Life Among the Ruins
Eternal Christmas
Wildwind Community Church
December 5, 2010
David Flowers
Isaiah 11:1–5 (TM)
1 A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump, from his roots a budding Branch. 2 The life-giving Spirit of GOD will hover over him, the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding, The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength, the Spirit that instills knowledge and 3 Fear-of-GOD. Fear-of-GOD will be all his joy and delight. He won’t judge by appearances, won’t decide on the basis of hearsay. 4 He’ll judge the needy by what is right, render decisions on earth’s poor with justice. His words will bring everyone to awed attention. A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked. 5 Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots, and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
I love this passage. It speaks of the coming of Jesus and what he will do. But it’s not exactly what Jesus did is it? Did his words bring everyone to awed attention? Several hundred people, maybe. Did a mere breath from his lips topple the wicked? Hardly. At least that’s certainly not how it seems to me when I think of the crucifixion. No wonder the Jews missed Jesus as the Messiah. What this passage proclaims the Messiah would be and do, and what Jesus actually was and did, seem pretty far apart. So those of us who believe in who Jesus was and is are left to believe that part of this prophecy is, as yet, unfulfilled. Part of it still lies beyond us in a future time.
My friend Eileen Button’s first book is coming out this summer, from Thomas Nelson Publishers. The title is The Waiting Place. That’s here, you know. The waiting place is here, where salvation has been assured, where deliverance has been promised, where we are told that redemption is certain – and yet? Yet we wait. We wait in the in between, the what-might-be, and the who knows what. We live life among the ruins. The world is full of promise. There is so much good, so much beauty, and people who are so noble that it gives you the chills. And yet – yet we know of the pain all too well. Children die and parents have to let go. We lose our heroes one by agonizing one. Our bodies, once strong and sure, lose their agility, break down, begin to betray us. We spend the first half our lives madly accumulating things – money, competence, children, status, power, influence, achievements – and the second half of our lives learning to let them go. This is the waiting place, and we live our lives among the ruins of a world with so much promise, that nevertheless cannot meet the deepest longings of our hearts.
That’s the truth. That’s the bottom line about the world into which Jesus came. That’s the truth about the world B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (since Jesus died). We’re STILL in the waiting place. I don’t think it is appropriate to go into advent and focus right away on Jesus. After all,
John 1:9-11 (NIV)
9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
I think when we talk about Advent, we start talking not about Jesus, but about the world that he came to. The Waiting Place.
Let me ask you something. Do you think God was in the world BEFORE Jesus came? When Jesus was born and got to a certain age, do you think he looked around and said, “Wow, what a hellhole this place is – I had no idea”? Or do you think Jesus came, in human form, to a place where he had already been?
Genesis 3:8 (NIV)
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Emmanuel means “God with us,” doesn’t it? And this passage invites us to suppose that before “God with us” was with us, he was already God with us.
Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
This passage invites us to consider that the very air we breathe comes from, and began with, the Spirit of God. The same Biblical word that means Spirit means breath, so God breathed into man the breath, or the spirit, of life, and that is when we sprung to life. And of course we live in a world that has been fashioned by God and where God dwells.
Acts 17:24-28 (NIV)
24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
28 ’For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ’We are his offspring.’
This is where Advent begins. It begins with God, already in the world, already at work, having already breathed his spirit, his breath, his life, into us. Advent is not where God says, “You know, I think I’ll go check out that big blue ball – never been there before.” It is where God says, “Been there forever, only no one knows it. Time to knock a little louder.” But not too much louder, of course.
And so God came to the waiting place – the place of in-betweenness, of not-yet, and of wait-and-see. Jesus came to bring the whole, complete life of God to us as we live among the ruins. But it goes beyond that. In the simple act of doing this, Jesus declared that the ruins are not just ruins. They are, in fact, the dwelling place of God. The ruins are not just ruins. They are, in fact, the very dwelling place of God.
God didn’t wait to clean up the earth before sending Jesus to us. He didn’t try to get rid of the darkness, and do away with the horror and tragedy and fallenness of the world. Not only that, but even in Jesus, God did not clean up all the darkness of the world. Jesus has not been with us bodily for a very long time, and yet darkness remains, does it not? The promise in Isaiah has yet to be fulfilled. And so what are we to do with this? The Messiah comes, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us IN OUR DARKNESS. Jesus came and dwelled with us among the ruins, in the messy, trashy conditions where we lived. And yes he ultimately died for us on the cross, but to this day, conditions are messy and trashy. Some people say that when Jesus comes, when God comes into your life, he takes out the trash. But I don’t agree! I don’t think that the appearance of Christ in your life will spell an end to your darkness – to all your doubt, all your sin, to the mess that is your life. Jesus said as much:
Matthew 13:24-30 (NASB)
24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25 "But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away.
26 "But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.
27 "The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ’Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’
28 "And he said to them, ’An enemy has done this!’ The slaves *said to him, ’Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’
29 "But he *said, ’No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.
30 ~’Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."’"
We aren’t used to the word “tares” in our language. It’s translated as “thistles” or “weeds” in most modern translations of the Bible, but the word “tares” is important. You know what a “tare” is? A tare is a weed that actually looks like wheat. Thistles don’t look anything like wheat, so that doesn’t help us really get it. But tares look like wheat. So when the slaves say, “Want us to go pull them?” Jesus says, “No way – you can’t really tell which is which – there’s a good chance that some of what you think is grain is actually tares and that some of what looks to you like tares is actually wheat.”
Now I don’t want to get into Universalism this morning and for those of you who don’t know what Universalism that’s fine, because I don’t want to get into it! But I will say this. There are all kinds of ways we can spin a parable, but it seems that one unavoidable conclusion we must draw from this one is that light and darkness are mingling together extremely closely, so much so that we often cannot judge by appearances which is which. This statement would drive some Christians absolutely berserk. I would be accused of confusing people, of darkening the clear light of God’s truth. Only I didn’t do it. Jesus himself said that good and evil are growing alongside of each other (in the same world, in the same governments, in the same schools and workplaces, in the same churches, in the same families, and ultimately within the same persons! No one government is completely good or irredeemably bad - though we can think of some that have come close on the bad side, right? No one school is completely good or evil. No one workplace or church or family is completely good or bad. And no one person is completely bad. This is where we as Wesleyans disagree strongly with the Calvinists. We do not believe that human beings are so completely bad that we cannot reach out to God. We believe that because of God’s grace, because the breath of God is still in us, and therefore because God’s Spirit is still in us in some basic way, God that is in us is able to reach out to God beyond us and outside of us.
My friends this is the reason we cannot make a religion out of always needing to be perfectly clear about right and wrong, about who is in God and who is outside of God, about my rightness and your wrongness. The things in you that you are certain are cursed will often be the very things that God uses to continue to draw you to him. What you call your blackest darkness, God sees as redemptive possibility. The ruins in your life are not just ruins. They are the dwelling place of God. This idea that God cannot dwell in your life because of your sin is ridiculous. There is ALWAYS darkness – always. We dangerously fool ourselves if we think otherwise. I don’t care what Bible camp you got “saved” at and how spiritual you think you are – there is still darkness in you. You live among the ruins and you yourself are PART of the ruins! And you might say “Yes, but God considers me clean because of the cross,” and I would say, “Then we agree!” There is still darkness in you, places you have not yet allowed God to penetrate and change. But God is working away at that very thing, because he loves you, and your sin is not consistent with his holy character. In fact, our sin keeps us from knowing God’s love.
Now the Bible is clear that God cannot stand sin – it is like oil and water. God and sin don’t mix. But on the cross, Jesus showed us that God does it anyway – God takes on your sin. And in the incarnation, God showed us that God gets into the dirt, not to grovel around in it with us, but to free us from it.
We live in the waiting place, in the in-between, among the ruins. But in the simple act of the incarnation – God becoming man – Jesus declared that the ruins are not just ruins. They are, in fact, the dwelling place of God. So where are the ruins in your life? Do you know that they are the dwelling place of God? Do you know that your frustration over the sins that dog you are opportunities for you to know God? Rather than thinking that you have to stop this or that before you can know God, clean up this or that ruin in your life, banish this or that darkness, why not find God in that place, right there with you, and allow God to start changing your heart and mind and life? Do you think God needs perfection before he can work and move? If so, why did perfect God come and live down here? If so, how can anyone ever know God?
No, the place of God’s work is right where you are, right in the middle of wherever you find yourself, right here among the ruins, in the place of in-betweenness, right in the present moment.
2 Corinthians 6:2 (NIV)
2 ... now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
God is already working, already on the move, in the world and in your life. The question is whether you will wake up to it, say yes to it, allow it to happen. If you are holding God at arm’s length for any reason today – waiting to get over this or that, waiting until you are living a better life, waiting until this or that question gets answered, waiting until you know for sure what to call it or how to label it, I just want to encourage you to yield – to quietly whisper yes to God and invite his Holy Spirit to continue doing what it is already seeking to do among the ruins of your life.
Now if you did that – if you whispered that “yes” to God, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Will you send me an email this week, telling me what happened? Will you tell me what has been keeping you from God, and maybe feel free to share your story or maybe even a few questions with me and let me help you? My interest is simply in helping anyone and everyone who wants to say yes to God and move forward. So I don’t care whether you call yourself a Christian, an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or whatever -- I’m just asking everyone here to consider whether we’re holding God at arm’s length while we try to manage some things ourselves while Christ waits to be welcome into the very mess we think we have to clean up before we can have him in.
