Deuteronomy 32:10-14

I need a volunteer to help us think about the sermon today. We are looking at four animals in the Bible to help us think about what God offers us through new life in Christ. As Easter approaches, I want to raise the question, what does it matter? And today we are going to answer that with some help from the eagle.

The eagle was involved in the stories of J R R Tolkien. In both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, the eagles enter the battles. The eagle is famous for its ability to see. They tell us the eagle can see a mouse from a mile high. The vision is like binoculars, so the eye of the eagle is good for both close up work and distances up to two miles, far greater than human vision.

 This morning we are going to look at God’s gift of wisdom to those who find Christ. Sadly, many people remained trapped, not really understanding themselves and not able to rightly divide the word of truth when it comes to the world. Tragically, many Christians do not claim the wisdom and freedom that can come with knowing Jesus Christ. So today, our spiritual exercise to prepare for Easter will be to learn about the eye.

 The eagle is used a number of times in Scripture. The Deuteronomy passage speaks of its protection and also that it sees the situation truly. Because of its seeing ability, John pictures it in Revelation 4 as one of 4 Living Creatures that worship God continuously. The eagle represents wisdom, one of the four holy attributes.

 And that is what we want to look at this morning. Jesus says in John 8, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” But many people do not experience the freedom that Christ intends because we keep ourselves from the truth.

 We keep ourselves from the truth about ourselves. There is a profile that we use for all staff members in the hiring process and I wish you all could take this profile. It is called the Hartman profile and it measures how well you accept what you feel about yourself.

 The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And of course, we are ashamed of that. So we try to hide from our own eyes those pieces of our lives which don’t please us. The process of hiding sets up stress. One part of you knows the truth about you and another part is trying to cover it up. And the Hartman Profile cannot tell you what you are hiding, but it can measure with sensitivity whether you are hiding something from yourself and how much you are hiding. And I will add that this Profile has been validated in several studies and Robert Hartman was nominated for a Nobel Prize for this work.

 The gift of Easter is to make the truth about you freeing instead of condemning. Because Jesus has accepted the guilty sentence for us all and accepted our punishment through his death, that means that we can face the truth about ourselves without condemnation.

 Represented in this room are all the seven deadly sins. And each of us has some truth in our life related to one of these sins. Pride, gluttony, lust, anger, envy, greed, sloth. There is no question but that some pages of your life have been touched by one or more of these sins. The question is whether you have claimed the forgiving power of God so that you can accept the truth about yourself and live in freedom or whether you are still bound. The 12 step process for dealing with addiction is merely a way to help you face the truth about yourself and live. Adding the message of forgiveness gives joy to the truth.

 Without accepting the truth about yourself, we act addicted. We look for truth that we can accept about ourselves. For example, I may have my problems, but at least I never was touched by sloth. I can’t understand how anyone can be lazy and I sure never did one single thing with that deadly sin.

 This culture is quite negative about sloth and it is probably true that the US has less sloth than some other places. But the truth that shackles and binds you unless you feel forgiven, is the truth about the deadly sins and temptations that are part of your personal history. And God comes with gracious wisdom and says, Face the truth about yourself now that you are forgiven and the truth will set you free.

 And the second area of truth is to understand what is happening in the world. Paul says to Timothy, [2 Tim 2:15] Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” If you accept Jesus risen and bringing a new kingdom of justice and peace, then it frees you to name the evils under which we suffer now. But many Christians are uncertain as to whether there is a new kingdom and so we are fearful to criticize what we have.

 I have been reading a book by Paolo Freire on education. He describes the feeling that people have when they first are introduced to a new way of looking at the world. They are afraid. If they leave the old, bad way of looking at life, maybe their whole world will collapse instead of getting something better.

 I have preached many times about God’s character of justice and mercy combined. I was taught this in 1978 by a missionary who had returned from Africa and was working with students. I suddenly realized that Tom was saying that the Bible was not a set of rules, it was developing a relationship with God that reflected God’s character and then going on to look at the world from the view of justice and mercy. I was in a parking lot in Syracuse, New York. I had already dropped a lot of the rules from my childhood religion. I watched TV, bought some stuff on Sunday, and had accepted other freedoms. But now Tom was offering this view of God with just these two principles. And I felt that if I accepted it, I might lose what I had and not get the promise of the new.

 I felt scared. I remembering asking him, You mean that all issues of life are a matter of applying God’s character. Yes. And without rules, how will we know if we’re right? The Wesleyan Quadrilateral – the examples of scripture, the use of our minds, the urging of the Holy Spirit, and the tradition of the church.

 We are living in a time when Christian leaders are afraid to call the war in Iraq evil because they are not committed enough to the Kingdom of heaven. And we use words to sanitize discussions instead of allowing moral terms. We are not privatizing Social Security, we are facing a war on Social Security so that Mr. Bush can use the money collected to pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes. And when AARP decided to complain, Mr. Bush’s friends are calling the AARP enemies of the military and friends of gay marriage.

 It feels even wrong to say these things because we are so conditioned by the powers of the present age. But God through Christ is building this new world where seniors are given back youth. Psalm 103 says that your youth will be restored like the eagle’s when they molt and start a new season. In this in between time, we need to apply the standards of heaven to the affairs of earth. With the wisdom of the eagle, we must apply justice and mercy to the deeds of our day.

 And the truth is freeing. Freeing to think. And our work now can make life on earth more like the God we serve. And that brings more freedom and dignity to others, which is also the will of God through Christ.

 So let us prepare for Easter by accepting new wisdom. Look at yourself with the freedom that Christ offers and look at our world from the light of the kingdom. Fly with the eagles. Amen.