January 9, 2005
AN OPEN WINDOW
In New Testament times, and in the centuries before then, people called the sky a "FIRMAMENT." They conceived of the world as a flat surface, like a table, and over this table was the dome of the sky. If you turn a bowl upside-down on a table top, you get the idea. Human beings lived in the space under that bowl. The bowl, the sky- kept people protected and dry. This roof was necessary because above the firmament was water.
When it rained they said the "windows of heaven were open." That meant the water above the bowl came sprinkling down. During a drought, the windows of heaven were shut. Nothing could grow because no water could pass through.
So for the ancients, the sky was not something open to infinite space. It was a barrier. It was solid. Nothing from here could break through it to what lay beyond. God was beyond that barrier. God existed outside the boundaries of the space where human beings live and move. There was a strong barrier between God and ordinary people.
We see the world much differently now. The sky is not a bowl. Rain is not controlled by windows. The earth is not a flat table-top. Everything is different now.
Science has informed us and shaped our thinking. At the level of knowledge, we are completely different from those ancient people. But at the level of our spiritual lives, I think we are still much the same. We still have a barrier between where we are and where God is. I have a list of barriers. See if you see yourself in any of them.
There are barriers of fear. I don't want to follow Jesus when he says turn the other cheek, go the second mile, give to those who beg, do not return evil for evil. I'm afraid of what will happen to me if I do that. Or at very least, I am afraid of what would happen to me if I ALWAYS obeyed those words. My fear is a barrier.
There are barriers of fear. There are barriers of self-will. I want to keep God out of my life, because I want to make my own choices, run my own life.
The barrier made by self will is one we apply at will. Our disparaging remarks about others, the sins of omission that perpetuate barriers of racism, or political party, and with it the refusal to talk, much less forgive. My way or the highway, is a barrier between ourselves and God, a barrier of self-will.
This Barrier often revolves around money: most of us know full well the Bible says give God 10%. We do have tithers here, but they are a minority. There's no need to browbeat about money here because we do have many faithful givers. But when it comes to letting Jesus be Lord, too many draw the line at the purse string. Our income would LEAP if everybody who was at three or four percent gave four or five percent, let alone ten. We would not have to wonder about how to pay for this excellent staff we have, the people with whom I am proud and grateful to work.
Think of it! A choir school that could evangelize every kid in the neighborhood. We could offer resources for neighbors in need that could do more than a bag of groceries. We could build a house to give to Habitat for Humanity. WE could send books to third-world seminaries, support for the agencies that are leading teenagers out of the slavery of addiction or prostitution and into the freedom of God's graceful purposes for them. We could make meaningful contributions to every worthy mission that comes into view. China Service Ventures, the Bible School in Slovakia, and of course, gifts to victims of natural disasters, and while we're at it why not offer seminary scholarships as my home congregation did for me? We are a congregation with global awareness could also have global reach. Unless we put up barriers of self-will. We put up a wall and say to God, "No more."
This year, I appeal to you, as an act of worship, guided by prayer, I challenge you to grow in your stewardship gifts. Begin with the gift of prayer for God's mission. Think in terms of percentages, not mere dollars.
God created the ancient firmament. We make our own firmament. There are barriers of fear. There are barriers of self-will. There are barriers of doubt.
We suspect that if we really looked behind the curtain, we would find out the Good News isn't true. We worry that when we pray, no one is listening. We refuse the leap of faith because we might fall into a pit of nothingness. This is a difficult and dangerous barrier between ourselves and God.
Matthew's gospel says that crowds of people were coming out to the desert to hear John the Baptizer. "Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan," Everybody knew they needed to come and be cleansed. Everybody saw the barriers between themselves and God. That is very much like today, despite all the other differences between now and then. People are hungry for an experience of God they can trust. Then and now.
Then came Jesus. Then he was baptized. Now, quoting Matthew, "when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him."
In Mark it is a more violent image. In Mark it says, "...he saw the heavens torn apart..."
Mark's gospel implies that the barrier had to be broken, even shattered. Matthew's language seems tame. Where Mark says 'torn' or 'split' Matthew uses a word that simply means opened. To me it makes God seem more willing and more able to meet us. No need for destruction. No need for pyrotechnics, Jesus walks the earth and when he does the windows of heaven open.
Jesus breaks barriers. Jesus opens doors. That is your Good News today. To the simple peasants of Palestine, heaven could only be reached if someone broke through the dome of the sky. To us today there still are barriers. The coldness and hostility of society, our fear and doubt, our claiming and clinging to status.
But Jesus walks the earth, receives baptism, and heaven opens, just like that. In the presence of Jesus the window to heaven is OPEN! The door is open for you. Because of Jesus, YOUR Baptism takes on the meaning of opening the barriers between you and God. The importance of your baptism comes home here.
You can trust it. Your baptism is something that took place in human history. It happened on a certain day date, place and time. There were witnesses! Because of this you can trust that it is no illusion. Your baptism is anchored in time and in fact. You can't un-ring a bell. God made a vow at your baptism and a vow from God can be trusted.
The barrier to heaven swung open. Is STILL OPEN. And the voice from heaven says to YOU "You are my beloved son or daughter." Baptism is adoption.
To be a child of God is no small thing. It means security, inheritance, guidance, forgiveness and life. All that matters most is secured by Christ and cannot be taken away. Heaven opened. Our grasping and worrying are not necessary.
Against our swirling mix of pride and paranoia we need to contrast this moment from Jesus' baptism. When the heavens open, what appears is not destruction, but a dove. In another gospel, Jesus said, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)
Jesus began his public ministry after his baptism. In this sense we can look upon it as a kind of commissioning. Ministry flows from the identity Son of God.
Your baptism is a commission too. Who will serve? Who will share? Who will be blessed by being merciful? Who will be a peacemaker?
Those who are called. Those with ears to hear. Those who receive grace upon grace, because Jesus is among us. That is to say all who believe and are baptized. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.
My message is better said by Scripture. In First Peter Chapter 2 we read "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."
Jesus came, and heaven opened. That's what happened. That's what's happening.
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