Living Words The Rev'd William Klock

A Sermon for Whitsunday
Acts 2:1-11
by William Klock


“Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?  How about now…now are we there yet?”  As you read the Gospels the disciples’ questions about the kingdom of God feel a bit like that.  All Jesus needed was one of them kicking the back of his seat on the way to Jerusalem.  “When will the kingdom come?  How long?  Are we there yet?  Is it almost time, Jesus?”  But it wasn’t just the disciples.  It was First Century Judaism.  Pretty much everyone was on the edge of their seat with anticipation for the kingdom.  Everyone except the Sadducees, because of course, they were sitting on the top of the heap, already in control of everything.  They’d already arrived and weren’t particularly interested in anything that might upset the status quo.  But even then, they knew it was the Romans who were really calling the shots, so I suspect even the Sadducees were thinking “Are we there yet?”  They just didn’t say it out loud.  Everyone knew it was time.  It had to be.  And that sense was even stronger for the disciples, because they knew Jesus was the Messiah—the one come to usher in God’s kingdom and to set the world to rights.  So if the Messiah had come—well—the kingdom had to be really close.



And so Luke, as he opens the book of Acts with the Ascension of Jesus, he tells us of Jesus’ promise to his friends: “Don’t go back to Galilee.  Stay in Jerusalem.  As John baptised you with water, in a few days I will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.”  But they hadn’t asked Jesus about the Holy Spirit.  They wanted to know when the kingdom was coming, because it had to be soon.  And so even as Jesus was leading them up the Mount of Olives and about to ascend to his throne, they were pestering him, “Is this the time?  Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”  And, remember, in answer to their question Jesus ascended, up on the clouds, into heaven, to take up his throne, to rule and to reign.



And as he did that, he commissioned his disciples to do something that I don’t think they expected.  He commissioned them to be his royal heralds, to go out and to proclaim this good news to Jerusalem, to Judea, even to Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.  Now, this wasn’t the first time Jesus had sent his disciples out to proclaim the kingdom, but when he’d sent them out before, it was to a people who were also asking those “Are we there yet?” questions.  The disciples had gone out and told the people that in Jesus the Messiah had come and that the kingdom was in sight.  But now Jesus is sending them out to proclaim that in his resurrection and ascension the kingdom has come and that was no small task.  Because even though the disciples had seen their risen Lord and even though they saw him ascend to his throne, this wasn’t how anyone expected the kingdom to arrive.  They thought everyone would be resurrected all at once.  They though the Messiah would put down the enemies of God’s people and cast down their empires.  They expected a king like David who would punish evil, wipe away all the problems, and make everything as it should be.  Instead, the wrong people were still in control, evil people still did evil things, so much was still wrong with the world—and yet Jesus had inaugurated something, he really had risen from the dead, and they’d seen him ascend to his throne with their own eyes, so they knew he was truly Lord and that the kingdom had come.  The Lord’s plan was to work through them, to spread the good news and to tell the world that Jesus is Lord, and to grow the kingdom.  That wasn’t what anyone expected, but they should have, because that’s how the Lord had been working in the world ever since he called Abraham out of the land of Ur and set him apart from everyone else, and made him and his family a witness to the world—that one day, through this

A Sermon for Ascension Sunday
1 St. Peter 4:7-11 & St. John 15:25-16:4
by William Klock


Today is that Sunday in the Church Year that has us sitting with the disciples as they wait for the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise of God’s Spirit.  It’s a little bit like the scene of them on Easter Day.  Think of Mary, confused and distressed, running to tell Peter and John about the empty tomb and finding them, hunkered down in a dark house with the doors and shutters locked tight.  Both times, the disciples sat in a house in Jerusalem waiting.  On Easter Day, they were waiting out of fear.  Jesus had been executed and, if they weren’t careful, they’d probably be executed too.  They were waiting for the Passover festival to end, for the crowds to start leaving the city, so that maybe they could just blend into the crowds streaming out through the gates and down the roads, so they could make their way back to Galilee and hopefully just go back to their old lives and forget—and everyone else forget—that they’d been followers of Jesus.  And so they waited.  In the dark.  Fearful.  Barely talking in whispers.



Today the disciples are, again, waiting in Jerusalem.  But today is different.  Late on Easter Day Jesus had appeared in that locked room, risen, and not just alive like, say, Lazarus was alive again after he came out of his tomb.  Jesus wasn’t just alive.  He’d been made new.  The same Jesus they knew, even bearing the marks of his crucifixion, and yet different.  This new Jesus, resurrected from the dead, was as at home in heaven as he was on earth and as at home on earth as he was in heaven.  This Jesus embodied their hope of an Israel, of a whole human race, set to rights.  In him they were confronted with the birth of God’s new creation.  And everything the Prophets had said and everything Jesus had said about God setting the world to rights now made sense—at first, suddenly, it made sense at a gut level, but then as this risen Jesus walked them through the scriptures—probably the same scriptures he’d walked them through umpteen times before—gradually it all finally started to make sense in their heads, too.  Jesus’ resurrection changed everything.  But most of all, they saw the hopes of generation after generation after generation of Jews for a world set to rights, they saw that hope fulfilled in Jesus, and in that they saw the glory of God like no one had seen the glory of God since—well maybe since the Exodus.



And so, for forty days, Jesus met with his disciples and with hundreds of others, and they studied the scriptures and, I expect, they worshiped and glorified the God of Israel who had done this amazing thing and, who, right before their eyes, was fulfilling his promises.  And then he led them out to the Mount Olives and ascended into the clouds.  Jesus had prepared them for this.  He’d said before that eventually he would be leaving them.  These passages have been our Gospels for the last three weeks.  Remember John 16: “In a little while you won’t see, but a little while after that you will see me, because I’m going to the Father.”  Or two Sundays ago, “I’m going to the one who sent me and it’s important that I do, so that I can send the one who will come along side you on my behalf, the Helper.”  And last Sunday, “I’m leaving the world and going to the Father.  In the world you will have tribulation, but I have overcome the world.”  That last bit from John 16:33 surely underscored for them the lordship of Jesus.  Now it was time for him to take his throne in the heavenlies.



And so Jesus commissioned them to take this gospel, this good news, back to Jerusalem and to all of Judea, and eventually even to the Samaritans and then to the nations.  And as he commissioned them he rose on the clouds to his throne.  Jesus didn’t have to do it that way.  It’s not like heaven is literally up there somewhere.  You can’t get

At That Time
Daniel 12:1-13
by William Klock


Daniel 12 begins with the words, “At that time”, which means we need to remind ourselves what time Daniel’s vision was talking about.  Remember that these last three chapters of the book are one long vision.  It began with Daniel lamenting what he could see.  Pagan kings, instead of being judged for their wickedness, were getting strong and stronger.  And his own people, an awful lot of them, seemed apathetic about the end of the exile.  They’d made lives for themselves in Babylon and simply weren’t interested in returning to Jerusalem.  And those who did return were facing opposition at every turn as they worked to rebuild the city and the temple.  Daniel was losing hope.  And so an angel appeared and in the first part of the vision the angel explained that there was more to things than what Daniel could see.  Unseen forces fought a battle in the heavenlies that somehow corresponded to events on earth.  In fact, Daniel was told, the angel Michael fought for the people of God.  Even if he couldn’t see any of it, Daniel had reason to hope.



And then, in Chapter 11, the angel gave Daniel of vision of things to come, as if to show how God is sovereign even in the wars and intrigues of pagan kings.  First the Persian kings and then the Greeks, as they squabbled and fought over the land of Judah.  That was most of Chapter 11.  Things would get worse before they would get better, but here was a chance to hope—to put into practise that truth that sometimes there’s more going on than what we can see.  Even in the intrigue, the subterfuge, the assassination of those Greek kings of Egypt and Syria, even in all that, the God of Israel remained sovereign.  Even as the worst of them came to power.  And that was the heart of Chapter 11: this evil king who wanted to convert the Jews into pagan Greeks. Antiochus made it illegal to live by God’s law, he desecrated the Lord’s altar, and he forbade the daily offerings made in the temple.  1 and 2 Maccabees tell us how he tried to force Jewish men to eat pork, torturing them and even killing them when they refused and how women who circumcised their sons were thrown off the city walls along with their children.  To remain faithful to the Lord in those days came at a great cost.  Many even paid with their lives.  Meanwhile, a significant segment of the Jewish people capitulated, finding ways to compromise or abandoning their faith altogether.  The faithful died and the unfaithful lived.  It wasn’t supposed to be like that.  Daniel was written for these people—to exhort them, to give them hope, and to assure them that the Lord remained sovereign and would vindicate them in the end.



And that’s where Daniel’s vision gets difficult.  Up to the events of about 167BC the vision maps right onto history, but then at 11:40 the angel says, “At the time of the end…”  As I said last week, the natural way to read this is as a continuation of the events that took place under Antiochus Epiphanes.  Verses 40-45 describes another war between Egypt and Syria.  They describe tens of thousands falling, but also being delivered out of his hand.  The king conquers Egypt, Libya, and Cush.  There’s a vague description of him going off to another war—or something—and pitching his tent between Mount Zion and the sea, and then—suddenly—he comes to his end.



The vision changes in these verses.  What was very specific suddenly becomes vague.  The language becomes more grandiose.  And what’s described here doesn’t map onto historical events as easily as the earlier parts of the vision do.  So some people think with those words “at the time of the end”, the vision is jumping to some time in the future and that the king is no longer Antiochus Epiphanes, but a future antichrist.  But as I said last week, the vision itself doesn’t suggest at all that the timeframe has changed and to inte

“Rhabarberbarbara”
Daniel 11:2-45
by William Klock


On Wednesday a friend at the pool stopped me and asked if I’d watch a video on her phone and tell her what it was about.  It was in German and she didn’t understand.  So she hit “play” and two men started singing and I laughed.  I said, “It’s ‘Rhabarberbarbara’ and they’ve set it to music.  “Rhabarberbarbara” is a German tongue twister poem.  Imagine “She sell seashells down by the seashore”, but it’s all ba…ba…ba sounds, and with each stanza the tongue twisting part gets longer.  Barabara opens a bar to sell her rhubarb cake: Barbaras rhabarberbar”.  But pretty soon bald, bearded barbarians in need of a barber show up.  It’s a funny poem and it’s hard to say, but these two guys set it to music and sang the whole thing perfectly.  My friend said she liked how catchy it was, but had no idea what it meant.  I laughed, because this is how the Greeks came up with the word “barbarian” for foreigners.  Their languages just sounded like “Bar…bar…bar”.  If you don’t know the language, your ear hears the repetitive sounds, but you have no idea what any of it means.  Imagine hearing “She sells seashells down by the sea shore” if you didn’t speak English.  It’s just rhyming repetitive gibberish.



As I was walking away I started thinking how this is a metaphor for how a lot of people might hear Daniel 11, which is what we come to today.  It’s the longest chapter in the book and most of it describes a long conflict between the King of the North and the King of the South.  The actual kings are never named.  The places involved aren’t named.  It goes on and on, back and forth between north and south.  In this case the language is history, not German, but if you don’t know the language it’s not that different than my friend listening to that German tongue twister that’s all bar…bar…bar.  It’s just repetitive gibberish.



But if you know the history, Chapter 11 describes the historical events that were whirling around Judah from the time of Daniel in the Sixth Century up to the 160s BC.  If you know the history a story emerges from the Rhubarberbarbara.  That said, knowing all the historical details isn’t the important thing you need to take away.  I’ll give you the big picture and skip the nitty-gritty.  If you want to know all the details, the actual historical events are well documented and you can look them up in a history book or Wikipedia.  If you’ve got an ESV Study Bible, it’s all there with nifty maps and genealogies and historical outlines.



But before we get into that, remember the lesson from Chapter 10.  That was the first part of this vision.  The lesson from that first part is that there’s more going on than what we can see.  Daniel was frustrated and discouraged by earthly circumstances and—as we’ll see—things weren’t going to get any better.  It’s easy to lose hope.  But the angel explained to him that the battles he saw being fought by kings on earth corresponded to battles being fought in the heavenlies.  The point of knowing this isn’t to burden us with some new responsibility—as if there’s something we can do to win those battles in the heavenlies.  Just the opposite.  Those battles in the heavenlies are not our responsibility.  Apart maybe from praying, there’s nothing we can do to assist the angels.  God has given us things to do and battles to wage in our sphere and he and his heavenly forces will do battle in their sphere.  And the point is that we should find hope in that.  The battle here may feel hopeless.  But knowing that God fights a battle in the heavenlies that somehow corresponds to the one we fight here and that the outcome in the heavenlies corresponds to the outcome here—that should inspire hope to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight the good fight.



Knowing that, the vision now continues wit

We Have Not Obeyed His Voice
Daniel 9:1-27
by William Klock


Last week we looked at the resurrection story in John 20 as it continued into the evening that first Easter Sunday—as Jesus appeared to his disciples while they were hiding, as he breathed new life into them through the Holy Spirit, and as he commissioned them with those words, “Even as the Father sent me, I am sending you.”  With those actions, with those words, with that little group of disciples hiding in Jerusalem Jesus began the renewal of Israel.  That was the beginning of a new people called to be light in the darkness and sent out to boldly proclaim the good news and the coming of God’s kingdom.  At its core it was the same mission that the people of God had had since Abraham: to be light in the darkness, to make the one, true God known to the nations.  But now, recentred in Jesus, this people would go out—as I said—as prophets, priests, and kings.  As prophets, calling first Judah, then the nations to repentance.  As priests, mediating, proclaiming the good news about Jesus who has died, who has risen, and who is now the world’s true Lord—it’s King.  And as kings, as we make real Jesus’ kingdom in practical ways in the world, anticipating that day when we will reign with him.



And the New Testament tells us how those disciples went out into the world as prophets, priests, and kings.  We read of their faithfulness.  We read how they were opposed and persecuted and even killed.  And yet we also see the seeds of what would come as little churches popped up all over the Roman Empire—even right under the nose of Caesar himself in Rome.  And history shows us how the gospel continued to conquer and transform the world, until even mighty Caesar submitted himself and his empire to Jesus.  The gospel did its work.  The old gods were defeated and their temples torn down—even turned into churches.  The perverted sexual ethics of the Greeks and Romans faded away.  The brutal gladiatorial games were outlawed.  Slavery became a thing of the past.  Women and children came to be valued and abortion and infanticide were done away with.  The gospel taught the world about grace and mercy.  It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I think most of us really have very little grasp just how much the power of the gospel transformed Western Civilisation for the better and in ways that displayed the life of the Spirit, that honoured Jesus, and that glorified God.



But what happened to all that?  Christendom has fallen.  The world around us is retreating back into darkness.  Anti-gospel philosophies are taking over.  Sexual immorality has become rampant in just a few short decades.  We’re back to murdering our children before they’re born.  The church has fallen out of favour.  Christians are mocked.  And while the gospel is still active, gone are those days when it captured whole peoples and radically transformed their societies.  Instead, it’s become a regular thing to hear of prominent Christians apostatising.  Whole churches forsake the gospel.  Even our covenant children are turning away in troubling numbers.



Again, what happened?  Could it be that we can learn something from Israel’s story of discipline and exile?  That’s what got me thinking about preaching through the book of Daniel.  The church today in the West seems to be in a sort of exile and Daniel offers us timely wisdom—showing us how to be faithful in an alien land and how to be light in a darkness that does its best to snuff us out.  And I think a part of that wisdom that Daniel offers also addresses the question of “Why?”  Why did this happen?  If anything is clear in Daniel, it is that God is sovereign and that even the raging beasts of empire ultimately serve his purposes.  And so as we find ourselves in exile, the story of Israel’s exile helps to answer why—if we have the humility to see it.  And, I think, Daniel 9 exhorts us

Prophets and Priests
1 St. John 5:4-12 & St. John 20:19-23
by William Klock


Jesus’ disciples were afraid.  They were huddled together in the dark, doors locked, talking—it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there was some arguing going on—all in quiet whispers lest the authorities find them and crucify them just like they’d crucified Jesus.  That’s what St. John writes in his Gospel.



On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…

 

This was the evening of that first Easter Sunday when Mary went to the tomb at dawn and found it empty.  She ran as fast as she could through the empty streets of Jerusalem to find Peter and John.  She beat on their door and when the door was opened the frantic words spilled out with her sobs, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb and I don’t know where they’ve laid him!”  So Peter and John ran and they saw for themselves the empty tomb with the linens used to wrap Jesus’ body lying there undisturbed.  It made no sense.  There was nothing they could do about it.  And the authorities were probably looking for them now that the sabbath was over, so they went back to their hiding place.



But, John says, Mary stayed behind at the tomb, weeping—ugly crying—sobbing her heart out.  And that’s when two angels appeared to her, sitting right where Jesus body had been laid…sitting right there with the linen wrappings and they asked, “Why are you weeping?”  And, still holding her bottle of oil in one hand and a box with those precious spices in the other, Mary sobbed out her story to them.  “They’ve taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.”  The oil and spices were useless unless she could find where he was, but still she held on to them.  But then, as John tells the story, another man approaches to ask, again, why she’s crying and who she’s looking for.  Mary thought he was the gardener and she blubbered it out all over again, “Sir, if it was you, tell me where you’ve laid him.”  And then the man simply spoke her name, “Mary,” and she knew him.  It was Jesus.  And now she was crying for joy, because he was alive.  It didn’t make any sense, but he was alive and she gasped out, “Rabbi!”  And she jumped up to hug him, but instead he said, “No.  Now is not the time to cling to me.  You’ve got to go to my brothers—to the disciples—and tell them the good news.”  And so she ran—again!—to the house where they were hiding to tell them, “I have seen the Lord!”



But what did it mean?  John writes that when he saw the empty tomb and the linens lying there he believed.  But believed what?  Because he says immediately after that the disciples did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.  And so even though John believed and even with Mary’s report that she had seen Jesus, there they sat, hunkered down behind shuttered windows and a locked door, talking in whispers.  There was no cooking fire lest the smoke give them away.  Maybe they had a small oil lamp lit so they could just see each other.  John tells his story so that it echoes the book of Genesis and the scene he give us of that evening of the first Easter day echoes Genesis: “Darkness was over the face of the deep.”



Brothers and Sisters, is that not a picture of too much of the Church today.  Jesus is risen.  We even proclaim it with joy on Easter, we’re reminded that his resurrection has changed everything, but we sit hunkered down at home afraid to go out and proclaim it?  We hide our light under a basket.

 

And then John writes that suddenly,



Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

 

John wrote about the Incarnation back in his prologue saying that in Jesus the light had come into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it.  That was an echo of Ge