God of the Poor

Psalm 68:1-10, Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 21, 2023

The Triumph of God

The Modern German Bible (Die Gute Nachricht, DIE BIBEL in heutigem Deutsch), which I often consult when preparing sermons, gives today's lectionary text, Psalm 68, the subtitle "God's Victory" (Gottes Sieg). In a nutshell, it's about God's complete victory over his enemies, "those who hate the Lord" (v. 1) and "kings of many armies" (v. 12). Verse 2 sings.

May you blow them away like smoke— as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God..

Let them perish is a bit harsh, but similar phrases like this appear throughout Psalm 68, and in all 150 Psalms. God is portrayed as an improved general who has completely defeated his enemy in battle. The point of God's victory is that God restores the dignity of humanity to the persecuted, ignored, and marginalized. The righteous will rejoice and make merry before God (v. 3), and God is "the father of orphans and the judge of widows" (v. 5). The final verse, verse 10, reads

Your people settled in it,  and from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.

When we hear the psalmist's statement that the victorious God immobilizes the powerful, the enemies, and those who hate the Lord, and protects and cares for the orphan, the widow, and the poor, we are moved to say, "So be it!" but we have a hard time agreeing. Because that's not how the world we live in works: the poor are ignored by the world. Poor countries have a weak voice on the international stage. How many pastors and Christians speak well of poor churches? While there are occasions in human history when evil powerful people are judged, it's not very often. Does it make sense to say that God destroys the wicked and defends the poor when this is the case? Many Christians see the psalmist's confession as mere religious rhetoric and actually live by political and economic power. That's what we've learned from real history, so we can't help it.

I believe that the failure of Marxism in the 20th century, and conversely, the one-sided triumph of capitalism, has been the misfortune of human history. Marxism envisioned the emancipation of the alienated human being from labor. It tried to realize the ideal of working as much as you can and taking as much as you need, but it failed. The reason is that human selfishness was too intense to realize such a lofty ideal. In competition with capitalism, which ostensibly touts freedom as a value but is actually based on selfishness, communist systems with low productivity were bound to fall behind. Starting in the early 1990s, communist countries began to close their doors, and now there are only a few left, and even those that remain are only moderately allied with capitalism. The fact that real socialism (communism) failed to create a world that was superior to the capitalist system - that it tried to create a world without rich people and poor people, so to speak, and ended up collectively poorer - has led modern people to no longer value equality as a priority. The current regime in South Korea is even more blatantly promoting the value of freedom over equality. Their version of freedom is more of an ideology that promotes endless competition rather than human dignity.

I consider it a misfortune of Korean church history that the so-called "Full Gospel Church" in Yeouido, Seoul, has become the largest church in the world. The Full Gospel Church is the poster child for prosperity theology. Korean Christians were attracted to the message that they could all be blessed by believing in God and receive the so-called "triple blessing" and live happily ever after. Conversely, progressive churches that proclaimed that the God of the poor is the God of the Bible did not attract believers. Even among the "Kijang" (Christian Presbyterian) churches, which represent progressive denominations, most of the churches that have grown into medium and large churches are offshoots of the Full Gospel Church. South Korea as a country, and the Korean church as a whole, is mired in a prosperity and growth ideology that makes it difficult for Christians living in it to hear the biblical message of the "God of the poor" with a straight face.

The Image of God

On what basis does the psalmist who wrote today's text say that God cares for orphans, widows, and the poor? Is it just a bunch of crap? The psalmist isn't saying this based on social science data. It's a theological statement that comes from a belief about who God is. There are two beliefs about God that underlie this statement. These beliefs underlie the entire Old and New Testaments, and they underlie the words of Jesus.

One is that God made every person in the world. Genesis 1:27 reads. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them ... " It's a simple sentence, but it's a truly amazing statement. We are said to have the "image of God," where the image of God refers not to a person's outward appearance, but to their spiritual attributes. For example, freedom, joy, and love are spiritual attributes. That's why we are both earthly and spiritual. There are no exceptions to the image of God: even the lowliest person is an image of God. Orphans, widows, and the poor are all created in the image of God, and to ignore them is to deny God. In Jewish society two and a half millennia ago, orphans, widows, and the poor were often ignored. Their very survival was at stake, and the psalmist, seeing through this, had no choice but to say that God protected them.

The other is the belief that God is all-powerful. This belief points to two facts. One is that no one is all-powerful except God, and the other is that God rules the world in ways we don't expect. The kings and nobles who are supposed to rule the world justly are supposed to ensure that orphans, widows, and the poor survive, but they are neither willing nor able to do so. If orphans, widows, and the poor have not been treated well in any society, in any time period, it means that people and man-made systems are not capable of doing so. Our system is also incapable of doing so. People are uncomfortable with the struggle of people with disabilities for the right to mobility and survival. There's a huge lack of prophetic imagination to change the world, and that's a testament to the fact that we're not omnipotent.

Given these two beliefs - that God created humans in his image and that God is omnipotent - we accept as truth the psalmist's affirmation that God defends the orphan, the widow, and the poor like a father and like a just judge. The problem is, as we've pointed out before, that the world we live in too often denies the image of God. We treat people as a means to an end. The gap between the rich and the poor shows no sign of shrinking. The gap between the lives of the people in Wandang Village, Yeongcheon, where I live, and the people in Gangnam, Seoul, is staggering. I wonder if they live in the same country, Korea. Is God really the one who created even the people living at the bottom in his image? Is he really the one who is all-powerful and good, so he is ruling the world justly? Then why is the world so messed up?

It's hard to find a good answer here. Probably no one will find the perfect answer until the end of time, but we do know some tentative answers. We could answer that the world is unjust because humans have sinned and the innocent still suffer, or that justice will only be fully realized at the end of time, or that the righteous who suffer now in an unjust world will be rewarded later in heaven. That sounds plausible, but who would be satisfied with that answer? If we take the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus literally, there is a logic of reward after death, but it doesn't make sense to people who live responsibly in the face of history. I don't have a definitive answer to why the world is not just. I just try to get closer to an answer. Perhaps the biblical view of the righteous and the wicked in today's text can help us get closer to that answer.

According to today's text, the wicked are enemies, haters of the Lord, and those who hold power in their hands. The righteous, on the other hand, are the orphan, the widow, and the poor. Not all the poor are righteous, and not all the rich are wicked; on the contrary, you can be rich and righteous, and poor and wicked. That's a superficial view of people and history; the Bible looks at the issue from a deeper level. 1) The rich and powerful don't really pay attention to God because their lives are centered on wealth and power. This is why Jesus said it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. 2) The poor have nothing in the world to rely on, so they rely on God alone. This is why Jesus said that the poor are blessed. The idea is that failure to pay attention to God is the most fundamental sin, and a life of dependence on God alone is true righteousness and blessing. From this perspective, God is on the side of the poor, which is why the psalmist today could proclaim that God keeps them and is responsible for them. On the other hand, at the ultimate level, the fact is that we will all be complete strangers at some point, with no one or nothing to turn to, and the only one who will accept us in that moment is God-not our family, not our friends, not our government, not our country, not our church. Happiness in Poverty

I believe that the phrase "God of the poor" is true not only when we die, but also in our daily lives here and now. Let me tell you a little bit about how happiness in poverty happens in my daily life. First of all, when you're poor, you don't bother with finances. You know what a blessing that is. Recently, a young member of parliament has been in the news for investing in coins. While he may not be breaking any laws, he deserves to be criticized for entering a highly speculative business as a member of parliament, and I can only imagine how poor his soul must be. If I were poor, I wouldn't have gotten into the coin business. It's also tiring to 'check' the stock price every day. If you own multiple homes, having to worry about the price of your house going up and down is a drain on your soul. If you're poor, you don't have to worry about any of this at all. Do you think my description is too far removed from reality?

Let me give you a more realistic example: a poor couple. They avoid (can't) do things that cost money. They don't go to expensive hotel restaurants. They don't have designer clothes or bags. They don't go out with friends often because they don't have the money. It might seem like a very humble life to some, but they take walks together, make simple side dishes and eat them together, read books and talk to each other. There are so many ways to be happy, even if you're poor. If you're married, you can be happy as one; if you're single, you can be happy as single. If you have children, you can be happy with them, if you don't, you can be happy without them, if you're healthy, you can be healthy, if you're weak, you can be weak. I'm not spouting poverty aesthetics here - I'm not a professional monk who finds the deepest meaning in the simplest of lives - I'm not trying to convince you to become poor in a secular society that's going back to its old ways, but I am advising you that you can be as happy as you want to be in poverty. Doesn't that make sense? Are you trying to tell me that I'm preaching something unrealistic because you don't realize how draining poverty can be on our lives?

I'm not preaching poverty per se, I'm preaching God, the God who created us in His image. God is good, his power is absolute, and he will not allow anyone to lose his image through poverty. If we know and believe in such a God, we will realize how deep, mysterious, and rich our lives are. Let me give you one more analogy: There are many ways to get from Daegu to Yeongcheon. You can take a chauffeured Benz car, you can take a train, or you can ride a bicycle. Or you can walk because you don't have any money. Are people who walk the most unhappy? No. There are many good things about walking. You see the sky, you see trees and flowers. You might meet a young couple with their kids and talk to them. Whether he walks or drives, what matters is how much he actually enjoys the process of getting from Daegu to Yeongcheon. That's right. Even if you live in poverty, you can find happiness if you have eyes to see it. If we don't find them, poverty becomes a curse, because God created us in His image. I wonder if South Korea is a country possessed by a poverty curse, because there are phenomena everywhere that we can't understand otherwise.

In the psalmist's cry and praise that God cares for the poor, I see another perspective: that if you actually believe that you are created in the image of God, you actually care about caring for the poor. If you don't care about such things, you cannot be called a believer in God. Here, the minimum standard for caring for the poor is daily bread. Daily bread is actually the foundation upon which a poor person can find their own happy life. This is why Jesus mentioned daily necessities when he taught his disciples to pray. You don't need a communist revolution to make this happen; you just need to be wise with what you already have. For example, if we reduce tensions between North and South Korea, so we can spend less on defense, and if we take a little more tax from those who have more money, we can solve the problem of those who don't have enough to eat. Is this so difficult? Is this some kind of left-right debate? Isn't this a Christian struggle to bear witness in the real world to our faith in God's creation, God's image, God's power, and God's goodness? Yes, it is. Our God is the "God of the poor.

"Alive"

 

John 14:15-21, 6th Week of Easter, May 14, 2023

The Gospel of John was written in the last decade of the first century. The situation of the church at that time was characterized by two things. One is the fact that Christians had been ousted from the synagogues, and the other is the fact that Gnosticism was beginning to flourish within the church community. The first fact concerns the survival of the church, and the second concerns the nature of the church. In the 90s, about 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and about 30 years after the deaths of James (Jesus' brother), Peter, and Paul, the outstanding leaders of the early church, the church was at a crossroads: whether it would survive history, disappear without a trace, become a subset of Judaism, or be reduced to a syncretistic sect. The anxiety of the church members was palpable. John 14:1 comes from that historical context. "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God; believe also in me."

Life in Jesus Christ

Being told not to worry doesn't make you not worry on its own, and being told to believe in God and believe in Jesus doesn't make you believe on its own. You have to be given a reason to believe. The Gospel of John, as a whole, is a document that gives that rationale, and if you boil it down to one word, it's "life in Jesus Christ." Christians are "alive" in Jesus Christ, and if that's true, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you won't be anxious. Let's read 14:19.

A little while, and the world will not see me again; but you will see me; because I am alive, and you will be alive.

Two words are key here. One is "see," and the other is "alive." Together, they become "see alive. John 13-17, which includes today's sermon text, is categorized as "Jesus' farewell address to his disciples. After these words, Jesus is arrested, crucified, and buried in a tomb. You could say that the world will no longer see Jesus because he is about to leave this world. But the disciples say they will see him. If the world doesn't see him, but the disciples do, it means that the word "see" doesn't have the usual meaning here.

In Zen Buddhism, there's a concept called bosheng, which is a combination of the Chinese characters for "seeing" and "nature". It means to see the ultimate reality of all things. It refers to a kind of great enlightenment. Not everyone can enter that realization. Why? Something similar happens in our daily lives: we see the same mountains, we see the same rivers, but some people see the mystery of existence there, and some people just pass by. Some politicians see the people as an object to be used or shown off, while others see them as an object to be served. Even in Jesus' day, some people felt God's presence in his words, while others rejected them, saying, 'This is too difficult, I don't know what you mean.

When Jesus says the world will not see, but the disciples will, he is referring to the risen one. The Jesus of Nazareth was recognizable to everyone, but the risen Lord was not a phenomenon that anyone could recognize. 1 Corinthians 15 lists the witnesses to the resurrection: Cephas, the twelve disciples, the five hundred brothers, James, all the apostles, and Paul. Women are apparently excluded from this list, in keeping with the custom of the time. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that anyone who was not part of the church community saw the risen Lord. Paul was an early persecutor of Jesus' followers, but his inner life was already inclined toward Jesus. In any case, no one in Jerusalem, including Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the governor, experienced the risen Lord. The implication is that unless the Christian "eyes of faith" were opened, they could not see the risen Lord.

People outside the church won't take the phrase "eyes of faith" seriously; they'll say it's too subjective, and so is the view I illustrated above. You don't mechanically enter the dimension of steadfastness the way money can buy you an apartment or a car. The eye of faith doesn't happen on its own in a day or two, or because you go to church. The disciples were people who had a special relationship with Jesus. They were people who left all their possessions, jobs, and families and obeyed Jesus' words, "Follow me." They accompanied him for nearly three years. They had walked with Jesus for nearly three years. Through Jesus, they had a new perception of God and the kingdom of God. Their idea of life, or as verse 19 puts it, "being alive," had taken on a new dimension. So the text could say that after Jesus' crucifixion, the world would not see Jesus, but the disciples would.

What is alive?

Let me ask you this straight up. What on earth does it mean to be alive, or what is life? Are we actually alive right now? Once we know that, then we can see what the text is talking about when it says "alive." A crude way of putting it is, "It's no big deal to be alive, it's just to be well fed in this world. It's enough to be a little healthier and a little happier than other people, and you can't say that's wrong - you've got to get by here, at least with a roof over your head. The problem is that modern people have fallen for infinite growthism - not just poor countries, but already rich ones, strive to achieve endlessly high levels of economic indicators. But my friends, when life is outwardly abundant, when it's prosperous, there's a deeper emptiness waiting for you. Where the mountains are high, the valleys are deep. Experts tell us that wealth beyond a certain point doesn't make much of a difference to a happy life. And yet, we live as if we're cursed to grow and prosper and gluttony and consumption, as if we're cursed to never go hungry no matter how much we eat.

The Bible tells a different story. The Bible says that God is the author of "living," or life. God is the one who created life, sustains life, and will complete it. We are creatures. No matter how brilliant we are, we are powerless in the face of life events. By analogy, consider Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum in France. No matter how much artistic inspiration the painting provides to many people, it cannot surpass Leonardo da Vinci, because the painting was created by the artist's inspiration and ability to paint. If the Mona Lisa were to be disconnected from Leonardo da Vinci, it would no longer have authority as a work of art. The Bible says that humans, as creatures, cannot have life on their own because our relationship with God has been broken by sin. Paul writes that no one can be justified before God by 'the works of the law' (Romans 3:20). When the world hears this, they may say, "Aren't you guys crazy?" What kind of God are you talking about when we've created artificial intelligence and, if we're lucky, we'll be able to immortalize humans through the power of science in the future. What do you say to these objections? We can't convince them because we see things differently. We can reduce disagreements, but we can't see complete agreement. The best we can do is explain and defend the teachings of the Bible and then live them out in real life.

In Jesus Christ

The Bible says that we, as creatures, have life only when we are in God, our Creator. The same is true for real life. It's not just gracefully eating well and living well every day, but only in relationship with God do we actually live life. Now does this make sense? Does this sound believable, or is it just religious platitudes? Today's text says in verse 19, "I am alive, and you are alive," and then it goes on to tell us what that "aliveness" is, or how we can be alive, in verse 20: "In that day I will be with you.

In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

The preposition "in" is repeated in this sentence. It says ἐν τῷ Πατρί (in the Father), ἐν ἐμοὶ (in me), and ἐν ὑμῖν (in you). One of the concepts of the Trinity is "perichoresis" (mutual indwelling). This means that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit exist "in" each other. The above verse is similar to the concept of co-indwelling. Jesus Christ is in God, the disciples are in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is in the disciples. Now the disciples are in God through Jesus Christ, which is why early Christianity called Jesus 'Immanuel'.

The link between these three units - God, Jesus Christ, and the disciples - is the "resurrection" of Jesus Christ. Resurrection doesn't just mean living again, it means being transformed into the life that will be consummated at the end of time. In his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (Das Glaubensbekenntnis), Fannenberg writes, "The resurrection of Jesus was understood as the final rush, the beginning of the eschatological reality of God's reign over all human beings" (p. 144). By "beginning of the eschatological reality," he means that the eternal life of God that will take place at the end of time began in the destiny of Jesus Christ. Having experienced the apocalyptic light in the destiny of Jesus, the disciples were no longer caught up in the political propaganda of the Roman Empire and could no longer remain in the Jewish legal faith. They waited intensely for the eschatological consummation of life, and that waiting is Advent faith. For the disciples, living in that Advent faith was the reality of being "alive." Is that right, or is it just too religious? If so, where do you find the fact that you are "alive?" You have a choice to make. To seek and wait for the light of the eschatological life that began in the destiny of Jesus Christ, no matter what the world says, or to follow only the standards of life that this world presents as plausible. To hope for the reign of God, or to be consumed by self-aspiration.

Those who love me

Here's an everyday analogy for the faith that waits for the eschatological reign of God. Forgive me if this is a very common analogy. A man leaves for a year-long space trip in six months. He doesn't know for sure if he'll come back in one piece. What he does know is that for the next six months, he'll see the world and see people in a completely different light than he ever has before. If people around him get annoyed, it won't bother him so much. He'll be able to embrace and love everyone. If we lived here and now, actually feeling and experiencing the life that God will consummate at the end of time, wouldn't that solve a lot of problems in our lives? We could actually have grace and peace. So why doesn't that work out? Why doesn't the light of eschatological life fill our souls?

The answer is quite obvious. The answer is that we haven't deepened our relationship with Jesus Christ. For those who don't have a deep relationship with Jesus, the eschatological life that occurred in a pre-emptive way in the destiny of Jesus seems very far away because their relationship with Jesus Christ is formal or shallow, just as the Lord of the resurrection did not appear to them. It's as if the trees, flowers, clouds, and birds are all unreal if you don't have a loving heart. That connection to Jesus is what verse 21 of our text says.

He that keepeth my commandments is he that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.

Keeping the commandments here doesn't mean keeping the law, it means following what Jesus says. It's about being a real disciple of Jesus, about setting your heart on the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, about letting go of your worries about what you eat, drink, and wear, about trusting God as completely as you would a father. It's about having a loving relationship with Jesus, because Jesus is one with God, and when you have a loving relationship with Jesus, you have that relationship with God. It is to these disciples that Jesus promised, "I will reveal myself to you."

Some of you have been Christians for 10, 20, or even a lifetime, and you're frustrated that your faith hasn't deepened. You go to church out of habit, you immerse yourself in church programs, or you focus on relationships. These are all good, necessary things. Your faith should bear fruit in those forms, too. But no matter how much fun you have at church, if you don't deepen your relationship with Jesus, if you don't experience Jesus Christ as "alive," or as verse 20 puts it, if you don't realize that you are in Jesus Christ - if the teachings of Jesus Christ don't weigh as much as gold - your Christian faith won't stay healthy. Even in the best case scenario, your faith will remain at an intellectual level.

Consider again the Lord's promise in verse 21: "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." The phrase "manifest myself" is used here. The phrase "I will manifest myself" means that the disciples will have life; that they will realize and experience a tangible glimpse of the eternal life that will come at the end of time. To put it in familiar terms, they will realize that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He is the way, the truth, and the life in our lives. Has He manifested Himself to you, so that you have felt the light of end-time life, so that you are not troubled by all the troublesome things you are going through here and now? Or maybe you've had very few of those experiences and you're just dozing through life. It depends.

Even in the days when John's Gospel was written, some people were living their lives through the eyes of faith and love, and others were not at all. It's true that faith and love are, after all, the grace of God, which is why Jesus Christ repeatedly said in our text that he would pray to the Father to send the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete (the Comforter, John 14:16; 16:7; 1 John 2:1). Paracleteos will defend and comfort the disciples, so that they may have a real realization of being 'alive' in Jesus Christ (kenosis) and live in the fullness of joy in whatever circumstances they find themselves. Amen.

From Darkness to Light!

1 Peter 2:2-10, Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 7, 2023

Pneumatikos

The first verse of today's sermon text, 1 Peter 2:2, reads as follows. Listen to it as if you were hearing it for the first time.

As newborn babes, as newborns, desire the sincere, divine milk, which is pure; for by it ye shall grow unto salvation.

As simple as this verse seems on the surface, its meaning is deep and subtle. Let's look at just three points: 1) First, let's look at the original Greek words for "pure and divine milk": λογικὸς, ἄδολος, and γάλα, the English equivalents of which are reasonable, pure, and milk, respectively. The Greek word 'logikos' means 'rational' and 'spiritual'. Our English Bibles translate logikos as 'divine', which conjures up a picture of something like a mountain spirit. To preserve the meaning of the original, it should be translated as 'rational' (Luther - vernünftig). The point of the text is to study the 'Word of God' 'rationally'. This exhortation was given because there were Christians at the time who ignored reason in favor of fervent religiosity.

2) 'Adolos' refers to that which is without admixture. It is a warning against religious syncretism. For example, the idea that not only is soul salvation important, but that being materially prosperous in the world is also important is syncretism. Just because you like milk and you like wine, what kind of drink would you get if you mixed milk with wine? From this text, we can see that there were already irrational and syncretistic beliefs at the time 1 Peter was written.

3) The word "adore" means "to think fondly of and long for. It's a phrase we don't use much these days. The New King James Version of the Bible says, "long for," and the King James Version says, "seek." The English word is crave or desire, and the German word is begierig. These words are closer to crave or desire, which is a stronger meaning than longing and longing. Psalm 42:1 says, "As a deer thirsts for water, O God, as a deer thirsts for a stream, so my soul thirsts for you." Psalm 130:6 says: "My soul waits for You more than the watchman waits for the morning." The parables of the woman who searched the house by lighted lamps for the missing drachma (Luke 15:8) and the father who waited anxiously for his second son who had left the house (Luke 15:20) also point to this longing.

According to the text, the reason to hunger for God's word is to grow to salvation. Just as the body needs a balanced diet to grow, the soul needs a balanced diet of the word to grow. This means that only those who hunger for the Word in a rational and consistent manner, like seekers and practitioners, can grow to salvation. Otherwise, they will remain in a childlike state. That's why Paul once said in his letter to the Philippians, 'Always be submissive, working out your salvation with fear and trembling' (Phil. 2:12).

A living sacrifice

What it means to work out your salvation is shown in verse 3 and following. Listen to verse 5.

That ye also, as living stones, may be built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.

That "spiritual" when it says a spiritual house or a spiritual sacrifice is πνευματικὸς, an adjectival form of the Greek word pneuma. The English Bible translates it as spiritual. The same adjective 'divine' is applied to the divine milk in verse 2 and the divine sacrifice here in verse 5, but they are different words in the Greek Bible. In verse 2 it is logikos and in verse 5 it is pneumaatikos. Logikos is "rational," as mentioned earlier, and pneuma is "spiritual. Of course, logikos can also mean "spiritual. Ancient Greek speakers thought of reason and rationality and spirituality and invisible inner strength as similar phenomena. What this means is that a spiritual person is someone who is strong inside, rational, and reasonable. Modern Christians don't fully understand what the Bible means by "spiritual." We've pushed its meaning into a narrow corner. We tend to understand it as some phenomenon that is irrational or irrational, which is why our English Bible awkwardly translates pneumaatikos as "divine.

When the Bible says spiritual, it doesn't mean outwardly pious, it means experiencing God's created world at its deepest depths. Contrast that with superficiality. For example, let's say you have a guitar player who's very good at playing. He's mastered a lot of advanced techniques, but those techniques don't make him a great guitarist. It's the depth of the music that he has to penetrate through those techniques that makes him a really moving player. Because music has a surface and it has depth. It's the same with philosophy, and it's the same with life itself: it's one thing to know a lot of information about philosophy and life, but it's another thing to actually live it and live it to the fullness of your daily life. It's one thing to be good at church life and another to actually live in Christian spirituality as a person who belongs to a church community. One is staying on the surface of information and the other is going into the depths of information. The basis for saying that there are depths to our daily lives is the fact that the world and our daily lives are God's creation. Some of us see that and some of us don't.

Strange light

In this sense, for us Christians to be holy priests, offering spiritual sacrifices, means to be people who experience God in the depths of our daily lives. Verse 9 of our text explains this with the Old Testament concept of the people of God. As I explain verse 9, it will become clearer what I mean by spiritual sacrifices and being a holy priesthood.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may declare the beautiful virtues of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The marvelous light that the text is referring to is the experience of the depth of life just described. The New International Version translates it as "marvelous light," the NIV translates it as "wonderful light," and the KJV translates it as "marvelous light." It's saying that the life, or the experience of life, that Christians are given is a marvelous light because it's so true that it's like nothing else in the world. To put it in more biblical terms, it's the light of creation, and it's the cloud that Jesus Christ will ride on when he returns at the end of time.

Before the text says light, it says darkness, because if there is light, then there was darkness. Darkness is the absence of life, and light is the presence of life. When I say darkness, I don't just mean living immorally. No matter how moral and cultured a person is, they cannot escape darkness, because they have no life within them. And when I say no life, I mean they don't know God, the author of life.

People outside the church will reject the idea that a person without God is in darkness, and they'll have it backwards: they'll say that Christians are depressed, boring, and somehow hypocritical, while they enjoy life and try to live it nicely and honestly. That's what happens to Korean Christians, but that's not the essence of Christian spirituality, so that criticism is not accurate. In any case, it's hard to convince people outside the church that the world without God is darkness, because you can't feel darkness as darkness unless you're in God's wonderful light, just as the words "He who wields the sword will perish by the sword" fall on deaf ears for those who have fallen into war games.

Let me give you just three examples of what it means to come out of the darkness and into God's wonderful light that we can experience in our daily lives: 1) On February 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 turned its camera toward Earth, the Earth appeared as a tiny dot in a photograph. The distance from Earth was 6.1 billion kilometers. Carl Sagan titled the photograph "The Pale Blue Dot". When you realize how small Earth is in the universe, you also realize, paradoxically, how precious it is. This experience is also a kind of light. 2) There was once a man who was earning a high salary and living a busy life. His head was full of work and family and travel and hobbies. One day, as he was rushing into his office, a dandelion blooming in the small garden attached to his building caught his eye. In that moment, it dawned on him that the world wasn't just about what he was doing, but that the dandelion was also important, and that the dandelion's work could be more important than the work that was related to his salary. The dandelion became a light to him. 3) There is a traditional Japanese literary genre called "haiku". Among the haiku by Kanno Tadatomo is the following line. "Even this charcoal was once a twig topped with white snow." I don't mean to imply that the source of all that exists is always experienced as light to us, but that if we deepen these experiences in our daily lives, our souls will always be alive and moving.

Among the Old Testament characters who experienced the "wonderful light of God" were Abraham and Moses. 1) In Genesis 15:1, Abraham hears the word of the Lord in a vision: "Abram, do not be afraid; I am your shield and your very great reward." At the time, Abraham was in the midst of extreme fear: He was a displaced person, old and childless, and uncertain about his future.

Genesis 15:12 reiterates that after preparing the burnt offering of a heifer, a goat, a ram, and a mountain dove, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and great darkness and fear came upon him. In verse 17, as the sun was setting and it was getting dark, a smoking brazier was seen and a "burning torch" was seen passing among the burnt offerings. Abraham experienced God as a light in the midst of darkness. 2) Exodus 3 is the story of Moses' calling. Moses has been living in the wilderness of Midian as a taskmaster to Jethro the priest for 40 years - a time of darkness in his life. One day he encountered the messenger of the Lord on Mount Horeb during the phenomenon of the quaking tree, which caught fire but did not burn. This was the moment when a light began to shine in his otherwise dull life.

The light of the gospel

The most definitive "marvelous light of God" that 1 Peter points to is the experience of Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus Christ that God has brought us out of a life of darkness and into a life of light. It is through Jesus Christ that we have been saved, that is, freed from sin and death. We've been freed from the compulsion and the temptation to try to fulfill our own life on our own. It's not our righteousness that makes us righteous, it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ that makes us righteous. That's why the last verse of our text, verse 10, says, "Now you have obtained compassion." If you don't experience Jesus Christ as light, the word compassion seems far away. What about you? Why don't we feel the compassion of God? Why do we miss the fact that life is a gift given by God's mercy? Why do we fail to take Jesus' words to heart practically, to not worry about what we will eat or drink or wear, but to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness? More fundamentally, why do we fail to grow to salvation, as verse 2 of our text says?

The one-word answer is that we don't have "repentance" (metanoia). I know some of you think that's a pretty obvious answer, because the church tells us to repent all the time, but the repentance Jesus is talking about here is changing the direction of our lives. Changing the direction of our lives is easier said than done; there has to be a revolutionary change. I know I'm still not fully converted in that true sense, so I'm always praying for God to have pity on me. In relation to verse 9 of our text, which talks about calling people out of darkness and into the light, I think there are two ways of life that need to be converted.

The first is conversion from Baal worship. The reason why Baalism is darkness is because it's an attitude of life that, to use a crude phrase, stirs up survival anxiety, and it's really hard to get out of that anxiety. When we look at how capitalism, the modern version of Baalism, enslaves our lives today, we understand why the Old Testament prophets identified the greatest sin as Baal worship. It's really hard for us as individuals to deal with the zeitgeist of Baal worship, but we have to be converted from it if our souls are to experience the wonderful light of life. A country that ensures its survival so that individuals are not disturbed by such issues would be a good country, and ours seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

The second is conversion from legalism. Legalism is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The law itself is good, so it's not simple to recognize how it is distinct from the gospel. That's why the Pharisees and scribes, who perceived the law as the way to salvation, were bound to misunderstand Jesus Christ. You can see how legalistic the church is today: the building of church buildings, the revitalization of church organizations, the discipleship and missions and evangelism strategies are all legalistic paradigms in the grand scheme of things. It's a kind of meritocracy, a desire for self-salvation, and that kind of meritocratic faith, whether it succeeds or fails, makes our souls sick. We either burn out or we fall into hypocrisy, and that's darkness. How can we come out into the light of the gospel if we're hanging on to it?

Dear saints, is your life full of light right now? Is your freedom, joy, peace, and love growing more and more abundant? Or does your life feel dark because you lack all the happy conditions the world says it should have? If so, go back to the beginning of your faith and start anew. Start anew by making it your spiritual mantra that God has called you and me out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Yes, Christians are people who make new beginnings in order to grow to salvation until death.

Hiding and Revealing

 Hiding and Revealing

Colossians 3:1-4, Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023

Today's sermon text contains many abstract concepts, and the most notable of these is the expression that "life is hidden." First, let's read Colossians 3:3:

"For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

The phrase "you have died" in this sentence refers to the spiritual existence of a Christian who has undergone baptism. Through baptism, Christians see themselves as having already died. Of course, they have not actually died, and they cannot die. Our lives are part of God's good creation, and every aspect of our lives should be valued. Extreme asceticism that has appeared in Christian history is not true faith. When we say that we have died through baptism, we mean that we have accepted our previous self and our new self as different beings. We have rejected the worldly achievements that we pursued when we did not know and believe in Jesus Christ, so our previous selves are like dead.

Baptism means not only dying but also living again. We die with Christ and live with Christ. Our old selves die, and our new selves are born. However, just because our old selves die, it does not mean that our lives are entirely renewed. There are still trials and errors in our daily lives, but the direction of our lives is completely different. As Colossians 3:2 says, we focus on "the things above," not on "earthly things." Colossians 3:1 explains that "above" is where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. "Above" does not refer to any space in the universe or the world of the Platonic "ether" as described in the philosophy of Neo-Platonism during the time of the writing of Colossians. Rather, "above" refers to the world ruled by God's power. To understand "above" correctly, it is essential to know what God's power is.

According to the fundamental teachings of Christianity, God's power is revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The power of the resurrection is the ultimate power of God. When the New Testament speaks of the resurrection of Jesus, it mostly mentions "the dead." This is because overcoming death is the essence of the resurrection. Death is the destiny of all living creatures. This includes humans as well as other living creatures. The reason why death is special to humans is that only humans are aware of death. Some argue that animals also have a vague consciousness of death, but this is not certain. If animals were aware of death, they would show signs of preparing for death while they are still alive. I have not heard anyone say that funeral culture exists among other animals. Humans consciously or unconsciously accept and cope with their lives in relation to death. This is because they know how violent and brutal death can be.

Modern civilization alienates death. More accurately, humans are alienated from death. There are two reasons for this. One is a consumption-oriented life. Modern people try to experience a feeling of detachment from death through consumption. If they become acutely aware of the fact that they will die, they cannot maintain a consumption-oriented life. I recently got rid of all my clothes except for work clothes and tennis clothes. I can live with three modified hanboks depending on the season, so there is no problem. This is not to say that everyone should live like me. It is simply an expression of my will to reduce consumption as much as possible now that I am 70 years old. The other reason is that modern people dream of immortality through artificial intelligence and medical advances. They consider it salvation. If I were given the choice of immortality, I would say "no, thank you." It's not because I don't like living a long and healthy life, but because life is meaningless without experiencing death. I learned this from the Bible, and I believe it to be true.

Jesus Christ, whom we believe to be the Son of God, also fell into the depths of death. It is difficult to mechanically believe in the Christian doctrine that Jesus carried the cross to forgive and save us from our sins. Jesus wanted to avoid the cup of death as much as possible. The day before he was crucified, when he went to pray with Peter, James, and John, he was "deeply amazed and sorrowful," and told them to "stay here and keep watch" because he was "exceedingly sorrowful even to death" (Mark 14:33-34). Just before he died on the cross, he cried out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" Why did Jesus think he was abandoned by God through death? If the path to human salvation existed, wouldn't it be right to go boldly? In contrast, Socrates, accused of inciting young Athenians, accepted death gracefully by receiving a cup of hemlock, leaving his disciples with the words to repay a borrowed chicken from a neighbor. Such an attitude is a tradition of Greek philosophy based on dualism between the spiritual and physical worlds. From the perspective of the New Testament Bible, which regards the human body as a holy creation of God, the death of the body is a complete destruction of human life. It is a desperate event. The disciples who witnessed their teacher being crucified and buried in the tomb were scattered back to their hometowns. The movement of God's kingdom started in Galilee had to come to an end. We all end our lives with death.

At some point, the disciples began to experience Jesus, who had been crucified and buried in a grave, as the "Living One." It is not easy to understand this experience of the disciples, just as it is difficult to understand the sentence that Jesus cried out on the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" According to the gospel proclamation, Jesus did not simply come back to life in the same body before dying. Rather, it is said that even though the door was closed, the resurrected Jesus entered the room. More importantly, it is a fact that the risen Lord appeared only to his disciples and those who had followed him. In 1 Corinthians 15:5, a list of eyewitnesses to the resurrection is given, including Cephas (Peter), the Twelve, five hundred brothers and sisters, James the brother of Jesus, all the apostles, and Paul. If the risen Jesus had appeared at the Sanhedrin or Pilate's office or in the center of Jerusalem, the news of Jesus' resurrection would have been more widely spread. However, the fact that the risen Lord appeared only to those who had a special relationship with him means that his resurrection was a special event that occurred in the realm of faith, not a general event that could be reported in history books or the mass media.

It is difficult to think that the resurrection of Jesus has little evidence to support it. What is reported in the news is not always important or certain. The truly important events are not recognized when they occur, but only when their results become apparent after a considerable amount of time has passed. When Jesus was born from Mary's body, almost no one recognized it. If people had known beforehand the significance of Jesus' birth in human history, many would have paid attention. Our daily lives are similar. The important events in our lives do not always reveal themselves from the beginning. Memories of certain experiences, even if they are vague, can determine a person's life later on. This is because the nature of this world is to conceal.

In today's text, Paul says that our lives are "hidden in God." This means that our lives have not yet been fully revealed, and therefore we cannot face the true identity of our lives. We still do not fully know who we are. Some people may feel uncomfortable with the question, "Who are you really?" They may argue that just being alive and living vividly is life itself. Of course, it is life, but it is not the kind of life that the Bible calls eternal life. I am not saying that the fact that our current lives inevitably end with old age and death means that they are hidden. The very nature of our vivid daily lives is to conceal. Try listing the things that you currently think make you happy. For example, let's say you won the lottery for one billion won, became a best-selling author, or a famous YouTuber, or married a good person. We do not know what impact these things will have on our future. We just blindly follow the vague idea of a "good life" that the world presents to us. This does not mean that our daily lives are not precious, but rather that the events that occur in our daily lives are not yet fully revealed, but are hidden. In other words, they are open to the future, like a seed that contains a hidden flower. When certain conditions are met over time, an unimaginable flower blooms from the seed. Are you waiting for the moment when a flower blooms in your life? Is this a story that is too far-fetched for you to believe? Do you not feel the reality of it? What do you really feel while you live?

Paul speaks of a very important fact here. He says that the life of us Christians is hidden 'with Christ' in God. Someone who lives for money is hidden with money. The phrase 'with Christ' means to be one with Christ. To borrow Paul's expression, Christ is in me, and I am in Christ. This refers to the spiritual solidarity in which we participate in the destiny of Jesus Christ, which leads to his suffering, cross, resurrection, and second coming. Being baptized, becoming a member of the church community, gathering regularly for worship, and sharing fellowship among church members all indicate the fact that we are one with Jesus Christ. Through this, our life, that is, our future, is hidden with Christ in God.

Appearing in Glory

The statement that our life is hidden means that our life has not yet been manifested. We still feel hungry, lonely, sad, and angry. We are disappointed in ourselves, and we secretly want to boast. No matter how many life goals we achieve, we are not satisfied. Human existence is far from the completion of life. We should be careful when we see videos on TV, YouTube, SNS, etc. that show people who seem to be completely satisfied and happy with their lives. Such stories are only partially true. No matter how splendid they are, they are only seeds. The happiness of a seed is different from that of a flower. We must endure the life of a seed. Only then can we welcome the moment when life is manifested. Referring to that moment, Paul says in verse 4:

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

"In verse 3, it says our lives are hidden in God, and in verse 4 it says that Christ is our life. Together, verses 3 and 4 mean that we are currently living a hidden life in God with Jesus Christ as our life. When Christ appears, we will also appear with Him. Our destiny will be determined by Jesus Christ. I am waiting for that moment.

The Christian tradition teaches that Jesus will come again at the end of the world to judge the world with life. According to 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and following, when our Lord comes with the sound of the trumpet, those who have died in Christ will rise again, and those who are alive will be caught up in the air to meet the Lord. Paul expressed that moment as "we will always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). That is heaven, eternal life, and resurrection as we know it. What does that mean? When Christ appears, we will be with the Son of God and always be with Him. We will become flowers that cannot be imagined in the dimension of seeds. It is the completion of life. Therefore, today's passage says that we will appear with Christ in 'glory' (δόξα).

I heard that the movie series 'The Glory' was quite popular. The 'glory' mentioned in the Bible refers to an event where all the tangled problems associated with vengeance are healed in a fundamental way according to God's way. We do not know how God will heal or what specific way He will appear. Jesus himself said, "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Matthew 24:36) It is because it is an event belonging to God's glory. In other words, it is an event where God reveals His divinity according to His way. We hope for it, but the people of the world do not value it much. They are not interested in it. They only focus on achieving their own scripts and programs. The reason they seek a glorious life only within their own categories is because they do not seek their own glory but the glory of God. We, as Christians, seek and praise the glory of God. We are waiting for today with great anticipation to welcome that moment. God's glory will soon be ours, and we will participate in it."

Waiting for the coming of Jesus with vague expectations and idle hands is certainly not enough. We do not simply look up to heaven and turn away from our daily lives and historical responsibilities. We believe that the moment of glory has not only yet to come, but that it has already begun here. Living in the dialectical tension between hiddenness and manifestation, that is, between "not yet" and "already," we strive not to lose sight of this tension at any moment in our lives. Therefore, we neither boast of having completed our own lives nor fall into despair, arrogance, or discouragement. We acknowledge that we are always lacking in something, yet we are always full of joy. So, no matter how many things we have to be proud of, we do not become complacent, and no matter how unfortunate our circumstances, we do not consider ourselves unhappy.

The important point here is the fact that we are "with" Jesus Christ, as mentioned before. Verse 3 says that we are hidden with Christ in God, and verse 4 says that we will appear with Him in glory. We are fortunate to live not alone in facing this great destiny but to live with Him. Therefore, the last verse of Matthew 28:20 conveys the promise given by the Lord of Resurrection, saying, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Until when? Until the moment of our death!