Blog

Throughout 2022 I have been preaching and teaching about the new life that Jesus came to bring – what it looks like, how we can find it and receive it from God through our faith in Jesus, and how we can live out that new life in our day-to-day lives. For many people, hearing about new life and comparing their current life to what God offers and expects in that new life leads to deep introspection and hope for change. More than that, many consider what needs to change in their life and what they need to do to make those changes or to make those changes possible – most often submitting to God who makes the changes in them.

In anticipation of a new year, many prepare themselves for those changes by making resolutions, such as: “I resolve that I will read two chapters of the Bible every day. I will pray for thirty minutes each day. I will participate in at least one small-group Bible study. I will increase my offering by five percent. I will volunteer to serve in ministry at least once each month.” Specific resolutions such as these are important first steps to establish new habits that certainly can help individuals grow in their faith.

However, for many people, resolutions for the new year are far too often short lived. Many start out strong, but as time progresses, their consistency begins to waver. Two chapters of Scripture each day turns into one each day, Monday through Friday, with hopes of catching up over the weekend, but then ten chapters becomes overwhelming at the end of the week. A half hour of prayer is difficult to find in a day when hectic schedules hardly leave more than a couple of minutes at a time between appointments and tasks. Guilt begins to grow when one considers the difference between finding time and making time, and even the occasional successful week – or just a day – becomes a reminder of how often one misses. If that’s where you find yourself each year, you are not alone.

Perhaps this year you might consider restoration instead of a resolution. Lots of folks take on restoration projects throughout their lives: restoring an old house, an old car, rusty tools, or shabby furniture or clothes. A restoration project often takes something that has some value or use but is in questionable shape and makes it better, more useful, or more valuable instead of starting with something new. One person might have a house that’s a “fixer upper”; it’s livable but in need of some repairs and updates. Another person might have a car that gets them from here to there well enough but needs a tune up or some body work.

Such projects anticipate necessary changes but are accomplished only as quickly or as completely as time, skills, and resources will allow. The changes might be slow and incremental, perhaps even imperceptible, but eventually the changes become apparent. Sometimes the changes aren’t just in the project itself; sometimes the changes show up in a person’s knowledge and skills. While a house might be transformed one room at a time, each room might be finished with more skill and in less time, displaying important changes in both the home and homeowner.

Paul described such incremental growth within our spiritual lives, writing to the early church in Corinth, who struggled to grow up in their faith, “We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Because of our faith in Jesus, each of us reflects God’s glory, but not always in the same ways or with the same degree of maturity.

Our new life in Christ is a lifetime of transformation; it’s a restoration project, so through 2023, that will be our focus. I will continue to preach and teach about the new life we have received through our faith in Christ, but we will keep working together on restoring our lives and our church with the tools, plans, and help God provides through his Word, by the Holy Spirit, and through our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let’s keep working together on what God is working in us, among us, and through us.

 

Traditions are comfortable, and many of us find great comfort in our traditions surrounding Christmas. My mother had a pattern of preparing for and celebrating Christmas, so we could expect several things to happen every year. My mother began Christmas shopping at the end of September. Right before Thanksgiving, Mom began baking and filled several large tins and many 5-quart buckets with cookies and other Christmas treats that would last through Groundhog Day. She also began playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. The week before Christmas, after we found a tree and set it up, Mom spent a couple hours whipping up batches of a mixture of Ivory Snow soap and water that we brushed onto the branches, until Procter & Gamble changed the formulation in the late 80s. Christmas morning, Mom made us wait until she and Dad had gone downstairs to turn on the lights and get either a movie camera or a film camera ready to capture the moment when we kids, eventually five of us, came down the stairs, youngest to oldest. Then, as we opened our gifts, Mom directed each of us to hold up the gift so she or Dad could take a picture. Even though we knew we could expect these things to happen every year, those moments when we first saw the gifts under the tree and when we opened them revealed something unexpected.

Celebrating Christmas, remembering the birth of Jesus, many of our traditions give us comfort because we know what to expect. We expect to see images of angels, stars, wise men, shepherds, and a manger. We expect to hear and sing songs about Jesus’ birth. We expect sermons and lessons to come from Matthew and Luke, where the accounts of Jesus’ birth are found, and we expect the preacher or teacher to come to the point that through his birth we can find new life in Jesus.

Yet with all those expectations, looking back through history and through the Scriptures, we also know that Jesus, his life and ministry, and the new life he offers were all largely unexpected. Even though the people of Israel were expecting the Messiah to come and rescue them, Jesus was not the Messiah whom they were expecting, and he didn’t arrive the way they were expecting. Matthew tells us that Joseph considered divorce when he was told Mary was pregnant. Luke tells us that Mary wondered about the announcement from the angel and that the shepherds were amazed by what the angels told them. John’s Gospel doesn’t describe the birth of Jesus but explains his coming in deeply theological, even mystical terms.

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t tell us anything about Jesus’ coming, except that he came from Nazareth in Galilee (Mark 1:9). In fact, Mark reveals that Jesus came in direct conflict with the people’s expectations. At one point, when Jesus returned to his hometown, Nazareth, and began to teach, the people rejected him because he didn’t meet their expectations. Mark 6:3 tells us they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” The verse also tells us that “they took offense at him.” Mark reveals another conflict of expectations when Mary Magdalene told the disciples about Jesus’ resurrection; Mark 16:11 says, “When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.” They knew Jesus, and yet they didn’t. They were expecting the Messiah, and yet they didn’t know what to expect.

In each of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, as different as they are in specific details and perspectives, there is a clear message that the life Jesus lived and the new life he brought were totally unexpected. While many had expectations for the promised Messiah, while others had expectations for Jesus himself, no one expected Jesus to live and die so that we might live forever. Jesus said in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As we prepare for and celebrate Jesus’ birth, let us find comfort, peace, and joy in the unexpected life we receive through our faith in him.

The Thanksgiving holiday and season is a great opportunity for the church. Many people, whether they have faith or not, are prompted to be grateful for those things we might take for granted, like daily food, a place to live, the freedoms of our country, and so on. In Ecclesiastes 3:12, 13, Solomon reminds us that these everyday things of everyday life are gifts from God: “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God.”

Since we have this seasonal reminder of general gratitude in our culture, it’s easy for the church to use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to connect people to God who provides those things for which we are grateful. This makes good sense, because we know ourselves how easy it is to take for granted God’s blessings and gifts, especially when we receive them every day.

However, there’s another blessing that’s specific to the church, one that we far too often take for granted: living in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ as the church. Certainly, we know that we ought to meet together; Hebrews 10:25 tells us, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” We also know that our meeting together conforms to the example of the early church, which we find recorded in Acts 2:42-47.

In a recent sermon, I mentioned the German minister and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote a book about the blessings of Christian community called Life Together. Bonhoeffer wrote the book while he was leading an illegal, underground seminary that trained ministers against the orders of the pro-Nazi bishop. Despite those oppressive circumstances, Bonhoeffer and his students, and the church they served, were strengthened by their living and working together in close community. Through their daily routines of prayer, meditation, study, and service, they established a community and lifestyle that enabled them to preach, teach, and lead the church faithfully and to endure in their faith even to the point of being arrested, imprisoned, and executed, at least in Bonhoeffer’s case.

Bonhoeffer began the book quoting Psalm 133:1, which says, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!” Rather than emphasizing the theological reasons for establishing and maintaining Christian community, he focused on the blessing of it. Bonhoeffer and his students recognized the blessing because they were keenly aware how easily community can be disrupted. However, despite that fact, they also recognized that the community of the church was not merely an outgrowth of faith but foundational to the new life received by God’s grace. Unfortunately, Bonhoeffer also recognized that this gift is easily taken for granted and “easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day.”

Because this life of community is a gift of God’s grace, we must not take it for granted, and we must make every effort to honor it, protect it, and practice it. Certainly, then, we must also thank God for it, as Bonhoeffer wrote:

Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

I am truly thankful for God’s grace that has saved me from my sins and given me new life in Christ, and I am also truly thankful for the life of community I have experienced within this body of believers. I pray that I would not only thank God for that daily but that I would also thank you for it more regularly and openly than I do. I also pray that as we celebrate this coming Thanksgiving holiday that each of us would also praise and thank God for his grace that enables us to share and live this new life together in community.

Throughout this year of preaching and teaching about the new life that God provides through Jesus’ death and resurrection and our faith in him, I have pointed out the contrast between that new life and our old lives. Through each message, I have invited people to make an exchange of their old life for new life. One of the greatest contrasts between the old life without Christ and new life in Christ is the difference between a meaningless life and a meaningful life. This is the contrast that Solomon emphasizes throughout the book of Ecclesiastes.

As you read through the book, Solomon uses a phrase repetitively throughout, “Meaningless! Meaningless!” which he explained clearly Ecclesiastes 1:14: “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” The idea of life “under the sun” seems to refer to some kind of separation from God, possibly absentmindedly, just focused on the here and now without actively considering God, but also intentionally, in conscious opposition to or rebellion against God. Living life “under the sun” gives the impression of simply waking up with the sun, going about everyday life doing whatever it is that has to be done, and then going to bed with the sun without a thought about God. That’s the kind of life that Solomon describes as meaningless, and that’s the kind of life that many people live, whether they know or acknowledge God or not.

Unfortunately, this kind of meaningless life is common. Obviously, people who don’t believe in God won’t acknowledge God and will live however they deem appropriate. Even those who believe in God can find themselves living in the same way. Many people, believers and not, look for meaning in the things they have and the things they do from day to day, and they might find some satisfaction and meaning in them, but it’s temporary and meaningless. That’s the harsh reality Solomon discovered in his own pursuit of meaning under the sun, which he describes in Ecclesiastes 2:22, 23: “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.”

Yet even in that empty pursuit of meaning in the things and experiences of life under the sun, Solomon hints that there’s something more. He writes, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24, 25). Even though Solomon recognized that the endless cycles of everyday life without God are ultimately meaningless, he reveals that when we find even temporary satisfaction in our daily work or daily bread, that is a gift from God.

However, the gift isn’t merely the satisfaction in those things themselves, it’s the reminder that the life God offers is full of meaning in him. This is the truth and good news found in Creation, as Paul explained to the people in Athens in Acts 17:26-28:

“From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Then Paul told them how God provides meaningful life through Jesus, whom God raised from the dead, and how to receive that life through repentance and faith. Some believed; some did not.

Our message of new, meaningful life in Jesus is Good News. Some will refuse to believe it and look for temporary meaning in the temporary things of life under the sun. While we live among them, we must reveal that new life in Christ is meaningful, with both our words and our lives.

My siblings and I are big fans of the TV show MASH. One of my favorite bits is from the “Bug Out” episode in which Radar, the company clerk, brings Col. Potter his lunch, a cold Spam sandwich, which Potter rejects, ordering Radar to tell the mess sergeant to get the kitchen back together. When Radar returns a few minutes later, Potter says, “Seems to me I’ve seen that Spam before.” “But it’s warm now,” says Radar. “Got the stove set up?” Potter asks. “I kept it under my arm,” says Radar. “Pass.”

Sometimes “new” really isn’t different; sometimes it’s the same old thing rewarmed, rearranged, or refurbished. As much as I like finding good deals on new gadgets, I really have to watch for the fine print that identifies the product as refurbished. New-to-me used objects might be good bargains at some level, but not when they’re somebody’s old junk cleaned up for a quick sale.

Unfortunately, it’s far too easy for us to do the same with our spiritual lives. While we talk about the new life we desire to have through our faith in Jesus, sometimes we find ourselves tucking our cold, dead sinful lives under our arms to warm them up a bit or cleaning off enough grimy residue of sin that we look just a bit more shiny, hoping nobody looks too closely. Sometimes folks who put their faith in Jesus experience a dramatic change – new vocabulary, new habits and activities – but are not willing or able to sustain the change for long, at least not on their own. Other folks get stuck in the transition, somewhere between the old life and the new life, and find themselves wavering back and forth between the way they “used” to be and they way the want to be and ought to be, again, struggling on their own.

Sometimes it’s an intentional cover-up, like with the false teachers we’ve been watching through our studies in 1 Timothy and Galatians. Paul describes such people as “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). However, sometimes it’s just a matter of the on-going struggle that many face, probably most of us. It’s the struggle Paul describes about himself when he writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).

Even though we might find some comfort in knowing that even Paul struggled with this problem, we can’t settle for the same-old thing when we know that God has done so much more to make us new through Jesus. It’s one thing to be honest about our past, but Paul reminds us that we really have been changed, writing in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

That’s a great part of the Good News we have to offer in the Gospel, that even though we’re all sinners with a past, we also have a new present, a new future, a whole new life. If we forget that aspect of the Gospel and its effects in our lives, then we don’t have much of an answer when people ask us, “What’s new?” If all we have is a new schedule for Sunday mornings, a new vocabulary for when we hit our thumb with a hammer, or new habits for dealing with life when it throws us yet another curve ball, then it’s not really a new life, just a new cover on the same-old life – warmed up, polished up, mostly made up – and most people are just going to pass on it.

What we need to do, then, is let God truly transform us and then live like it so that others can see what’s new without having to ask. Then, when they do ask, we need to tell them what we found, as Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

It’s amazing how easily we are distracted from our primary focus. Think about what happens when a cellphone rings. Even the most careful driver is tempted, if not immediately prompted, to look when it rings while they’re on the road, but just for a moment, right? Even if the phone isn’t your own, do you ever feel the sudden urge to look at your own anyhow, just to make sure you didn’t miss a call or text?

If anyone asked us, I’m certain that we would quickly agree that driving safely ought to have our primary focus, certainly compared to getting a phone call or a text or checking social media. Certainly, there are plenty of other distractions in our lives with not-so-dire consequences, but why do we let secondary things distract us from people or tasks that are immediately or ultimately more important? At a simple level, that’s just the nature of distractions; they catch our attention and hold it, some things better (or worse, I suppose) than others. However, sometimes it seems that we let distractions become an excuse or as a cover-up for our own immaturity and weakness.

Sin has a way of distracting us so that it’s easy to minimize its consequences and our own guilt. Pay attention to how Eve rationalized her disobedience in the garden; after the serpent deceived her about God’s command and about the consequences of disobedience, she chose to sin, as it tells us in Genesis 3:6:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Eve thought, if it tastes good, looks good, and promises “good,” it’s got to be OK. Eating the fruit was sinful disobedience that resulted in death, among other consequences, but Adam and Eve were distracted and deceived.

Pay attention to how they responded when they were caught in their sin. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Yes, there was plenty of guilt all around, but their distraction and deception led to deflection. Rather than simply admitting their own guilt, repenting of their disobedience, and dealing with the consequences, they tried to turn God’s attention away from themselves to someone else. That’s not how our relationship with God and others is supposed to work.

In his first letter to Timothy, Paul encourages the young preacher to pay attention so that the deception of false teaching would not divide the church or lead people astray. In the current sermon series through 1 Timothy, I’ve been using this verse as the anchor point throughout: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16). Essentially Paul tells Timothy to pay attention to his own knowledge and practice of God’s Word, both in his own life and in the life of the church, for the sake of his own salvation, as well as others’. This is a foundational principle for the life and practice of the church, both for individuals and for the body: pay attention to your own relationship with God so that you/we can help others with their relationship with God.

It’s so easy for the church to be distracted by sin in the world that we neglect our own relationships with God and others and our own responsibilities to God and others. Obviously, there’s a lot of sin in the world; so it’s easy for us to be distracted by someone else’s sin. It’s easy to be right about “their” guilt, but if we’re just trying to distract or deflect from our own sin and struggles, we’re missing the point. While many in the church seem to be paying attention to “them” and to what “they” are doing, Paul’s command to Timothy and the church is to pay attention to our own lives and doctrine; then we will be able to pay attention to others with the right motives, guidelines, and practices. The result, Paul says, is salvation for both ourselves and others. Let’s pay attention!

New Clothes!

Alright, this is a little out of character for me (if it’s not, let me know!), but I’m kind of proud of the results of the ongoing changes I’ve been making to my eating habits. Since September 2021, I’ve lost about 80 pounds. Among the results I’ve experienced from that, I move better, sleep better, think better, overall just feel better. In addition to that, unlike with several other times in my life when I’ve put some actual effort into being healthy, I now actually believe that the new habits I’ve adopted are actually sustainable; while I used to have a target weight in mind, now I just want to live differently and see where it takes me.

One of the side effects (or benefits) of losing so much weight is the obvious fact that my clothes don’t fit the way they used to. Not too long ago they used to be tight and uncomfortable, but now they hang on me loosely, some even to the point where I worried that a good sneeze would cause an embarrassing “wardrobe malfunction.” So over the past week or so, I’ve had to get some new clothes (in sizes I haven’t worn since college!).

What a difference new clothes can make! More than giving me a new look, these new clothes reveal a whole new life. I imagine there’s some psychology involved here, but replacing my older, bigger clothes with newer, better fitting ones has helped me let go of the past and look forward to the future. However, I find myself hesitating to get to the next step: getting rid of the old clothes; once I do that, there’s no going back without some difficulty and cost.

That’s the same struggle many of us have with this new life in Jesus. Even though we have taken off the old self and “put on the new self,” as Paul describes in Ephesians 4:22-24, we find ourselves slipping back into the old just because we’ve kept it hanging in the closet. Paul tells us that not only must we put on the new self in Jesus but we must also get rid of the old self; he writes in Colossians 3:7-10:

You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

This new life in Jesus isn’t just swapping the old for the new; it’s a matter of getting rid of the old and replacing it with the new.

In fact, the old should be dead and buried, as Paul writes in Romans 6:2, “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” He continues to explain it this way in Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” The old, sinful life must be done away with so that we cannot go back to it.

Sure, that’s easier said than done. As much as we want to get rid of the old self, there’s an attachment to it – like an old t-shirt or a pair of jeans that are just too comfy to get rid of. We’ve spent a lot of time in that old way of life; it’s familiar, it’s easy. It just doesn’t fit anymore, and it’s time to get rid of it, not just pack it away.

Besides, the new life doesn’t just fit better; it fits perfectly. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:12-14:

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

With a new life that comes from God’s love, we’re no longer clothed with anger and rage; we’re clothed with compassion and kindness. We’re no longer clothed with malice but with forgiveness. So as we put on Jesus, let’s get rid of the things that don’t fit and put on a perfectly new life.

I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for just about anything new, especially new technology – phones, computers, tools, software, whatever, if it’s new, I’m interested. The only thing that really keeps me from living on the “bleeding edge” of technology and being an obsessive early adopter is the mind-boggling price tag. Fortunately, because of my overwhelming desire to have the latest and greatest and the harsh reality of economics, it takes me so long to identify the sweet spot between the best gadget and the best price that I often miss the newest and end up with version 2.0 instead of 3.0 – but a guy can dream, right?

I suppose that’s the appeal of “the new,” having the dream. There’s something about having a glimpse of the future or at least what the future could be that not only eases the angst of change and the restrictions of cost but encourages an active pursuit of something new. The last restraint, for many, is being tied to the past.

I’m not sure who said it first or best, but change will not happen until the discomfort of staying the same becomes greater than the discomfort of making the change. In other words, as appealing as the promise of something new might be, most folks won’t actually pursue it until it becomes unbearable not to change. For example, even though I’ve lived a lifetime of desiring better health and its benefits, I never really changed my lifestyle until the discomfort of having poor health outweighed (ha!) the discomfort of making changes.

Certainly, we know that the something new isn’t always best, maybe not even better. Think about where all our problems began: back in the Garden when the Serpent tricked Adam and Eve into pursuing something new that turned out to be the absolute worst. How did he tempt them? He called God’s Word into question and painted a false image of the future. From that moment on, the tension between the past and the future, what we’ve got and what we could have, has been at the heart of our struggle with God.

The Good News is that God is the God of something new. When God’s people Israel were struggling, again, with faith and obedience and the consequences of their unbelief and disobedience, again, God promised, again, that they could have new life if they would put their faith in him and follow him in obedience. He said, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18, 19). While the new thing God was doing in that moment for Israel was rescue from oppression and exile, God was preparing something new for all people of all time, another rescue and a whole new life. Paul tells us about this new thing God has done and is doing through Jesus. He writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

Even though the contrast between our old life and the new life God promises through Jesus is Good News, there’s still the struggle of change. We get an idea of that struggle in (Hebrews 12:1, 2):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

In Hebrews 11, the writer reminds us of the lives of so many of those people in the Bible, the “Faith Hall of Fame,” those who struggled against sin and its consequences in order to pursue and receive new life from God through their faith. We know all too well how our sin and the sin of others hinders and entangles us, how difficult it can be to deal with sin, but the promise of the joys of new life from Jesus, who also endured the suffering of sin – our sin – on the cross, helps us to throw it off and pursue new life from God.

Certainly, there’s discomfort, maybe even outright pain, in pursuing something new and making changes, but the dream, the hope, the promise of new life from God is certainly worth the cost. Praise God! Jesus has paid the cost. Now let’s make the change.

As I write this article, I’m watching snowflakes float past my window. Even though several of my friends had mowed their lawns on Good Friday, most of them posted photos of snow-covered lawns the day after Easter. Go ahead, check the date of this newsletter; honest, it’s really spring. I have to admit that I was a little gung ho about spring this year, vowing to ignore the weather simply because the equinox had passed, but I still have to wonder, is it really a new season? Whether you listen to the groundhog or depend upon the calendar, it’s supposed to be spring, but with snow in the air, the signs seem to indicate otherwise.

That kind of bait and switch is one of the deceptions of life that Jesus came to deal with. Since I’ve been preaching through John’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry, we did not touch on one incident that happened in the final week of Jesus’ life, which we find in Mark 11:12-14, 20-26.

After Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he went back to the town of Bethany for the night. The next morning, as they returned to Jerusalem, Jesus saw a fig tree that had leaves but no figs, and he cursed it (vs. 14), “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Then Jesus continued to the temple, where he drove out the money changers and those who were selling merchandise, saying (vs. 17), “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” Then the next day, when Jesus and his disciples were returning to Jerusalem, they saw the fig tree Jesus had cursed withered from its roots. When Peter called attention to the dead tree, Jesus told them to have faith in God and said:

“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins.” (Mark 11:23-26)

This incident has confused Christians for centuries, but its implications are very important for us as individuals and as the church; it gives us a better understanding of the new season Jesus began with the new life he provides through his death and resurrection. The key to understanding the fig tree is what Jesus did in the temple.

When Jesus arrived at the temple, there was all kinds of activity, but it was empty and unfulfilling. What had been intended to be a “house of prayer” was robbed of its purpose; so Jesus disrupted what was going on. In the same way, the fig tree had plenty of leaves, but the show of life provided no figs; so Jesus cursed it, and it withered. While we often think of Jesus’ actions in the temple as cleansing it, in reality he was closing it. By the end of the week, when Jesus died on the cross, the purpose of the temple had come to an end, indicated by the sign we read in Mark 15:38, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” So Jesus explained to his disciples that a new season was beginning, a new life in which people no longer have to go to the temple to offer sacrifices in order to worship God and pray, a new life in which action without fruit would be just as dead and useless as the tree without figs.

Through his death and resurrection Jesus provides new life that begins and continues through forgiveness, making it possible for people to approach God directly in faith. Instead of going through the motions that make it look like we have life, we need to put our faith in Jesus who died to forgive us; we need to die to ourselves and receive forgiveness; and we need to show real fruit – forgiving others as we have been forgiven. Then we can show the world that we really live in a new season of new life.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in the sermon one of my mother’s favorite movies, “The Quiet Man,” starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, in which the main character, Sean Thornton, was caught in a no-win situation, having to choose between fighting for his wife’s dowry and keeping his vow to never fight again. While he made the right choice – fighting for his wife’s love – the story has a tragic sense simply because Sean moved to Ireland to get away from fighting. He quit boxing because he regretted unintentionally killing another man simply to win some money; he left America to get away from notoriety and personal shame. Sean was looking for a fresh start; so he returned to his ancestral home, which, as he said in the movie, had become another name for heaven for him.

Looking for a fresh start, going home to “heaven,” Sean shows us a common desire among people and hints at where we can find it. There are many people who are looking for a fresh start in life, whether to get away from a past full of guilt and regret or to break cycles of attitudes, decisions, and behaviors that have caused harm in one’s own life or for others. The problem for people who are looking to start over or to remake themselves is that whatever it is “I” might do or wherever “I” might go to get a fresh start on life, “I” am still “me.” No matter how much we want to change, no matter what kind of effort we exert, we still have our memories, habits, and inclinations that either keep reminding us of who we were or keep tempting us to go back.

So, like Sean, we look to find a fresh start in “heaven,” a perfect place where we can find our perfect self, a place that is far removed from the pain of the past and the problems of the present. However, heaven isn’t merely an escape; it’s not simply a destination. Heaven is the dwelling place of God where God makes everything new, as John described in Revelation 21:3-5:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

It’s no wonder that we might look to heaven for a fresh start, since God promises not only to deal with the pain and suffering of the past but to eliminate it and make something new.

Unfortunately, most people look to heaven and that new beginning as a final destination and not something that we can experience in the here and now; however, there’s Good News! While John also describes the creation of a new heaven and new earth as part of God’s plan, Paul tells us that this new creation begins in us when we put our faith in Jesus, writing in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Very simply, new life in Jesus is a fresh start.

Better than the fresh start we’re looking for, it’s the fresh start we need. We’ve seen this illustrated over and over as we’ve been following John’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry. With every miraculous sign, Jesus demonstrates that he has the power, authority, and purpose to give us a fresh start through the new life he came to bring. With each physical healing, Jesus points to a fresh start, as he did with the lame man in John 5:14 when he said, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” With each demonstration of God’s grace and forgiveness, Jesus offers a fresh start, as he did with the woman who was caught in adultery, saying in John 8:11, “Neither do I condemn you…. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

As much as the people around us want and need a fresh start, may we who have received new life from Jesus show not only that we have it but also how they might receive it. Let us live as new creations – thinking, speaking, acting as people who have been transformed because we live by faith in God’s presence – both in the here and now and into eternity in heaven.