One of the most common words of the Hebrew Old Testament translated to the English word for “sin” is related to missing the target. In Judges 10:16, we read of soldiers who could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. The same word is used of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who are accused of grievous sins (Genesis 18:20). Translators rightly have chosen the correct English words (miss and sin) so that we understand what was written. To the Hebrew ear, however, doing something wrong and missing the target had the same sound. Thus, when the people of Sodom refused to provide hospitality to Lot’s visitors and instead abuse them, they were “missing the target.” And when a soldier cannot hit what he is aiming at, he is “sinning.” We know the difference as did the Hebrews, but it is helpful to know that to the Hebrew ear, the words were the same.

There are a number of reasons that someone might miss a target, but there are two that are quite obvious. The first is inability. If you give me a sling such as the one the soldiers in the book of Judges used and asked me to hit a hair with a stone three times in a row, I can guarantee you that I won’t hit that hair even once. Even with good instruction and hours of practice, most of us would prove ourselves incapable of hitting the target perfectly every time.

When we think of sin, in Reformed circles, we are quick to talk about total depravity which leads us to understand why we are incapable of not sinning. We have sinful natures which cause every single thing we do to be tainted, at least a little bit, by sin. Total depravity keeps us from being capable, and even with good instruction and much practice, we still fail to hit the target perfectly even once let alone again and again.

The world would tell us that though we might not hit the bullseye, as long as we get close, that is good enough. It’s nice to think that, and maybe that is good enough for our friends and family, but it is not good enough for God. God has different standards than we do, standards that demand that we hit the target every time all the time. According to God’s standards, missing the target even once is enough to fail us, and when we fail, we are no longer qualified for eternal life with him. Thankfully, however, God does also correct things, and Jesus, who hit the target every time, sent from God the Father, gives us his results while he takes on ours. He gives us his perfection, and he suffers the consequences for our imperfections, and for that we must be thankful. The is the essence of the gospel, of course: we become righteous because we receive our righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ.

The second reason someone might miss the target is because they don’t know what the target is. What am I aiming at? When I was a kid, a friend had a fairly good slingshot, and we used it to shoot small stones. At first, we chose our targets, but since we could never hit them, we decided to just shoot at random. It was a lot more satisfying to be able to exclaim, “Did you see me hit that branch and break it off?” I wasn’t aiming at the branch, but there was a certain level of satisfaction in seeing the impact of what I was doing. Of course, because I wasn’t aiming, I could not really say that I had hit the target. If we don’t have a defined target, we might hit anything, and although what we do may appear impressive, we really haven’t accomplished anything concrete. To hit the target, we have to identify the target first.

So, when it comes to our behaviour, what is the target? Who gets to identify the target? There are two options: either we identify the target ourselves, or someone identifies it for us. In Canada the various laws help define the target. Our laws, for the main part, are based on precedent: how did previous judges rule when they encountered a similar situation? The question is this: how did previous judges decide how they would rule if they did not have precedent? It is not difficult to determine that many of the laws in Canada can be traced by to standards set out in the Bible. In countries which have an Islamic history, laws can be traced back to the Qur’an, a book Muslims believe was written by their greatest prophet who received what he wrote from Allah, the god of Islam. The target, in both cases, was defined someone outside of this world, by God himself. At one time, we would see that many sins found in the Bible were also considered crimes within Canada. (Proponents of Sharia law of Islam propose that breaking Islamic religious laws should be considered criminal violations and punished as such.) Over time things in Canada have changed. As Canada loses its Christian roots, more and more kinds of behaviour that were at one time considered both sinful and criminal have ceased to be criminal. Thus, it is now possible to use drugs or have sex outside of marriage and not be accused of a crime.

This has become quite confusing for many, for the target seems to have changed. Those who are not Christians are quite happy to redefine the target according to their whims, and biblically prohibited behaviour now becomes acceptable and even desirable while it seems that some biblically sanctioned behaviour becomes criminal. (Speaking out against some kinds of sinful behaviour is deemed discriminatory and could be punished in the courts.) It is quite easy for a Christian, who is not aware of this change to come to believe that because a particular sin is no longer a crime, it is permissible. Thus, there is a new target to aim at, and when someone hits that target, they believe they have accomplished what they intended to do. In other words, while they hit a target (one set by us), they did not hit the target (one set by God). This new target in Canada is defined by us, not by someone else, in particular, God.

Earlier I mentioned that the standard many hold today is that we come close enough, and that is a problem, for being close enough it not good enough, at least not by God’s standards. In that scenario, we have to convince people that God has higher standards that we do, something that is relatively easy to do. It is not hard to convince someone of their failure and guilt if they know and accept the standard given to us by God. Today, however, the real problem is that many people do not take into account that they have moved the target and they are aiming at the wrong thing and seem to be hitting it quite successfully. Many people think they are quite successful because they are hitting something. They are a little like I was when I hit the branch and claimed success because it broke, even though it was not identified as a target. So, before we convince someone that God’s standards are higher than ours, we first have to convince them that God’s standards are the target we should be aiming at. In other words, we must first convince people that it is not only the crimes that commit that God counts against us but the sins as well.

When we miss the mark because we are tainted by sin, we chalk it up to inability, and we put our trust in Jesus Christ to do what we cannot do. When we miss the mark because we have changed the target, that is called ignorance. To overcome ignorance, we first need to help people know, and what people need to know more than anything else today is that there is a God who created us and who loves us so much that he guides us in how we should live. When (since), we fail, we can also let people know that this same Creator God also cares enough about us that he will deal with our sin through Jesus Christ. People need to know, for if they don’t know, they will never know that the target they are hitting is not anywhere close to where they are aiming. Ignorance is never an excuse for breaking the law, so even those who have chosen to move the target are still guilty of sin. That too, thankfully, can be forgiven, but we must ask God for that forgiveness which is offered us in Jesus Christ.

On Saturday evening I attended a choir concert which featured four choirs: two church choirs and two Christian community choirs. All of the choirs did a beautiful job leading us in praising God. For the last four songs of the evening, all four choirs took the stage and the power of their voices filled the room. It was good to be there.

When I was in college a few decades ago, I attended a missions conference in Urbana, Illinois. Gathered together were about 25,000 college-aged women and men, and we had the opportunity to attend various workshops and learning opportunities. Each day all 25,000 of us would gather in the stadium of the university where the conference was being held for a worship service in which we heard God’s Word proclaimed and where we joined our voices in song. It was good to be there. The final evening of the conference was planned for December 31, and we gathered in the stadium for a worship service which began late in the evening. As the old year ended and the new year began, we celebrated communion together. If I live to be 100 years old, that New Year’s celebration will be the most meaningful and memorable. It was very good to be there.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a salesman, and after making my purchase, we talked casually for a while. The conversation turned to our faith, and it was good to discover that both he and I worship the same God through Jesus Christ. He is from a different denomination, and he talked a bit about a new church that had started in his community. He was a little disappointed that there was a new church, for he viewed it as being so similar to his own that he did not see the need for a new congregation. He said, “When there is already a true church in the community, why do we need another?” Although he may not recognize it himself, I believe that deep down he was lamenting the divisions that exist within the church of Jesus Christ, divisions which are very difficult to overcome even when denominations are very similar to each other. Of course, by merely using the expression, “true church,” he was pushing a number of denominations to the sidelines, implying that they weren’t good enough to make it to the status of being a “true church.”

John Calvin, in his Institutes, talked about what makes a church a “true church.” He said that at least two things must be present: faithful proclamation of God’s Word and regular celebration of the sacraments. He implied that there might a third mark of the true church, namely the faithful exercise of discipline, although this third mark is often subsumed under the proclamation of the Word. These two (or three) marks have become the standard by which some judge other churches. If a church is not faithfully proclaiming God’s Word (teaching and guiding its members) and if it is not regularly celebrating the sacraments, it should not be considered part of the true church.

The question that arises in my mind is this: how faithful and how regular? How do we determine if a church is faithful enough in its proclamation of the Word of God? How often should we celebrate the sacraments? John Calvin said we should celebrate communion every week, but since we don’t, does that place Nobleford CRC outside the boundaries of being a true church?

Reading Calvin’s Institutes, I discovered that he was not so concerned that churches do things perfectly, or nearly so, before they can be considered part of the true church. In fact, he gives remarkable latitude when he says that even if those marks are present in a small amount, we must understand that church to be part of the true church. In other words, things are not nearly as black and white as we might want them to be, if we follow Calvin’s leading.

I would say that the 25,000 young men and women who gathered at the missions conference give us a picture of the true church. We were from a wide variety of denominations, most of which were not Reformed in their theology. Some of us were charismatic while others were from the far more ancient Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. In the crowd were people who belonged to house churches and people who attended megachurches. As we gathered the Word of God was proclaimed, and, on New Year’s Eve, we celebrated the sacrament of Lord’s Supper. I fully recognized that the method of our celebration would not have met CRC standards, for I was one of the servers, and I was not an elder at the time. I’m not even sure that the one who presided over the celebration was ordained, something that is required in our denomination. In spite of our differences, we were a small part of the true church of Jesus Christ, the one that is described in Revelation 7:9 as being from every nation, tribe, people and language who worship the one true God through Jesus Christ.

Although we did not celebrate communion at the choir concert last Saturday (that would have caused cries of outrage to be raised by some in attendance), I believe that those who were gathered there were also representative of the true church of Jesus Christ. We were from a multitude of denominations and some of us in attendance hold strongly to our traditions, but, yet, we were worshipping God together, proclaiming his Word in song. We were the true church, and it was good to be there.

Robots have become necessary in many manufacturing processes. Car bodies, once welded together by humans, are now welded more quickly and accurately by robots which do the same process over and over without tiring. Robots are especially adept at repetitive tasks requiring a significant amount of precision.

But robots also cause engineers significant headaches, and one of the biggest problems that must be overcome is what is referred to as “robot drift.” Let’s say, for example, that a robot must weld two pieces of steel, 10 cm long, together. Those pieces of steel are placed in a jig, and the robot then moves into place and engages the electrical current and welds them together. In order to have a strong weld, the robot must be exactly in the right place every time. The problem is this: robots, as well built as many of them are, tend to have a little play in their joints. After five or ten or even one hundred welds, this may not be noticeable, but after a full week of welding, the robot could be placing the weld a two millimetres to the right of where it should be. It doesn’t sound like much, but anyone who welds knows that the two piece of steel will not be joined together if this happens.

To solve the problem, engineers must design the robot so that it returns to his “home” regularly. This “home” is a fixed point where the software can reset so that any drift can be eliminated and the robot can begin anew. Robot drift is often imperceptible and even unmeasurable, but it can become quite problematic over time.

Culture is a little like a robot. The culture of a place rarely changes rapidly. Occasionally there are circumstances that introduce more rapid change (influx of immigrants, recession, invention of labour-saving devices), but most often the culture of a place appears to remain mostly the same, or at least as we perceive it.

But, as we well know, culture also drifts. I daresay that Canadian culture is markedly different today from what it was 100 or even 50 years ago. Forces have been acting on Canadian culture so that today things that were unheard of half a century ago are now considered to be normal. Eating out used to be an event, but today many of us eat in a restaurant of some sort several times a month. (I didn’t eat in a restaurant until I was about 12 years old.) Sometimes the cultural shifts are quite innocuous, but sometimes they are more dangerous. Our minds might turn to the obvious ones – sexual practices or the legalization and use of mind-altering narcotics – but there are many less obvious but potentially equally dangerous changes. One family psychologist in a radio talk show suggested that families have a meal together once every week. As I was listening, I thought she would say, “once a day,” but apparently many families never have a meal together except, perhaps, for special occasions. One of the reasons cited is that children are often so involved in such a variety of activities that the family has no time to sit down together for a meal. The family unit is no longer functioning, this psychologist said, and, as a result, children are not receiving regular guidance from their parents. I suspect that half a century ago things were very different.

Culture, like robots, tends to drift, and the changes that are made are often imperceptible until, of course, we realize that something isn’t working. The accumulation of the drift is the real problem.

Like robots, culture needs to be reset. We need to return a home position, and we need to return to that home position often. It goes without saying that Scripture provides the “home setting” for all cultures. Scripture doesn’t impose a particular (e.g. western) culture on its readers, but it does outline some of the things that are essential for culture to be proper and good. Recognition and worship of a gracious and almighty God and a humble submission to his authority is one of the main teachings of Scripture. Trust in Jesus Christ of our salvation flows out of this. Caring for others is an essential part of Christian culture. We need to be reminded of these values often because, if we aren’t, we will drift further and further from them. In the home I grew up in, we read the Bible at every mealtime, attended Sunday School and catechism, worshipped twice on Sunday, and were encouraged in our personal devotions. Perhaps many of us have drifted from that, and, perhaps, as a result, many of us do not have the same intense commitment to God and his ways that former generations may have had. We might discover that we have drifted quite a distance from where we should be.

It’s not that we need to return to the way things used to be. That is not resetting ourselves. Rather, we should find ways to regularly engage with Scripture so that our minds and hearts can be turned again to the Lord and his ways. It might be that the old ways were the best, but it may also be that we have to find new and appropriate ways to reset ourselves by engaging God’s Word in different ways from the traditional ways, if the old ways don’t work for us. With new technology, the possibilities are numerous. But, whatever we do, we all need to be reset back to our homes, namely to the teachings of Scripture, very regularly.

One final note: culture will continue to drift, and it is very unlikely that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, will be able to prevent that drift. It is quite likely that attempts we make to influence our culture to return to what we define as a Christian culture will fail. It’s far more likely that we will find ourselves, as we reset, becoming more and more different from the culture around us. This we must accept, as hard as that may be.

If we return to the robot and its weld, it seems fairly reasonable to say that our current culture is welding far off the joint between the two pieces of steel. Things are not working as they should, and we can sense the problems. We are heavily influenced by the world around us, and we may think that drawing a bead of weld 2 centimetres from the joint is acceptable because that is what everyone else is doing. It is good to be reminded that, following first question and answer of the Westminster Confession, “our purpose as human beings is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” and living by that wisdom is drawing a bead of weld where it belongs, regardless of what everyone else is doing.

The Heidelberg Catechism speaks of the providence of God in Lord’s Day 10, and in so doing says that “all things come to us, not by chance, but from God’s fatherly hand.” Over the past few weeks I have heard this quoted several times, and each time I have become a little troubled. I have become troubled because the one quoting this was speaking about some adversity that they had experienced, and it seemed to me that they believed that God had sent them that adversity, indicating that it appeared he was its cause. This is problematic because God does not cause evil nor is he the source of anything that is evil. While Lord’s Day 9 says that God sends us adversity, we must read that statement in its context, and when we do, we discover that the act of “sending” may not be the same as the act of causing.

Zacharias Ursinus was one of the co-authors of the catechism, and he also wrote a commentary on it. In that commentary he gives a bit of background into why he and his fellow author decided to include these statements in the catechism. He says that outside the teaching of God’s providence there are three basic explanations as to why things happen as they do: First, some people believe that the only reason things happen is because of cause and effect limited entirely to this world. Human beings are the cause of most things (although a grizzly attack is also a cause), and what we cause (do) has an effect (result). In this view, God does not involve himself in history. This appears to be the most common view held by people today who believe strongly that we can change our destinies, and we can do so without God’s intervention.

A second view says that built into the very fabric of this world is something we might call fate. Fate is a kind of force that pushes the events of history in a certain direction, and none can resist that force. Even God cannot resist this powerful force, and those who believe in fate are fatalistic, saying that there is nothing that can be done. We simply have to live with what we get.

A third view says that God doesn’t really direct how things happen in this world, but from time to time, he reaches down into the world to shake things up a bit. In this view, God doesn’t move things in a specific direction, but he does add energy to the system so that it keeps going. Human beings are responsible for their own destinies, and we must deal with things as they come our way. I don’t know anyone who holds this view, although there may be some who do.

In thinking of these three views, Ursinus found that they didn’t correlate with the teachings of Scripture. Rather, he thought that the word, “providence,” might be a better way of describing why things happen as they do. (It wasn’t Ursinus who developed this idea, but he thought it necessary to include in the catechism to answer some of the teachings of his day and ours.) He defined providence in this way: Providence is the eternal, most free, unchangeable, wise, just and good counsel of God, according to which he effects all good things in his creatures; permits also evil things to be done, and directs all, both good and evil, to his own glory and the salvation of his people.

Notice that Ursinus identifies two kinds of events in this world: good and bad. Relying on Scripture, he says that all the good things that happen in this world can be attributed to God. Not all things are directly attributed to God, for there is some human agency involved. Yet, the very fact that a mother loves her children or a scientist makes a discovery are the result of God building these good things into the world. Ultimately, we can trace all good things back to the nature of creation or God’s intervention in it after he created it. All good things come from God.

But evil or bad things do not come from God. They come from the fact that sin has entered into this world and things are not as they should be. There should be no cancer, and there should be no drug-fueled crime. There should be no car accidents, and there should be no divorce. These things happen because of sin. We must be careful not to attribute them to God. Rather, as Ursinus points out, God, while not causing them, permits them. This is an important distinction.

If it were true that God literally sent difficulty and adversity into our lives, we would have to say that God is more like a cruel dictator than a loving Father. At the same time (and this is something that often tries our faith), God permits evil things to happen. In his infinite wisdom (something we cannot understand), God allows cancer and crime and broken relationships. While they should not be, they are, and God has decided not to stop them, at least not yet. In the future, of course, God will rid his creation of sin, and evil things will no longer occur. We may never understand why God allows bad things to happen, but we have to trust that he knows what he is doing.

The final statement that Ursinus makes, however, is the most important: God direct both good and evil to his own glory and to the salvation of his people. Certainly, we can say that easily about the good things that he causes to happen, either directly or indirectly. It takes an act of faith, however, to trust that God can turn evil things, things that are a result of sin permeating this world, for his glory and for our salvation. And this is what is truly amazing about the sovereignty of God: unlike us who are often helpless in the face of evil, God can take that which is evil and somehow make good come from it. And he does that regularly and often. It is the devil’s design to use adversity to drive us away from God, but God often brings people closer to himself through times of adversity. I cite two examples: first, it is evident that when the church of Jesus Christ experiences persecution, it tends to become more faithful and often grows more rapidly. We saw that happening in China in the height of communist rule when the church grew remarkably. I cite a personal example as well: in 1977 my mother was involved in a tractor accident which resulted in her losing her unborn child and being hospitalized for half a year. It was a difficult time for her and my father, but God used those difficulties to cause my parents to grow in their faith. Especially in my mother I sensed a renewed sense of calling to serve the Lord, and she did so faithfully for the decades God gave to her after the accident, becoming a faithful leader in a variety of ministries in the church and a witness to the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ to her neighbours.

God’s providence is astounding, for in this providence we see his sovereignty. But let’s be careful, as Ursinus was, to understand that only that which is good comes from God’s fatherly hand. We can also be thankful that when living in a sinful world causes adversity, God is powerful enough to work through it and turn it to our good. And we can be thankful for a God who does intervene in this world, rather than being subject to fate or dependent on our own abilities. Our message to the world is this: we have a God who provides good things and helps us when things aren’t good. That is true for now and for eternity.

Years ago, I used to listen to a short radio show called The Rest of the Story. This program contained short vignettes in which the author, Paul Harvey, would talk about little known history that had given rise to much used commonplace things today. Harvey, for example, might talk about the inventor of the coffee machine or the founder of a restaurant chain. His goal was to help us understand where things we use every day came from. Most often, the history included unknown, ordinary people who had great ideas. The Rest of the Story was intended to help us all understand that sometimes ordinary people from ordinary places can do extraordinary things.

If Paul Harvey were writing about the beginnings of the New Testament church, he might well begin by talking about a man from a remote fishing village on the shores of a smallish lake in the Mideast, in an unknown province named Galilee. He would have noted that this man’s parents were not academic scholars or political leaders but, rather, were also of fisherman stock, plying their trade as their parents did before them. He would have gone on to say how this ordinary man, after becoming convinced that a local Rabbi had a life-changing message for the world, became a strong advocate for this Rabbi and went on to become a leader in a movement that has changed the world. If we had known Peter, we would not have suspected that he would become one of the early leaders of a religion that is now over 2 billion people strong. Telling the rest of the story simply by stating the observable facts would be inspirational for we see an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

Of course, we know that there was much more happening than what can be learned from the story of Peter. Peter’s Rabbi, for example, was no ordinary man; he was and remains the eternal Son of God. Peter didn’t become the leader of the church through his own power and charisma or his unique set of gifts; he was empowered by the eternal third Person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit. While The Rest of the Story normally celebrated the accomplishments of ordinary people, the story of Peter and the rest of the apostles much celebrate the accomplishments of God working through ordinary people.

I suspect that few of us or few of the people we know will ever become the subject matter for The Rest of the Story. Most of us will not invent some life-changing device or develop a novel and helpful idea that shapes the course of human history. Most of us don’t have the ingenuity to develop something that can change the world. We are not going to make the pages of The Rest of the Story.

But Peter wouldn’t have either if it had not been for the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit working in him. Peter would have continued on as an unremarkable fisherman in Galilee, and we would never have known of him as we have never heard of almost all of the other fisherman of his time. Peter’s fame is solely a result of God working through him, and, as I already stated, it was because of this that Peter accomplished what he did. We could argue, further, that Peter was not always willing to be used by God to lead the church. He was plagued by reluctance and disillusionment, at least at first, although that was replaced with a deep commitment that led to his being willing to die for Jesus, which he did.

This all goes to say that while few or even none of us may ever make it to the pages of The Rest of the Story, that does not mean that we won’t be able to engage in life-changing work. It is possible that God may work in us to change the world. We may feel unqualified and incapable, but that hasn’t stopped God before.

We may not be like Peter in that we do something as significant as being one of the first leaders of the Christian church, but we can be used by God to change someone else’s life. It doesn’t take someone special or particularly qualified. All it takes is our response to willingly follow Jesus. Peter, as we recall, had to grow a little in that, especially as he denied Jesus at his trial. Jesus had to straighten him out a little after he rose again, and after that, Peter showed himself to be ready and willing. Peter’s life didn’t proceed as he planned it, we can be sure, but because he was willing, God used him.

The rest of our stories has yet to be written. We don’t know what lies ahead of how we can be used of God. Yet, we can be confident of this: if we are willing, and if we are committed to following Jesus, God can work in us to change lives and perhaps even change the world. As Peter, we won’t be able to say that it was our ingenuity or charisma, for all that we do must be attributed to God the Spirit as he works through us. But when we are willing and ready to follow Jesus, we can be quite sure that he will use us in ways we might not have thought possible.

We should note, of course, that we will not always know how God uses us or the impact we might have made. A GEMS or Cadet counsellor may not know that a small conversation changed the life of one of their students, and a visit to another member of the church might change someone’s life forever, and we may never hear of it. Perhaps, a generation or so from now, someone might include one of us in their “The Rest of the Story.” It does not take ingenuity or special giftedness to make a lasting impact on someone’s life. All it takes is a deepening commitment to Jesus Christ and a willingness to be used by the Holy Spirit. May it be said, however, that in the end, we become part of The Rest of the Story as they recount how we were used by God to bring change to another’s life and, perhaps for some of us, to many lives.

In Revelation 5, John, the author of Revelation, shares with us a vision that he is seeing. In his vision he has been invited to observe what is happening in heaven, in God’s throne room. In this chapter, God is seated on the throne, and in his hand is a scroll that has seven seals on it. The seal contains the decrees of God that will shape the rest of history, both in heaven and on earth. Because the scroll is sealed, however, someone must be found who is qualified to break open the wax seals and thus enact what has been written there.

The question is put to all who are gathered there: who is worthy to break the seals and enact God’s decrees? No one comes forward and no nominations are made. This saddens John so deeply that he weeps uncontrollably. This was especially disconcerting for him because of his situation and the situation of the church. John had been exiled to a distant island by the Roman courts, a punishment that was almost as bad as a death sentence. The church which remained on the mainland was suffering greatly because of persecution, and unless God stepped in, it, along with the gospel entrusted to it, would be destroyed. Only God’s decrees could stop the powerful evil forces at play in the world, but, as John tells us, no one seemed to be qualified or worthy to break the seals. God’s decrees would go unenacted.

Seeing him weeping uncontrollably, one of the twenty-four elders (representing the entirety of God’s people, Old Testament and New Testament), told John to stop weeping, for someone had been found who was worthy to open the scroll. The elder tells John that “the Lion of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

This description of the one who is worthy to open the scroll brings to mind the prophecies of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, we learn that God was going send a Messiah, one he had anointed to bring salvation to the world, and that through this Messiah God would make right the wrongs of this world and bring things to the end he desired. We know, further, that this Messiah would be a descendant of David, of royal lineage. The elder also calls the Messiah the Lion of Judah. Throughout the ancient world images of lions were found in places of great power, as is appropriate, for in the ancient world there was no animal more powerful than the lion.

Lions are also intimidating, for they can destroy life in a few seconds. They were used by the Romans in the amphitheatre to put to death those who were believed worthy of execution. The crowds thronged to the theatre to watch these blood spectacles which included the killing of Christians who refused to recant. John was well aware of these atrocities, and the fact that the one who was able to cause history to move forward was a lion who would stalk and destroy those who stood against God and his people.

If John’s vision would have stopped there, the implications for the church would have been far different from what they are now. If it were true that the Messiah, Jesus, were only a lion, the way forward would have been to tear the throats and crush the bones of those who stood in opposition to God.

This is the way of the world. How do powerful nations become powerful? They overpower weaker nations and take what belongs to others for themselves. Should a weaker nation resist, the more powerful nation will send its armies, usually justifying itself in some way, and, after eliminating resistance, they will take what doesn’t belong to them. Powerful nations always put two options before those from whom they intend to take. Option 1: Give it to us. Option 2: Resist, and we will beat you up, and then we will take it from you. This has been true throughout the centuries. This is how the Roman Empire became richer and more powerful. It is how the nations of Europe became rich and more powerful during the days of colonization. And it is how the powerful nations of the world today become richer and more powerful. They act like lions, preying upon those who are weaker and bullying them if they show resistance.

If God’s Messiah had come as a lion, this is what we could expect of the church. But that is not what we see. As soon as the announcement is made that there is someone worthy to open the scrolls, and that this worthy person is of regal descent and is one of great power, the next thing John sees is “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” This Lamb has the appearances of being defeated, but yet lives. We know, of course, that this Lamb is none other than our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ who came to give his life as a sacrifice for sinners. It was in his death that he won the victory over the powers of evil. It was in his sacrifice that he continues to be victorious.

Scholars who have given great thought to this part of John’s vision, note how absolutely jarring and unexpected the appearance of the Lamb who appears to have been slain is. The decrees of God are going to be carried out, not by a lion who crushes and destroys but by a Lamb, the most helpless of animals, who has died on a cross at the hands of an earthly lion.

And this shapes the demeanour and task of the church. Instead of finding its work in crushing others, the church, following Jesus Christ, finds its work in following Jesus in sacrifice. The power of the church is not found in its institutions and in its placement of its people in positions of authority and power. The power of the church is found in the gospel, the story of Jesus who gave his life for sinners. The power of the church is not found in declaring its rights and privileges but in giving its life for the sake of others.

This message is easily lost by the church and by those who claim to be acting in the name of Jesus Christ. In centuries and places where Christianity was the majority and when positions of power were held by those who identified with the Christian faith, the church acted in the same way as the powerful nations of the world, exerting its control and demanding of people that they submit or be destroyed. When the church is weak, however, it can no longer use the ways of the world to advance its purposes (perhaps instead of the purposes of God), and it is forced to being a lamb (powerless and helpless) instead of a lion (dominating and destructive), thus following Jesus in his sacrifice.

To be powerful, Jesus did not come as a lion, although, truth be told, that could have been the way God got rid of sin from this world. God could have sent a lion among sinners, tearing out their throats and crushing their bones, but he did not. He sent a Lamb, and that Lamb, in succumbing to the lion in his death but being raised to new life by God the Father, became more powerful than any lion and established an eternal Kingdom marked by reconciliation and peace.

The power of the church, those who follow Jesus Christ, again, is not dependent on its ability to rule but in its willingness to sacrifice. The church grows as the followers of Jesus Christ recognize that when they are weak, Jesus Christ can be strong through them. And when the sacrificial Lamb does his work, it is then that we see the Kingdom come and God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Last week I attended a conference to which pastors who were in their third part of their ministry were invited. There were about twelve of us in attendance, and we talked at length about what it means to retire and what that looks like for a pastor. One of the things that most pastors face that is different from the average retiree is the expectation that the pastor will not continue to be a member in his last church beyond retirement. Too many times, it has been discovered, the retired pastor interferes in the work of the next pastor, causing friction and discord. So, when a pastor retires, he is expected to move away from his last congregation, finding a new community or returning to an old one. Unlike pastors, most people, when they retire, continue to live in the same community after retirement, and although their lives can be drastically different, they experience a lot of continuity as well. The conference focused on those who are in the last third of their ministry, helping us understand how we can prepare for this last and often difficult transition. I found it to be helpful even though I am at least a decade from retirement (hopefully).

In the course of the conversation, it became evident that not all cultures understand the concept of retirement. One of the pastors in attendance has his roots in Colombia, and he works with Christian Reformed Latino pastors in the southern United States. Latino pastors normally don’t speak of retirement; they tend to work until they are no longer able, some dying in the pulpit, figuratively speaking. His comments led to a discussion about the arbitrariness of retirement. Most of us think of 65 as being the retirement age, although people my age won’t get their pension until 66, but the age of 65 is quite arbitrary. Another of those in attendance continues in ministry at the age of 67, and he does not foresee that he will be ending his ministry soon. Although he finds that he does not have the stamina he used to have, he still is invigorated by his work.

As the conversation progressed, the word, vocation, was thrown around. Vocation (coming from the same root at “vocal”) refers to our calling, and, according to the dictionary, is often considered to be a divine calling. In some circles, vocation is reserved for those who work in religious settings such as churches and monasteries, but Reformed people understand that everyone has a vocation, a calling from God. One’s vocation can be in agriculture or education, carpentry or nursing. God places a call on our lives, and we respond to that call by faithfully engaging in the kind of work that best enables us to fulfill that call.

A vocation is different from a job or even a career. A career is a particular way of fulfilling our vocation. For the most productive years of our lives (20-65+), we tend to respond to God’s calling by having a career. We may retire from our career, but that does not mean that our vocation ceases. The question is this: how do we continue to full our vocation (God’s calling) when we no longer have a career? This was the question that was posed to us as pastors. How do we continue to answer God’s call (our vocation) when we no longer have a church in which we pastor? For the Latino pastors, because their careers do not end, this is not a hard answer. For a variety of reasons (often financial but also very much cultural), they fulfill their vocation by continuing to do exactly what they had been doing for the rest of their lives. For a North American pastor, however, the question becomes more problematic: how do we fulfill our vocations without being called by a church? The answer is not easy to discover, and it will vary from person to person, depending on health, circumstance and opportunity.

One of the pastors who was leading the conference and who retired just a year ago, shared some helpful insights. She said that when she first retired, she took a sabbatical, pausing from serving actively to reflect on God’s blessings throughout her career. She talked of her time serving in a church and then teaching in a couple of Christian universities. She needed the time to reflect so that she could sense God’s calling as she moved forward to new opportunities. She confessed that she still was not entirely clear how she would fulfill God’s calling, but things were starting to gel a little. She suspects that in the next couple of months she will become clear about how she can fulfill God’s call on her life, and she is certain that that call will also include ample time to spend with her grandchildren.

We often focus on helping young people understand their vocation, their calling, and we also want to help them seek a career that will help them fulfill their vocation. What we do far less is to help those who are coming to the end of their careers continue to fulfill their callings. In the most extreme cases, a retiree, who can afford it, shirks any notion of vocation and spends his/her life in self-gratifying activities, playing pickleball in the morning and golfing in the afternoon. It’s rather hard to understand how such a person is answering God’s call. (Note, that someone who no longer has a career has more time to engage in these activities, and that can be a blessing. The problem occurs when that is all that they are doing.) God’s call, our vocation, remains intact even when we do not need to earn money by engaging in a career, and we should not neglect that calling. Perhaps it is as great (or greater) a challenge to discover how someone who no longer works in a career can discover how to answer God’s call in other ways as it is to determine what vocation God may have for us when we are young. To discover that might take a great deal of creative thinking.

What did I gain from the conference? I learned that I need to seek God’s leading so that as I work through the last third (probably last quarter) I can continue in my vocation beyond my retirement date. As God’s call remains, I trust that I will find a way to answer that call, trusting that whatever it looks like, God will use me for his kingdom and his glory. At every age of life it is good to consider what our vocation is, but especially in times of transition the question becomes more pertinent. May we all know God’s call on our lives and seek to answer that call no matter what age we may be.

I was pastoring in a small village, and a new pastor arrived in town. He opened up a church building that had been sitting empty for some time, hoping to plant a new church. To engender some interest, he decided to have a revival meeting, so he obtained permission to use a vacant lot on the main street and began setting up a stage and chairs. The lot was fairly large, and he was able to arrange seating for about 300 people. He had large speakers, a great sound system, and several mics. He began his revival on a Saturday morning at about 9:00. I lived a few blocks away, and I heard what sounded to be a large crowd gathering in that vacant lot, and I hurried over to see what was going on. There was nobody there except for the young pastor and one or two others. The music, the clapping, and all the rest was just a recording of another revival. From time to time the pastor would stand up to speak, but I didn’t stay long enough to hear what he had to say. The revival lasted all day, for I could hear the noise until early evening. I am quite sure that the neighbours across the street were not impressed. I was a few blocks away, and the noise was loud enough to be disturbing to me. A few days later I happened to meet a colleague of his, someone from the same denomination, and I commented on what had happened. His colleague said to me, “He has a lot of enthusiasm.” I don’t think he meant it in a positive sense.

Normally, enthusiasm is a positive trait for a person, but that has not always been so. In the 1650s to say that someone was enthusiastic was considered to be a criticism. An enthusiastic person was one who showed “excessive religious emotion,” to the point that they were irritating. The pejorative sense of the word has almost entirely disappeared, although I think the colleague of the “enthusiastic” pastor had got it right. The young pastor had gone a bit too far, and, sadly, his efforts at planting a church failed shortly afterward.

The word, “enthusiasm,” has its origins in the Greek language, and the Greek root from which we get our word means “to be inspired or possessed by a god, and, thus, to experience ecstasy.” In the 1650s, when the word was used pejoratively, the Puritans, who were a rather reserved group, were suspicious of anyone who expressed too much religious emotion, for they thought that such people had become conceited as they claimed special revelation from God. Too much enthusiasm was thought to be a dangerous thing.

And yet, no enthusiasm at all should be a warning sign to us that perhaps we are not moved by the things of God. If we never have any emotion at all when it comes to God and his work in this world, our faith might be growing cold. If we never feel inspired by God to participate in his work, perhaps it is because we are ignoring his presence in our lives.

I don’t think we need to set up 300 chairs in a vacant lot and hold a revival which lasts all day Saturday. Still, I do admire this enthusiastic young pastor because he was willing to put himself out there and even be criticized and mocked because he felt so strongly that people know the message of salvation and come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. He may have been a little misguided when it came to putting his enthusiasm into practice, but his heart was in the right place.

This young pastor was part of the Pentecostal movement, and Pentecostals tend to be a little more aware of the moving of the Holy Spirit than the average Christian. Part of their culture is to be conscious of how the Holy Spirit might be working around them. Maybe that can make them overly enthusiastic (at least from the perspective of a staid, northern European, Reformed person), but, at the same time, it may well be that they sense that the Holy Spirit is moving, and they want to be part of that movement.

It doesn’t seem improbable that we can get so caught up in being “rational” about our faith that we miss opportunities to join in the Spirit’s work. We do have a tendency to reason and plan before we act, and if we do not see the way clear and if we cannot remove all obstacles, our tendency is to do nothing. But let’s not forget that what we may perceive as giant rocks in the roadway are nothing more than little pebbles to the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as an obstacle to the Spirit, and when he begins to move, wonderful things can happen.

Are we enthusiastic enough? If to be enthusiastic is to be possessed by God, then, according to Scripture, we are all enthusiastic because the Holy Spirit dwells in all who believe in Jesus Christ. But the Spirit does not force us to act; rather he moves us, and, it seems, we do have the power to grieve the Holy Spirit when we do not follow his urging (Ephesians 4:30. Paul says this in the context of our sinning, but we can extrapolate this to following his lead as well.) When we keep in step with the Spirit, however, we are hearing his calling and urging, and we are responding by showing our enthusiasm.

As I reflect on the attempts of the enthusiastic pastor, I believe that he was following the Spirit’s leading. What he chose to do might have been somewhat unhelpful, but he sensed the Spirit calling him to bring the gospel to that village. He would have been well served to have had a conversation with some of his colleagues and trusted friends before he set up 300 chairs, for they may have guided him in a bit different direction. But he was enthusiastic, and that is not a bad thing.

Jerusalem is separated from Jericho by a little less than 30 km, but the altitude difference between those two cities is a little more than one kilometre. Jerusalem is 800 metres (2600 feet) above sea level and Jericho is 250 metres (800) feet below sea level. Walking the ancient road between the two cities means that if you are travelling to Jerusalem you are walking almost entirely uphill while the trip to Jericho is almost entirely downhill. If someone is travelling down the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, we know that he is travelling to Jericho from Jerusalem.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) we read that there was a man travelling down the road when he was attacked by bandits, beaten, and left for dead. Shortly afterward, a priest happened to be travelling on the same road, and, as he tells the parable, Jesus says that he was also travelling down the road. A Levite follows, and Luke uses the word, “likewise,” indicating that he was probably travelling in the same direction. Finally, we are told that a Samaritan is travelling along the same road, although there is no indication of his direction of travel.

While it may not seem significant, the direction of the travel of the priest and Levite tells us a lot about what they have been doing. Priests and Levites were designated by God to serve him in the temple. To do this, they had to be clean, free from contamination because of contact with a dead body, for example. If the priest and Levite were going to Jerusalem, we might well believe that they wanted to keep themselves from being tainted by the blood of the man who had been beaten and might well die in their arms. We might assume that they had weighed the alternatives, and had decided that it was better to avoid contact with the beaten man and so be able to serve in the temple as God required. They might have been able to argue that leading the people to worship God took precedence over helping an injured man. They might have been able to argue that, but, of course, they were not travelling to Jerusalem but away from the city. They had fulfilled their religious duties, and they were not obligated to keep themselves clean.

It is also helpful to know that around the temple were a number of beggars, people who had disabilities and who could not earn a living for themselves. These beggars were welcomed by those who visited the temple, for after visiting the temple and worshipping God, the worshippers could express their gratitude to God by helping out those poor disabled folk. It would have been natural, therefore, for both the priest and the Levite to help out the poor man who had been beaten to within an inch of his life, but they do not, choosing, instead, to ignore his plight.

It is the Samaritan who not only stops to help the man but provides financial arrangements so that the man could be helped as he (the Samaritan) continues on his way to conduct his business, whatever that may be. Although we cannot know for certain, it is likely that he is travelling up the road toward Jerusalem, because he indicates that he will be passing by a few days later. It is highly unlikely that he lived in Jerusalem because of his ethnicity, and we can surmise that he was only attending to business in that city. What we do know is that whenever he was in Jerusalem, he would not have been welcomed in the temple. Although Samaritans believed in the same God as the Jews, the Jews did not welcome the Samaritans into their fellowship. The good Samaritan would not have been invited to worship at the temple.

Let’s be clear about one other point: while the Jews did not like the Samaritans, the Samaritans also had every reason to hate the Jews. Because they were not welcome to worship God in the temple in Jerusalem, they had constructed their own temple on Mount Gerizim, a mountain in the region of Samaria. For a time they worshipped the Lord there, but the Jews, in a moment of intense religious zealotry, destroyed that temple in 112 BC, completely cutting off the ability of the Samaritans to worship God. The destruction of the Gerizim temple led to a lasting rift between the two people groups.

And, yet, as he travelled along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, when he saw the injured man, he stopped to help. We can be most certain that this man was a Jew, for he had been in Jerusalem, perhaps to worship there, and he was travelling down to Jericho. The Samaritan would have assumed that the man was a Jew, but he stopped to help anyway, giving a substantial portion of his time and money to assist a man who was considered to be his enemy.

He was a neighbour to the man who had fallen prey to the robbers. He loved his neighbour as himself, providing for this unfortunate soul what he would have wanted for himself although, to be certain, he would not have received it had he been the one who had been attacked.

Jesus uses this parable to challenge our understanding of how we treat our neighbours. Notice that there is no question as to what he means when we are to love others as we love ourselves. It is obvious enough to all that if we take Jesus’ words seriously, we are to provide for our neighbours all the good things that we provide for ourselves. What we want is for our neighbours to have what we have to the same degree that we have it. There can be no doubt that the expert in the law understood that this is exactly what the commandment to love our neighbours meant.

He tried to skirt this demand on his life, however, not by challenging what it means to love someone but to question what kind of people are in the group that we should love. If our neighbours are those who love us and want the best for us, then it is easy enough to love them as we love ourselves. However, if our neighbours include those who have every reason to hate us, and we have every reason to hate them, then Jesus’ command takes on a whole new depth of meaning. The parable of the good Samaritan clarifies for us that our neighbours might include those who love us, but our neighbours are also those who have no use for us. And that makes this commandment a lot more difficult to follow.

There is no really good reason for us to not take care of our neighbour. The priest and Levite, having spent time with God and having come to know again his providential care, were invited to give alms to the poor on their way out of the temple. It was understood that God’s covenantal love for them and his acceptance of them as his children should result in us loving others. But they didn’t. And they were without excuse.

All of this can be considered on a personal level, but we are invited to ask the question: does Jesus’ parable also have something to say about the way nations treat each other? Who is our neighbour? And how do we treat them?

Most of us are familiar with the Evangelical Free Church in Lethbridge Perhaps we might be less familiar with the history that gave rise to the word, “free,” in the name of that denomination. We should ask, “free from what?”

To fully understand the history of the name, we must go back to the year 380AD. As we are aware, Christians in the early centuries of Christianity were sometimes severely persecuted. Christianity did not have the official sanction of the Roman Empire, and that left Christians vulnerable to attack. Things changed significantly in 312AD when Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan which recognized Christianity as being a valid religion and moved it to become the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. Another huge change in policy took place in 380AD when Emperor Theodosius, in the Edict of Thessalonica, declared that Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. This was quickly adopted across the empire and remained true even after the Empire came to an end in 476AD and was divided into several smaller kingdoms. The Edict of Thessalonica gave Christians and Christianity dominance in the Mideast, in northern Africa and in much of Europe.

While this was a blessing, there were some significant drawbacks. The ruling civil authorities (kings and nobility) saw themselves as being called by God to be defenders of the Christian faith, and they took an active role in leading the church. Gradually they took upon themselves the duty of appointing church leaders to the positions of pastors and bishops, even appointing the Bishop of Rome, the pope, to his position. While it could be argued that many of the appointments by the kings and nobility were proper and good and those appointed to their positions served the Lord faithfully, it is also true that those appointed were expected to be supportive of the civil government. In other words, the civil authorities were more likely to appoint people who would show their appreciation for their appointment by being patrons of the civil leaders.

This all came to a head in the 11th and 12th centuries when the right of the nobility to appoint church leaders was challenged. For almost a century, the church struggled to gain the right to appoint its own leaders, independent of the kings and nobles. Eventually the church won out, and even the most powerful kings and civil leaders had to receive the blessing of the church leadership before they could be considered legitimate. Even today, in some countries the monarch is crowned by the highest religious leader, as is illustrated by the fact that King Charles was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England. (It should be noted that the achievements of the church in those centuries did not last as is seen from the fact that the king of England, while being crowned by the Archbishop, also appoints the Archbishop, a kind of compromise to what had been before the reforms of the 11th and 12th centuries.)

While the church won its independence from the government, the government continued to have great influence in the church. In many northern European countries, there was only one recognized church, and it was supported by the government. In Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the state church has its roots in Lutheranism. They do not name their churches “Lutheran Churches,” but, rather, “Evangelical Churches,” which can be a little confusing because “evangelical” means something a little different in North America. In countries like the Netherlands, the Calvinistic teachings dominated, and these churches were called “Reformed Churches.” These official churches were considered national churches meaning that they were supported by tax dollars in addition to donations from the people. (This remains true in some places in Europe where the national church continues to receive tax dollars from the government.) Because of this financial support, it was often the case that the churches were not entirely free from governmental influence. And, from time to time, this caused concern among those who sought to follow the teachings of Scripture rather than be influenced by the civil authorities.

Thus, in Norway for example, a number of Christians left the state church (the Evangelical Church) and formed their own denomination calling it the “Free Church,” or, as we have it here, the Evangelical Free Church. The word, “free,” indicates that the church considered itself free from government influence. It also meant that it would not receive financial support from tax dollars.

In the Netherlands, at about the same time, it was felt strongly that the state church was too influential in appointing leaders and determining doctrine and in the early 1830s a movement began which led to a secession of a number of churches from the state church to form a new denomination with the result that the Christian Reformed Church was born. While this new denomination did not take the name “free,” it was understood that it was free from government influence, for it had seceded from the national church. (Note that the “free” in the Free Reformed Church does not have the same historical roots as the “free” in the Evangelical Free Church, although the sentiment is there.) It is important to realize that the early years of the CRC in the Netherlands were difficult, for the new congregations were forbidden from meeting together, and some of their pastors were jailed for violating old laws which had been long forgotten but were remembered so that there would be reason to level criminal charges against them. This persecution ended rather quickly and less than 70 years later, Abraham Kuyper, a member of what is now the CRC, became the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

This history serves, in part, to illustrate what the phrase “separation of church and state means.” Some believe that the phrase is found in the American constitution, but it is not. Rather, the First Amendment of the US Constitution states that “congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” In other words, separation of church and state prevents the government imposing a particular religion on the people or forcing them to worship or believe in a particular way. Further, the government has no right to appoint the spiritual and religious leaders of any denomination.

But the restrictions are meant to go only in one direction. If there is a separation of church and state, meaning that the government cannot influence an individual’s religion, it also means that if a person believes that their religion should shape their political and social views of the country, that must be permitted. After all, if the government may not influence one’s religion, they cannot say that one’s religion is not permitted to influence any non-religious polity. Let’s be thankful for those who went before us and who fought hard to give us the right to believe and worship as we desire but let’s not forget that we still have the right to seek to influence those who hold power, for our faith requires that we do.