Tag: New Testament

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Joy and Lament – Philippians 4:4-9

There is a tension between joy and lament in the Christian life. How do you celebrate and have joy when those around you are struggling? How do you “rejoice always” as Paul instructs when there is so much suffering, both in the world and even in our own lives?

If you grew up in the church, Philippians 4 is a very familiar passage. You see it on notecards, memorize it, hear it in words of encouragement – but often it is misapplied by what can be called “the Theology of the False Smile.” If we take the instruction from Paul to rejoice always as being focused on the outward appearance then we just end up papering over what is happening inside us.

Christmas is a season where this is felt most keenly. On the one hand, the whole world seems like it is focused on joy and cheer, but on the other hand it can be a very difficult time for many people – if we don’t have families we can celebrate with, don’t have resources to celebrate as is expected, if we suffer from the dark and cold of the season, Christmas can be a time of deep depression. If we have fallen into the Theology of the Fake Smile, we just ignore the pain and paper over with a false joy.

Verse 6 instructs us to “not be anxious about anything.” This, too, is misapplied through the “Hakuna Matata Theology”. No worries! A problem free philosophy that drives us to ignore all problems and avoid anxiety by avoiding responsibility and reality.

Paul also tells us to “let your gentleness be evident to all,” which also gets misapplied – this is the “Bless Your Heart” theology, where words and even deeds are only kind on the surface level, but underneath cut like a knife.

To properly follow Paul’s instructions, though, we need to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. Pretending to be joyful is not actually being joyful. We need to address the world, both inside of us she outside of it, the way that it actually is rather than how it is “supposed to be.”

We see this in a broader sense as well. When the American church falls into the trap of avoiding lament and only showing, discussing or allowing the positive, we perpetuate this Theology of the False Smile on a ecclesiastical level, and even on a social and political level as this bleeds into Christian Nationalism or other ways we paper over suffering and lament both in the present and the past.

To understand more about how to properly apply Paul’s words here, let’s look back at the opening of his letter. In chapter 1, he clearly acknowledges his suffering, but also the goodness that comes from his suffering. Through his suffering, many have come to see and know Jesus. We can’t show Jesus in our suffering if we ignore and downplay our suffering.

This is one of the reasons that we as a church value authenticity. We don’t want to be a place where people have to pretend to be doing well just to walk in the door. We don’t want to be a place where we ignore what is happening in the world outside. We do not need to protect God. It is not our job to make Christianity look good by pretending everything is going well when it isn’t. In fact, if we see how Paul does it, in fact we make Christianity look good by being authentic, by embracing our suffering just as Christ did, and embracing the suffering of others – just as Christ did.

An authentic community mourns with those who mourn, laments with those who lament, and allows all its members to mourn and lament authenticallyso that the community can come around them.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 15, 2024

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Faithful Stewardship – Matthew 25:14-30

We’ve been going through a series called “Resident Aliens,” examining how we are called to live as citizens of heaven but residents of earth. We are not called to hide our time until heavens, but we are called to enable flourishing in the world around us.

That is much of the story that Jesus is telling in this parable. This parable came in a series of stories that focused on eschatology, with the primary point of those being that no one knows when the end will come, so that is the context.

The story is of a man who loaned huge sums of money to his servants before he went away, with the expectation that they would put the money to work for him. We may not feel like that applies to us, but each of us has some amount of time, talent or treasure that we can put to work for the kingdom of God.

Each was given a different amount “according to their ability” – note that they didn’t squabble or compare amongst themselves, since the money was never theirs to begin with. Likewise, the same is true of the resources we have.

We must be careful not to be the servant who buried his treasure in a field. He did so because he was frightened, because he had a false understanding of his master – he was overwhelmed and did not know what to do, and so he did what he felt was the least harm. In reality, not acting was the worst things he could do

Do we do the same thing? Do we bury our time, our talent or our treasure because we are afraid of what to do with it? Because we feel like it’s ours, forgetting that in reality it all comes from God?

As Peter writes in his epistle, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

So however we have been blessed, let us turn that blessing back to those around us, serving God by serving others.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 17, 2024

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Do Good – 1 Peter 3:8-16

We have been exploring what it means to live Christ-honoring lives outside the walls of the church building. It means internal growth and maturity, but it also means loving others. All church mission statements boil down to “love God, love others”.

And not just others who look like us, think like us, vote like us, live like us, we’re called to love all our neighbors. This is hard! Christ makes sure we know it’s hard – he instructs us, “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, ” but he also offers grace to us when we fall.

As Christians, we live in a tension as “resident aliens.” We are citizens of heaven, set apart by God – and yet we are in the world and called to minister to it and love those around us. This is a tension that feeds back on itself, though, because it is that very set-apart-ness, that love God has for us that spills out into the world through us.

1 Samuel 22 tells the story of David in the cave of Adullam – he has been rejected by Saul and is hiding out in a cave with his loyal followers. He is a stranger in his own the land, a fugitive and refugee within the kingdom he was destined to rule. But his response was not what we move expect – he gathered “all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented.”

Peter references this experience, quoting from Psalm 34, which David likely wrote in that cave after having escaped from the Philistines as he sought to escape Paul.

Peter’s whole letter is an instruction to the people of God on how to live within an empire. He sets up Christians to live quietly subversive lives that worked within the pagan religious and sociopolitical framework of the Roman empire. He gives five words of instruction:

  • συνφρονέω (synphroneō) – “Be like-minded”
  • συμπαθής (sumpathes) – “Be sympathetic”
  • άγαπάω (agapao) – Love one another
  • σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomal) – “Be compassionate”
  • ταπεινός (tapeinos) – “Be humble”

All of this points us to the life of Christ, in all its complexity, and we are to seek to live like him.

Then Peter gets to the verse probably most often quoted from this passage: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” This is often interpreted as a call for apologetics and an intellectual case for our hope. But if you look at the passage as a whole, it points us back to the words of unity, love, compassion and humility.

This passage is not about handling hostile questions from angry atheists, but about drawing people into wonder what is going on with us. It’s not about answers to the problem of evil or the historicity of scripture, but answers to questions about why we love so well, why we give so well, why we are compassionate to those others hate.

Are you living a life peculiar enough to make others ask questions about the hope that is in you?

The hardest thing Peter instructs us to do is be humble – in this age of social media it’s easy to instantly share your opinion, but it’s difficult to do that in humility. Can we live in that humility and unity? Can we walk in the tension of living in the world but not of it, as ministers of reconciliation? Can we remember where our hope truly lies?

We have an election on Tuesday and the outcome and aftermath are uncertain. What is certain is that God is still sovereign, that He still loves us and has a plan for His church. Let us rest in that knowledge and let it propel us to lives that point others to the reason for our hope.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 3, 2024

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Graves into Gardens – 2 Corinthians 2:17-21

Paul is writing this letter to the Corinthian church, which was one of the largest and most diverse churches at the time. There was a lot of drama and conflict at this church across religious backgrounds, sexuality, gender, methods of worship and questions of authority.

This is the chaos that Paul is speaking into in this passage.

We can learn a lot about the Corinthian debacle because it is a much more diverse church than some of the smaller, more homogenous churches like Philippi and Colosse.

But this passage speaks into this diversity and points people to the unity we have as citizens and ambassadors of heaven.The message to us is that all the things in us that are dead – our sins, our broken relationships, our passion – are overwritten by the new creation made by Christ. Old things are gone and renewed things are here, regenerated by God Himself through Christ. We are reconciled to God through the cross.

But beyond that, we are then called to pass along that message of reconciliation. We are to “live such good lives” among our neighbors that they look at us and say “I’ll have what they’re having.” In our reconciled nature, we become the means of reconciliation for others.

But it’s not just about the vertical reconciliation with God, but Paul is also focused on the reconciliation between people and groups of people. This is particularly important to keep in mind when reading this passage which is speaking into such a diverse church with such fragmented relationships.

God’s first command to humanity in Genesis was to be fruitful and multiply, to steward the creation of God. The planned state of humanity is shalom, an all-encompassing wholeness of all creation, both within and without. To be ambassadors of Christ it means we seek mutual flourishing of all people and all creation. We seek to participate in the work of God, turning the graves around us into gardens.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 6, 2024

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Unity is Hard Work – Galatians 2:8-14

In this passage, Paul discusses “The Incident at Antioch.” It comes after the vision that Peter has in which Christ declares all foods clean. It also comes after the Council of Jerusalem made the determination that gentile Christians did not have to become culturally Jewish in order to join the Church.

After this time, per Paul, Peter lived much like a gentile in terms of cultural and ceremonial rules. But when he was with more culturally Jewish Christians, Paul would revert in how he behaved and most importantly how he treated gentile Christians.

For Paul, this was a big deal. The “New Perspective on Paul” movement suggests that much of Paul’s discussion of the “works if the law” are really focused on these cultural identity markers, those “signs of the Covenant” that marked the distinctions between Jews aha Gentiles. For Paul, unity within the church is vital because Jesus came to bring all people to himself and break down those barriers.

But real unity is hard work. It requires more than social media, but real investment in each other, across those barriers of ethnicity and culture. No matter how ‘aware’ you are, you can be called out – just like Peter, but also even in situations where you have the best of intentions.

Unity is hard work because promises get broken, and we can get hurt. The Jerusalem church and Paul agreed to how they would do ministry, but the leaders in Jerusalem backslid on that agreement. Related, leaders will disappoint us.

Unity is hard work because politics and power win the day too often. History is full of the church being co-opted for secular political ends. Peter’s behavior here was simply an early form of this, changing behavior to maintain influence. We see this across the ages of the church and certainly into the present day.

Unity is hard because it counter-intuitively involves conflict. In order to keep unity we must be willing to confront those who would subvert unity.

Unity is hard because it will mean surrendering things. This is one of the reasons Sunday mornings are so segregated – we are not willing to give up our cultural expectations of worship and church in order to come together. These things are not core to our relationship with Christ, but at cling to them because we see them as “markers of the Covenant” much like the leaders Paul came into conflict with.

So in the end the only answer is to love like Christ did, loving across boundaries and against the gradients created by culture and society. The only answer is to do this hard work on unity as we seek to be more like Jesus.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 29, 2024

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Jesus the Healer – Sight to the Blind: Mark 8:22-26

The biggest question around this passage is “why did Jesus heal the blind man in two parts?” Was Jesus’ power limited in some way? Was the man’s faith lacking (like Mark describes in Nazareth elsewhere)? There is clearly a connection between the faith of people and Jesus’ willingness or ability to heal them. Those is a key theme across the gospels, especially in Mark. But elsewhere Jesus seems like he can and will heal without faith on the other side at all.

So there is some kind of relationship between our faith and God’s healing, but at the same time, God can do what He wants. So in this case, was it about faith. Was Jesus tired? Did he need to retap his Mana? Is there something special about sight? Is there something Jesus wanted to demonstrate?

We may get some clues by looking at the context. Jesus has just fed 4,000 people with a few loaves of bread with 12 baskets left over, then confronted the Pharisees over their lack of faith and demands for a sign. From there they left in the boat – but they forgot the bread. Jesus tries to address the failings of the Pharisees but the disciples are distracted by the bread fiasco. And so Jesus addresses blindness three ways – the blindness of the Pharisees, the blindness of the disciples, and then the physical blindness of this man.

Then the next section is the center-point of Mark, when Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ. In the midst of all this blindness, Jesus as Messiah emerges as the light in that darkness, the one with the power and authority to heal.

The blindness Jesus heals here is like our own blindness. The sight the man receives is the sight of people, the precious creations of God that Jesus came for. C. S. Lewis writes “you have never met a mere mortal.” Jesus wants us to see people as He sees them, not merely as “trees walking around.” And even if we are not there yet, we can be confident that Jesus will ultimately heal our sight fully and we will see the world and people the way he does.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 15, 2024

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Don’t Cry – Luke 7:11-17

This story is one of only two stories of Jesus raising someone from the dead, the other being Lazarus. This one comes directly after the story is healing the servant of the centurion, which was a story about Jesus’ power. This story brings that power together with compassion.

I he story here is a hard one. The woman is a widow, who has now lost her son, the one who was to provide for her in her husband’s absence. The loss of her son was more than just a wrenching emotional and personal loss, but a disaster economically. She had nowhere else to turn.

Hopefully no one here is in that place, but we know that circumstances can change and those of us comfortable today could see our fortunes change tomorrow, just as this woman had experienced.

Jesus stepping into this story is of a piece with the heart that scripture continually tells us God has for the immigrant, the widow and the orphan.

As a church, this compassion is the greatest witness we have to the world. But when many people interact with the church, they do not see the compassion that we envision Jesus looking at the widow with. They often see barriers, disgust, resentment and other barriers between the suffering and the people who are supposed to be of God.

Jesus tells the woman not to cry – this is not something we are supposed to do! But Jesus is the one who has the power to step in and change circumstances so that there is no need to cry.

Luke is telling the story about a new kingdom coming to pass. Things are changing – and we live in the same changing and emerging kingdom. Whatever our anxieties, economic, political, personal, Jesus looks on us with compassion and is willing to heal us, even today, even in our modern age and circumstances.

After all this happens, the people were in awe. Psychology tells us that the people who are happiest are those who are able to look at the events of our lives through the prism of resurrection and redemption. They don’t use those words, of course, but that is the concept that we can rely on, not only as a psychological method but as the foundation of our reality. This means we can engage with hard things, can engage with suffering and even death with the knowledge that ultimately there is victory.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, September 8, 2024

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Jesus is Willing – Matthew 8:1-17

This passage includes multiple stories of Jesus healing. It comes immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus focuses on the upside-down values of the Kingdom of God versus the glorification of strength in the world around. He addresses the spiritual source of sin versus only the outer actions – hatred and lust versus murder and adultery. And finally he takes apart the religious leaders and their hypocrisy. The Sermon blows the minds of those who heard it – “because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”

Having established his authority with his words, this passage tells us how he then did so with his actions.

Scripture tells us “You have not because you ask not.” Many of us put ourselves and our needs aside, not wanting to be a bother, not wanting to be a disappointment, but this is not the attitude we are to have with God. We see that in this story – a man who has been suffering and outcast finds it in himself to bring himself to the feet of Jesus and asks. “If you want to, you can heal me.” And Jesus says, “Yes, I want to.”

This healing is more than a physical healing – it touches the man’s spiritual, emotional even social and economic situation. In the same way, Jesus seeks to heal us in those same ways.

Next up, a centurion comes to Jesus. This man is everything the leperous man was not – powerful, foreign, healthy. But he comes to Jesus across a cultural and ethnic boundary to seek healing for a servant. Jesus responds in kind – again, Jesus is willing.

The next healing is closer to home. Peter’s mother-in-law, who would have been known to Jesus and all his disciples. She is sick, but in this case we don’t even see her ask for healing. But Jesus is willing, even when we do not ask.

And Jesus is willing to take on the repercussions of the healing. The stories of him healing go viral (so to speak) and that evening he is swarmed by people begging for healing. And once again, He is willing.

Matthew connects that willingness to Jesus role as Messiah and as the one who gives humanity its ultimate healing. He quotes Isaiah briefly, but the full passage is:

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah 53:4-6

Jesus is willing, even to the cross. We also have the opportunity to be willing – we can cross the boundaries of culture, of socioeconomics, of comfort. When we do so, Jesus is willing and will bring healing in. Jesus is willing. Are we?

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 25, 2024

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Bethesda – John 5:1-9

Think of something that you have been struggling with for a long time – maybe a sin or temptation, a pattern of behavior, a bad habit or addiction, a hurt, a painful memory, resentment. Something you wish God would heal but over the years He has not.

We’ve all likely heard that there are three answers that God gives to prayer – yes, no and wait. But sometimes that knowledge does not help. It seems like we’ve been waiting for so long for something that would be objectively good. Why wouldn’t He do it?

There is no formula to getting our prayers answered – if there were, we’d all be following it. But God is a person, not a vending machine. He asks us to trust him – on good days, on bad days, in crises, in peace.

We have this example in the man in this story, paralyzed for 38 years, seeking healing from this supposedly magic pool. The specifics of the angel coming down are not in the earliest manuscripts, but were likely added to clarify what the man says later.

This is from the Book of John, the one gospel where the city is Jerusalem looms largest throughout the book, rather than only at the end. The indications of different Jewish festivals help the Jewish people across the world place the stories in time and cultural context. The book of John also focuses on Jesus’ interactions with other people, and this one is notable.

We don’t know how long this man has been waiting, but it seems to have been a long time. We can imagine him younger and more hopeful, pushing and jostling to get to the pool first, and failing time after time. Eventually he gives up, and while he stays in the area he has resigned himself to the fact that he will never be first. Proverbs says “a hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and we can see that this man’s heart is sick.

Jesus steps into this story of scarcity and offers abundance. God wants healing broadly not just to those who get somewhere first. But first he asks a piercing question: “do you want to be made well?”

The man does not say “yes”. Instead, he just shares why it’s impossible, why “it is what it is.”

But that’s not what Jesus asked. That’s not where Jesus wants him to direct his gaze. Not at the superstition of the pool, but the face of Jesus. And Jesus is validating the desire that this man has almost forgotten that he has. Our desires find their root in who God made us to be. They may be misplaced or diverted to incorrect or inappropriate things, but God wants to fulfill the core of our desires, just like in this case.

So where are the gathering pills beneath the colonnades in your life? Where are at sitting on our mat, waiting out the hours but having largely given up.

And maybe it’s not even in your life. We are surrounded by needs and unanswered prayers in our own community and in the global community ended moreso. Where do we step in and how do we make those decisions? We can’t have all the answers, but we can trust that God’s power is abundant, sufficient for both the great problems of the world and our small sins and hurts.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 18, 2024

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Healing Unlooked For – Mark 3:1-6

At this point in Jesus’ ministry he is beginning to become well known in the area, and that means he is beginning to gain the attention of the religious authorities. They see him as a threat and so in this story set out to trap him.

Jesus, though, cannot be tripped or trapped. He knows the hearts of everyone involved, and is specifically ready to go address the misuse and abuse of scripture especially around the nature of the sabbath.

This story of Jesus’ healing is very different than the most of them. They typically are very personal situations, but this one is very public and almost political.

One way it is different is that unlike most other people Jesus had healed is that the man with the withered hand never actually asks for healing. He does not appear to be in desperate straits the way most do in these stories. But this story gives no indication that this man, who tradition holds was a stonemason, actually needed healing in the way most people healed by Jesus did.

Instead, it appears that this man was simply going to synagogue like an the others, possibly there specifically to see and learn from Jesus. When he arrives, though, he and his disability are being used by Jesus’ enemies to further their own ends.

But Jesus ends up flipping things around – he calls the man to stand forth, this man who had not asked for any of this, who was just there for synagogue. And the man obeys, despite what was very likely deep discomfort. He stretches out his withered hand, even though it was likely embarrassing and a source of shame in that culture.

And when he obeys, he receives a gift unlocked for, while Jesus challenges the preconceptions, the authority and abusive nature of those who had tried to trap.

So when we come to sit at the feet of Jesus, can we also do so without any expectation? Can we go simply to be taught and live in His presence, whether at church or throughout our daily life? If we do, we may find healing we did not expect or even realize we needed.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, August 11, 2024