Rejoicing with Rejoicers
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Romans 12:15: Love must be sincere…Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. One of my professors warned, “There will be days when you do a funeral in the morning and a wedding in the afternoon. You will need to weep in the morning and rejoice in the afternoon. Your tears and your joy better be sincere.” That advice comes directly from our text for today. Paul is laying out different shades of Christian love which is not rooted in feelings but in a decision of the mind to behave in certain ways. Empathy is “the ability to...
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Involved in the Mission
Wilderness Wanderings
Our scripture is from Colossians 3:12-14: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” When are we involved in God’s mission? Christians often think that only activity connected to the church is involved in God’s work. The implication is that God is not interested in our daily lives. But this is far from the truth. In the beginning, we were made to be involved in...
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A Dunked Community
Wilderness Wanderings
A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is Acts 1:1-11. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection! To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it . Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: Dive In Take a stab at defining Christian communal identity. What comes to mind when you hear the words ‘mission’ and ‘missionary’? How should we understand it? The disciples ask Jesus about the kingdom. How does he shift their focus? Four responses to the...
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Sabbath & Generosity
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Deuteronomy 15:1, 4-5: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts…there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.” Old Testament laws are not always easily applied to us because they concern Israel as a nation state. These laws about the Sabbath year, when debts are cancelled and land is returned to the families it was originally given to, are such...
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Blessing Enemies
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Romans 12:14 “Love must be sincere…Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Love has many colours. Having explored hospitality, Paul ups the ante. Love is no easy thing. It flies in the face of the normal human reaction to negative things: anger and revenge. Let’s start with a brief story about revenge. On a Friday early in 1982, Kevin got drunk, got into his car, went for a drive and killed an 18-year-old. He was convicted of manslaughter and drunk driving. Since he was only 17,...
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A Word of Encouragement
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text comes from Romans 15:2, “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.” This verse is written for the church community. Yet, Paul uses the word neighbour, which is rarely used except in the commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” So, we can apply this instruction to contexts outside the church. It a good word of wisdom for daily living. How might we apply it to our workplaces, communities in which we volunteer, and even in our homes? It is important to recognize that we build others up without desire for...
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Who Do You See?
Wilderness Wanderings
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Leaving Egypt Behind
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Deuteronomy 5:15: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” Egypt is difficult to forget – for the Israelites; also for us, Egypt seeps back into our bones. Egypt is brick building. Quotas. Meet your quota. Exceed your quota and you might get rewarded. But if you don’t meet your quota, you will be punished, severely. Brick building. Endless brick building. Mr. Julius Caesar Dithers in the comic strip...
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It's Not about You
Wilderness Wanderings
Today our text is Romans 12:9a, 13 Love must be sincere…Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. We return to hospitality. Why? Because culturally, hospitality is mostly about the one hosting, whereas Christian hospitality is about the one being hosted. Let’s flesh this out some more. Hotels and restaurants are part of the hospitality industry. They seek to impress customers so that they will return. Likewise, we want to impress people so they will associate with us. Hospitality is largely understood as having people over. More importantly, people we...
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Good Works
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text comes from Genesis 2:15, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. and Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Well, its another Monday. Rumor has it that many of us do not like Mondays. We do not like the return to the grind of work. The weekend is relief, Monday is back to it. Yet, it was not meant to be this way. Created in the image of God, each of us was created to be productive. This does not refer only to paid labour. We were...
info_outlineOur text is Exodus 20:8-11:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Sabbath keeping is an art form in which we resist certain values, refusing to allow them to define our identity and way of life. Within the 10 commandments, it gets a place of prominence, linking our relationship to God with our relationship to fellow humans. It gets the most words. Consider these things with me.
In Egypt, Pharaoh was god, his word was an iron law. But he was an anxious god, worrying about his dreams. Knowing that famine was coming, he gathered resources. When the hungry people came to him for food, instead of sharing his wealth, he sold his resources so that all of Egypt, including its people, belonged to him. God indeed – he controlled everything!
In such a world, everyone worked for Pharaoh. And every person, including neighbours and family, was competitor for the scarce resources that Pharaoh passed out. Competition raged. Everyone was anxious.
At mount Sinai, the Israelites switch allegiance. They commit themselves to the God of Abraham (cf. Ex. 19:8), who freed them from Pharaoh’s clutches. But what kind of God is he?
He is a God who rested (Genesis 2:2-3). After creating, God did not show up to do more, nor did he check on creation in anxiety to ensure it was working. He had complete confidence in the fruit-bearing, blessing-generating processes of creation. Despite sin, this still holds. Jesus pointed to the birds and flowers. They are still provided for, so stop being so anxious (Matthew 6:25ff).
Unlike Pharaoh, God is not a workaholic. He does not keep jacking up production schedules. Instead, God rests, confident, serene, at peace. God’s rest bestows on us a restfulness that contradicts the “drivenness” of the system of Pharaoh and of our own day.
God invites us to a new life of neighborly freedom in which Sabbath is the cornerstone. Such faithful practice of work stoppage is an act of resistance. Our bodies declare that we will not participate in the anxious system that pervades our social environment. We will not be defined by busyness and by pursuit of more, in either our economics or our personal relations. Our life does not consist in production.
Sabbath invites us into a life that does not consist in frantic production and consumption reducing everyone else to threat and competitor. Sabbath permits a waning of anxiety, redeploying energy to the neighborhood, to exchange anxious productivity with committed neighborliness. This practice creates an environment of security and respect and dignity that defines how we live and how we view others.
As you journey on, go with this blessing:
Go to Jesus and he will give you rest and an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). May the presence of God go with you and give you rest (Exodus 33:14).