[If there is a Lions Club still functioning in your community, find out if any member of your church is a member. Then either use this moment as an interactive to talk about their club, and rituals, or you tell the story and use them to back you up so that you make sure you’re getting the story right.]
So the interview might go like this . . . . or turn this into a narrative . . . or make it a personal story.
How many here belong to or know someone who belongs to a local Lion’s Club . . . . .
Do you have father–daughter dinners at your local club? How many of you present have ever been to a Lions Club event?
One of the most interesting rituals of Lion’s meetings occurs when all of the members, meaning all the grown men present, shout out the Lions Club chant. Can you do that here for us this morning?
Roooooar Lions! Rooooooar Lions! Rooooooar Lions!
Bite me! Bite em! Bite em!
All you kids present, did you notice that it is adults who are sounding like kids? Sometimes, adults have fun acting like children.
But wait a minute. Would you explain the “biting” part? Please?
[Again, this is a place where your interactive can have the member explain the ritual. But if you have no one present, you can do it yourself.]
So “biting” is really an invitation to collect an offering. The ushers are called “tailtwisters,” and their job is to come around to each table and take a “bite” out of your wallet. And when they “bite” hard, your job is to pony up more money. At one point the Lions Clubs were one of the premier humanitarian organizations in the world. The money went to important and worthy causes.
[This is where you can thank your Lions Club member and ask the congregation to thank them as well as they go back to their seat.]
In order to do all of the great missions they did, the Lions would need to collect money regularly and often. So, you had to call upon a person’s “inner lion” to pinch that pocketbook for all it was worth. It took courage to “twist the tail of the lion.” It took courage to allow your own tail to be twisted! It took courage to give abundantly. But everyone did it! That was part of the community spirit.
But that kind of “lion” spirit permeated more than a pocketbook or wallet. The Lions Club and other charity organizations today are filled with men and women of character, men and women of kindness, compassion, and giving in other ways than money. They have the courage to speak out against wrongs. They have strength to lift each other up. They are fiercely loyal, and yet regally kind. They aren’t perfect people. But they are dedicated Lions!
We as followers of Jesus also have the heart of a lion, a heart like the great Lion of Judah! In the scriptures, that roaring wind-like voice of Pentecost is most often described as the great roar of a lion!
“The lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8)
“This is what the LORD says to me: "As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey—and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor-- so the LORD Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights.”” (Isaiah 31:4)
“They will follow the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will return trembling from the west.” (Hosea 11:10)
“Then he cried out in a loud voice like the roar of a lion. And when he cried out, the seven thunders sounded their voices.” (Revelation 10:3)
C.S. Lewis had it brilliantly right when he depicted God as Aslan the Lion in the Chronicles of Narnia. God is the brave, courageous, protective, regal, dignified, powerful ruler of field and forest, earth and heavens. But those who are God’s people also have a lion’s share of that kind of courage and strength.
When the patriarch Jacob names his sons, he names Judah in particular a “lion’s whelp.” Dan and Gad receive lion-like references as well. The word used for Judah is “gur aryeh” (whelp of a lion), which means a cub. But not just any cub. Most often it means a disdained one or the cub of a beast of prey, “still abiding in the lair.”* This is an oft-overlooked reference. For we do not gather our courage on our own, but we inherit our lion-heartedness from God as we abide in God and God abides in us. In that state of abidance, we learn how to be strong but merciful, courageous but loving, victorious but forgiving, prophetic but patient. It is in our image as children of our God that we bear the mark of the “lion.”
In a sense, you could say, people of God have a lion tattoo engraved upon our hearts. And this identity infuses us with courage, with stamina, with strength, with prophetic witness and voice for our ministry, and our mission. We are the people of the Son of the Lion. For Jesus IS the true Lion of Judah!
The Hebrew scriptures trace the “line of the lion” through the ancient fathers through the line of David and up through the Messiah, Jesus. King David had the heart of a lion (Samuel 17:10). Samson had the strength of a lion and somewhat of a wild spirit too. In fact, you could say, Moses had the temper of a lion, the prophets had the voice of the Lion, and Jesus the authority and kingship of His Lion-voiced Father, the roaring Source of all Authority and Majesty.
“Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.”(Revelation 5:5)
The power and authority of the Lord fills us with leonine strength, courage, and perseverance, as well as lamb-like meekness and humility, for Jesus is both the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The Lion of Judah ramps us up with a unique and dignified identity, even when we are disdained and dispersed. The promise of God, the forgiveness of God, the hope of God’s salvation lies in knowing who we are. We are members of the Lion’s pride. That is our identity, tattooed upon our hearts.
“Behold, the people rise like a lioness…” (Numbers 23:24)
The promise of God is that the power of God will always prevail over evil, always prevail over doubt, always prevail in a world that would try to extinguish God’s beauty, goodness, and truth. Micah speaks of the remnant of Jacob this way: ”like a lion among the beasts of the forests, like a young lion among flocks of sheep” (5:8). Judah’s blessing is an identity that will mark within us a potential, perhaps not yet realized in the young whelp, still learning from the Father, still abiding in the Son. The promise of God for strength and victory within the world lies strong and growing in God’s people:
“He crouches, he lies down like a lion; like a lioness, who dares to rouse him? Blessed are those who bless you and cursed are those who curse you!” (Genesis 49:9, Jacob’s blessing of Judah).
Even the Mishnah encourages us to be brave as a lion in order to “do divine will” (Avot 5:20). We rely upon the strength of Jesus to guide us through the most difficult times in our lives, even our most difficult times of doubt. For we are His whelps. We abide in Him, and He in us. And the Lion in Him will see us through.
The scriptures speak a lot about God’s forgiveness. Jesus shows us the power of forgiveness and mercy in His ministry and in His authority to heal and to include. Yet sometimes, we miss Jesus’ message of that power of forgiveness when it comes to forgiving ourselves.
When Jesus encounters people and heals them, as we see Him beginning His ministry in our scriptures today, we see Him not only healing people from outside forces or even healing them from birth defects, but often we see Him specifically granting them relief from “sin.” From their own sins. “Your sins are forgiven,” Jesus says often. It’s clear that God is healing them and is forgiving them, but Jesus recognizes a larger and more difficult issue in some of the people He encounters –their inability to forgive themselves.
Most of the people Jesus encounters are stuck in a place in which they cannot forgive themselves. Some of them, we might say, no doubt have done nothing that deserves forgiveness. Some of them, like Zacchaeus, obviously have. But the issue for Jesus in His healing is not just to invoke the grace of God upon them. Even the rabbis do that in their Temple rituals. No, Jesus does something more. Jesus reveals to people their true identity as people of God. Jesus reveals to people the “lion tattoo” of God’s image engraved upon their hearts. He reveals the strength they don’t know they have, the resilience they forgot they had, the beautiful image they are afraid to remember they have. Jesus relieves in people the need for self-flagellation, harboring of guilt and shame, the stuckness that keeps us muddling in doubt instead of rising in spirit like the lion who rises up. Jesus unbinds our hearts to reveal our true nature.
If I were to hold up a mirror right now in this congregation, I guarantee you that when you look at yourselves, some of you do not see you as God sees you! I guarantee that some of you will look into that mirror, and instead of seeing the courageous, strong, beautiful, wild and free lion’s whelp that God created you to be, you see instead your faults, your mistakes, your pain, your guilt, your shame, your past, your failures, your imperfections.
Take a moment and think about that. What do you see in yourself? What do you truly see, when you look at yourself and your life in the Divine Mirror?
Let’s take a moment and look at your life. What do you most see about yourself? I guarantee you, most of you will be much less merciful to yourself than God is with you.
Ever try this experiment with your kids? Instead of issuing a punishment or consequence upon them for something they’ve done wrong or a mistake they’ve made, try asking them to impose an appropriate punishment upon themselves. I guarantee you, they will be much harder on themselves, than you could ever be on them!
We lack most in our lives not the courage to forgive others, but the courage to forgive ourselves! We need the strength of Jesus to face not so much others, but to face our own image of ourselves.
We are both saints and sinners. Look at the people of scripture. Moses killed a man! Judah tried to weasel Tamar out of her covenantal and family heritage. David stole another man’s wife and had him killed to get her. Samson got sidetracked and wandered from his commitment to God. Saul got jealous and nasty. Elijah got arrogant and had to hide in the hills. And that’s just the beginning.
We are both faulty and feisty! Sometimes we are downright jackals. But we all, as followers of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, have the heart of a lion. A God-seared identity that cannot be erased in any follower of Jesus. We all have God’s Lion ID engraved upon our hearts. And we all are still “whelps” abiding in the lair of the One Most High. And what we must most learn is not to allow our misdeeds and defects to detour us from our destiny as members of the Lion’s pride.
Do not allow your mistakes to become your identity. Do not hide your foibles and failures under a bandage. Often we just keep piling on bandages until we no longer can see who we truly are. All we see is our woundedness and our shame. We are our worst critics! We need Jesus this morning to remove those bandages and show us that our wounds have already been healed. We need Jesus to restore us to a place of pride in the Lion’s pride, to see and to recognize ourselves for who we are and whose we are.
Look into that mirror and discover your true self. You are healed, you are forgiven, you have been restored. Let Jesus reveal to you your Lion Tattoo –your true identity as part of God’s own people.
This morning, I call on your “inner lion”: have the courage to face that past, or that person, or that thing that’s paralyzing you. Lion up to your past. Lion up to your future.
In C.S. Lewis’s story of Narnia, Edmund betrays his siblings and is in dire need of forgiveness and restoration. When he repents, and Aslan grants him redemption, he then can be forgiven. And can forgive himself as well.
Redemption comes from God, not just in the grace and forgiveness God bestows upon us, but also in the strength and courage God gives us to participate in our redemption.
We are only redeemed to the extent that we accept our gift of redemption, the one Jesus is offering to us through His own sacrifice.
Too many times, we see the gift, but write upon it, “return to sender,” and refuse to take it in, to embody it, to receive it, to embrace it. Instead, we harbor that guilt and pain, and don’t allow ourselves to accept that precious redemption gift.
God’s forgiveness is like a healing balm. You know those people who go to the doctor, get the prescription, but then lay it on the counter, and don’t take it? Today, you need to accept God’s forgiveness and redemption for your life. God is ready to heal you. The moment you confessed whatever it is you’ve done, God has already forgiven you. All you need to do is forgive yourself, to accept God’s gift of healing, and to dare to look at yourself in the mirror and see God’s lion tattoo written upon your heart –“Lion’s Pride.”
Look! Look again! Have the courage to see your faults, but lion up to see past your faults to the Lion King who redeems you, heals you, loves you, and calls you out. Judah was a “whelp.” But a “whelp” became a winner. So will you.
Lion up!
God gives you the courage and strength to be the person God created you to be. The lion cannot be tamed.** But a lion’s whelp carries the true DNA of its majestic Creator.
Embrace your inner lion. Look in the mirror and see your true nature as God’s own child! Stand tall and go forth with lion-hearts and lion-boldness in faith and in hope.
Lion up!
Give a roar for Jesus!
[You may want to have people do a “Rooooar” of their own!]
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
Jacob Names Judah (Genesis 49:8-10)
God’s Spirit Comes Upon Samson Despite Those Who Would Fell Him (Judges 13-16)
Matthew’s Witness to the Beginning of Jesus’ Ministry (4)
Minor Text
Joseph’s Vision and Persecution by His Brothers (Genesis 37)
The People Challenge Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Threaten to Stone Them (Numbers 14)
The Spirit of God Comes Upon David and He Prevails Over Goliath Despite His Critics (1 Samuel 16-17)
Saul Tries to Kill David but is Unable Due to God’s Spirit (1 Samuel 19)
David’s Pride and Persecution of Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11-12)
King Uzziah’s Pride and Anger (2 Chronicles 26)
Psalm 2: The Lord Has Installed His Son
Psalm 72: The Royal Son Will Defend the Afflicted
Psalm 103: The Lord Heals and Redeems
Psalm 112: Blessed are the Righteous
God Will Pour Out His Spirit Upon His Chosen One (Isaiah 42)
The Healing of the Nations Jew and Gentile (Ezekiel 47)
Luke’s Witness to the Beginning of Jesus’ Ministry and His Proclamation at Nazareth (4)
The Conversion of Gentiles (Acts 15)
[Optional Scriptures: Elijah Helps the Widow of Zarephath; Elisha heals Naaman the Syrian]
Jacob Names (Metaphorizes) His Son Judah
“Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a lion’s whelp, Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him? The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.
Samson’s Riddle
Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.”
“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”
He replied, “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.”
For three days they could not give the answer. On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?”
Then Samson’s wife threw herself on him, sobbing, “You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.” “I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother,” he replied, “so why should I explain it to you?”
She cried the whole seven days of the feast. So, on the seventh day he finally told her, because she continued to press him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.
Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?”
Samson said to them, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle.”
Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home.
And Samson’s wife was given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast.
Matthew’s Witness to the Beginning of Jesus’ Ministry
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee.
Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.
Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.
Image Exegesis: Healing and Redeeming / the Son / Lion of Judah
At a recent advance with Len Sweet, we watched Katy Perry’s “Roar” –in which she rises from her mild, timid identity into her own identity as a “tiger” like confident person in her own right. Once again, pop culture owns our problems in society with identity.
As Christians, we too have an identity problem. We find our identity not in a tiger but in the lion –the King of the forest and field! And Jesus is our Lion of Judah! When we take on the identity of Jesus and allow Him to live His resurrection life within us, we own our identity as a child of God, engraved with a lion’s share of courage, strength, and ability.
When Jesus was leaving his disciples in the flesh, He assured them, that all authority and power was given to Him, and that we as His disciples could do even better and greater things, as long as we abide in Him, and He in us. Paul reminds us again and again how important this relational “abiding” must be!
While often we concentrate on the vine, the agricultural reference for abiding in scripture, the lion’s whelp is another “abiding” metaphor. We as lion’s whelps are still abiding in the lair –abiding in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which teaches us, guides us, and instills in us a Jesus identity that is strong, courageous, and fearless in the face of evil and godlessness.
The Lion’s son or daughter bears the prophetic lion’s voice! The lion’s voice is that powerful and creative voice of God that prophesies but also brings things into being, heals, forgives, and grants restoration and promise.
Samson’s riddle of the lion and the honey bring two very important metaphors of scripture together –the authority of God and the promise of God.
The story of Samson in particular shows us how we can go astray and make mistakes when we stop “abiding” in our covenant relationship with God and get distracted by the ways of the world and the temptations of the world. This is the mistake Jesus would not make in his time in the wilderness. Jesus instead shows the strength and courage of His Lion-like Father, as He IS the true Lion’s Son, the Lion of Judah, with the heart of authority, compassion, and forgiveness.
No better perhaps use of this metaphor in fiction has been demonstrated than in C.S. Lewis fiction, The Chronicles of Narnia, in which Aslan the Lion represents God.
The heart of God is the strong lion with the good, true, and beautiful, compassionate heart for forgiveness and grace.
As Paul reminds us, we are the “true Israel.” All those who follow Jesus bear the sign of God upon their hearts and are protected from evil by way of God’s authority and strength (in Revelation).
May the sign of God be your primal identity in your own prophetic journey!*
*Due to the more exegetical nature of this sermon, this exegesis is shorter this week.
*Strongs 1482. For more on the metaphor of the lion, see also the Jewish Virtual Library and the Jewish Encyclopedia.
**The word ariel (sometimes used to mean “hearth” but other times to mean “eagle” is also linked at times with ari (Hebrew for lion) or arieh (Aramaic for wild beast). Ezekiel’s “griffin” combining the eagle and lion would seem to bear out this double meaning and multi-faceted image of God with characteristics of both.
