Acts 1:1-14, May 24, 2020, Sermon

“Is This the Time?” 

Pastor Randy Butler

It is no surprise to say that we live in a time of great uncertainty. Parents and students are uncertain about how schooling will look in the months ahead. Business owners, large and small, are very concerned about the survival of their businesses. Farmers and ranchers wonder if there will be a demand for their produce and meat. We in the church are asking when we will meet again for worship. And perhaps, most of all, we are fearful that there might be a resurgence of COVID-19 in the coming fall or winter. These are fearful and uncertain times.

Jesus’ first followers are experiencing a different kind of uncertainty, but uncertainty nonetheless. They journeyed with Jesus for three years; some of them left their livelihoods to follow him. They then watched with horror as he was crucified by the authorities. But then, he was raised from the dead. And now he is with them again, though in a somewhat different form. Yet it doesn’t look as though he is planning to stick around, as he prepares them for the coming of his Spirit, the Holy Spirit. But he is with them for awhile, forty days says Luke, before his ascension into to heaven. During this time he is teaching them, and as they are together they ask him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They wonder if he will finally overthrow the Romans and set up a new kingdom.

I love their question, asking essentially, “Is this the time Lord you will set things right and do what we have all been wanting you to do? Will you restore us to power now?” It’s not unlike the questions we are asking today. “Is this the time when we can return to normal?” “Are we in phase 1 now, or is it phase 2 of restoring us to what we were before?” "Can it be now that we worship together again, shop like we used to, go out like we did before, without worry?"  "Is this the time the economy can go back to what it was?"

And of course we know Jesus’ answer. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” His answer leaves them hanging, waiting, wondering, still uncertain about what comes next. Just like the answers given in our day leave us hanging, waiting and wondering, and still uncertain.

Some suggest that we are in a kind of Great Pause. Everything has come to a screeching halt, a great pause, a monumental interruption of our normal life. And it does feel like that, as we have reconnected with family and friends, perhaps found time to try some things we have postponed for so long. But it is beginning to feel less like an interruption and more like a transition. What is the difference? Well an interruption is a break between normal and a return to that normal. A commercial break on television interrupts the show you are watching. But after the commercial you return to the same show, and pick up where you left off. A transition on the other hand is a break between normal and a whole new state of affairs, of an entirely new normal which follows. It’s not a return to same show, but a passage to an entirely new program. And it is beginning to look like life on the other side of this great COVID-19 pause is going to look very different than it did on the side we left, back in February. This is more than a mere interruption.

The followers of Jesus in the first century are asking about a return to normal that leaves them kind of stupidly looking up into heaven, waiting for things to go back to what they knew. But they begin to learn, and this takes time, that things are going to be very different. It takes about forty days with the risen Jesus before they are receptive to a new and very different state of affairs, from being with Jesus one way to receiving his Holy Spirit in another way.

And for them, as for us, this transition leaves us feeling very unsettled and uncertain. We find ourselves in a kind of zone of uncertainty. It’s the same way a trapeze artist feels as she lets go of one trapeze before grabbing the other one. That’s a zone of uncertainty. Have you ever seen a squirrel in the middle of the road as your car approaches? They always seem to avert disaster at the last minute, but not before some frantic back and forth before they reach the other side of the road. A squirrel in the middle of the road lives in the uncertainty zone.

Maybe we too are living in a zone of uncertainty today. It’s unsettled, it is scary, and nobody really has the answers that make us feel better. Because the experts too, are living in the same zone of uncertainty.

So how do we carry on as followers of Jesus in this transition? Our text gives us a few answers – we wait, we witness, and we pray. We wait. Jesus orders the disciples not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the father. Now waiting is not the thing we really want to do right now. We don’t want to wait for things to get back to normal. And Jesus says wait. He tells us that because in the waiting something is still going on, even when it feels like there is nothing going on. When God rests on the seventh day of creation, it’s not like he is done. Something very restful and regenerative is happening on that seventh day. The mystics call it a rest most busy, that fallow time in which God is still very much at work in us and in our world. God is still doing something in our world and in us. This great pause is a pregnant pause, full of promise.

In his translation of the New Testament, Eugene Peterson offers a unique paraphrase of Romans chapter 8, which talks about all creation waiting for redemption. Peterson’s translation says this: “All around us we observe a pregnant creation. We’re also feeling the birth pangs…that is why waiting doesn’t diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting.” Perhaps the waiting of our time can enlarge us and grow us in ways not otherwise possible. So we wait.

And we witness. The charge Jesus gives is very clear. Wait for the Holy Spirit to empower you and then be my witnesses around the world. We too feel the uncertainty, the anxiety of it all. But we have something else – that is, trust in God who is always at work in every situation.

Now this is the time in the church when we observe Jesus’ ascension into heaven. And the joke going around this week is that ascension is when Jesus decided he was going to start working from home. Well there is a humorous truth in that. We tend to blur the distinctions between resurrection and ascension. But they are two very different events in the life of Jesus. In resurrection he is raised to life on earth. In ascension he reigns in heaven. His ascension installs him in heaven, now partnered with God to oversee and rule all things. He is indeed working from home, his heavenly home. The same one we know in the flesh in the gospels still lives, in a new way, but he is still Jesus the Christ, now reigning from his heavenly home office.

We too are called upon to be witnesses in our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our nation, to the ends of the earth. Witnesses who experience some degree of peace, stability, and assurance we can share with others because we trust and proclaim that no matter what zone of uncertainty we find ourselves in, God, through Jesus Christ has got this. And will see us through this valley of the shadow of death.

And finally prayer. We wait, we witness and we pray. When the disciples go back to Jerusalem after Jesus has ascended they meet with the others, and with them constantly devote themselves to prayer.

Now we don’t just tack on prayer here at the end. I remember in a church where I was intern I was leading worship and I said after someone had described a situation “Well the least we can do is pray.” A man came up to me after the service and said kindly but firmly, “Prayer is not the least we can do, it is the most we can do.” Prayer is not an add-on at the end of the meeting or the end of our day, it is at the center of what we do and who we are.

If you are like me, perhaps you have found it difficult to pray during this transition we are in. Our rhythms are disrupted, our routines are changing. Well, don’t beat up on yourself, but don’t stop praying either. Someone said, “If you can’t pray, then at least say your prayers.” No matter what it feels like, no matter what the disruption, keep spending time with God in prayer - however it works best for you, in the study or out on the range. Cultivate the habit and spirit of prayer. Let’s keep praying for our lives, our church and our world. And take time to listen. “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” says Psalm 62. We don’t have to do all the talking in prayer.

We do indeed seem to be in a transition from one way of living to another. It seems to me that the coronavirus is changing us in ways that are bigger than 9-11, the 2008 financial crisis and other big events. Stay with it friends, wait and grow, witness in word and service, and pray. 

Acts 17:22-31, May 17, 2020, Sermon

“Knowing God”

Pastor Randy Butler

In Acts 17 we are given a glimpse into the forceful personality of the Apostle Paul. He has just arrived in Athens, Greece. He is there because he has had to leave other nearby cities in which he has been preaching, forced out by local religious groups who are not at all happy with his message about a crucified and resurrected Jesus. Because of this we find Paul by himself in Athens, waiting for his traveling partners Silas and Timothy.

So with some time on his hands, perhaps Paul might take in the sights of this famous city. Though past its prime as a political leader in the ancient world and now another city in the Roman Empire, still Athens is the cultural and intellectual center of the Mediterranean region. All the good tutors for wealthy Roman families still come from Athens and from the Greeks. The major philosophical and intellectual ideas still originate in Greece, and the art work, the sculptures and shrines are beautiful and not to be missed. Perhaps Paul might enjoy this, take a little break from the evangelist’s life, make a tour of the city. But no, Paul is single minded. The book of Acts says while he was waiting, Paul was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols – that is statues, images and shrines of pagan divinities. Raised on the clear monotheism of his Jewish faith Paul simply could not handle these images of various gods, a clear violation of the second commandment, “you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

He simply could not relax in this environment and so he did what he always did – found the local synagogue and argued with the leaders there, making the case for the risen Christ. And he takes on the local philosophers and academics, debating with them. And it turns out that the academics want to hear more so they invite him to come. He perhaps didn’t have much choice in the matter. They take him to the Aeropagus where the Athens city council meets.

Now what is the problem with these idols? Why is Paul so upset? They are just figures and images and statues and things like that. Well for one thing they are inanimate. The images they worship aren’t even alive. The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament makes a mockery of this contradiction when he points out how foolish it is that those who make idols from wood use half of the wood for fire and for keeping warm and cooking food, while with another part of the same piece of wood they fashion an idol and pray to it, saying save me for you are my god (Isaiah 44:15).

The thing about idols is that we can make them how we like. I love the story of the kindergarten teacher who was observing her classroom of children while they drew. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl quickly replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.” Like this little girl we all have the tendency to draw God the way it suits us.

Professor David Wells asks, “Why do people choose the substitute over God himself?” Probably the most obvious reason is that it gets around accountability to God.” He says, “We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations. They are safe, predictable and controllable…portable, completely under the user’s control. That is the appeal of idolatry.”

Now we are not ancient Greeks with statues of various divinities in our homes, right? Maybe, maybe not. I try to imagine a visitor from the ancient world coming into our house and looking around. The first thing they can’t miss is the large black screen mounted on my wall, above the fireplace. It is dark now, but maybe it speaks or lives. Turn it on and my visitor might think that the very oracle of Delphi is speaking prophecies through this portal into another world. My visitor notes how we in our tribe watch the screen so intently, and laugh at it, cry with it, sometimes even yell at it. It would not be hard to conclude that we somehow worship before this screen. And the passionate enthusiasm I display as I watch the screen and the teams that are playing against each other with some strange ball, with thousands screaming and worshiping in the stands, might lead my visitor to think that this is indeed my place of worship. And perhaps my visitor would not be far from the truth. And perhaps, though the millennia separate us, we are not so different after all.

So Paul gets his chance to speak. He speaks first about God the creator. In the ancient world every town had its gods and goddesses, every home had idols and statues for various needs. One of the problems with this is that we get kind of spread out. Our religion becomes diffused of its power, and it is functional and needy. We pray to this idol for that issue and this figurine for that need. And what Paul does is trace everything to one source, one creator, the Lord. All the creative power of the universe is focused on one Lord of heaven and of earth, as he puts it, not constrained by human made shrines. God is creator not us. This God is the one who gives us life and breath and there is no other. This focuses our commitment and devotion. It’s like the difference between having several boyfriends or girlfriends and one spouse. And it enlarges God. Sometimes our God is too small. That was the title of a famous book by JB Philips – “Your God is Too Small.” And often our God is too small, not the God of Scripture who is the creator and sustainer and one who gives us our very life and breath.

And the amazing thing, says Paul, is that this God can be known. Paul notices the anxiety of the Athenians – so many gods to cover every possible event or concern or scenario. They even have a shrine to one they call the unknown god, just to cover all the bases. I remember a woman in our church who was sick and had asked for prayer. She was active in many groups, so she asked for prayer from her Presbyterian friends, her Mormon friends, her Buddhist friends, her agnostic friends. And I understand the intent and the need, but it seemed to me to reveal more fear and anxiety than it did anything close to trust in God her maker.

Paul says that this God is our creator but that we can also know God, who draws close to us. We are created to search for, to grope for and to find God. Though God is not far from each one of us. In fact, God is so close that Paul will quote one of the poets of his day, to say that in God we live and move and have our being. A few centuries later St. Augustine would pray famously, “You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” He would also confess the he spent a good bit of his life searching and groping in the external world until he finally realized that God was found within his heart, in the internal world. There is the temple, says Paul elsewhere – within us, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Many people in our lives are worried, restless, searching. We ourselves are worried, restless and searching. And Paul is inviting us into relationship with God within in us, closer to us than we are to ourselves, as St. Augustine put it, with whom prayer becomes an intimate sharing between friends as one saint puts it, intimacy with God. Paul knows that this intimacy with God can change the world. That is why he must speak.

That is why he is so urgent about it. Make no mistake, Paul is asking for decision. God in fact is asking for decision. Paul is saying that God is merciful, granting us time. God knows we are searching and groping but still God calls us to decide whether we will dabble with this god and that god, or whether we will put our life in the hands of God as we have come to know him through Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead; to leave the small gods and idols of our lives and to put our trust in the Lord of heaven and earth. Will we?

A woman named Emilie Griffin wrote about prayer and she said “there is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about praying and really praying.” For some she says this split second can last decades, made long by our busyness and our important obligations, until there is a great gulf, an abyss of our own making that separates us from God.

But God waits for us in our searching and groping. God is that gentle quiet voice of love and grace inviting us to draw close and trust. This is the God who makes us creates us, who is our source. And we will never be at peace until we return to God. Do that today. 

John 14:1-14, May 10, 2020, Sermon

“Believing in Jesus”

by Pastor Randy Butler

Jesus’ disciples are beginning to feel a bit anxious, moving into a period of fear and uncertainty. They have been with Jesus for almost three years and he is beginning to talk about his going away soon, like far away. They are getting concerned and a little confused. They are afraid he is going away for good; that they might be left like orphans. But he is also talking about coming back again after going away. Is he coming? Is he going? Which is it? So it is an anxious and confusing time for them.

We are calling this “Believing in Jesus” this morning, because that is what Jesus is asking his first disciples and us to do – to believe in God and to believe in him. And that means he is inviting us to trust in him, trust that he knows what is best and will do what is best for us – to believe in him, just like we believe and trust in those whom we love, and who we know love us. During our own time, this time of fear and uncertainty, what wonderfully reassuring words we hear right at the outset – “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”

We need to hear this because we are indeed feeling anxious and uncertain these days. We too are confused, not sure how to respond to the spread of this Coronavirus, fearful for ourselves and our loved ones, for our community, for our economy. I caught the flu in early March and I checked myself for every cough, any sign that it was moving into my chest. I was more anxious than I have ever been about getting the flu. We are wondering in Baker City, when will we open back up? Will we get back to normal? Should we close, should we open? We are having our own “coming or going” experience here. The other day we had dinner with some friends from Idaho who we hadn’t seen in awhile. They came to the house, should we shake hands or hug? Should we have dinner inside or outside? Should we even be together? We are wondering as a church, how will we go about regathering when the time comes? Should we greet each other or just wave? Offering plates or not? Communion or not? We are thinking about these things. The isolation we have experienced might even leave us, like the disciples, feeling like we are orphans. We even wonder where God is, where Jesus is in all this. Maybe he has left us to fend for ourselves.

But Jesus continues. He says he is going to his father’s house where there are many rooms, and he is going to prepare a place for them, and then come back for them so that they can be with him, where he is. Now these words have long comforted those who have lost loved ones, as well they should. To know that we and our loved ones, when our time comes, will be with Jesus in the father’s house is deeply comforting. But we want to look and read carefully here, and note a couple of things. We see that Jesus doesn’t use the word heaven to describe the place he is going to. And he isn’t necessarily talking about what happens when we die. In fact he isn’t talking about our death at all. He is talking about his death, and what is going to happen after that, after he is crucified. And I think we can say that Jesus is also referring to coming for the disciples after his crucifixion when he is risen, coming to them in his resurrection, and that Jesus is going to take them to a whole new place, we use the word place metaphorically, a whole new experience with him, as they too will begin to live a new life of resurrection. A few verses later than our text he says, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.” He is talking about coming back to them in his resurrection.

His assurance, in their fear and uncertainty, is that they will be with him, and he with them. Now they don’t really understand all this, and they have questions. Thomas says “Look, Lord we don’t know where you are going, can you just show us the way?” And Jesus answers simply “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to Father except through me. If you know me you will know my father also.” It’s like Jesus is saying, “It isn’t a place we are talking about Thomas, it is me. I am the place.” Later he will say, “Abide in me, stay with me, live with me, make your place with me.”

The great 20th century missionary Earl Stanley Jones tells of a missionary who got lost in the African jungle, nothing around him but bush and a few cleared places. He found a native hut and asked a man if he could lead him out. The native man said he could, and the missionary said, “Alright please show me the way.” The man said, “Well, start walking,” and they walked and hacked their way through the unmarked jungle for more than an hour. The missionary was getting worried and he said, “Are you sure this is the way? Where is the path? His guide turned to him and answered, “Friend in this place there is no path. I am the path.”

Jesus is saying “I am the path, your path, through the unmarked jungle of your life’s fears and uncertainty. Follow me.” Now it is an astounding claim, no doubt. An exclusive claim – “No one comes to the father except through me.” But we do best to remember Jesus’ audience here. As one early church leader pointed out, Jesus did not hurl this exclusive claim into the face of the world to taunt it, he gave it to his disciples to encourage them. While there is a time and place for a good energetic discussion about Christ among other world religious beliefs and claims, it might be best for our time and place to consider the comfort and encouragement that comes from Jesus who is our path to God. In a time like we are in, people fearful, business owners wondering if they will be able to stay open, all of us waiting to see if the virus will spread, or go underground for awhile, only to resurface in the fall. Parents wondering if and when their children will return to school. Will we return to a lockdown again? In times like this we followers of Jesus need to know the way to the eternal God, the truth about our lives and the world. We need the way, the truth and the life, and if Jesus is offering it, then maybe we ought to check it out; see if he is the way and the truth and the life for us – to make it our own, own it, live it.

Philosophers make the distinction between knowing something by description - by being told about it, and knowledge by acquaintance - by becoming familiar with it. It’s like the difference between the map of a place and the place itself. Do you know how it is when you put in a location or address into your GPS and you start to drive and you realize that the GPS map programmers missed a few things (they are getting better about this), but you find out, as you drive, that they have missed some updates like the fact that the road on the map is now closed. There is a difference between seeing a place on the map and hitting the road to go there. Jesus is inviting us to hit the road with him, to take the journey with him as the way and the truth and the life, to see for ourselves if he can really get us there.

As we come to know God through Jesus we are invited into a relationship of freedom and boldness in which we can do great things and ask great things. Jesus promises that we will do greater works than he does. He must mean this in a quantitative way, not a qualitative way. There is certainly a way in which we are not going to do greater things than Jesus. But Jesus never went beyond Palestine. In fact he told his first disciples to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. These are the works that are greater than what he could accomplish in his human lifetime. But we are encouraged to such bold prayer. “If you ask anything in my name I will do it,” says Jesus. This is a challenging promise, and at the very least invites us to bold and unrestrained prayer, to expect great things from God and attempt great things for God, as William Carey once said. I believe our church is in a position to do just that in the years ahead as we cling to Jesus Christ, during the tough times, when we can’t be together in worship, and in the better times to come, following him, Jesus who is the way the truth and the life. Amen.

John 10:1-10, May 3, 2020, Sermon

 “The Christ Gate” 

Pastor Randy Butler

We are reading from a bible passage familiar to many, because of its references to shepherds. And as we get started in exploring it I want to clarify something so that we focus our time this morning. Jesus is often portrayed as a loving shepherd, as he should be. The Bible often gives us the image of God as a shepherd. The most beloved of Psalms, the 23rd, says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” And Jesus himself says, “I am the good shepherd,” in the passage following ours in John 10. So that is a rich and powerful image of God for us to explore. But not this morning. Because in the text we will read Jesus doesn’t even say, “I am the good shepherd.” Instead he says, “I am the gate for the sheep.” In fact he says, “I am the gate” twice in verses 7-10. And that is where we will focus this morning – on those words, “I am the gate.” 

Now this passage in chapter 10 of course follows chapter 9, and we recall that the Bible did not originally have chapter and verse notations. So in what precedes our text this morning John tells of the healing of the man born blind, and the religious leaders’ inability to see what was really taking place. They were blinded by their own prejudices and religious rules and could not see God’s grace and love in Jesus’ healing of this man. So Jesus’ interaction with them, these supposed shepherds of Israel, is very much on Jesus’ mind as John records what he says next. 

John 10:1-10 (NRSV)
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. 
Just as the Bible describes God and Jesus as shepherds, so it also describes spiritual leaders as shepherds. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel was particularly fond of this image in his denunciation of the leaders of Israel: “Ah you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool…but you do not feed the sheep.” Ezekiel goes on at length in his prophetic criticism of those who are supposed to be the leaders, the shepherds of the people. 

Perhaps Jesus has Ezekiel in mind as he speaks, “…anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” By contrast says Jesus, “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.” Jesus goes on to draw a contrast between two kinds of shepherd leaders – those who plunder the sheep and those who take care of the sheep as they are meant to be cared for. The rightful shepherd enters by the gate, and by that Jesus means himself, the sheep hear his voice or her voice, the voice that speaks the way of Jesus. 

We begin to think of our own day and the spiritual leaders of our day, church leaders of our time. There are those who speak the way of Jesus and invite us to enter through the Christ gate, and on the one hand there are those who find detours, other ways; ways around the Christ gate, the Jesus gate. And it really couldn’t be any clearer. Jesus says, “I am the gate for the sheep, I am the gate.” 

Pastors and teachers and spiritual leaders can miss this, this focus on Christ. Partly because of the pluralism of our day, we avoid the exclusive claims of Jesus. We seek other ways, easier ways than the often demanding ways of Jesus. He does after all say in Matthew’s gospel, “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.” And so some find Jesus’ words somewhat exclusive. “I am the gate for the sheep.” Later in John’s gospel Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” What does this mean for us today? 

I remember leading a new-members class for the church in Seattle where I was the pastor, the shepherd. And a woman in the group said, “You know I really don’t about this “I am the way, the truth and life thing – when Jesus says, ‘No one comes to the father except through me,” Does that have to be true for everyone everywhere. Do I have to believe that to become a member of this church?” I had to think for a minute and as I did someone else in the group said, “Well maybe we can’t be sure about everyone else. And maybe the important question is “Is Jesus the way and the truth and the life for me? Maybe we have to answer that question before we worry about anyone else.” I remember breathing a sigh of relief, and thinking, “That was a good answer.” And it is. Those with different perspectives on this can argue the point on theological or religious grounds, and there is a place for that. But before we go deciding for the rest of the world, perhaps is it best to settle this for ourselves, whether he is the gate to life with God for us. We should perhaps speak from our experience, not just our theological position. 

Jesus says in the last couple of verses of our text this morning, “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come and go and find pasture…I came that you might have life and life abundantly.” If you will allow I would like to share how Jesus has been a gateway to God for me. 

He says first, “whoever enters by me will be saved.” What does that mean, to be saved? Most of us would probably say that Jesus saves us from our sins, or that Jesus saves us so that we can go to heaven and be with him forever, or something along that line. And that is right, but only partly right. I’ve heard it put this way: what if salvation is less about our getting into heaven than about getting heaven into us. What if salvation is not just concerned about our future but has to do with the present? 

When I was twenty one years old I had just finished two years of college at the University of Colorado. I was failing school, I was skiing and doing all kinds of other things that contributed to this. And I was a mess spiritually and emotionally. So I came back to Sacramento to work as a construction laborer and at the advice of a family friend I started going to a college age group gathering at a Presbyterian Church. I don’t have time to tell you the whole story but I can tell you that God saved me through that group of people. And the pieces of my life started coming back together. I was saved. It was very real and concrete. That was over forty years ago, but I can honestly say that my life would not be near what it is today if I hadn’t had that experience. 

Jesus says, “Whoever enters by me will come in and go out and find pasture.” Well, anyone who lives in Baker County understands what that means. Jesus is talking about freedom and room to roam. He is talking about the spacious life of the fields and meadows and pastures we have all around us. He is talking about having that freedom within us, wherever we live. We can find freedom of spirit with Jesus. He can settle us, liberate us so that we aren’t slaves to our compulsions and sometimes disordered needs. 

I am discovering that I don’t always have to be right anymore. I had a conversation with my neighbor in Spokane and it got somewhat heated as we discussed the politics of our day. As we parted I said, “Well let’s do this again sometime.” He said, “Sure, I’ll set your right. And I thought to myself, “Well, I am going to read up a little more on these things so that I am better prepared to argue my points next time.” But after awhile I thought, I don’t need to do that. I have better ways to spend my time and energy. Maybe he is right, maybe I am right but it doesn’t matter that much anymore. Freedom. We walk through Jesus into God but as we do we discover the freedom that comes as we walk with him. 

And Jesus says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He of course means more than a life of riches. He means the fullness and abundance of his Holy Spirit living within us. He means the abundance of fellowship we enjoy with other followers of his way, others who have passed through this gate. 

That group of college age people in Sacramento met in an old white house on the property of the Presbyterian Church. And when I walked over the threshold of that old white house I had found my people, I had walked through that doorway into a new life. 

Peace with God, spiritual freedom, and new life giving relationships. From my earliest days I remember every summer heading up to spend a couple of weeks at a cabin owned by my grandmother and extended family, an old cabin built in 1904 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains situated near a beautiful meadow with an association of about twenty five other cabins. It is called the Cedars, and to get there you take a turn-off at Soda Springs near Donner Summit, and drive about eight miles in on a dirt road. At the end of the road there was a gate, a simple gate of three old cedar posts, and on the top a sign that read simply The Cedars. And after the long drive and the dusty dirt road when I saw that gate I knew we were there, and as we passed through that gate to our cabin I knew what lay ahead – two glorious weeks of hiking, fishing, swimming and just laying around. Somehow it was like salvation, and freedom and abundance waited for me on the other side of that gate, if I would just go through. 

My friends Jesus says he is the gate to a life of salvation, freedom and abundance with God. Let’s walk through that gate together.