Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 24, 2008, Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Exodus 1:8 - 2:10

Well, folks, they’re baaack!  Or to you students, “welcome back!”  What a difference one week makes.  Last week, Farmville was just a sleepy, little town, minding its own business.  The streets were clear, there were plenty of parking spaces, and restaurants had tables available without a wait.  But this past weekend, it seemed like a swarm of locusts descended upon the town, clogging the streets and parking spaces, and devouring food in restaurants.  Merchants like Walmart and Barnes & Nobles are literally minding their businesses as the “cha-ching” of cash registers are echoing throughout town.  Farmville, like so many small college towns, has a love-hate relationship with college students.  On the one hand, there’s no doubt that you students bring a lot of money into our local economy and energy into our community.  On the other hand, I hear the old-timers complain about swarms of students jay-walking across Main St., and how these “foreigners” from northern Virginia and the Tidewater region are taking over the town.

It makes me wonder if the Pharaoh of Egypt had similar feelings about the Israelites who were taking over his country.  These past several Sundays in August, we have been looking at the book of Genesis and focusing on the lives of some of the patriarchs of the Bible, Jacob and Joseph.  Today, we are in the book of Exodus, and a lot has happened since we left Joseph last Sunday.  Joseph had invited his father Jacob and his whole family to move down to Egypt where they would be taken care of during the famine that had struck the land.  Once in Egypt, the Israelites grew and prospered, and they were becoming as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, just as God had promised Abraham in Genesis 22.

But all was not well.  For a new king, one who did not know Joseph, rose to power over Egypt.  Pharaoh was the king of the most prosperous empire on earth at that time.  He was at the top of the organizational chart, number one in the power rankings, and yet, he was insecure.  One day, while looking out from his palace, he saw that his beloved country was swarmed by foreigners called Israelites.  They were everywhere-clogging up the streets, trading and bartering, using up municipal services, speaking a foreign language, but more problematically, they were breeding like rabbits.  As he looked out, an ominous thought came to him: what if these Israelites grow so numerous that they join our enemies, fight against us and then leave the country?  The thought sent chills down his spine.  So here he was, the king of Egypt, master of the empire, and yet, he was serving another master: fear.

Whom will you serve? Will you serve fear? Like Pharaoh, many of us fear of losing power and we fear people who are different from us.  We fear college students who are into hip hop music.  We fear senior adults who are getting senile.  We fear people who are handicapped.  We fear people who don’t believe like us, who speak a different language and wear different clothes.  And sometimes, in our insecurity, we attempt to make our existence more secure by putting those people down.  Sometimes, we even try to make life difficult for them.  The Egyptians had a higher standard of living than they deserved because there was a vast underclass of Israelites who were forced to do hard, back-breaking labor and yet not receive a living wage, a decent education or basic healthcare.  But the Bible said that the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.  Fear and dread are such primal emotions that even a powerful person like Pharaoh is not immune.  And neither are we.  So whom will you serve?  Will you serve fear?

Now, let’s move away from Pharaoh and look at this from the Israelites’ perspective.  Yes, I know that it was Pharaoh who forced the Israelites into slavery and back-breaking work.  That’s bad enough.  But for many of us, we enslave ourselves to work.  And so, another question for us is, if you won’t serve fear, will you serve work?  In the movie Chariots of Fire, Harold Abraham, one of the main characters, explains why he works so hard at running the hundred-yard dash for the Olympics.  He says that when each race begins, “I have ten lonely seconds to justify my existence.”  Abraham looked to athletic achievement as the defining force that gave meaning to his life.[1]

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with gold medals, and I imagine those who watched the Olympics and saw Michael Phelps win eight gold medals were inspired by his work ethic and his accomplishment.  But when winning a gold medal-instead of doing our best-becomes an obsession, when that becomes the defining moment of our worth as a human being, then that gold medal might as well be a golden calf to us.  Something wonderfully good is transformed into an idol.  Now, it’s awfully difficult to know when we’ve crossed the line from a good thing into idolatry, but in sports and perhaps in life also, our response to losing can often show us whether we’ve crossed the line or not.  Like Lola Jones, who was heavily favored to win the Olympic 100-meter high hurdles.  But as she led the race, Jones smashed hard into the ninth of ten hurdles and crashed to the track.  She wound up finishing seventh.  That was a devastating loss for Jones.  But what interests me is whether Lolo Jones will be able to rebound from this adversity and become a stronger and better athlete, or if she will allow this horrific experience to turn her into a bitter and angry woman.  Sometimes, we can learn much more about a person’s character in the wake of a loss than from easy victories.

In this story, Pharaoh’s character was revealed in the defeat of his initial plan to suppress the Israelites.  In light of his failure, Pharaoh tried more desperate measures.  Instead of working the Israelites to death, Pharaoh now commanded his midwives to actively kill all the Israelite newborn boys. One way or another, Pharaoh was trying to kill off the future of the people of Israel.  Without any Israelite boys growing up into adulthood, it meant that there would be no men to continue their family line and perpetuate the Israelite race.  This was the first attempt at a “final solution” to the Jewish problem.  And if it succeeded, then the people of Israel would be no more, and God’s promise to Abraham to be a father of a great nation would be broken.  The midwives faced a dilemma.  Their work was founded on the commitment to usher life into the world, but now, they were commanded to be agents of death.  They had a decision to make: would they serve Pharaoh?

Whom will you serve? Will you serve Pharaoh? Oh, I’m not talking about serving an actual Pharaoh, and walking like an Egyptian . . . or committing infanticide-at least I hope not.  But I am wondering what or who are the Pharaoh’s in your lives?  What or who has the power over you to lead you to do things that you know are wrong?  Could it be your boss who leads you to overlook some shady business dealings that harms your customers or your competition?  Could it be the Pharaoh of popularity that leads you to succumb to peer pressure to drink, use drugs, or have sex?  Could it be the Pharaoh of laziness or easy success that leads you to plagiarize by downloading papers off the internet?  Will you serve these Pharaohs?

What’s amazing to me is that the Bible tells us in verse 17 that the midwives feared God more than Pharaoh, and they were willing to put their lives on the line so that the lives of innocent children could be spared.  This brave community of women reminded me of what Oswald Chambers once said: “It is the most natural thing in the world to be scared, and the clearest evidence that God’s grace is at work in our hearts is when, in the face of fear, we do not panic. . . . The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.[2]

Because of the midwives’ refusal to obey Pharaoh’s directive, he then gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”  I’m intrigued by the word “all.”  At first, I naturally assumed that Pharaoh was commanding all Egyptians to do his dirty work for him, but upon further reflection, I think it was possible that this command might also be directed at the Israelites!  After all, the Israelites were slaves; they had no rights, no power.  They were mere chattel, mere property of their masters to do exactly what they were told.  In this case, Pharaoh was telling the Israelite people to throw away their very own futures into the waters of the Nile.  The Nile River, the main source of life for the barren Egyptian desert, was now to become a watery grave for newborn Israelite boys.

I know that my interpretation seems implausible because it seems inconceivable that the Israelites would follow such an order.  But hang with me for a minute, and I want to especially direct this to our college students.  How many of you students remember the day you left home for college?  For some of you it’s easy to remember, because it was just a couple of days ago!  Well, going away to college is somewhat like a birth-you now leave the safety and security of the cocoon of home, and you are thrust out into a new world.  You are birthed into a new setting, foreign, possibly hostile and certainly unfamiliar, and you are in a somewhat powerless state.  I remember my first days at Rice University when I was faced with the fact that one out of every five students were valedictorians of their high schools!  It was sink or swim time, and I didn’t know whether I was in way over my head.  But aside from that pressure, or maybe because of it, I’ve had friends who drank and partied their way right out of college.  They might not have literally thrown their futures away, but they certainly wasted their tuition and their time as they got wasted in other ways.  As you begin classes this week, don’t obey the Pharaoh’s command to throw away your future by drowning yourself in your new-found freedom.

Whom will you serve?  Fear?  Work?  “Pharaoh?”  Or will you serve God?

This story challenges and encourages me because of the picture it paints of those who decided to serve God.  It challenges me because they were all women, and as we know, women in those days occupied the lowest status and power in society.  And yet, it was the midwives who first ignored the mighty Pharaoh’s directive.  Then it was a couple of Israelite slave women, one a mother and the other a sister, who crafted a plan to save the life of baby Moses.  Finally, and perhaps most incredibly, it was Pharaoh’s own daughter and her handmaidens who decided to defy Pharaoh and proceeded to raise and protect this endangered Hebrew baby.  Isn’t amazing that God chooses the weak of this world to confound the strong!

This story also encourages me because it shows that we do not need to serve God in isolation; that we do not have to serve God alone.  These women-the midwives, Moses’ sister and mother, Pharaoh’s daughter and attendants-all served God within a community.  Each group played its role, each fellowship had its place in God’s plan, each community made a difference not just in the life of Moses, but ultimately in the survival and continuation of a whole nation.  This encourages me greatly because it gives me hope that God too can use the fragile and sometimes flawed communities called church, Sunday School, covenant groups, choirs and worship teams, Baptist Campus Ministries, Intervarsity, Young Life and others to further God’s saving plan and liberating purpose for the world.  And from my perspective, these communities are not in competition with each other.  One size does not fit all.  BCM may be a good fit for one person, but Young Life may be a better fit for another.  Choir may be a good fit for those who can sing, but for those who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, perhaps a silent meditation group will be a much better fit!  Farmville Baptist may be a right church for some, but another church could be a better match for others.  Each of these groups can play its role, each of these fellowhips has a place in God’s plan, each community of faith can make a difference not just in our lives, but in the lives of others.  The key is to find that community and join in so that you can worship God, grow together and serve others in the name of Christ.

Now, in this story, it’s good to know that those who served God were protected from harm.  But I must say that in serving God, we are not guaranteed safety or security.  People of faith during World War II knew this was true when they observed a modern-day Pharaoh - Adolph Hitler - attempt yet another “final solution to the problem of the Jews.”  While all too many people across the world served Hitler and obeyed his orders, there are truly heroic stories of people who chose to resist, people who chose to serve not fear, not Pharaoh, not Hitler, but justice and freedom, many times inspired by their faith.

The nation of Denmark - occupied by the Nazis for five years - is considered one of the most stirring and successful models of resistance.  Many of you may have heard the story, in which the German government required all the Jews in Denmark to identify themselves by wearing a yellow armband labeled with a star of David.  In response, the story continues, the King of Denmark himself dons a yellow armband, inspiring all his subjects to follow suit, foiling the Germans’ plan to easily identify the Jews.  While I hate to say it, this story is a legend.  Jews in Denmark were never required to wear such an armband before they were officially deported.  Yet even though this story never came to pass, the spirit of this story is true; its origins came from a Swedish political cartoon - and we all know that sometimes political cartoons distill truth in a way that a long editorial never could.  The king of Denmark inspired the cartoon because during the years of Nazi occupation, he modeled resistance and noncompliance for his subjects, who followed his model.

Even when his country was ordered to turn over its Jews in the summer of 1943, King Christian and his government refused.  His subjects also refused, staging strikes, sabotaging military targets, and generally creating chaos.  The Germans eventually had to declare martial law to restore order before they could continue their plan to deport the 7,500 Jews who lived in Denmark.  However, by the time order was restored and the deportation plan was begun, three months had passed, time which the people of Denmark had used to hide or smuggle to safety all but about 500 of their Jewish neighbors.  Even after their deportation, the Danish government still continued to negotiate for the safety of its Jewish citizens, and more than 90 percent of them survived the war.  The king and his subjects saved their Jewish neighbors at great personal risk, using their own fishing boats to navigate waters guarded by German patrol boats, for instance.  And yet, as a community, they had decided to stand together to protect the innocent and the oppressed.[3] As a community, they had decided to serve something higher than fear or Hitler.

Whom will we serve?  We serve Jesus Christ because he served his heavenly Father unflinchingly even in the midst of opposition from other religious leaders and from the Roman empire.  Upon his death on the cross at the hands of his oppressors, Jesus continued to serve God by praying: “Father, into thy Hands I commend my spirit.”  That was Jesus’ defining moment.  And God vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, thereby showing that He is our ultimate liberator who has freed us from the oppression of sin and the punishment of death.  And as followers of Jesus, we have daily opportunities-perhaps not so dramatic-to have these defining moments in which we affirm and reaffirm who our Lord and Master is-not only by our words, but also by our deeds, not just as individuals but as a community of faith.  Today, we are reminded of how some have lived out their defining moments both in scripture and in history.  Only one question remains: when our defining moments come, whom will WE serve?  Amen.

[2] Oswald Chambers, reprinted in “Wisdom in a Time of War,” Christianity Today (1-07-02), p. 47.

[3] http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/denmark.asp and http://www.auschwitz.dk/Denmark.htm

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 17, 2008, Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Genesis 45:1-15

Families.  They can be a source of great blessing, or they can be a source of great pain.  Or both.  And this morning, as we continue with the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, we encounter a family that was seriously messed up.  Joseph’s dad, Jacob, could have easily been a guest on the Jerry Springer show.  Jacob had four wives, but only one he really loved.  Jacob himself knew how painful it was to not be the favorite son of his father, and still he played favorites with his own children.  Jacob loved Joseph, the favorite first-born son of his favorite wife, Rachel.  Now, if you’re going to show favoritism toward one of your children, especially one of your youngest, it’s probably wise not to make too big a display of it.  Much better to slip in an extra twenty dollar bill with his lunch money than to buy him a Corvette when he’s still not old enough to drive.  Unfortunately, Jacob just couldn’t help himself.  In big families like that, usually the youngest kids do not get new clothes; they get hand-me-downs.  Oh, but not Joseph.  Joseph received from his father a glitzy coat of many colors - a coat that shouted “I am my dad’s favorite son!”  And while Joseph couldn’t help being his father’s favorite, he certainly didn’t help himself by flaunting that fact in front of his older brothers.  Joseph was a spoiled brat who ratted out his brothers with an evil report about them to their father (Gen. 37:2).  Joseph was also a dreamer of grandiose dreams that envisioned himself being the boss of both his brothers and parents as they bowed down before him.  And Joseph was either stupid or arrogant enough to share those disrespectful dreams with his brothers and his father.  Joseph really put the “diss” into that dysfunctional family!

As in every family feud, every side contributes to the problem, and Joseph was no exception.  Joseph fueled his brothers’ jealousy and hatred of him by his actions and his words.  But even then, it’s hard to see how Joseph could deserve what happens to him next at the hands of his brothers.  One day, at the request of his father, Joseph was sent out into the fields to look for his brothers.  Joseph wore his fancy coat that his father gave him, the one so flashy that you could see it for miles.  And you can believe the Bible when it says in Genesis 37:18: “But Joseph’s brothers saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.”  And they would have killed him too, if it weren’t for Reuben the oldest who suggested that they just throw Joseph into a pit to die.  And then later, Judah, the second oldest, convinced the rest to sell Joseph as a slave to some traders who were on their way to Egypt.  Then they tricked their father Jacob into believing that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.  And that broke Jacob’s heart.

This act of treachery by Joseph’s brothers triggered a series of events that led Joseph to be a slave in charge of the household of Potiphar, one of Pharoah’s officials.  It also led to Joseph being falsely accused of attempted rape by Potiphar’s wife, which landed Joseph into prison.  A slave in a foreign land.  A slave falsely accused and imprisoned.  Where is God in that?  It’s hard to know exactly how Joseph felt about the circumstances of his situation since the Bible doesn’t say.  But it’s not too hard to imagine Joseph silently fuming every time something bad happens to him.  And I doubt one would blame Joseph too much if he had thought: “If my stinking brothers hadn’t sold me into slavery, none of this would have happened!  This is all their fault!”

We too, are tempted to point to individuals in our family who cause trouble - the brother who can’t control his tongue, the sister who can’t mind her own business, the cousin who can’t hold his liquor, whatever.  And when we think of some disastrous family wedding or some ruined Christmas gathering, we can say, “If my stinking cousin hadn’t started drinking, none of this would have happened!  This is all her fault!”  Like Joseph, these family problems are not just a one-time occurrence that come and go.  Instead, we live with them, we remember them, we continue to suffer the consequences of them - and often, the family members keep doing the same hurtful behaviors!  We find ourselves fuming, “Well, what happened last Thanksgiving was bad enough!  But what happened at Mom’s birthday party was even worse!  And then he called me last week like nothing happened and that made me mad all over again!”

In these situations when we’ve been hurt, and in Joseph’s situation, we’re tempted to ask: Where is God in that?  And yet, the Bible is explicit in pointing out in Genesis 39, verse 2 and  21, that no matter what Joseph’s circumstances were, the LORD was with him.  The LORD was with Joseph when he was a slave in Potiphar’s household.  The LORD was with Joseph when he was in prison for over two years.  And while God’s presence was not a “get out of jail free” card, in each situation, Joseph rose in rank and responsibility.  Joseph made the best out of a bad situation.  Eventually, Joseph did get out of jail and he rose to the rank of the second most powerful person in all of Egypt, all because he was able to interpret Pharoah’s dreams that signaled seven years of bumper crops followed by seven years of famine.  And Joseph was assigned to be in charge of the storage and distribution of food for all of Egypt.

Even back in Canaan, where Joseph’s father and brothers still live, Joseph’s prediction of famine became true.  So Jacob told his sons to go to Egypt to buy some food.  The ten oldest brothers headed off, and the youngest brother, Benjamin, stayed with his father Jacob. They went to Egypt to get food and they came face-to-face with their brother Joseph, who was the boss.  They did not recognize their brother because they had sold him to be a slave, not the boss of all of Egypt.  But Joseph recognized his brothers.  He pretended not to recognize them, and he gave them a hard time.  He asked them a lot of questions and he accused them of coming to Egypt as spies.  He even put them in jail for a few days.  Then he said that Simeon would have to stay in jail while the rest of them went back home and brought their youngest brother, Benjamin, back.  Then, when Benjamin did come, Joseph played a trick on him so that it would look like Benjamin was a thief!

It seems here that Joseph is just toying with his brothers, like a powerful cat toying with a mouse before finally pouncing on it and devouring it.  And we can’t help but ask ourselves, “Why can’t Joseph just stop playing those games with his brothers and just reveal his identity and welcome them?”  After all, here they were, all of Joseph’s brothers bowing down before him in fear and trepidation, fulfilling the dream that he had so long ago.  What more did Joseph have to prove?  But here, I think the genius of the biblical narrative reveals itself.  For while the Bible does not show Joseph’s inner motivations to explain his shabby treatment of his brothers, the truth the Bible reveals is that the road towards unity is often times a long, winding and torturous journey.  For when one has been deeply hurt, forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be easily offered to the ones who have harmed us.  And often, we cannot explain the reasons why others do what they do even as they take those first steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation.  Many times, when we’ve been hurt, we just can’t “get over” what is burdening us so that we can go on with our lives.  But we see that even Joseph, now the second most powerful man in Egypt, even he couldn’t get over what his brothers had done to him quite just yet.  We see him struggling.  We can make some guesses to explain his behavior.  We know that he wants information about his father and his youngest brother, Benjamin.  But we can also see that Joseph doesn’t totally trust his brothers at first.  Hence all those tests and demands that they bring Benjamin to him.  Regaining trust is the major issue in making progress toward unity and reconciliation.  But through the course of the testing of his brothers, Joseph was finally able to see that his older brothers had a genuine concern for their youngest brother Benjamin and for their father back in Canaan.  And now, Joseph faced a moment of decision.  Would he unleash his anger and exact his revenge . . . or could he finally lay down his grief and pain, and offer his forgiveness?

The answer is found in our Old Testament text for today from Genesis 45:1-15. Joseph had invited his brothers to his home for a dinner.  And Judah has just offered himself as a slave to Joseph so that Benjamin and his other brothers can return home and not break their father’s heart.  The Bible then says: Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.  ⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!  ⁵ And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.  ⁶ For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping.  ⁷ But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

Oh, after all these years of pain, heartache and separation, we finally witness the blessing of unity in the family of Jacob!  And it was indeed a long, winding and sometimes torturous journey.  And what Joseph tells his brothers in verses 4 to 7 gives us a clue as to how he was able to fully walk down that path of forgiveness and reconciliation.  He first identifies himself: “I am your brother Joseph.”  He is no longer playing games and wearing masks, things that people often do in the presence of people they don’t like.  He then acknowledges the past: I, Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt.”  There can be no whitewashing of the past.  But Joseph does not dwell on the past.  He quickly moves on to minister to his brothers: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.”  Joseph offers forgiveness for their actions and freedom from their own guilt.  Finally, Joseph sees everything that has happened to him from God’s perspective and purpose: “God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

Mark Batterson, Pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. has written that when he faces a seemingly insurmountable problem, he finds it helpful to reframe the problem in order to shift the focus.  Batterson writes: “You stop focusing on what’s wrong with your circumstances.  And you start focusing on what’s right with God. . . . If you don’t turn your adversity into a ministry, then your pain remains your pain.  But if you allow God to translate your adversity into a ministry, then your pain becomes someone else’s gain.”[1]

Joseph could have focused on his pain.  He could have told his brothers: “Much of my life was the pits because of you.  You threw me into a pit, and then you literally sold me out into slavery for twenty pieces of silver.  In Egypt, I was falsely accused by my master’s wife and was thrown into prison, where I stayed for more than two years.”   But Joseph didn’t go there.  Instead he told his brothers: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry for ourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.”  In Genesis 50:20, Joseph later says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  Instead of focusing on the ways that his brothers had wronged him, Joseph focused on something much more important: the saving of many lives, both in his immediate family and of his own people.  In the midst of the pain and suffering of his life, Joseph allowed himself to be used by God to be a savior for his family and his people.  And this story is not only true for families, but it also true for our churches, our communities and for our world.  The road of forgiveness and reconciliation is often a long and winding and sometimes torturous journey.  It comes at a cost, but if we fully travel down that road, the blessing of unity awaits.  And we’re able to travel down that road, not because we have the strength and fortitude of Joseph, but because we have Jesus Christ, God’s only beloved Son, who was sold out by a friend for thirty pieces of silver, falsely accused and sentenced to death, and even as he was hanging on the cross, he offered forgiveness by crying out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  And through his resurrection, God sends Jesus ahead of us in order to save us from the famine of our sinful lives, and he bids us to come and experience God’s divine forgiveness and reconciliation and the blessing of unity of the world to God.    Amen.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 3, 2008, Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Genesis 32:22-31

When my kids were younger, they would often ask me to wrestle with them, especially Wesley.  It’s a game where the kids would get on top of me and try to pin down every part of my body-my arms, my legs, my fingers and toes and even my head-to the carpet.  And to make the wrestling match more interesting, while they grappled with my arms trying to pin them down as I laid on the carpet, I would stick my left leg straight up in the air accompanied by the sound effect: “boing!”  That would get their attention, and so they would scramble to my raised leg, and as they pushed it down, my left arm would go up in the air-boing!  Wes would then hold on to both my legs as Thea made her way to my raised arm to wrestle it down.  As she did that, I would lift both my legs and Wesley up into the air-boing!  Both kids would squeal with laughter as they went around and around trying to pin down my body.  As soon as they got both arms and legs pinned down, one of my fingers would lift up-boing!  As soon as they got that, my big toe would lift up-boing!-and then my head-boing!  Pretty soon though, I’d get totally exhausted, and when they had every part of my body pinned down, Wesley would reach out with his palm and tap my nose as if it were a hotel concierge bell-ding, ding!-thereby signaling that I lost the wrestling match.  The kids would go away happy for having won the match, and I would limp to the medicine cabinet for my tube of Ben Gay.

Well, this morning’s Old Testament lesson from Genesis recounts another wrestling match, a smackdown seemingly straight out of World Wrestling Entertainment.  On one corner of the ring was Jacob, a “heel” if there ever was one.  Jacob’s name in Hebrew means “heel holder” because he was born holding on to the heel of his older twin brother Esau.[1] The name “Jacob” also means “supplanter,” one who usurps the place of another, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics.  For most of his life, Jacob was a “Heel,” like wrestling villains Ric Flair, Chris Jericho or “Edge” in pro wrestling, whose tactics matched the behavior of a “heel” as defined by fellow wrestler Jesse Ventura: “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.”[2]

Throughout most of his life, Jacob was a cheater who connived and tricked others in order to get what he wanted.  At a relatively young age, he conned his older brother Esau into giving up his birthright for a bowl of red stew.  In those days, a birthright was a blessing bestowed upon the oldest son.  It was a big deal because it meant that the person who received the birthright received a double portion of the father’s assets upon his death, and inherited the position of leadership within the family.  From our modern perspective, that just doesn’t seem fair, and I suppose it isn’t, since it wasn’t Jacob’s fault that he was born mere seconds after Esau.   But that was just the way it was in those days.  Now, it certainly didn’t help matters that Isaac the father showed favoritism and loved Esau more than Jacob, because Esau was a manly hunter while Jacob was more of a mama’s boy helping his mother out in the kitchen.

So one day, Esau came back from the fields starving.  He found Jacob simmering a big pot of lentil stew, and he stammered: “Let me gulp down some of this red red stuff, for I am famished.”  (That’s the literal translation in the Hebrew.)[3] Jacob was happy to oblige, but on one condition: that Esau sell him his birthright.  To Esau, an inheritance in the far distant future wasn’t going to do him any good if he were to die of starvation today.  So he agreed and he solemnly swore and sold his birthright to Jacob.  Now, you might say that anyone who can’t tell the difference in value between a birthright and a bowl of stew deserved to be scammed.  Fair enough.  But the point is that even at a young age, Jacob was conniving to receive his father’s double blessing and to supplant his older brother as the head of the family.

Now, it is one thing to wrestle a birthright from a dimwitted brother, but it is another thing to wrestle the actual blessing out of a dim-sighted father.  One day, an old and dying Isaac instructed Esau to go hunting and fix his favorite meal so that afterwards, he could give the final blessing to Esau.  While Esau was away, Jacob, following the instructions of his mother Rachel, carried out a plan to trick Isaac into thinking that Jacob was Esau by wearing skins of animals and the clothes of Esau.  Now, covered with hairy animal skins and smelling like Esau, Jacob served his father his favorite meal, and cheated Esau out of his blessing.  When Esau found out, he was furious, for once the blessing was given, it could not be revoked and given to someone else.  In his anger, Esau vowed to kill his younger brother, and Jacob, afraid for his life, fled to live with his uncle Laban in Haran.

Jacob was a heel all right, but if you walked in Jacob’s shoes for a while, you might better understand what motivated him.  I imagine it must be hard to know that you’re not your father’s favorite son, that you’ll never measure up to his expectations, that you’ll never receive his full blessing.  That knowledge might motivate you to do all sorts of underhanded things to supplant your siblings, to prove your worth, to grasp at ways to make your dad love you and be proud of you.  Sure, you might even wrestle a blessing out of your father, but who knows if that blessing was sincere?  Who knows if a blessing received through trickery is a blessing received truly?  And what good is a blessing when it estranges you from the ones you love and creates enmity among your siblings?

I also imagine that not feeling blessed also makes it harder for a person to trust others, perhaps even God.  It’s interesting that during Jacob’s journey to his uncle Laban, the Bible tells a story in Genesis 28, of a night Jacob spent sleeping on a rock and dreaming of a stairway to heaven.  In that dream, God promised to Jacob the same blessing that God made to Abraham many years before: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”[4] While Jacob was no doubt awed by the dream, it is enlightening to hear the vow that Jacob made in response, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God.”  It seems that Jacob was not satisfied solely with God’s promise; he wanted to make a conditional deal with God.  According to literary critic Robert Alter, “God has already promised Jacob in the dream that He will do all these things for him.  Jacob however, remains the suspicious bargainer-a “wrestler” with words and conditions just as he is a physical wrestler, a heel-grabber.  He carefully stipulated the conditions of sale (of the birthright) to the famished Esau . . . now he wants to be sure God will fulfill His side of the bargain before he commits himself to God’s service.”[5] Imagine that, trying to pin God down on God’s own promises!

I don’t know about you, but it’s not hard for me to imagine trying to pin God down on God’s own promises.  I remember as a young child praying that if God would be with me and help me pass my test, then I would read my Bible more.  As a young adult, I prayed that if God would give me enough money to live by, then I would answer the call to ministry.  Throughout my life, I’ve made all sorts of conditional deals with God, even despite the promises God has made to me.  So no, it’s not hard to imagine trying to pin God down on God’s own promises.

As for Jacob, God upheld his end of the deal.  God watched over Jacob and gave him enough not only to survive but thrive.  Sure, he found in his uncle Laban a scoundrel and a cheat equal to himself.  But despite being tricked by Laban’s bridal switcheroo which cost Jacob seven more years of working for Laban, at the end of the day, Jacob was successful by all accounts.  Jacob married both of Laban’s daughters, had eleven children with them, and later Jacob fleeced Laban of a vast portion of his flock.  God had blessed Jacob, and on the outside, Jacob had the look of a winner, a person who made something out of himself through his own ingenuity and hard work.

But there was one final thing that had not yet come to pass.  Jacob had not yet safely returned to his father’s house to reunite with his brother Esau.  So now, in this story, Jacob and his whole entourage were about to cross the Jabbock River and into his homeland.  He sent his family and all his possessions on ahead and he spends a night by himself.  It’s probably like us going to a family reunion and taking a deep breath to brace ourselves before entering our parents’ house.  And on this dark night, on the cusp of a family reunion, on the verge of seeing his long-estranged brother, Jacob faced the wrestling match of his life, one that would redefine his identity forever.

So, on one corner of the ring was Jacob, a “heel” if there ever was one.  On the other corner, was . . . a man.  We really don’t know the identity of Jacob’s opponent.  Some, like Hosea, think the man was an angel.[6] Others say it was God himself.[7] Still others say it might be Jacob’s own conscience.[8] But as far as we know, the identity of this wrestler was masked from Jacob and from us.  These two wrestled the whole night and neither one could gain an advantage until the mysterious adversary cheated and gently touched the socket of Jacob’s hip, which instantly fell out of joint.  From what I understand, the hip is the wrestler’s pivot point, the source of his strength.  Even so, Jacob would not release his hold, and when the dawn was about to break, the masked wrestler finally asked to be let go.  But Jacob wouldn’t do it, except on one condition: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  Here we see a deep hunger in Jacob to be blessed, to be affirmed as valuable and worthy, even though on the outside, Jacob was both rich and successful.  But Jacob needed a source of worth that material wealth, societal status, and even familial love could not provide.  This sense of worth could not be achieved through conniving and cheating, nor could it be grasped through legitimate, human effort and ingenuity.  It was a blessing that could only be received by grace, when Jacob’s core strength was incapacitated, when he could no longer rely on his own human power.  It was a blessing that was given not on Jacob’s own terms, but through a life-transforming encounter.

“What is your name?” asked the man.  “Jacob” was the reply.  “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”  Before the blessing was given, something even more radical took place.  Jacob’s very name was changed so that he was no longer just a “heel” or a “supplanter,” but now, he is identified as “Israel,” one who struggles and strives with God.  This change in identity will not make Jacob’s life easier or safer or even more successful.  In fact, for the rest of his life, Jacob will walk with a limp, a physical mark of his ongoing spiritual struggle.  It is a struggle that he cannot control, no matter how much supplanting, grasping, conniving and cheating he might be tempted to do.  For when Jacob in turn asks for the name of his adversary, he is answered by a question: “Why do you ask my name?”  In that culture, being able to name someone and to know someone’s name gives the “namer” control and power over that person.  But this nameless adversary cannot be controlled and Jacob has no power over him.  And it is precisely at this point that Jacob receives his blessing.  What exactly that blessing is, the Bible doesn’t say.  It just says, “Then he blessed him there.”  But perhaps that’s precisely the point.  For when your core identity is changed so that you no longer have to rely on your own power and strength, and yet you can still strive with God, then anything that is given to you can be a true blessing.  For what is most important about the blessing is not what God can give you, but who God is and God’s presence with you.  After receiving the blessing, it finally dawned on Jacob that while wrestling with this masked opponent, he was in fact striving face to face with God.  In this wrestling match of epic proportions, the wrestler named the “Heel” claimed to have seen the “Face” of God and still live to tell about it.  And having been inwardly transformed by this experience, Jacob/Israel is now free to return home to do the outward work of reconciliation with his brother Esau.

I think many of us can see our stories in Jacob’s story.  We too have been wrestling for a blessing all our lives.  We hunger for a blessing from our parents, our siblings, our children, those who are important to us.  And sometimes, out of that deep need, we will connive, cheat, manipulate and supplant others in order to receive that blessing.  And it doesn’t matter if we look successful and fulfilled on the outside, on the inside we are hurting and we are hollow.  We are separated and estranged from people who are important to us, because we have hurt them and they have hurt us.  And in the dark of the night, we wrestle with those issues many times unnamed and unidentified.  But God is there in that struggle.  God is there in your wrestling.  But perhaps you won’t be able to receive the blessing you desperately need until God incapacitates you at the center of your human power.  Perhaps you won’t be able to receive the blessing that you desperately need until God renames you and remolds your identity in Him.  Go ahead and strive with God, for God can take a fight.  The Good News is that not only can we, like Jacob, strive with God, but we also have in Jesus Christ some One who strives with God for us.  Someone who, at the Garden of Gethsemane, knows what it feels like to go through a dark night of the soul.  Someone who, at his trial, was cheated out of a fair hearing and was sentenced to death.  Someone who, at the cross, experienced what it means to be utterly defeated and forsaken.  But also someone who, at the dawn of a new day, walked out of a tomb scars and all as the fulfillment of God’s promise of reconciliation for the whole world.  And so, even as you struggle for a blessing, you are not alone.  And may God in Christ bless you in whatever way you need as the dark night begins to pass and the morning begins to dawn.  Amen.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel_%28professional_wrestling%29

[3] Translation by Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, p. 131.

[4] Genesis 28:13-15.  Compare that with God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 13:14-17.

[5] Robert Alter, p. 150-1.

[6] Hosea 12:3-4.

[7] For a sampling of the various ways that ancients have identified this man, see James L. Kugel, The Bible As It Was, p. 224-226.

[8] Edward Markquart, http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_c_wrestling_with_god.htm.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 20, 2008, Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-42

When Beth and I lived in Charlottesville, we had a yard about the size of a postage stamp.  We had a push mower, and every other week or so, I’d go out to the yard and mow that sucker in about eight minutes flat.  Then we moved to Farmville and bought a house with a pretty big yard.  We thought it would be great to have a place for church parties and picnics and play dates with the kids.  All that’s true, but it takes me a lot longer than eight minutes to mow the lawn!  So we got a riding mower, and I experienced my first sense of manly pride in mowing.  A few swipes of a push mower just doesn’t do the trick - but riding my Cub Cadet, feeling the power of the engine - now that’s pure masculinity!  I remember finishing the job that first time, pleased with my accomplishment, wiping the sweat from my (manly) brow - when Thea came out of the house and said, “Daddy, what happened to my flowers?”  “Flowers?  What flowers?” I said.  Beth came out and joined the conversation.  “You know, the seeds she planted last month.  The ones she’s been patiently waiting to blossom.”  “You mean those gangly weed looking things were flowers?” I asked.  Ooops.  As a side note, you should probably know that Beth is now the one who mows our lawn.  Talk about a blow to my masculinity!

Thea took it well - and if I remember correctly, the plants themselves somehow survived and sprouted forth a few days later.  But the experience made me do some thinking.  You see, Thea planted those seeds, and when she looked out in that corner of the yard, she saw young plants rapidly growing and on the verge of blossoming.  I looked at that same corner of the lawn and mistakenly saw some leggy weeds - and I mowed those bad boys down.  Frankly, my own vision probably wasn’t entirely wrong; I’m sure there were plenty of weeds mixed in with Thea’s flowers, but I didn’t have the vision or understanding to know the difference.

Our story today encourages us to have vision and understanding, as well.  Jesus continues his series of parables using the commonplace example of farming to paint a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like.  This parable is a sequel to the Parable of the Sower that I preached on last Sunday.  And while Jesus talked about the four different types of soils in the last parable, in this parable, Jesus focuses on what happens to the seed on the good soil.  The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good wheat seeds in his field.  But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.  Most scholars think the weeds that were sown were most likely darnel or cockle.  In some regions, darnel is referred to as “false wheat” because it looks so much like wheat.  The way you can tell them apart is when the plants begin to bear fruit.  The ears on the real wheat are so heavy that it makes the entire plant droop downward, but the “false wheat,” whose ears are light, stands straight.[1] That’s why it was only when the wheat began to sprout and form heads, that the owner’s servants noticed that there were weeds among the wheat.  So the perplexed servants asked the owner, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field?  Where then did the weeds come from?”

Where do the weeds come from?   This question seems to be a metaphorical version of a perennial question that we often ask ourselves: where does evil come from?  If God is a good creator God, why is there so much evil in the world mingled amongst the good?  If the Christ is building God’s church in the world, why is there so much evil within the church?  If the Holy Spirit is alive and living in me, why is there so much evil in me?

The parable does not give an exhaustive answer.  The owner replies: “An enemy did this.”  This answer seems to suggest that there is someone in the world who is actively working against the purposes of the owner, against the purposes of the Son of Man, a name that Jesus gave to himself.  This answer also suggests that the owner, the Son of Man, is not the planter of the weeds.  He is not the instigator of evil.  But this answer is also tersely and vaguely answered, perhaps to teach us that a more detailed answer is not necessary right now, despite our human curiosity and desire to know more and to speculate on this mystery.  For now, it is sufficient for the servants of the owner-and for us-to simply know that: “An enemy did this.”

But that leads us to another question: “So what do we do now?”  The servants asked the owner, “Do you want us to go and pull the weeds up?”  At this point, I fully expect the owner to reply: “Yeah, sure, pull up the weeds.”  All good farmers and gardeners know the importance of careful vigilance against weeds if one wants a good crop.  And nothing ruins a garden more than weeds overrunning and choking out the good plants and flowers.  And that’s what the enemy is banking on.  For you see, the enemy in Jesus’ parable is very sly.  The enemy will do everything he can to prevent the people of God from bearing fruit.  In last week’s parable, the enemy tries to prevent the seed of God’s word from taking root.  But if that fails, the enemy will sow weeds in the good soil so that the workers will be obsessed with eliminating the weeds.  But in the process of pulling up the weeds, those workers will also uproot the wheat, thereby accomplishing the enemy’s goal without him having to lift a hand![2]

We’ve seen that play out over and over again in the history of the world. We’ve seen inquisitions to rid the church of heretics, witch hunts to rid a community of undesirables, crusades to rid the world of Muslim infidels, jihads to rid the world of Christian infidels, final solutions to rid the world of Jews.  In our country, we’ve had an on-going debate between and among both political parties about which groups of people are undesirable, which groups should be detained, disenfranchised or deported.  Within Baptist circles, we’ve seen liberals, moderates, conservatives and fundamentalists exclude each other in fellowship, in missions and in appointments to denominational posts.  And in these attempts to root out the “weeds” in our midst, there has been collateral damage where innocent people were hurt, where lives were wrecked, where wheat was rooted up along side the weeds. In our focus on weed-pulling, instead of bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace and goodness, we’ve produced hatred, bitterness, contentiousness and violence.  In the history of the human race, we’ve seen that we are incapable of “doing good” by violence without also doing a great deal of evil.[3] When we “do good” by doing evil, ironically, we often become the very thing that we want to root out.  As a result, we’ve turned a lot of people off against God, and helped the enemy accomplish his goal against the owner.  That’s why the owner replied instead, “No, leave the weeds alone.  Because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest.”

Let both wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest.  This is a challenging word for many of us, because it seems so passive, and it verges on the dangerous notion of permitting evil to exist with impunity in the world.  We see God as a God of justice and are disappointed that God would not exercise judgment right now, this minute.  Some of us have been deeply hurt by evil people and we want that judgment, that separation between the wheat and the weeds today.  However, this parable challenges us with the notion that is not our job to execute final judgment on those whom we think are the weeds of this world.  That is God’s job at the final judgment day, and only He knows who are the wheat and who are the weeds.  We have to trust that, when God’s kingdom comes, His will for justice will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Let both wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest.  This is an offensive word for others of us because we don’t like the notion of a final judgment and wish that Jesus had not mentioned it.  We see God as a God of love and we would have been perfectly happy for the parable to end with the Master telling his servants to leave the weeds alone.  Why go into the fiery details and the weeping and gnashing of teeth?  But we cannot ignore the fact that when we experience real evil in the world, there is something deep within us that cries out for justice.  Can we live in a world where truly evil people get away with doing horrendous things and yet still get away scot free?

But-what if there is also wheat and weeds growing together within each and every one of us?  Yes, we affirm the good that is within us, what Abraham Lincoln described as the “better angels of our nature.”[4] But do we also confess our shadow side, what Joseph Conrad called our “heart of darkness”?  It isn’t fashionable to say this in our culture, but the Bible tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.[5] If God were to weed out everyone today who disobeyed Him, I certainly wouldn’t be here preaching this sermon, and I doubt there would be anyone else on this earth left.  So while we might be challenged and offended by this parable, perhaps we might also be comforted by the fact that during this time before the final harvest, God is refraining from rooting us up and pronouncing upon us final judgment.  It means that there is still time to allow the good seed planted in us to bear good fruit.  It implies that instead of obsessing over other people’s differences and faults, we can focus on nourishing the good that God wants to grow within us.  It might also suggest that when the final harvest comes, God will root out and incinerate the weeds in our lives once and for all, while the good grain of our lives will be lovingly gathered into his storehouse for God’s enjoyment and glory.

Dr. Jim Sommerville, the new pastor of First Baptist, Richmond, tells a story that took place when he was the pastor of a church in Wingate, North Carolina (the town where our youth just visited for youth camp).  He asked the people at his church to imagine what would happen if they adopted a policy of weed-pulling, if they drew a circle around the little town of Wingate, and made a vow that no evil would cross that line, that no weeds would grow within that border. Sommerville said, “You know, you and I could spend the rest of our lives protecting that boundary, standing shoulder to shoulder with pitchforks and clubs, making sure that we kept drugs and alcohol and pornography and gambling safely on the other side.  I think it would take all of our energy and most of our time.  But what if we did it?  What if we succeeded?  What would we have?  We would have a town characterized by the absence of evil, which is not the same as a town characterized by the presence of good.  And maybe this is what Jesus was talking about all along, that it’s better to have a wheat field with weeds in it than a field with nothing in it at all.”

When that church in Wingate began a ministry to the children of a nearby trailer park, they had to decide what kind of ministry it would be.  They could have chosen to root out all the sources of evil in that place — to chase down the drug dealers and the deadbeat dads, to confiscate handguns and to pressure welfare moms to get a job.  Instead, they chose to put up a basketball goal, to tell stories from the Bible, to put their arms around little children, and sing songs about Jesus.  And two years after they started that ministry, two years of going out there Saturday after Saturday to do those things, Pastor Sommerville got a note in his box at church with five words on it: “Adrian wants to be baptized.”  Adrian, the one-time terror of the trailer park.  When they first started their Saturday ministry, nobody would have guessed that this little girl who couldn’t even follow directions would one day want to follow Jesus.  But instead of pulling weeds in the field where she lived, they just tried hard to be wheat, and somehow Adrian saw that and fell in love with it and wanted it for herself.  After Adrian was baptized, there was a little more wheat in the field, producing seeds for a greater harvest.[6]

This is a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like.  In a world still full of wheat and weeds together, may God give us the vision to see God’s kingdom and live it out faithfully and fruitfully.  Amen.

[2] The ideas of the last two paragraphs are heavily indebted to Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 2, pp. 26-27.

[3] Frederick Dale Bruner, p. 30.

[4] http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html.

[5] Romans 3:23.

[6] Jim Sommerville, “A World Full of Weeds,” http://www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=506.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 13, 2008, Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I’ve got a question for you this morning.  How many of you either presently or in the past have farmed or cultivated crops?  Oh good!  I need your help, since, being a city boy, I know very little about farming.  What are some things that you need to prepare the soil to successfully plant a crop?  How would you go about sowing your seeds?  (This is not a rhetorical question, you can go ahead and answer.)

From everything that I’ve read and seen, if a person is going to make a living out of farming, then the farmer will need to prepare the field carefully, ridding it of big rocks, tilling the soil to break up lumps of dirt, and then carefully plant and fertilize the seed into the well-prepared soil.  As I travel around, I’m often struck by the beauty of farmlands that have rows and rows of crops lining the field.  You can tell that not much was left to chance in the planting of those seeds.

Now suppose you hear about a farmer who, one day, decided to plant a field.  He loads up his broadcast seed spreader, hooks it up to the back of his John Deere, fires it up, and starts spreading seed while still rumbling down the asphalt driveway, indiscriminately scattering seed onto the road and gravel pits, into the side ditches, and upon the briar and weed infested patches before he even gets to his fields.  There are three words that might describe this sower: “dumb,” “crazy” and “ex-farmer.”  Everyone knows that seed is a precious commodity, and one doesn’t just indiscriminately scatter it around if one wants to maximize the return on one’s investment and maximize the size of the harvest.

But that’s exactly what this sower in Jesus’ parable does: he indiscriminately “sows” the seed onto all sorts of unsuitable places.  I imagine that upon hearing this parable, the farmers in Jesus’ audience would think to themselves: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph the carpenter?  Well, he better not quit his day job to become a farmer!”  As a matter of fact, Jesus was not trying to give farming advice.  Jesus told this parable of this extravagant sower to give us a picture of who God is and what God’s kingdom is like.  For God’s ways are not our ways.  While we tend to safeguard those things that are precious to us and only share them to those whom we think truly deserve it, God is an extravagant prodigal who scatters His most precious possession, the seed of the good news of His Kingdom-Jesus Christ himself-to everyone, regardless of how receptive they might be.  As one commentator puts it: “God the gospel farmer has no compunction about tossing seed anywhere and everywhere whether or not it will have much of a shot at succeeding.  Why?  Because unlike real farmers who love and lavish attention on only the good field, God as farmer loves every field, every plot of land, every heart.”[1] To change the metaphor, God is like an extravagant investor willing to put down huge sums of money on any and every stock regardless of whether they were sky rocketing or tanking.

Despite God’s extravagant investment into every heart, God is not naïve.  In this parable, Jesus makes clear that while God sows the seed of His word onto every kind of soil and every kind of heart, only a small percentage of hearts will actually hear and understand the good news of God’s kingdom, much less receive that word and bear fruit.  Jesus explains that the seeds sown along the hard path never take root and are snatched up by the evil one.  We have seen people whose hearts and minds are hardened against the very idea of God.  They don’t understand how modern, rational human beings can believe in God, and they attack anyone who adheres to a religion or subscribes to a faith.  Other people are like the shallow, rocky soil that the seed blooms quickly and enthusiastically, but only for a short time.  Because the seed of God’s word is not deeply rooted in them, their shallow faith cannot withstand times of challenge or persecution.  Theirs is a low-commitment, fair-weather faith that quickly withers when things do not go their way, when they are asked to sacrifice, and when the novelty and excitement wears off.  Still others have thorny soils that receive the seed gladly, but the weeds of worry and the lure of wealth crowd and choke out the word so that no fruit is produced.  Some may be so busy with everything else in life-good things like work, school, family, recreation-that they leave no room and no time for a growing relationship with God.

In Jesus’ interpretation of this parable, he explains that three quarters of the seeds sown will not grow long enough to produce fruit.  While twenty-five percent might be a pretty good batting average in baseball, those aren’t good odds when it comes to most other things in life.  But Jesus seems to be saying that that’s just the way life is.  And then Jesus talks about the good soil.  Now, before we go there and pat ourselves on the back for being the good soil, may I suggest that Jesus addressed this parable to his followers and Matthew recorded this parable for the Church.   If I’m right, then we in this sanctuary can’t simply identify ourselves as the good soil and unbelievers outside the church as the “bad” soils.  If I’m right, then it might be possible to understand that even within the Church, perhaps only one fourth of its members are growing and fruitful Christians.  That may be a shocking assertion, but, if we just look around at various churches, maybe even at our church, we’ll see that that’s just the way life is.  Now don’t worry, I’m not going to name names, identifying which ones of you are the twenty-five percent , and which ones of you are not bearing fruit.  I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to which of the four sections of our choir - altos, sopranos, tenors, or basses - are the ones living fruitful lives.  (Though, with my wife singing alto, I know which one I’d pick!)  Instead, I might suggest that within each of our hearts, within each of our lives, we have soil that is unreceptive to God’s word.  For those of us who attend church, and that includes me, we are exposed to the seed of God’s word week in and week out, and yet, there are areas of our lives that are hardened and unreceptive to what we hear.  We have soil that is shallow and rocky, and the seed of God’s word can’t take root in our lives so our faith ends up being withered by the challenges of life.  Finally, we have soil filled with the thorns of worry and busyness that can choke out any chance for our faith to bear fruit.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll see that that too is the way life is.

It’s really not that surprising that the seed didn’t grow in the bad soils.  The surprising thing is that the farmer chooses to scatter seed in those soils anyway.  The good news this morning then is that God continues to be the extravagant sower who continues to scatter the seed of His Word to every one regardless of how receptive they are, and to every one regardless of the receptive soils in each of our divided hearts.  The good news is that God loves everyone, even those whom we think are not good prospects for the Gospel, and God will not give up scattering the seeds of the Gospel their way.  The good news is that God loves our whole being, and that’s why God will not give up scattering the precious seed of His Word in the inhospitable places of our hearts in the hopes that the Word will take root in all areas of our lives.  The great news is that when and wherever the seed takes root and grows and bears fruit, it will yield an extraordinary return a hundred, sixty or thirty times more than what was sown.  We see this truth time and again in the history of the church.  Think of Saul, a persecutor of the early Church who became Paul, the Church’s greatest missionary, when the seed of the Gospel took root in his life.  Surely that was a hundred-fold return on the seed that was sown.  Think of a former slave trader named John Newton who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” when the seed of the Gospel took root in his life.  Surely that was a sixty-fold return.  Think of the people in this room and the transformation that has taken place in their lives when the seed of the Gospel took root.  Surely that is a thirty-fold return.  It doesn’t take much for God’s Word to yield extraordinary returns in the lives of those who truly receive.  Let those who have ears, hear and understand this good news.

As we prepare to take communion this morning, God reminds us that in the harvest of wheat that is the bread and in the fruit of the vine that is the cup, these things symbolize the extravagant investments of God’s most precious Son.  These elements are the gracious seeds that are sown and offered to all again and again.  But it is not enough for us just to receive them.  God is inviting us to allow the seed of his spoken Word and the seed of this symbolic, enacted Word to penetrate deeply into the soils of our hearts so that the presence and power of Christ will bring forth the extraordinary returns of fruit in all aspects of our lives.  Amen.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 6, 2008, Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

During these summer months, many of us look forward to taking our vacations.  In the United States, the average number of vacation days per year is 13 days.  In Korea and Japan, it is 25 days.  In Germany it is 35 days.  And in Italy, it tops out at 42 days of vacation a year.[1] Now, that’s some serious rest and relaxation!  And while 42 days of vacation might sound wonderful to us now, I hazard to guess that after five days of vacation, most of us will get restless and antsy about work, calling the office and sneaking an email here and there.  And after ten days of “vacation,” our spouses and children will be begging us to return back to work because they’ll need a vacation from us!  We in the United States live in a workaholic culture where much of our identity and significance are derived from how busy we are, and we demand high levels of productivity from ourselves and from others.  We live hectic lives.  We burn the candle from both ends.  At the end of the day, when we are spent and exhausted, we want to be like that woman in the old TV commercial who luxuriates in a bubble bath while saying, “Calgon, take me away!”  But bubble baths can only do so much.  The fact is, we are a people who are chronically weary and burdened.  And Jesus here is seemingly offering us a gracious invitation to rest.  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

What a wonderful invitation!  Those words are like a peaceful oasis of refreshment in the midst of the desert of our busyness and restlessness.  Now, if only Jesus could have stopped right there, I would have been totally with him, for who doesn’t need a break from work and the burdens of everyday living?  But Jesus continues his invitation in verse 29: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”  Now, what could Jesus have meant by that?  When we think of the word yoke, we have in mind a crossbar with two U-shaped pieces that encircle the necks of a pair of oxen working together.  A yoke is something that binds two beasts of burden together for the purpose of farm work.  It is usually a metaphor used for any burden or bondage, not for rest and relaxation.  You won’t find one picture of a yoke in a brochure for some cushy spa vacation.  If Jesus had taken lessons from Madison Avenue, He might have said, “Come to me and take my hammock.  Come to me and have an umbrella drink by the beach.  Come to me and enjoy a massage.”  But “Come to me and take up my yoke”?  Doesn’t that seem a little sadistic for Jesus to add an additional burden of a yoke on people who were already weary and burdened?

According to pastor Rob Bell, in Jesus’ day, different rabbis had different sets of rules, which were really different lists of what they forbade and what they permitted. A rabbi’s set of rules and lists, which was really that rabbi’s interpretation of how to live the Torah, was called that rabbi’s yoke. When you followed a certain rabbi, you were following him because you believed that rabbi’s set of interpretations were the closest to what God intended through the Scriptures. And when you followed that rabbi, you were taking up that rabbi’s yoke.[2] Seen in this way, a yoke is one particular way of life that we give ourselves to in submission and service.

So when Jesus invited people to come to him and take up his yoke and learn from him, Jesus was basically inviting these weary and burdened people to follow him as his disciples, to follow his teaching and lead a particular way of life defined and revealed by the master rabbi Jesus.  Unlike other rabbis and teachers of the law, this rabbi was gentle and humble in heart and, as a result of following and learning from him, Jesus claimed that these people will find rest for their souls.

This “rest,” this “refreshment” that Jesus is talking about is much deeper than just “taking time out from work” or going on “vacation.”  The kind of rest that Jesus was talking about can be summed up in St. Augustine’s famous affirmation on the first page of his Confessions when he says to God: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”   As we’ve heard before, we are made with a God-shaped void in our hearts, and if we try to fill that void with anything else other than God, then our hearts will continue to be restless, constantly searching and seeking for the ultimate source of life and purpose.  Those other things could be good things like athletic achievement, career advancement, romantic love, societal status.  But if we let those things define our cosmic significance, then that would be a sin.  According to pastor Tim Keller, “the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.  It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.”  In the movie Chariots of Fire, one of the main characters explains why he works so hard at running the hundred-yard dash for the Olympics.  He says that when each race begins, “I have ten lonely seconds to justify my existence.” [3] According to Dr. Keller, every person must find some way to “justify one’s existence.”  Keller writes: “In more traditional cultures, the sense of worth and identity comes from fulfilling duties to family and giving service to society.  In our contemporary individualistic culture, we tend to look to our achievements, our social status, our talents, or our love relationships. . . . Everyone is building their identity on something.”[4]

I think Dr. Keller is right-everyone is building their identity on something. And whatever that something is, that is your yoke: a particular way of life that we give ourselves to in submission and service.  And if that yoke is not Christ, then you will face a never-ending battle in trying to justify your existence by your works rather than by the grace of God.  That’s a mighty weighty yoke that you’ll put on your shoulders.  And you will set yourself up for a no-win situation, whereby your identity is crushed if you do not achieve your goals, or you find yourself not satisfied if your goals are achieved.  For example, if your yoke is your work, and you fail in your job, then you’ll see yourself as a failure in life.  But if you succeed, it may be at the expense of all other things: your family, your relationships and even your health.  And when you finally retire, you’ll find that your identity or purpose in life also retired with your job, and you’re left alone because you alienated the people who were most important to you during your working years.  If your yoke is money, status or success, your identity will be crushed when you don’t reach a certain level of wealth or acclaim, but even if you do, you’ll be insecure about those who are richer, more influential or successful than you.  If your yoke is romantic love, then you’ll feel insignificant if your love is rejected, but even if you win your love, you’ll eventually find that your beloved will not be able to give you everything that you think you need, and you’ll be on the lookout for a new lover.  If your yoke is your children, then you’ll be sorely disappointed and perhaps embarrassed if they do not grow up meeting your expectations, but even if they do, they will resent you for being domineering and controlling in your quest to make them into your image.  If your yoke is religion and right living, then you will either be constantly wracked by guilt and shame for not living up to your ethical standards, or you will be proud, self-righteous and cruel to others because they do not live up to your ethical standards.

In other words, if you live your life trying to justify your own existence by putting on a yoke other than Christ, then you be damned if you don’t succeed, and you be damned if you do succeed.  And no amount of vacation or time away will give you the rest you need, because the inner restlessness of those yokes will burden your soul wherever you go.  You won’t be able to quiet down the accusing voices of those yokes no matter how hard to you try to escape.

The question therefore, is not whether we will find rest by ridding ourselves of all yokes.  The question is which yoke we will take up.  The truth of the matter is, if we do not live for Jesus, we will live for something else.  We will either serve Christ, or we will serve some other master.  Therefore, the question is: Will we submit ourselves to the heavy yokes of human approval, of material gain, of social status, of self-righteous pride?  Or will we find rest by submitting ourselves to the easy and gentle yoke of Christ?

Jesus’ invitation to rest this morning is to those who recognize that they are weary and burdened with the overwhelming and ultimately impossible task of saving themselves.  Come to Jesus, and take upon yourself the life that you were created to live.  And when you do that, you are promised a peaceful and refreshing rest that comes when our hearts have found its true home in Christ, where we are secure in the unconditional love and acceptance of God, and our identity and significance are defined by the gentle yoke of Christ.  It is an easy and gentle yoke because if and when we fail, we are offered forgiveness, grace and healing.  It is an easy and gentle yoke that rests our souls because it frees us from having to save and justify ourselves in front of others and ourselves.  It is an easy and gentle yoke because it frees us from our fears and anxieties, and it frees us to be who we were created by God to be.  Most of all, it is an easy and gentle yoke because Christ is yoked with us, leading us every step of the way, carrying most of the burden and load.

The apostle Paul asked a very important question in Galatians 1:10: “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant (or slave) of Christ.”  Then later in Galatians 5:1. Paul celebrates this truth: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  Jesus once said this to his followers: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”[5]

On this Independence Day weekend, let us accept Jesus’ invitation to declare our independence from all the things that yoke us into slavery, and let us declare our dependence on Christ by taking up his yoke and accepting his invitation to rest in His grace and peace.  Amen.

[2] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, pp. 47-48.

[3] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 162.

[4] Keller, 164.

[5] John 8:31-32.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 8, 2008, Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

My roommate from college and I are both doctors.  I have a doctorate in religious studies, and he is a medical doctor.  Though there’s a world of difference between being a minister and being a physician, we still share some things in common.  First, when we’re at parties or meeting new people, many times, we hesitate to reveal our occupations.  Here’s my situation: I can be having a great conversation with someone, laughing, and telling stories, and then out of the blue comes the question, “So what do you do for a living?”  “I’m a Baptist minister,” I tell them, in the most casual and least-guilt-inducing way I can imagine - but it’s too late.  Their faces blanche, their eyes get wide, they shift their beers to behind their backs, and say, “Well, uh, nice talking to you.”  My former college roommate perhaps gets it even worse.  When his new acquaintances find out that he’s a doctor, they often say, “An ear, nose, throat doctor, eh?  I’ve got this growth on the back of my throat.  Would you mind looking at it? People are always trying to get him to give free medical advice or sample medicines.  I know, because I’ve tried to do that too when I visit him!  The second thing we have in common is that, in our different callings, we are both interested in healing-I am interested in healing in the spiritual realm, and he in the physical realm.

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, we find Jesus involved in both spiritual and physical healing.  In the previous chapters in Matthew, Jesus has been gaining fame and acclaim throughout Galilee for his healing ministry.  He had just healed two demon-possessed men and a paralytic, and now, he invited a tax collector named Matthew to follow him as his disciple.  In response, Matthew had Jesus over for a dinner party and invited a few of his friends.  And what takes place is an interesting story filled with an interesting cast of characters.  I’d like to spend a little time this morning highlighting these characters.

First, there’s Matthew, the tax collector.  As much as we might dislike the IRS and its agents today, back in Jesus’ time, tax collectors were hated even more.  Tax collectors in those days were usually social climbing Jews who collected taxes from their own people for the occupying Roman rulers.  They were despised as traitors and were seen as morally untouchable.  They might be rich, but they got that way by their unscrupulous business practice of skimming off the top from their collections.  As you can imagine, it was hard to win friends with this job, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the only people who came to Matthew’s house to eat with Jesus and his disciples were other tax collectors and people deemed as “sinners.”  But to this despised and rejected group of outcasts, Jesus came and shared table fellowship.

Another group of people in this story were the Pharisees.  Pharisees get a bad wrap from us today, but in Jesus’ day, they for the most part were the righteous and responsible people who took their religion very seriously.  This meant that they did not associate with sinners in strict adherence with Psalm 26:4-5: “I do not sit with deceitful men, nor do I consort with hypocrites; I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.”  It was unlikely that they went into Matthew’s house, but they saw what was happening, and asked Jesus’ disciples: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

I think that’s a fair question.  There is definitely wisdom in not associating with evildoers.  In the purity codes in Leviticus, many times, God told the Israelites: “I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.”[1] The word “holy” means to be “separated” or “set apart” in order to fulfill a sacred goal.  I know that when I was growing up, my parents taught me not to hang around with the wrong crowd.  And I’ve seen too many times where people were dragged down a destructive path by a wrong peer group.  In the healthcare profession, doctors and nurses know how important it is when treating sick people to avoid catching their diseases.  That’s why they wear masks and gloves.  That’s their way to be “set apart” and to keep a safe distance so that they won’t get sick.  In the minds of these Pharisees, who were serious about God’s holiness, what Jesus was doing-eating with tax collectors and sinners in close proximity-was dangerous, irresponsible and a violation of God’s law.

But Jesus had a reply for them: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”  Jesus saw himself as a physician, sent to those who are sick.  He then challenged the Pharisees, those who were serious about following scripture, by saying: “But go and learn what this means”-and here Jesus quotes scripture himself, from Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  Jesus did not refute the Pharisees in their adherence to the Levitical purity codes.  But Jesus finds in the prophet Hosea a deeper Word, a word that says “mercy” and not “sacrifice.”  According to theologian Frederick Dale Bruner, “Sacrifice” is an act of the will that calls for separation from others.  “Mercy” is an act of our heart and seeks identification with others.[2] To the question of sin and holiness, Jesus contrasted the Pharisaic idea of “salvation by segregation” with his new approach of “salvation by association.”[3] That’s why Jesus is called “Emmanuel”-God with us-because his mission was to come and identify with us, not in our sin, but in our humanity, so that he might call, not the righteous, but sinners.  What Jesus tells the Pharisees raises the question of whether the Pharisees were as righteous and healthy as they thought they were.  Perhaps they were also sick, and were just good at ignoring it or covering it up?  Could it be that in their meticulous concern over purity and cleanliness, those Pharisees may actually suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder?[4]

During the course of this supper, in addition to the tax collectors, sinners and Pharisees, another man shows up on the scene to make a seemingly impossible request: resuscitating a dead daughter.  Now, this man is described as a “leader,” presumably someone with power and authority in the community.  It’s unclear why he would wait until his daughter was already dead before coming to Jesus.  Perhaps he thought he could save his daughter with the resources and the power that he had.  Perhaps he didn’t want to embarrass himself by seeking help from someone who seemed to associate with the outlaws and outcasts of society.  But when his daughter died, he had nowhere else to go.  He was desperate and downcast, and Jesus was his last resort.  It is interesting that Jesus did not give him a hard time he didn’t ask any questions.  The Bible simply says that Jesus got up and went with him and so did his disciples.  Jesus shows mercy and compassion to the poor and the rich, to the weak and the powerful.

On his way to the daughter, another character shows up on the scene, this time a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years.  According to Levitical law, this condition would have made her ritually unclean, and anyone who touched her and her linens would be also made unclean.  She was an untouchable woman; it was crazy for her to reach out to Jesus.  But like the ruler who had lost his daughter, she was desperate and willing to try anything, and in her faith, she believed that she would be healed by the mere contact of Jesus’ cloak.  When she did so, Jesus was not contaminated by her touch, and he did not reprimand this woman for her audacious act.  Instead, he recognized her courage and faith by saying: “Take heart, your faith has healed you.”  With those words, this afflicted woman was made clean by Jesus’ healing words.

Finally, Jesus reached the ruler’s house, only to find a noisy funeral dirge underway.  We shouldn’t be too harsh on that crowd for laughing at Jesus’ seemingly ludicrous words: “The girl is not dead by asleep.”  I wouldn’t dare say anything like that at anyone’s funeral.  But Jesus is not just any one, he is not just any physician, he is the Great Physician whose ability to heal is limitless.  Jesus took the dead girl by the hand, and she got up.  The Great Physician has the power to heal beyond death, for there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  And while we do not expect the dead to be raised today, with hope and faith in this great physician, we believe that Jesus will raise the dead on the last day, so that all who die in Christ will live in full communion with Him.

In this short vignette, we see that Jesus is the Great Physician who makes house calls to heal both physical ailments and sin-sick souls.  To the despised and the rejected, the Great Physician offers a merciful invitation to follow and have fellowship.  To the seemingly righteous, the Great Physician offers a holy challenge to reevaluate their spiritual health.  To the powerful, the Great Physician offers an even greater power.  To the afflicted, the Great Physician offers healing words that bring wholeness and joy.  And to the dead, the Great Physician offers a life-giving touch that ultimately revives and resurrects.

These were the cast of characters present with Jesus as he was having dinner at Matthew’s house.  And may I suggest that this same cast of characters are present this morning, in you and me, as Jesus is about to host a supper in his Father’s house?  I think many of us would like to believe that we’re basically living a righteous life, like the Pharisees, but if we’re really honest with ourselves, I think we too will be able to identify with the other characters who sought out Jesus for healing.  There may be some here who feel they are rejected and despised, like tax collectors and sinners.  The Good News for you is that the Great Physician heals the outcasts.  There may be some here who, like the ruler, occupy positions of power and authority, and yet are dejected because of events totally out of your control.  The Good News for you is that the Great Physician heals the downcasts.  There may be some here who feel afflicted by loneliness and isolation, like the woman with the bleeding.  The Good News for you is that the Great Physician heals those whom nobody else would touch.  There may be some here who are struggling with a deep issue and feel like a part of you has died, like that daughter of the ruler.  The Good News for you is that the Great Physician heals those whom nobody else could touch.[5] There is no limit on the power of the Great Physician to offer mercy and healing.  The only limit is whether we will recognize our need of healing and accept Great Physician’s invitation to follow him.  The choice, as always, is ours.  May we follow this Great Physician even as we bring our burdens and infirmities to Him.  Amen.

[2] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew, a Commentary: The Christbook, Matthew 1-12, p. 421.

[3] Bruner, citing J. Fitzmyer, Luke, 2 vols. (1981-85), p. 421.

[4] http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/mentalhealth/anxiety/133.html.

[5] Tha language of outcasts, downcasts, would touch and could touch is taken from Bruner, pp. 428-429.

Preached by Michael Cheuk
May 18, 2008, Trinity Sunday, Year A
Genesis 1:1-2:3; Psalm 8:1-9

Today is Trinity Sunday, a day in the Church year when we acknowledge the belief that we worship and serve one God in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This doctrine is one of the most difficult to understand, and it is a stumbling block for many Christians and non-Christians alike. In the next 10 minutes or so, I’ll try to explore one aspect of this doctrine to the best of my ability, but at the end of the day, I must acknowledge that our affirmation of the unity of God in three Persons is a holy mystery. Explaining the mystery of the Trinity is like trying to explain the mystery of love—we can try to apprehend it, but ultimately, we are called to live in that mystery even though we might not fully understand it.

The Bible never explicitly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity—in fact, the word “trinity” never shows up in the Bible. Nonetheless, within the pages of the Bible, there are intimations that there are three distinct Persons in the one God we worship. In the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, we read that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the process of creation, the Spirit of God hovered over the dark, chaotic waters before the word of God was spoken to create light and the rest of the world out of chaos. Also, in the beginning of the Gospel of John, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” In these verses here, John is writing about Jesus as the Word of God who was in the beginning with God in the creation of all things. Through these two passages, we can see how a Trinitarian God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—created the universe.

In these opening chapters in Genesis and the Gospel of John, we see that God is not just a lone, solitary deity who created the world as an antidote to loneliness. No, these passages suggest that at the very beginning, God was already in a perfect community with God’s own self in the persons of the Father, Son and Spirit. In fact, Jonathan Edwards, the brilliant American preacher, theologian and president of Princeton University who lived in the 1700’s, once wrote: “The very essence of God’s reality . . . was the intratrinitarian love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The only possible reason for such a perfect being to create the universe was to extend that love to other, imperfect, beings.” Creation itself, in the view of Jonathan Edwards, is God’s desire to extend God’s own being of pulsating love into other created matter.[1] According to theologian Scot McKnight, God’s eternal reality is the love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is what God was doing, is doing now, and will do for eternity. This is what God is.[2]

This eternal love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is creative and life-giving. In the beginning, it was out of God’s own mutually indwelling love that the creation of the world came into being. As we continue to read in the Genesis creation account in chapter 1, we see this divine dynamic of creative love coming into play. In verse 11, God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. In verse 22, after God created the sea dwelling creatures and every winged bird, God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” In verse 24, God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. Throughout these verses, the mutually indwelling love of the Trinity endowed creation with a creative productivity and a life-giving fertility that brought about the flourishing of the world.

This mutual Trinitarian love also overflows to the creation of human beings. In verse 26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” In the Hebrew language, the word for “image” is tselem, and the Greek translation of that word is eikon. Today, when we think of an “icon,” we often think of the little pictures on our computer screens. Each icon or picture symbolizes a computer program or file, and when we click on the icon, we expect the program or file that the icon represents to load up on the computer. In a similar way, when the Bible tells us that human beings are created in the image of God, it is saying that God made us so that we may be a little picture of some of the attributes and characteristics of God. And so far in this creation account, we see that God is One who relates as Persons of the Trinity in mutual love. And then, out of that love, the Persons of the Trinity decide to create the universe and then human beings in their image and in their likeness. In other words, God relates and God creates. And so in verse 27, it says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We human beings are the very good outcomes of the creative, life-giving, trinitarian love of God. God did not create human beings out of God’s need for love. God was already in a loving community within the Trinity. But God created human beings out of the overflow of the mutually indwelling love among the three Persons of the Trinity. And as such, God made us so that we might be the image, the icon, the little pictures of who God is—that is, creatures who relate in mutual love to God and to one another, and creatures who are co-creators with God in creative, life-giving ways.

We reflect the image of God when we relate to God and to others with the same love that God relates to us. As 1 John 4:19 reminds us, “We love God because God first loved us.” We also reflect the image of God to the extent that our relationships with one another reflect the mutual love of God in ways that are fruitful and life-giving and a blessing to others. We are created for relationships. While all relationships are called to be fruitful and life-giving, in some relationships God will bless with children. God said to the man and woman, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” But we must be careful here. Having children does not necessarily make one reflect the image of God more than not having children. Parents reflect the image of God in their childbearing to the extent that their children are an overflow of the mutual love they already have for one another, and not as a way to create miniature versions of themselves who will give them the love they lack. In my experience as pastor, the most troubled children I see are often the ones in which their parents use them to obtain the affection and companionship that they are not getting from their spouse. And that certainly is not a picture of the way God created human beings—not out of a need for love, but from an overflow of love.

Another way we reflect the image of God is by rightly relating to God’s creation. God told the first humans to “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” But here, we must also be careful. Yes, in Psalm 8, the psalmist writes that God has made human beings a little lower than the angels to rule over God’s handiwork. But ruling over all flocks and herds, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea doesn’t mean that human beings can exploit the environment and drive species to extinction. God rules creation in a wa