This sermon is entitled, "Are You Satisfied?". It is based on Luke 7:31-35. It was preached on February 23, 2014.
Anyone who has ever had a child knows that they all have days when nothing satisfies them. Even children who are normally happy and pleasant have days when no game is fun, no food is good, no trip is interesting, and no book is a good story. I know that this is true before I even had children, because I once spent several summers as a day camp counselor and when you have 10-15 kids under your supervision the days in which everyone was satisfied with your activity were few and far between. But at least I got to give those kids back to their parents everyday at 3:00. No I have to live with the children who cannot be satisfied. Last month jessi decided to take Owen to see the movie Frozen and she was excited to tell him the news in the morning until he seemed non-plussed. After many back and forth argument with him she finally told him that he could go but only if he didn’t whine about it. That was too much and Owen decided that if he couldn’t whine he couldn’t go and so he chose to stay home and complain that he was bored. Some days there is juts no satisfying him. So anyone with a child knows that these days come, but now that I think of it, anyone who has ever been a child knows that these days come. When I was eight my mother took my brother and I to Sea World. I was so excited since I had never been there. I could not wait to see Shamu the killer whale and get splashed by Seymour the Walrus. But my excitement dropped the moment we arrived and right next to sea World stood Geaga Lake with its water slides towering to the Heavens above and plummeting into large blue pools of water. I remember saying to my mother, “We should have gone to Geaga Lake.” and I remember her saying to me in the most exasperated tone, “You’re never satisfied.” Fortunately, I realized that she was right, and I put Geaga Lake out of my head, and enjoyed my day at Sea World. In everyone’s life there comes those days when something’s always wrong, and as long as these are only occasional days we all get through them, but what of the people for whom their entire life is a complaint? How hard is it to be around these people? Jesus found it rather difficult to deal with them in this story from the gospel of Luke. When we get to this story John the Baptist had just sent his followers to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah. They were uncertain about him as were others in the crowd, and, after Christ sends them away to report back to John without really answering their question, he then turned to the crowd knowing that they too were uncertain and said, “What did you go out in the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? Someone dressed in soft robes?” Christ challenges his audience about their expectations. Many of them were bothered by John the Baptist’s demeanor and actions and Christ says as much when he says, “33For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon.” So Jesus criticizes them for not being satisfied with John but this is because they also are not satisfied with him either. The same ones who refused to be baptized by John also refused to accept Jesus, but for very different reasons. For them Jesus wasn’t ascetic enough, wasn’t hard line enough, wasn’t strict enough, and so he says to them, “34the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Here you have two different leaders, John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ, and they will appeal to very different people. For the fire and brimstone crowd, there is John. For the grace and love crowd there is Jesus. There is in these two figures something for everyone, or nearly everyone that is. That is because some people will never be satisfied. It is so easy to find an excuse not to believe in something. When I try to convince my sister in law, who is from Buffalo, that the best chicken wings can be found at a place in West Virginia, she cannot bring herself to admit the truth. Every time she has them, she finds something at fault. Likewise, when my friend tries to convince em that Ft. Worth has better pizza than Pittsburgh, it is a futile attempt, for nothing could convince me. My mind had already been made up and no argument would satisfy me. If that is how the human will works concerning such a small thing, how much more is it true when dealing with the biggest thing of all?, For the Pharisees no argument could satisfy them. They had already made up their minds concerning the messiah and were simply looking for a justification or a rationalization. For John it was that he was too austere. Therefore, he had a demon. For Christ it was that he was not austere enough, therefore they considered him a glutton.
Jesus responds by mocking them saying, “To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.” In other words, Christ is criticizing the pharisees and others for thinking that God must conform to their own expectations. They did not expect that the Messiah could really be in their presences, and, if he was, certainly he would make himself known in some way to them, who were the guardians of the faith. So when it did not happen as they expected they were resolute in their disbelief. If the truth is told, it didn’t matter what John or Jesus were like. They could have been tall or short, skinny or overweight, well spoken or clumsy, wise or foolish, and nothing would satisfy the Pharisees. Something would always have been wrong. It is easy to wonder how they could have been so dense and hard-hearted. It is easy to wonder how they could have blown such a great opportunity, but, if the truth continues to be told we might not be too much better. Place this story in our modern context. We are waiting for Christ to return, and we all have our expectations as to what that will look like and be like. Remember how Jesus describes it, “The son of man descending on a cloud?” Well, that is how the Pharisees and other religious leaders of Jesus’ day believed that the messiah would come, and if Jesus had then, and if he were to do so today., we could all identify him and all would be easy. But if Jesus were to come back today much as he did the first time, not owning much, not looking like much, hanging out with people of whom we do not think much, contradicting many of the beliefs we hold dear would we reject him to? I think we might. Like the children crying out in the street we play a game and we expect God to follow along, and when God doesn’t we turn away and blame God for not following our commands. We play the flute when we say, give me this, or do this for me, rather than ask God what he wants us to do. We wail when we do not get what we want and blame God for our misfortune. We are no longer children, but we are still children of God, and most days, I imagine this gives God great pleasure, but there still some days when nothing that God does can satisfy us. This has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with us. God blesses us, but we do not always appreciate it because we wanted to be blessed in a different way. God provides for us, but not in a manner to which we have become accustomed. God has all kinds of ways to amuse us, but we are so busy making life miserable that we don’t even notice. Jesus finishes his parable by saying, “wisdom is vindicated by all her children,” and that is an interesting way to end a statement that began by criticizing those children for every parent has times when they are upset with their children, but they always love them, and their love, their sacrifice, their efforts, all our vindicated in the form of their children, even if they do not always show the proper appreciation. It is the same with God and us. No one is ever completely satisfied with their life and if we focus on all the things that inspire our dissatisfaction then our mind will be made up, we will blame Christ for not meeting our expectations, and we will miss all that he does for us. But if we are satisfied that God loves us, satisfied that God is with us at every stage of our life and in even the darkest moments, satisfied that Christ wants what is best for us and following him will bring that to us, and if we are satisfied that it is Christ who leads us rather than the other way around then no day will come that doesn’t bring us some joy. The question is, are you satisfied? Are you satisfied that God is with you even if that doesn’t mean things well always be great? Are you satisfied that Christ promises a joyfilled eternity in the next life but does not promise you a pain free existence in this life? Are you satisfied that god has blessed you with many things but also causes the rain to fall on the just and unjust and the sun to shine on the righteous and the wicked? Whether or not you can find satisfaction in this life depends largely on whether ir not you are satisfied with who God is and how God works. And whether or not you love god for who God is and not who you want God to be. The Rolling Stones had a hit song with titled “satisfaction which ironically was all amount how they couldn’t get any satisfaction. Many years later with more life under their belt they had another hit with the song “you can’t always Get What You Want” who chorus showed a great growth of maturity when Mick Jagger sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you’ll find you get what you need.” If we spend our life striving after we want we will ever find satisfaction in this world. It will never be enough, but when we surrender to God’s will we learn that we may not have everything we want, but God does give us all that we need. When we come to that realization, then and only then, will we ever be truly satisfied.
January Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Turn to the Light" and is based on Matthew 4:12-17. It was preached on January 26, 2014.
I hate it when I get lost. Unfortunately I have a great deal of experience with this and so I often find myself going in the wrong direction, and I have come to know intimately the truth to the saying, “When you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.” Sometimes I do it on purpose. There are times when I will take a road I have never been on before just to see where it goes and usually I find my way to someplace recognize, but occasionally I find myself utterly and completely lost and so, reluctantly, I need to admit defeat and turn around and head back the way I came. More often than not however, I get lost completely unintentionally. I know where I am going I just do not know ho to get there, or I thought I did and then I find that I have taken a wrong turn and then I discover another truth. That is that there is a direct correlation between ones speed and how lost you are. If I am going to get lost, best to do it quickly I suppose. In reality I drive fast in order to determine whether or not I need to turn around as quickly as possible, because, if you are lost, if you are going the wrong way, the first thing you must do to get going the right way is to turn around.
Now in the Bible there are no cars but there were a lot of lost people including the ones who managed to get exactly where they were going. Many people from around the whole Judean countryside who felt spiritually lost found their way to John the Baptist alongside the Jordan River without a GPS and when they got there John told them to turn around. This is what John the Baptist was telling the people when we meet him in the gospel of Matthew “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come near” This is why it is said that he had a baptism for the remission of sins for when John told people to repent he was telling them to turn around for the word repent means to turn around. Those who were walking away from God now are told to turn around and come back to God. This was a good thing but it was not without discomfort. To truly repent one must show remorse. Sorry does seem to be the hardest word, but it is the word that must come form each person for their repentance to be true. And as hard as it can be to say your sorry it was much harder in John’s time, for we here again and again of people in the Bible rending their clothing and donning sackcloth and ashes. This is what a person who was in mourning was to do including those who mourned their own waywardness.
Now you would think that those who came to se John had already turned around, but not all had. Some came to see what the commotion as about. Some came to make sure they had their bases covered. These people were criticized as the pharisees were. So turning around brought with the possibility that you would be singled out for scorn in front of others. Also, people had to try not to succumb to temptation again. There was a reason so many were walking a path that led away from God and that is because it was an easier path, a wandering path, but turning towards God one assumes is a better path but a rockier uphill climb.
But turning around was uncomfortable for John the Baptist as well. John himself wore uncomfortable clothes. Matthew tells us that he wore clothes made of camel hair and this is like the later ascetics who would wear hair shirts that hurt the flesh as part of their penance. As bad as that was John the Baptist gets himself arrested and later killed. We won’t find out until later why but he is.
So John tells people to repent because the Kingdom of God has come near and, when John is taken out fo the story, Jesus takes his place. After this then Jesus’ public ministry begins. He was announced as the Messiah at his baptism, but then he retreats for forty days which we will talk about when lent begins While he is gone John is arrested although Matthew does not tell us the details until 10 chapters later when people start claiming that Jesus is resurrected, we see that this is the opportunity for Jesus to come forth.
When he does he picks up johns mantle by using his words, “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come near”
This statement is powerful. It shows that Jesus follows in John’s footsteps but also shows that he is going to take things in a new direction. In effect Jesus says, “turn around even you who were following John who said he was not the one to come, turn around and follow me.” Jesus then quotes the prophet Isaiah which is the second of fourteen scripture formulas found in Matthew in which Isaiah writes “so that what had been spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled.”
*The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.
The light is Jesus the Christ and the people are invited to turn around turn away from the darkness to follow the light. What an inviting idea. What a beautiful image. But many people do not. Why do you suppose that is? We talked before about how nice light is why would so many people remain in the darkness?
Well, for starters, many people simply did not believe him. They thought it was strange that he was from the Galilee. In the prophet’s words these words refer to the people of Galilee Zebulun and the land of Naphtali seeing the light of the Messiah, and these places are mentioned because they were despised areas. they thought he was an ordinary man They liked John better.
Secondly, many people feared the dark more than they loved the light. John told people to repent including the king and he was put in jail and soon would be dead. It might be cold and hard to see in the dark but at least you’re alive.
Thirdly, the light can be inviting but when you have sat in the darkness for so long the light can be painful
The other night I had a conundrum on my had when both of my children got up at the same time in the middle of the night because they need to go to the bathroom. In our bathroom we have a dimmer switch and Owen told me not to turn the lights up very bright, but charlotte demanded that I turn them all the way because to her, if they aren’t on all the way they aren’t on at all. Owen complained that the light hurt his eyes, so we had them on dim until Owen was done and then on full for Charlotte. The fact is that Sometimes, the light hurts. We don’t like being in the dark, but turning on the light all at once can be blinding.
These are the same reasons that people today might not turn towards the light, but I hope that you will stay with it. Eventually our eyes adjust to the light and we come not only to welcome it, but to depend upon it and to wonder how we ever lived without it. As true as this is with the light of the bathroom it is so much more true with the light of the world.
We are fortunate. The people, who met Jesus were hit with a flash of light and then he was gone to some other town and they were left with their eyes blinking colors and unsure of who to follow or where to follow. But we have the scriptures, the gospels, the teaching and the examples.
But do not get discouraged if it takes a while for you to turn around to follow the light.
Turning around can be hard. We are comfortable in the direction we’re going even if we know it is the wrong way. The landscape is familiar. Turning to the light can be painful. It takes work and requires sacrifice
We have the luxury of spending our time with the light slowly but surely adjusting to its brightness to the way it illuminates everything including things we would rather not see.
Just keep spending as much time in the light as you can and eventually the pain and hardship will fade. And when it does we will eventually get to that place where we really want to be and our eyes will be able to see things we never thought we’d see.
December Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "The Christmas Family Tree", and is based on Matthew 1:1-17. It was preached on December 22, 2013.
When I was in seminary the book that we used for our New Testament class was written by Raymond Brown, and it was the standard, definitive book on New Testament studies. So I thought it was interesting when I came across a lecture by Raymond Brown on the genealogy of Jesus which we have just heard read perhaps for the first time for many of you in which he stated “these three minutes of tongue twisting names contain the essential theology of both the old and New Testaments for the whole church, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant alike. Now that is a pretty bold and sweeping statement but Brown goes on to say that Zwingli was preaching the genealogy in the early days of the reformation and he preached that Matthew’s genealogy contained the essential theology of the reformation which is salvation by grace. As you know we have two stories of Jesus’ conception and birth. Only two, Matthew’s and Luke’s, and they are very different from each other. When we read them it comes as a shock to some of us how different they are. Did Mary and Joseph live in a house in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, or did they live in Nazareth and go to register for a Roman census in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in a stable because the inn was full? Did they flee from their house in Bethlehem into Egypt to escape Herod’s child-killing rampage after he had been tipped of by the magi’s arrival, or did they return peacefully home to Nazareth after Bethlehem census taking with nary a mention of Herod?
There are many differences and rather than try to reconcile them by forcing them together father Brown suggests that we might do better to recognize that the Holy spirit was content to give us two different accounts and that the way to interpret them faithfully was to try to treat them separately. Each one has specific lessons to teach us, and so today we focus on the genealogy that Matthew gives us and ask ourselves why he chose to emphasize the names he did.
According to Matthew the story of the origin of Jesus Christ begins with Abraham begetting Isaac, no mention of the deserving elder son Ishmael. Then Isaac begets Jacob without a word about his elder brother Esau whose birthright was stolen by Jacob Jacob begets Judah and his brothers, but why is Judah chosen and not the good and extraordinary Joseph? What’s going on here? According to Matthew who is being faithful to the theology of the old Testament God does not necessarily select the noblest or most deserving person to carry out divine purposes, and that is the interesting part. That is why you should not gloss over the genealogies when they appear in scripture. For reasons unknown to us God may select the Judahs who sell their brothers into slavery or the Jacobs who cheat their brother or trick their father, the Davida who steal wives and have husbands killed but who also compose beautiful psalms of praise. And notice that there are five women mentioned. Not a mention of the great women of the Old Testament like Sarah, Rebeka, or Rachel. Instead we get Tamar, a Canaanite, who disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law Judah to get a son with him. And Rahab a prostitute who was also a Canaanite and who betrayed her people. Then Ruth the Moabite and a women of very little power. And Bathsheba the one whom helped to consummate the affair with David. Every one of these women was used as God’s instrument in bringing the savior into the world and every one has scandal attached to her name as does the final and most important woman, Mary. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was unexpected and her pregnancy was scandalous for many reasons. Now we see her as a saint, but at the time Matthew wrote his gospel claiming that the son of God came from a young unmarried woman was quite scandalous indeed. But certainly you can see how all of this will fit in with Jesus upcoming ministry to tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes and lepers to the sick who need a physician and not those who are righteous or who consider themselves righteous. Matthew’s genealogy is showing us how the story of Jesus Christ contained and would contain the flawed and inflicted and insulted, the cunning and the weak-willed and the misunderstood. His is an equal opportunity ministry for sinners and saints alike. And what about the final fourteen generations of unknown and seemingly unremarkable people. Had you heard of any of them? Who was Azor and Acim Eliud and Eiezar? What did they do? What kind of people were they? We have no idea. And this where the message its us directly. If so much powerful stuff can be accomplished down through the millennia by wastrels, betrayers, outcast, seeming nobodies, and people who were equal mixture sinner and saint isn’t that a pretty hopeful message to us today? Isn’t that a testament to God’s ability and likeliness to use us with our flaws and gifts in peculiar and unexpected ways? Who of us can say that we are not in the process of being used right now this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it? Now, once you get your mind around the possibility that you night not be too flawed for God to do something great with you, consider that the same is true of other people, your co-worker, your estranged family member, your bitter rival or neighbor. Let me conclude with what Father Brown suggests would be a thoughtful reflection on Matthew’s genealogy which encourages us during the liturgical season of Advent to continue the story of Jesus Christ in this way, “Jesus called Peter and Paul, Paul called Timothy, Timothy called someone, someone called you, and you must now call someone else . . "
November Sermon of the Month
This
sermon is entitled "Give Thanks Then Give Back" and is based on 2 Corinthians 9.This is a timeless sermon that has been preached at our
church for over twenty years in the fall. I hope that you will enjoy as
we do. It was preached on November 17, 2013.
As we come to the time of Thanksgiving, there is much for us to prepare. There is the turkey, and the pies. There is the house to clean, or the travel arrangements to make. These are important preparations to be sure and our Thanksgiving experience would be lessened if these things were not complete, but there is one preparation, and only one that is essential for Thanksgiving to be Thanksgiving. The one thing we must prepare above all others is the list of things for which we are thankful. Without any reason to give thanks, and without actually giving thanks for our blessings the fourth Thursday of November is just another meal. Although Thanksgiving is not an explicitly or exclusively Christian holiday, it is one that Christians should particularly appreciate. So let us once more turn to the apostle Paul to hear about the meaning of thanksgiving. In all but one of Paul’s epistles he begins by giving thanks for the people to whom he writes and for Jesus Christ. Oftentimes he gives thanks many more times in the letter even though he is often writing to clear up a disagreement, referee and argument, or correct his followers who have gone awry and sometimes he is writing from prison. In this chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes it pretty clear why we should give thanks, how we should give thanks, and what we have to be thankful or. As Paul overseas the collection of an offering that will help establish the church in Jerusalem he makes four basic points about why we should give thanks to God. First he argues that giving thanks points to God. When thanks are given they are given to someone. If someone were to claim “I am thankful for my children, my health and my freedom” without acknowledging a giver, it would mean nothing more than “I am happy for my children, my health and my freedom.” The very idea of thanksgiving points to God, who is the giver, the one to whom we direct our thanks. This Paul makes clear every time he thanks God in his writings.
Secondly, Paul teaches us that giving thanks requires faith. He says, “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” Despite these words sometimes giving thanks is not a natural response because our circumstances are not that for which we would have hoped. Sometimes sit is hard to believe that we always have enough of everything because to us it often seems that we never have enough of anything. But in times such as these we should give thanks as an act of faith believing that despite our limited perspective God’s goodness of character and kindness to us, now as always, deserves and demands thanksgiving. Thirdly, giving thanks reveals dependence for in giving thanks we recognize that there is good in our lives from a source other than ourselves. As Christians, we are thankful because we are receiving what we are incapable of earning or deserving: our Heavenly Father’s approving smile, our Savior’s welcoming embrace, the inner resonance of peace and power brought by the Holy Spirit Himself.
Finally, it isn’t enough to say thanks, we must show that we are thankful, and the way to do this to give thanks. As we see the Giver and our dependence on Him, our thanksgiving should turn outward into giving to others. What we’ve received is too wonderful to hoard. Let’s instead allow our thankfulness to become a means of blessing others. As Paul says, “it is written, “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” 6The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully7Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” So give thanks with gratitude and joy, for you have been blessed and sharing your blessings with others, will increase your blessings till more. Paul writes these words in the hope that the Christians of Corinth will give generously from their wealth and abundance to help the church in Jerusalem. These words are important for us not only when we give to other churches, people, or mission projects, but also when we give to ourselves, when we give to our own church. An indebted person gives back. A thankful person gives with joy. We are indebted for all that God has done and promises to do for us, yet we should give not out of obligation or debt, for we know we could never repay what God has given us. Rather we should give out of joy knowing that God requires far less of us than he has the right to expect, and still God will do infinitely more with what we give than we could do or even imagine doing ourselves. As our Stewardship campaign reaches its climax next week, we are called to prepare this week for the celebration. We d so not by baking or cooking, but by giving thanks for all that we have, by counting our blessings, by acknowledging the debt of gratitude we have towards God. Then we are called not to pay it back, for we never can, but to pay it forward by giving back just a portion, in order to help God’s church continue to preach the word of God’s loving generosity. There I ask that you spend the week in grateful prayer as you make your pledge and then mail it to the church, drop it off, or bring it next Sunday, where we will give thanks by giving back. As we begin our time of preparation let us simply listen to the words of the apostle Paul 10He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. 13Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. 15Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
October Sermon of the Month
This
sermon is entitled "Come Before Winter" and is based on 2
Timothy 4:9-22.This is a timeless sermon that has been preached at our
church for over twenty years in the fall. I hope that you will enjoy as
we do. It was preached on October 7, 2013.
It's not often
that a minister can use the same sermon several times in one church and
get away with it, but the sermon this morning, I continue to trust, is
such a sermon. Every year in the fall, this sermon has been repeated at
the request of those who have heard it a number of times. It’s repeated
because its message is too important to just present once. It’s
important, too, because each year different ones of us hear it for the
first time; and those of us who have heard it before come to understand
its message in new ways and hear new voices calling us to “come before
winter.”
The basic ideas and much of the content come from
a sermon that Clarence McCartney delivered to his congregation in
Philadelphia every year for40 successive years. There, too, it was
always delivered on a Sunday in the autumn. On that Sunday people would
return from all over the nation to hear its timeless message.
I
would ask each of you to carefully consider this message this morning,
whether you are hearing it for the first time or the (eleventh). The
title is “Come Before Winter” and the subject is the apostle Paul’s last
request to his young friend Timothy.
Paul, as most of you
remember, was a brilliant, but bitter young Jewish lawyer who had
dedicated his life to stamping out the Christian faith. When Stephen
became the first Christian martyr, Paul had a part in stoning him to
death. When the church spread to Damascus, Paul secured an edict to go
there and destroy the Christian community, but on the road to Damascus he
was confronted by the risen Christ and challenged to make some better
use of his life. In the days following, a man named Ananias sought him
out in Damascus and challenged him to become a follower of Christ – one
who would give his life in the service of the risen Lord.
Paul accepted
this challenge, and the rest of his life was spent in travel– on
foot, on beast, and by boat - - across Asia and then across Europe,
bringing the good news of God’s gracious love and purpose to mankind on
both continents. There was no trial that he wouldn’t endure: stonings,
beatings, shipwreck, imprisonment – he had endured them all, time and
again.
He wanted others to know the love and purpose that had so
changed his life. So the bitter antagonistic lawyer became the apostle
of love. He wrote the never-to-be forgotten words of self- we find in the
thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. In fact, most of the new testament
was written by him.
Yet, when Paul was sent to stand trial in
Rome where he was to spend his last days and write his last letters, he
suddenly found himself very much alone. When the going got tough, most
of his friends deserted him. Demus, Crescens, and Titus all returned to
their homes, and Paul, alone and in prison in a new and strange land over
1,000 miles from home, was left with but three friends he could count
on. The first was the friend who had confronted him on the
Damascus road – the risen lord. The second was Luke, his beloved
friend and physician, who had accompanied him on most of his journeys,
and had written both the gospel that bears his name and the acts of the
apostles.
The third was Timothy, a young
half-Hebrew, half-Greek youth whom Paul had affectionately called, “my
son in the faith.” But now Timothy, of the three he could count on, was
not with him.
(The letter to Timothy)
So Paul
sat down and wrote what turned out to be his last letter to this young
friend. In it he tells Timothy he wants him to come to Rome immediately
for he doesn’t expect to live much longer. He asks him to bring a few
things. First, he asks Timothy to bring his cloak from Troas. It is
getting cold in Rome and Paul needs the cloak to keep him warm. Next, he
asks Timothy to bring his books and parchments, even in prison there was
work to do and a mind to use. But most of all, Paul wants Timothy to
bring himself, so he wrote to Timothy:
“Do your best to come to
me soon.
Do your best to come before winter!”
Why
before winter? Not only for the cloak, not only for the books, not
only because the time is short before his execution, but because of
the peculiar hazards of navigation on the Mediterranean in winter. When
winter set in – the Mediterranean was often closed for navigation. Many
captains wouldn’t set sail after a certain date. If Timothy waited
until winter, no boats would be sailing until spring, and Paul has a
feeling he won’t live until spring. Come before winter or not at all!
Come now or you’ll never see me again!
We don’t actually know
what Timothy did. We like to think that Timothy didn’t waste a single
day;that he started at once and went to Troas and picked up the books
and the cloak and sailed for Rome; then landing in Italy, he
rushedimmediately to the prison, embraced his dear friend, read with him
the books, wrote his last letters, sat at his feet and learned the
height and depth of Paul’s knowledge and unquenchable faith in Christ,
then walked at the last, with him to the place of execution, saw him
give his life as a witness to his faith, and supported him till the
very last, but it was before winter or never! Either he went
immediately or he never saw Paul again.
And so it is with
us. There are things that will never be done unless they are done now.
There are opportunities that come but once and then they are gone, and
there is no recapturing them. There are people we love who will pass
from this life before spring and we don’t even know who they will be: a
parent, a child, a classmate, a neighbor, the person sitting next to you
right now. The winter will come and pass and spring will transform the
buds on the trees into summer’s leaves, but as the winter comes and
goes, so do life’s opportunities and the lives of our dearest friends.
(The
parable of autumn)
you’ve heard me say many times that of all
the seasons of the year, autumn is the one I like best. Autumn is,
itself, a parable of life’s opportunities: one week it presents the
climax of opportunity; next week it’s just too late. This week the
vibrant color of the leaves is at its zenith and the next week they are
brown and upon the ground.This week the air is crisp and cool and the
sun shines. Next week the air is bitter and cold and the clouds are gray.
This
week your child needs you; next week he learns that mother and father
are always too busy. This week is a chance to be with a parent or a
friend; next week they’re gone – stricken with a heart attack, paralyzed
by a stroke, or dropped out of school, and the chance will never
come again. Last week someone needed me desperately, but I didn’t have
time to respond and they’ll never need me again, for they know now
I’m always too busy with something, so they won’t bother me again.
(The
voice within)
Each day of life there are voices calling to
us, saying, “come, before winter” – come now; I need you now; tomorrow
will be too late.” The first, and one of the most important, is the
voice we hear from within– I’m going to call it the voice of character.
What is character really – but the sum of our concerns, our goals, our
commitments, our sympathies?
It is what a person is made of,
what he’s willing to stand for, and what she’s willing to fall for. It
is the degree of a person’s self-discipline and concern for others. But
character is like molten steel. There is a time when its workable and a
time when it’s set; a time when it can be formed into something
worthwhile, and a time when it can be re-formed only with great pain and
difficulty. The high school and college years and the early years of
marriage and work are especially the years when the metal is molten and
being poured and shaped. If in these years we learn to do our very best;
if we learn to feel the pain of others and offer our love to share the
pain; if we learn to love, not for what we can get,
but for what
we can give; if we learn to stand for what we believe is right, even when
we must do it alone; if we set goals that challenge the best of us,
then the molten steel hardens into something worthwhile.
But if
in these years we do just our second best; if in these years we
just settle for having a good time and getting by; if we put off
until tomorrow the things we should do today; if we ignore the needs of
those about us and think only of ourselves; if we do the easy, popular
thing rather than the difficult thing we know we should do; then, this is
the sort of person we become. For what I am today is forming what I
will be tomorrow and next year, and the year after.
There
are precious and critical moments in every life, but the most precious
is always the present moment; not tomorrow, but today.
(The
voices of those we love) Second,is the voice of family
and friends. Suppose that Timothy had said to himself: “Yes, I will go
to Rome, but first I must clear up matters at Ephesus; then I must see
how things are a Colossae; then I’ll go to Troas and get the books and
cloak; then I’ll find a ship and sail.” Arriving at Troas a month
later, he inquires about passage to Rome and is told that the last boat
sailed yesterday. All through the anxious winter, how he must have
wondered what was happening in Rome. In spring, he takes the first boat
and rushes to Rome and finds the house empty where Paul had been living.
So he goes to the prison and pleads with the guard for any information
about Paul, but the guard only curses him and sends him away.
So
he goes from house to house seeking news, until finally a response
comes: “So you’re Timothy! Didn’t you know that Paul
was executed
last December? Every time the jailer put his key in the door,Paul
thought you were coming. His last message was, “Give my love to Timothy,
my beloved son in the faith, when he comes’”. How Timothy must have
wished then that he had come before winter.
In the diary
of Thomas Carlyle, one can read the tragic words written after Carlyle’s
neglected wife died: “If only I had you for five minutes more by my
side, that I might tell you all.”for 40 years he had her at his
side, but he always kept putting it off until tomorrow, until there was
no tomorrow. For us he wrote the words:
cherish what is
dearest while you have it near you,
and wait not until it is far
away. Blind and deaf that we are,
if thou yet love anyone
living;
wait not till death sweeps down the paltry little dust
clouds
and dissonances of the moment, and
all be made so
mournfully clear When it is too late.
How often
we give flowers to the dead rather than to the living – too late! How
often we make time for our children after they no longer need us – too
late! How often we keep within us the deepest things in life and never
share them until the one we wanted to share them with is gone – too late!
Phillip
brooks put it this way:
You who are letting miserable
misunderstanding run on from year to year,meaning to clear them up
someday; you who are keeping wretched quarrels alive because you cannot
quite make up your mind that now is the time to sacrifice your pride and
kill them; you who are passing men sullenly on the street, not speaking
to them out of silly spite, and yet,knowing that it would fill you with
shame and remorse if one of
Those men were dead tomorrow morning;
you who are letting your parents, or friends or child’s heart ache for a
word of appreciation or friendship or sympathy or love. If only you
could see and feel and know all of a sudden, that the time is short, how
it would break the spell. How you would go instantly and do the thing
which you might never have another chance to do.
To
each of us, there are loved ones and friends crying for our love and
needing our friendship. How often do we hear voices? How often do we
come, before winter?
(The voices of minorities)
Third,there
are the voices of minorities in our country: the poor, the rejected,
the forgotten, saying we can’t do this to them anymore; that if they
can’t share in the American dream, there won’t be an American dream for
any of us. The time is now to do something; not tomorrow or ten years
from now. Do we hear their voices and understand what they are saying,
or are we afraid and feel that the dream is only for us?
(The
voice of Christ)
But more eager,more concerned, more wistful
than any other voice is the voice of Christ, calling us to him – calling
us to come, before winter: calling us to know his love and to let that
love for all people flow through our lives to the world. How many of
you have seen Homan Hunt’s painting, “the light of the world”? In it you
see the crucified Christ with crown of thorns on his head and lantern in
his hand, knocking at the door of the human heart. The door is a heavy
door. Its hinges are rusty, for it isn’t opened often and there is no
handle on the outside. If the door is to be opened it must be opened
from the inside. The master never forces his way in, for his ways are
the ways of love. He just patiently knocks and to any man who opens the
door,he is ready to light the way, to free that man to reach out in
concern to others. He frees him to be a new kind of person. He frees
him to care for those so close to him. He frees him to work for a new
kind of world today. But how many of us keep putting him off until
tomorrow. Christ invites us to follow him today; we answer tomorrow,
tomorrow,tomorrow, until we no longer hear his knock or until there are
no tomorrows.
(Closing)
And
today’s opportunity may never be repeated. It wasn’t to Timothy. And it
won’t be to many of us. In the use we’re making of our lives; in
our relationship to children, parents, and friends; in facing
and responding to the crisis and opportunities of our time; in
our relationship to Christ our lord. We say, “I intend to do
something about that tomorrow.”
But Paul says: “Now or never.”
Christ says: “Now or never!”experience, conscience, common sense all
say: “Now or never!” Now is the time – today –to build a life that is
worth living. Now is the time – today – to show your love and
appreciation and forgiveness to family and friends, not after they are
gone. Now is the time to become involved in creating a new kind of
society in which all humanity can share. Now is the time to open your
life to the love of Christ, that this love may guide all your decisions
and all your days and all your involvements. Don’t wait until it’s too
late! Do your best to “Come, before winter!”
September Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "The Price is Right" and is based on Matthew 20:1-16 . It was preached on September 1, 2013.
There are a lot of great game shows on TV. I remember, when I was school aged, I would spend most of my summer days watching game shows all morning long. There was no doubt in my mind that they saved the best for last, for, after two straight hours of fun prizes, fabulous getaways, and fantastic cars, at 11:00 came the Price is Right. I think everyone who watches that show has their favorite game. But what I enjoyed the most was the showcase showdown. When two people went head to head, and there was two showcases, one presented in a serious manner, and another in a funny skit, the person who had won the most money got to choose if they would pass or bid. Now the one who came closer to the actual retail price without going over was the winner., and that person would celebrate with great joy and the loser leave with great disappointment, after all, it is a game show, and only one person can win the grand prize.
If game shows reward the contestant with the best pricing skills who takes the luckiest turns of the wheel with cash, cars, and cruises, then it seems to me that the game of life should reward the person with the most devout faith who is the best laborer of God with the Kingdom of Heaven. That is how people thought of God and religion in ancient times. God was Bob Barker, who called people to “Come on Down”, and those who were best at doing what God commanded won the grand prize. But for every winner, there had to be many more losers, or else the grand prize wouldn’t have been worth winning. Peter certainly felt that way, and, after following Jesus for a while, he decided to find out what was in it for him when he asks, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ Jesus answers saying that, “at the renewal of all things”, they will inherit the kingdom and eternal life. At first it seems like Peter and the disciples would receive more than Jesus’ other followers, but then he tells them that “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. “ To underscore this message, he tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, which we have heard today. In it a man who owns a vineyard goes to the market to find day laborers. After agreeing on the usual pay he sends some to his vineyard. Three hours later he returned to the market and saw workers who had not yet been hired. He hires them and sends them to his vineyard. He did the same at noon, three, and five. Since there was no guarantee that they would be hired the next day, when the day ended he paid them as was the custom. Those who had been hired last were paid first and they were paid what the those who had been hired first were promised. When those who were hired first saw this they expected top get more than had been promised for they had worked longer. But when they were paid the same as the last, the amount to which they had agreed, they were angry. Now, it is important to note that the laborers did not work not because they were lazy, but because they simply were not hired. They obviously wanted to work because they came to the market to find it. They were obviously desperate for work because they stayed all day hoping to find something knowing that, as the day went on, their chance to earn grew less. We are not told if they were not hired because they lacked any special skill that was needed, but, since they were applying for work as day laborers, there should not have been any special skill needed. We also do not know why it was that the householder kept needing more workers, and why he did not simply hire all of them at once. We are not meant to know any of these things. We are only meant to know that the householder hires laborers even up to the last hour of the day, and he understands that they cannot feed their family on only one hour’s income, so, out of his generosity, he pays them the same as everyone else. Taken on its face we can easily understand why the laborers were upset. If you worked for 12 hours and were paid the same amount that others were paid for working 9,6,3, even only 1 hour, you would be upset too. You of course would only be getting what you deserve since you agreed to that price at the time, but you would probably wish that you had waited so that you could have gotten some rest before work. A business cannot be run this way, and you can bet that the next day those who had begun at 6:00AM will wait until 5:00 to get hired by this man. But of course work and pay are not what Jesus is speaking of in this parable; at least not earthly work or earthly pay. Jesus is speaking of laborers for sure, but laborers of God. Jesus is also talking of reward, but of the reward that God gives; the Kingdom of Heaven When it comes to money you can always have more. If the householder paid the later laborers $100 for their work, then those who were hired first might have expected to receive $200 for their longer work. Likewise, Peter and the disciples, may have expected to receive more in Heaven than those who came afer them, since they believed in Christ the longest. The problem with this thinking is that there is no greater reward than the Kingdom of Heaven. You cannot get any better than that. So if Jesus is the householder who offers the Kingdom of Heaven for those who believed late, what more can he give to those who believed early? In football it does not matter if you score a touchdown by running the ball in from the one yard line or driving it, slowly, 100 yards down the field. It is still worth six points and all the coach cares about is that a touchdown was scored. God is the coach, the kingdom of Heaven is a touchdown, and those who believed when they were a hundred yards away from the goal line and those who believed when they were knocking on the goal line are all saved the same. The first will not be more saved than the last. I want you to notice that Jesus never says how much the householder agreed to pay the second laborers; those whom he hired at noon, three, and five. He only said he would pay them, “whatever is right”.
Would you sing up for that? Would you work for someone who simply said, I will pay you whatever is right? I did that once. I used to work a for a man who did not pay well, but I agreed to it, then I was offered some extra work by my friends mother whom I knew to be a good and generous person. She asked me to help do some work on her farm for a couple of days, and she said she would pay me, but we did not discuss terms. I agreed to work for her without agreeing on payment for two reasons. One, I trusted her to do right by me, and two I didn’t really know how much I should demand. If I demanded too much maybe she would say no thanks, and if I demanded too little maybe I was selling myself short. When I was done she not only paid me more than my boss did for less work, but more than I had hoped for. That is how it is with Jesus Christ. We agree to be laborers for him because we trust that he will do right by us, and we do not suppose to demand how he should pay us, because we trust that fi we leave it up to him he will reward in ways that we cannot imagine. You know, at the beginning of this sermon I said that my favorite part of the Price is Right was the showcase showdown, but now I must say that I have changed my mind. The problem with the showcase showdown is that I have never seen one where someone didn’t lose. Now that I think of it, and now that I reread the parable of the laborers in the vineyard I would have to say that my favorite part of the show is actually the spinoff. Because, at the end of the show, when they get together to spin the wheel, there are those very special episodes where both people will land the wheel on $1.00 meaning that they have won a $1,000. Now I ask you, does it lesson the joy of the person who sat through contestant’s row the whole show any to know that the person who won after only one turn also won the $1,000? No, they both enjoy their money the same. When God calls us to come on down to reap our reward and we win the big prize, the showcase showdown, the Kingdom of God, should our joy then be lessened because another person who has worked at it for less time than we have is also implored by God to come on down? NO
When we place ourselves in this story we should be careful not to immediately place ourselves in the shoes of those who had labored all day no matter how long we have been Christians, for we have all fallen short in some way. Few if any of us have been laboring for Christ all of our life. We should not be envious that God is generous, for we do not truly understand how much we benefit from his generosity.
Instead we must continue our labor for our Lord knowing that some may get the same reward for having done less, but knowing that labor for God is its own reward in the here and now. On this Labor Sunday you should take stock of the work that you have done in this world for your earthly bosses and be proud. Likewise, you should take stock of the labor that you have done for your heavenly boss, and vow to work for the rest of your days, no matter how long that may be, and rest assured that when it comes to collect your wages, no matter what others have done or what they have received, you can be certain that if God is the boss paying his laborers the price will always be right.
August Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Shall We Gather at the River" and is based on Revelation 22:1-17 and the hymn of the same name. It was preached as part of our sermon series "Singing the Bible"
There are many rivers to cross but I can’t seem to find my way over, because the river is wide and its too far to cross. Moon River, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style some day, because we go down to the river, into the river we dive. So take me to the river, drop me in the water. Lets go down, don’t you wanna go down, down to the river to pray. I wish I had a river I could skate away on. but the tears I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River and I am gonna sit right hear until I die. I could easily fill an entire sermon with nothing but lyrics from songs about rivers. When I was writing my sermon I selected only songs with river in its title to listen to and there were well over a hundred songs, easily one of the most common words used. There is no doubt that rivers captivate us. They are so often sued in music and literature and movies, because they are such powerful metaphors. Water can be used as a symbol representing life in the womb or death from drowning. It can represent a wave of emotions. It represents a source of life. A rushing river represents excitement while a slow moving river represents peace and tranquility. In a spiritual sense, it may show your acceptance of divine will and destiny. Instead of struggling against life you ‘go with the flow.’ It is no wonder therefore, that the last image we get in the Bible would be one of a river, and it should not be surprising that one of the most popular images in Christianity is the image of believers gathering at the river to add one more in the waters of baptism. So we have the hymn “Shall we Gather at the River” but as readers of the Bible we must ask. Which river?
Our passage today from the last chapter of the Bible’s last book is about a river, but it is merely the last image of a river in the Bible. Of course many rivers are mentioned many times, but usually it refers to physical rivers that you or I could go and visit and step a toe in, like the Jordan. But at various times angels and prophets evoke the image of a river to describe Heaven or God. That is what is happening in the revelation to John of Pathos. who says, 22Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. This describes the new Jerusalem, a new creation of Eden to which God has been leading his people ever since they got kicked out of the first Eden. In revelation the paradise that was lost is promised to be returned, and, although it will be somewhat different, there is much that will remind us of the former glory. First and foremost is that there will be river, just as a river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. In Eden there was a river that flows into four streams, in Gods new creation there will be one undivided river and the tree of life which was in Eden know will be on both sides of this river and it will flow from the throne of God, who will live in the creation with us. But in between the beginning and the end the Bible gave us another image of a river in the book of Ezekiel when the prophet described a river that would come and bring life where there was none. He wrote:
This water flows towards the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. 9Wherever the river goes,* every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes.
It should become clear from these passages that there can be no paradise without a river. So when the Baptist minister, Robert Lowry, saw a vision of Heaven as he rested on his sofa One hot afternoon in July 1864, you shouldn’t be surprised that he saw a river. In the midst of Civil War he had heard and seen nothing but pain and tragedy, and he longed for the peaceful paradise promised in the scriptures. He saw the bright golden throne room and a multitude of saints gathered around the beautiful, cool, crystal, river of life. He was filled with a sense of great joy. He began to wonder why there seemed to be many hymns that referenced the river of death, but very few that mentioned the river of life. As he mused, the words and music to Shall We Gather at the River came to his heart and mind.
Shall we gather at the river, Where bright angel feet have trod, With it's crystal tide forever Flowing by the throne of God? Here Lowry describes the river just as it is described in the book of Revelation so that we immediately know which river he is referring to. Not any physical river that we might be near, not the Jordan River where Jesus was himself baptized, no river of the past such flowed out of Eden, but the river that is to come.
Refrain: Yes, we'll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river That flows by the throne of God.
On the margin of the river, Washing up it's silver spray, We will talk and worship ever, All the happy golden day.
Rivers are such a powerful draw that every major city is founded on the banks of a river. And the rivers are used for water and power and the necessities of life, but they are also used for fun. Parks, marinas, wharfs, trails always follow the river, because rivers bring joy to us.
Ere we reach the shining river, Lay we every burden down; Grace our spirits will deliver, And provide a robe and crown.
The way we find that river this to lay our burdens down on Christ and accept is grace.
At the smiling of the river, Mirror of the Savior's face, Saints, whom death will never sever, Lift their songs of saving grace.
Soon we'll reach the silver river, Soon our pilgrimage will cease; Soon our happy hearts will quiver With the melody of peace.
What more wonderful image can be given and I love that it is the last image in the Bible. For a people who knew so little peace, the image of the peaceful river representing the peace that will come was very enticing, and it seems to me that when we take it for granted the image loses its appeal. In a time of peace, peaceful things do not attract. A slow moving river can seem said and boring if what we want is excitement, but when people know the excitement of war peace and quiet become immensely attractive.
The people of Israel loved rivers because they did not take them for granted. They had so few and they were so small. They could imagine anything as majestic as the Ohio let alone the Mississippi. We have so many rivers that we have been guilty of taking them for granted. But what if we didn’t have it? What if it was scarce? What if the rivers just dried up?
They have become polluted and dirty because of a belief that they would always be there. When I grew up I was told that you shouldn’t fish in the Ohio because of the pollution and that seemed such a shame. That’s why I am glad that we have repented of our actions and improved our rivers so much so that a few years ago the Bass master classic was held in Pittsburgh. We needed to be reminded that rivers are precious gifts and if we lose them we become greatly impoverished.
The same is true of God’s grace, which is what the river of life is filled with. We can take it so much for granted that we forget about it, but without it we would perish. We would be lost. We would go nowhere
The preacher Henry Ward Beecher wrote “Love is the river of life in the world.” and it is true but only because the river of life flows from the source of love, and the only way to get there is to make like Fuck Finn and ride the river, but before you do that you have to gather at the river. Let us gather together and see where the river will take us.
July Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" and is based on Deuteronomy 33:27 and the hymn of the same name. It was preached as part of our sermon series "Singing the Bible"
Arms can convey much. Arms are metaphors that we use to describe many attributes such as strength, might, power, or force. A quarterback is said to be good because he has a canon for an arm. A pitcher has a fast arm. To get what you want from someone is to strong arm them. Whenever I think of that saying I think of my father who has about the strongest arms of anyone I have ever known. My dad has forearms of steel. Whenever he would put his arm around my shoulder I would notice that. I have no idea how mush weight my dad can lift, because he came by those strong arms the old fashioned way. He worked for them. Not worked out for them, btu worked for them. In the mills, the factory, on the farm, moving furniture, as a custodian and groundskeeper, street sweeper, pool installer, and about a dozen more jobs or so. He has been a hard worker all his life and he has the arms to prove it. Because the word arm can be used to convey many different attributes and because God has so many attributes we wish to understand, using arms as a way to describe God is very appealing, and its done best, as far as I am concerned, by our hymn for the day, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”. This hymn is based on Moses’ farewell speech to the Israelites just before they enter the Promised Land just before his death as recorded in Deuteronomy 33, and it focuses on the way that arms depict strength, might, power and force. It is important to note that this passage has the most divergent translation of any I have ever encountered. The more familiar translation, and the one upon which the hymn is based, is from the King James and is very close in most other Bible translations. It reads:
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.
The New Revised Standard translates it as:
27 He subdues the ancient gods,* shatters* the forces of old;* he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
So here “The eternal God is thy refuge” becomes “he subdues the ancient Gods” and “underneath are the everlasting arms” becomes “shatters the forces of old”. I do not know how the original text can possibly convey such disparate meanings, but if the word arm can be used to describe an appendage of the human body that is used to build things as well as a weapon that is used to destroy things, then I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when translaters come to such different conclusions. This takes place at the end of the Pentateuch. The Israelites are about to go into the Promised land and Moses promises if they lean on God’s arms they will destroy their enemies. So here God’s arms are an example of strength and might that can be used to exert force over one’s enemies. The everlasting arms are strong arms, mighty arms, that can conquer other peoples that were created by the very same arms. It reminds me of the phrase, “the long arm of the Law” in which we believe that eventually that arm will catch those who do wrong and will administer justice. It is no surprise then when the film music composer, Carter Burwell, after having been asked to score the Coen Brother’s remake of the 1969 Western “True Grit”, didn’t look at the old film or listen to its classic Elmer Bernstein score. Rather, before the Coens went off to shoot the film, they discussed the idea of using 19th-century church music — preferably “something that was severe (sounding). It couldn’t be soothing or uplifting, and at the same time it couldn’t be outwardly depressing. I spent the summer going through hymn books,” he says. The movie and the book it is based upon tell the tale of a 14 year old girl in the wild west looking to avenge her father’s murder. Burwell said “I thought that hymns, or music that sounded like hymns, would remind you that what’s driving the whole story is a biblical sense of righteousness,”. So, he chose the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” to play repeatedly in many variations throughout the film which depicts a girl leaning on God’s arms in the hopes that god’s arms will “thrust out the enemy from before her; and shall say, Destroy them!” I really love this hymn and I really liked the movie, but it was a jarring juxtaposition for me, because I hadn’t though of the hymn in that way, but when you think of it used in conjunction with teenager it makes a lot sense. It makes a lot of sense, because when I was that age I liked to think of god as being strong because I wasn’t. I liked to think of God as some superstrong superhero, who could fix all the things I felt powerless to fix. I need God’s arms to be massive and powerful even more so than my father’s because I wasn’t very strong, and I dreamed about getting strong all the time.
When I was 14 I wanted to be strong so I could be good at football. I dreamed of hitting and tackling hard. I dreamed of staring down bullies in the parking lot of Hardee’s and winning the attention of girls in the process. I dreamed of being strong because might made right, or so it seemed. After all, one look in the old testament proves this old saying. The Israelites’s God was stronger than the Philistines God so the Philistines had to be destroyed. This goes along with a sense of God as strong so that he can punish people, so that he can destroy the wicked. When I was young I thought the only good arm was a strong arm, a stiff arm, a gun, a bazooka, a canon of an arm.
But as we get older, we mature, and our lives change and our perspectives change, and the way we think of changes as well. Including how we think of arms and God.
That is the case for em and this hymn. As is aid it was jarring to hear this hymn used as the theme of a violent revenge film because when I hear this hymn I always think of it as sweet and comforting hymn and it always made me think not of my dad’s strong arms, but my mother’s loving arms.
What a fellowship, what a joy divine, Leaning on the everlasting arms; What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, Leaning on the everlasting arms. Refrain: Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms; Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms. Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, Leaning on the everlasting arms; Oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, Leaning on the everlasting arms. What have I to dread, what have I to fear, Leaning on the everlasting arms? I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, Leaning on the everlasting arms.
It’s a happy song, a pretty song, a comforting song, and it was a hymn designed to comfort when it was written in 1877 with music by Anthony J. Showalter and lyrics by Showalter and Elisha Hoffman.
Showalter said that he received letters from two of his former pupils saying that their wives had died. When writing letters of consolation, Showalter was inspired by the phrase in the Book of Deuteronomy 33:27 "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms". And so he want on to write this hymn as a source of consolation and comfort to let everyone know what peace can be ours if we will but lean on the everlasting arms. Now the everlasting arms which Moses invoked to promise death to his enemies is invoked to promise comfort to God’s children. Here the emphasis is on the word everlasting. No matter what happens God is the only one who is everlasting and if we lean on him we will too. That is key when reading an O.T. scripture to interpret it through the lens of Jesus Christ and that is what good hymns do.
The scripture speaks of God as using the arms to destroy thine enemies but the hymn describes the arms as something to hold our burdens. God is not, therefore, our superhero to answer to our beck and call, he is someone who lifts us up and holds us in his love.
The old testament loves to speak of God’s strength and might. In the New testament God is no less strong nor is he any less mighty, but he does seem a great deal more loving. In the New Testament people have figured out that love is a greater show of strength than force, and so the strongest person to ever walk the earth was not Samson who knocked down entire buildings to destroy his enemies and himself, but Jesus Christ who, though he could have called legion of angels to destroy his enemies, died on the cross to save his enemies and himself. Sacrifice, love, mercy, these are the true sign of strength and so a hymn that is based on an Old Testament scripture is given a decidedly new testament spin and this makes it a song for us to sing with joy and peace.
When I was young I wanted to be strong so I could win fights, but as I grew older strength became a means to a very different end. The Christmas after my son was born I got sick. I was so sick that I couldn’t go to my aunt’s house to exchange gifts with my family which I look forward to every year. While my family went to have Christmas cheer I stayed on the couch nursing an upset stomach and watching a rerun of “Happy Days.” It was a special Christmas-themed episode in which the characters were planning to spend the holiday together but their plans were ruined by a blizzard. There was one scene in particular that I will never forget when Mr. Cunningham and his daughter, Joni, sat in their house and found that the forced togetherness did wonders for their relationship which had been floundering. In one scene Mr. C says to his twenty some year old daughter, “the saddest day of my life was the day I realized that you were too big for me to carry.” So there I sat, sad that I was missing a holiday moment with my son, feeling sick, and now crying on the couch, because I realized that that would become the saddest day of my life as well, and that day was inevitable. So I have been working hard. I have been experiencing. I have been working out. I have put my son on a diet. I have done everything I could to stave of that day as long as possible, because what I realized then and know too well now is that strength that can hurt is impressive, but strength that can lift us and love us, that is wonderful.
My father’s arms are still pretty strong, but he is getting older, maybe one day my arms will match his, but the strength of his heart was always much more impressive and the love of my mother’s arms much more inviting because the arms that are used to fight can only last awhile before the ravages of time and age diminish them and leave us in a state where we are barely stronger than we were as children, but the arms that love and comfort and lift up, those are eternal surviving even death. Those arms are Godly because they are everlasting, they are everlasting because their strength comes not from might but from love. May we never feel to big or strong to let God hold us in his everlasting arms, because only then, when we fully experience God’s love will we know true strength.
June Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "All things Bright and Beautiful" and is based on Genesis 1:1-19 and the hymn of the same name. It was preached on June 9, 2013 as part of our sermon series "Singing the Bible"
Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings, He made their glowing colors, He made their tiny wings.
All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.
This summer we will be hearing the Bible in song, and so we begin the sermon series at the beginning. This hymn that we have sung, “All things Bright and Beautiful’ is based upon the creation account in the book of genesis in which the lord God made all that we see around us. Specifically, God created the bright and beautiful things that the writer, Cecil Francis Alexander saw around her at three locations: at Llanwenarth House in Govilon, Monmouthshire, in the valley of the River Usk in Wales; at Markree Castle near Sligo, Ireland; and in Minehead and the nearby village of Dunster, England. The hymn may have been inspired by a verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "He prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all." Alternatively, inspiration may have come from William Paley's Natural Theology, published in 1802, that argues for God as the designer of the natural world. For example, the hymn's second verse alludes to "wings" and verse 7 refers to "eyes". Paley cited wings and eyes as examples of complexity of design, analogous to that of a watch, with God as the "Divine Watchmaker". That was the popular thinking of the time, and I think that it is still relevant today. Science in 1848 was beginning to expose how complexly designed and intricately detailed the world was, and this helped to buttress the faith of those who believed that God created the world. After all, they supposed, how can we see the spiraling strands of DNA or the complex amalgam of systems that make up the human body and not see evidence of a creator’s hand? To them the universe was designed and put together with the exacting care that one takes when making a clock or watch, and so God was thought of as the Divine Clockmaker. And so Alexander, a writer of such notable hymns for children such as once in Royal David’s City, set out to write a hymn that would describe the world as she saw it, and as the book of Genesis described it.
Some other verses include: 3 The purple headed mountain, The river running by, The sunset and the morning, That brightens up the sky;-
All things bright ...
4. The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden,- He made them every one:
All things bright ...
5. The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows where we play, The rushes by the water, We gather every day;-
This reminds us of the beginning, when each day God made something new and at the end, seeing his work complete, God saw that it was good. Everything in creation was good, God saw to it himself, and the descriptions of the Garden of Eden were descriptions of a paradise in which no creature lacked for anything. So we learn from the very beginning of the Bible that God is good, and God is good to us, by creating a creation that is good. But I ask you do you think everything in creation is good? What about the shark? The skunk? The termite or the tick? There are to me gross, foul, and terrible things in the world. I’m a brave man. I’m not afraid of much. I am not easily disgusted, but there are two things absolutely guaranteed to make my hair stand up on end. The cockroach, and the house centipede. As far as bugs go, I think they’re fine as long as they are not in my house, and many that are in my house I can stand, but those two things I cannot stand. When I got to Texas I was introduced immediately to the dean of Admission at Brite Divinity School, then I was introduced to my apartment manager, and then I was introduced to the Texas cockroach all on my first day. I don’t know if everything is bigger in Texas, but I assure you, cockroaches are. The cockroaches there are so big you can hear a crunch when you step on them, and I lived in an old run down apartment so there were plenty. If I saw one run across the room I had to stop everything and kill it. Why? It couldn’t hurt me. They do not bite or sting, but my disgust with them was such that my friends would laugh at the intensity of hatred I showed when killing them. Nowadays, I have not seen a cockroach in years, but what plagues me now is the house centipede, easily the ugliest thing in all of God’s creation. No one ever sang a hymn about those. Well one group of people did. They remind me of the song by the comedy group, Monty Python, which is a parody of today’s hymn called “All Things Dull and Ugly”
All things dull and ugly All creatures short and squat All things rude and nasty, The lord god made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings. He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small All things foul and dangerous The lord god made them all.
Each nasty little hornet Each beastly little squid Who made the spiky urchin Who made the shocks... he did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small. Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The lord god made them all. All things dull and nasty.
So, on the one hand we have our hymn that sings of the goodness of God’s creation, and on the other hand we have our experience which says that not all things are so good. What do we make of this? There are two things we should make of this I think and the first is that all things are bright and beautiful to God who made them as he saw fit. So things that are ugly to us are so, because they are not like us, but God created them for a reason. How annoying and ugly are flies? But we need them to break down and decompose dying matter. They play an important role in the life cycle. Bees sting, but without them we would have no honey or flowers. Worms can be gross but they help keep the soil good for the plants. I do not know what the purpose of the cockroach and the house centipede is, but I am sure that God knows, so we learn from this hymn that all creatures great and small are bright and beautiful to the Lord who created them all.
The other point to make is that not all in the world is due to God. Human sin creates things or perverts God’s creation so that what was once bright and beautiful can be sullied and stained. Likewise, we hear of a time in which animals that are natural enemies today, then laid down next to each other. All was in harmony when God deemed it good, and so much of what we see in the world today that we would not call good is a result of human beings acting against the way God intended. This hymn is about creation before the fall. In that Garden of Eden all was good. All was bright and beautiful. Terrible things like cancer, flesh eating bacteria, and kidney stones did not exist. Also, nothing was spoiled so there were no polluted creaks and streams, no smog-filled air, no landfills or mountains filled with toxic waste. It is true that God is good all the time and all the time God is good, but often times humans are not and even that is reflected in this hymn, though you will not find it in our hymnal or any others today. In more modern times, due to its endorsement of the class system, verse three is mostly omitted.
3. The rich man in his castle The poor man at his gate He made them High and lowly He ordered their estate
Hymns are an attempt to grasp the nature of biblical truth, they are an attempt to create theology that is accessible to everyone, but as, such, theologies change over time. Let us never confuse hymnody with scripture, and so we no longer, thankfully, agree that the rich and the poor are ordained by God and assigned to their station, so we do no longer sign that verse, but neither do we throw out the hymn in its entirety which is filled with such an important and valuable theological insight.
The last verse is the one that provides us with the most important lesson.
6. He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell, How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well.
This final verse recalls Psalm 105 “O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples” which goes on to list many of the things that God did in the OT but first among them should be that he created all of the earth and all that is in it for us, and when it is left to its own devices it is good.
It is important that we share the good news that all things bright and beautiful were created by God and all things God created are bright and beautiful in their own way. It is also important that we take care of God’s creation for it is a living witness to God’s glory. It is like the quilt a grandma hands to her grandchild. It is a memento handed down intended for us to remember them but also intended for us to use. But we use it carefully. We prize it, because we prize the one who made it. Because we love our grandmother, we value what she made.
That is the attitude that we should have with regard to what God has made. We should prize creation because we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Therefore, let us praise God and thank Him for making "all things well".
May Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Each in Their Own Language" and is based on Acts 2:1-21. It was preached on May 19, 2013 as part of our Pentecost and baptismal celebration.
Have you ever gone to someone who was an expert and asked them to explain something to you, but their explanation was so complex that it just confused you more? I have a friend who is a theoretical chemist, and when I would picture him at work I would imagine the stereotypical lab coat and goggles mixing chemicals, but, as he explained to me that isn’t it at all. Pretty much all his work is one on computers were he works on modeling. When he tries to explain the details it only makes things more confusing because he sues the language of his profession of which I am not a member. I believe he uses computers to model the best and most effective way to administer a vaccination to a population, but he might also be trying to turn lead into gold for all I know. I need him to explain it to me in a language I can understand, otherwise I have no hope of learning.
And that is the way for everyone. Having knowledge about something is no good if we cannot communicate it effectively. If people expect us to speak to them using terminology like doohickey, thingamimijig, and watchamacallit, but we use words like phalange, catalytic converters , resonating box, or Heisenberg couplers they will likely walk away more confused than when they came. A seminary professor once said the same thing about preaching and teaching the gospel. If people want to know about Jesus, God, and the church and we talk to them about ecclesiology, soteriology, and eschatology, they may decide that there worst fears are confirmed and this church stuff isn’t for them. And so he said, “We must speak to people in their own language.” A striking example of literally speaking to people in there own language can be found in the story of Pentecost. It is the day in which we celebrate the Holy spirit falling upon Jesus disciples in the city of Jerusalem. As they spoke in their own language people who were gathered in the town from all around who spoke many other languages could understand what they said. Some in the crowd supposed that the disciples must have been drunk even though one of the signs of being drunk is that one speaks in a language that no one can understand. There were many languages then and Acts gives us a list of some that were spoken that day. Cretans and Arabs, Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, and Jews all were there, and all heard the gospel in their own language. Many of those languages are gone now or changed beyond recognition. A Greek or Jew of toady would not be able to understand a Greek or Jewish person of those times as languages change and develop. Now there are many other languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, and our own English language. Because of the variety of languages throughout the world the world can sometimes remind us of the story of Babel in Genesis and of course that is what we call it when people speak in a way we do not understand. Babeling, and it happens all the time. People misunderstand, they get confused, they feel like they are speaking a different language even when they are both speaking English, and it leads to much hurt feelings, frustration and anger. All anyone wants is to be understood and to understand, and that is why Pentecost was such a wonderful experience. They all understood. Each in their own language. Now a days you’ll hear of peo0pel claiming to speak in God’s language and they call themselves Pentecostal, but they require someone to interpret what they are saying. It is called the gifts of tongues but ti sounds like babbling to us, and it is the opposite of what happened on the first Pentecost. Instead, I think what happened is that when Peter got up to speak, h spoke in such a way that the meaning of his message got through. Has that ever happen to you? Has anyone ever conveyed a message without words, or without many words? I recommend if you get a chance to go to a service in another language and you will be surprised how much you understand. It must be that way because the word of God is for all people in all places of all languages. The word that God speaks is a word that must be understood by each person, so it must be spoken in a universal language. We have universal languages. There is the language of math and science. The language of music and dance. The language of love and compassion. There is so much in these languages that are conveyed through their use that it recalls Francis of Assissi’s plea that we preach the gospel, if necessary use words. We, the church, as the community of God, must convey the word of God to people in their own language. We have a way that we talk to one another. We have sayings and words that come from the stories of the Bible and the life of Christ and we say them to one another with no question that we understand what it means to pray, to take communion, to talk to God. But when we share our faith with others outside of the church we need to adjust our language a little. You wouldn’t want to have an in depth discussion on the nature of Christ with someone who has never even heard of the trinity, but sometimes that is what we try to do. We want to convey the message that God sent his son that we may live with him eternally in words that people will understand. A missionary once spoke of people who believed in a sun god and a tree god, and they told the story of how the sun once walked the earth but had a fight with the tree god and so ran off to live in the sky. Seizing upon this story he told the people of how Jesus was the son who had returned to live with the people and would never leave. This is what worked for him and what has Not only have missionaries learned the languages of native cultures to first preach the gospel they also used the same terms they used to convey the meaning worked for the church throughout time. It is important to speak to people in their language because God speaks to us in ours. We who follow Jesus Christ believe that we may speak to him and with him whenever we need. We believe we have a personal connection to him and it isn’t because we speak English, because he speaks to all people in all languages. Jesus Christ has a personal revelation for each of us, personal conversation with us in a language we can understand. This is what makes our faith such a personal faith. On the day of Pentecost the holy spirit came and opened the ears of many who had previously only heard Babeling, and today four people have come because their ears are open to the word that God is speaking to them. They have come to be cleaned. They have come to be blessed. The y have come to be forgiven and welcome into the body of Christ. They have come to hear the word of God speaking to them personally and individually, and they have come to add their voices to the voices of millions who have come before knowing that when we speak together no matter what language, it dos not sound like a cacophony of babbling, but the sound of a mighty rushing wind.
April Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Shame". It is based on John 21:1-19 . It was preached on April 14, 2013.
Okay so I was wrong about My reasons for us fallin' out Of love I want to fall back in
My life is different now I swear I know now what it means to care About somebody other than myself
I know the things I said to you They were untender and untrue I'd like to see those things undo
So if you could find it in your heart To give a man a second start I promise things won't end the same
Shame, boatloads of shame Day after day, more of the same Blame, please lift it off Please take it off, please make it stop
This is a song by one of my favorite bands, “The Avett Brothers” and it is called “Shame” It was one of the first songs of there’s I had ever herd, and I knew as soon as I heard it that I was going to love them, because the song resonated so completely with me.
It resonated with me, because I have been there, I have felt the overwhelming burden of shame and the gut wrenching turmoil of blame that can cling to a person’s soul unlike anything else, and I think everyone has felt that at one point or another.
We have a railing on our deck that the previous owners thought would be a good idea to paint white and the deck floor they also thought would be good to paint beige and so what happens is that, no matter how much we try, the deck gets dirty every year. We paint it every spring, and by September it looks dirty. That’s just the result of being outdoors. Likewise, any person, no matter how good or upright, no matter how much they may try to do the right thing, inevitably has moments, where they make a mistake, where sin dirties their heart. It is just what happens when we live in a sinful world. At some point shame comes to us all, and the particularly pernicious nature of shame is that it feeds on itself, and grows, and causes us to believe that we cannot overcome it. So the feeling of shame which is often caused by sin, can easily lead to wallowing in it and making our situation worse. Often times we are incapable of freeing ourselves from shame, it takes someone else.
Once when I was at church camp my friends and I were preparing for the talent show. We had participated before doing some old comedy skits and got a lot of positive feedback, so we thought we would really put an effort into writing one of our own. We enlisted some friends and we stayed up for many nights working out what we would do. It was great, or so we thought. It had a lot of funny edgy, off color jokes. It had inside jokes, and it had some good natured burns of our fellow campers that we just knew they would take in good fun and tell us how funny we were later. I knew we had miscalculated when the booing started. People don’t get booed at church camp talent shows too often. They really are one of the most forgiving audiences one can perform in front of, so it became pretty clear to me that perhaps, what seemed funny to us at 2:00 in the morning wasn’t so funny to everyone else. I remember later on at the campfire, just feeling, shame. Thinking that we were dumb and arrogant and foolish. I remember wanting to leave. The great sacred place that I spent all year waiting to go to, and I wanted to just go home and hide myself, and then two things happened. One is that my youth group leader, who was also a counselor, came over to me, and told me some helpful words. She came to me and my friend whose shame threatened to eclipse my own and told us that are skit ”was really awful,” and then she invited us to lead the next song. I know those don’t sound like the most encouraging words, but I cannot tell you how important it was that after acknowledging our lack of judgement, she didn’t berate us any more than we were berating ourselves, and, in fact asked us to resume our place in the group as if nothing happened. The other thing is that me and my same friend went to another church camp event the next week and we participated in a mime workshop which seemed kind of weird to us and we only singed up for it, because the other workshops were filled. The workshop involved acting out a scene in which Christ’s love and mercy were shown bringing reconciliation to people and lifting their shame. I remember working on it all week and wondering how people would respond to it, and knowing that I could not take another poorly reviewed performance. I remember getting very involved in the scene in a away that I would never have expected and then being amazed when it ended and the 500 people gathered gave us a standing ovation, and then the keynote speaker, who two years later would become my professor and mentor, came out to speak and told us how moved he was by the performance. I learned that day how shame can be lifted off a person’s shoulders, through the love of a counselor, and the forgiveness of Christ.
I always think about that moment when I read this passage from John’s gospel, which just drips with shame. Here we pick up where we left off, with the disciples having betrayed and abandoned Christ. Then having seen his body gone and not understanding. Then having been confronted with his body and doubting, and now they know he is alive and now they know that they had lost their faith for a while, so that, in some ways, his return is not unmitigated good news, but a reminder of all that they had done wrong. This is evidenced by the fact that the disciples, now knowing that Christ is back, don’t know what to do and so they return to where Jesus had found them, by the sea of Galilee, returning to this old job of fishermen. It is as if they felt that they had lost there right to call themselves disciples, and, so, not knowing what else to do, returned to their old life, when Christ appeared again. Of all the disciples Peter is the one with the most guilt since he is the one who denied knowing Christ three times after he told Christ he would do no such thing, and so Christ has special words for him, which at first seem like a cruel test. Three times, he asks Peter, “Do you love me?” Here we have a disciple who loves Christ, but doesn’t have a lot to show for it, and so all he can say is, “You know, and again “yo know” and finally with desperate shame, he cries, “You who know all things must know this, that I do love you.” Here Peter knows that although he cannot prove it and although much evidence can be used to mock the claim, he loves Christ in spite of all and calls upon Christ himself to be his witness. At the end of the day, what else can we say? We too have faltered and failed. We too have fallen short and deserted him more than three times, and yet we do love him. Perhaps it’s because we know that we have fallen short of his goodness that we love him, for we know that only his mercy and his grace can free us of our shame. Earlier, Jesus told his disciples to be perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect, and I must confess that I cannot love anyone who would put that burden on me, for I know that the command can only lead to soul destroying shame. If the bar is set that high and I know I am going to fall short then what would be the point of trying. Fortunately, Jesus also told his followers, “come to me all who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” I love Jesus Christ because he already knows that I will not be perfect and he already knows that he will forgive me and love me anyway.
“And everyone they have a heart And when they break and fall apart And need somebody's helping hand I used to say just let 'em fall It wouldn't bother me at all I couldn't help them now I can”
Those are the last words of the song, and I love that it ends like that. Why can the singer help them? Because they have had there shame lifted off, and they know how it can happen for someone else as well, moreover they know that they are called to help and to act. Peter is forgiven, but it is not cheap grace, but the grace that comes with a command, “Tend my flock. Feed my sheep.” The Heidelberg catechism sums it up well when it answers the question, “Since we are delivered from our suffering by grace alone, why do we need to do good works?” by saying “For this reason, that we must employ our whole life in expressing our gratitude to God for his goodness and praising him.” Peter was so grateful that Christ freed him from his shame, that he gladly took on the charge of caring for Christ’s sheep, and we are called to respond likewise. Christ is the one who can free us form our shame, who can take our burden of blame and lift it off, and, in response, we must tell others who and by whom, their shame may be lifted as well. If there is anything we can do to help others forgive themselves, then we must do it, because there are few burdens so heavy as the ones we give ourselves. At the very least we must let them know that the one who forgave his disciples for deserting him will forgive us for deserting him as well.
“For his anger is but for a moment; his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
Joy came that morning by the sea of Galilee. It came for me the next morning at church camp when I saw that all was well and relationships were restored, and it will come to us as well if we love Jesus Christ. For his love can lift our shame, and his love can makes us whole. If we love him then we too are called to tend his sheep and we can do so by letting them know that they need no longer carry there shame alone. In fact they need not carry it at all.
March Sermon of the Month
This sermon is entitled, "Coming and Going". It is based on John 8:12-20. It was preached on March 17, 2013.
I cannot say that I have had too many adventures in my life. I have traveled some, I have done a few crazy things like skydiving. I’ve been in the ocean and on top of the mountains. One of the greatest adventures I have had would be when I would drive across the country between Texas and Pittsburgh. I made that trip twice a year for two years. It was a two day trip through seven states, two time zones, and nine major cities. It was long and difficult, but it was also exciting because I was leaving my friends and my home at school, and I was heading back home to see my Jessi. I was moving from a great place to an even better place. Each morning, when I began that trip, I reflected on the happiness and the sense of belonging that I knew in the place I was leaving, and I looked forward to the joy and love that I knew I would receive in the place towards which I was going. I also knew that, no matter how long it took or what time I got in Jessi would be waiting up to hug and kiss me at my journey’s end. Like those great Motel 6 commercials I knew that she would leave a light on for me. Well those journeys were not only made bearable, they were actually made quite enjoyable because of two things. First because of that light at the end of my journey that was a beacon of warmth and hospitality promising me rest, peace, and joy after my long travels and second because, while I didn’t always no where I was as I zipped across the country, I knew where I had come from, and I knew where I was going. Two points make a line, and those two points, my origin and my destination, were all I needed to provide me with the motivation and desire to cross that distance.
Jesus didn’t need anyone to leave a light on for him because he announced to a startled crowd, “I am the light of the world”. This was startling to the crowd as it would be to any of us if someone were to say this. It sounds extremely arrogant and boastful to our ears, and we only tolerate it, because we accept Jesus as the Christ, and remember that old saying, “It isn’t boasting if its true.” His hearers argue that what he claims cannot possibly be true because he is only one witness, and the Jewish law demands that two witnesses be required as a test of truth. Jesus responds by saying, “‘Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going.” Because he knows that he has come from God and that he is going to God, he is not afraid of the truth that he speaks, even if it goes against the accepted conventions of the time. Just prior to this announcement Jesus encountered a crowd preparing to stone a woman for adultery, and he said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the one to cast the first stone.” Stoning was the common punishment for that crime, and those who engaged in it were doing there religious duty to uphold the law, but Jesus words chastise them. His words upset people because they overturned the conventions as to how things ought to be. In doing so he called for a religion of compassion and sincerity over and against a religion of law and self-righteousness. This is the religion that Christ came to create. It is a religion that cares more for mercy and love than for judgement and condemnation, and it was shocking to many at the time. But we need to be careful lest we be so quick to judge those awful and harsh people that we encounter Jesus rebuking time and again in the scriptures. The stereotype, the convention, that has been handed down to us is that the Jewish faith is one of rigidness and judgement. This has led to the justification of the worst anti-Semitism in our history. You will not find even the most orthodox Jew today who suggests that an adulterer be stoned to death, and while, many Jews may be more concerned with the law than love, the vast majority are not. Likewise there are just as many Christians who have been as rigid and concerned with what humans consider to be proper rather than what Christ says is right. Looking back through our history it is hard for us to understand how honest Christian people, with the teaching of Christ before them, could have endured many things that were woven into the texture of their way of living.
It is amazing to think that there was a time when speaking against these societal conventions would have been offensive to a great majority of people. But the light of Christ cast out the darkness. Truth that was once offensive is now accepted. We need to remember that our faith journey and the path of Christ’s Church is not a static experience as if we could say, “ Here, with Christ, I stand and I’ll never move.” If that were so, then there are many darknessnesses that we would still be under. But we, like moths to a flame, are heading towards a light, the light of Christ, and with each step we take the light scatters juts a little bit more of the darkness.
As we Christians and Christian churches move along our journey we must wonder about how traditional we should be. We must wrestle with trying to determine what it is that we should keep because it is the truth of Christ and what we should shed because they are the conventions of the world in which we live. As we do this it is as if our entire life is this long journey between our birth and death. Some people travel a great deal between those two points, while others stand still for fear of losing their way. They are afraid that if they leave the place where they are they will never get to their destination, and they will not be able to get back home. What they don’t realize, however, is that time marches on, and those who try so desperately to cling to where they started out get pushed helplessly along anyway. They find that they are not in any great new place, but neither are they in that perfect, idealized, place they were before. While, at the same time, many of those who embark on that journey are so quick to get away from where they started out, that they leave without a map, a compass, or anything to guide them, and they lose track of where they are going and never get there. These are the dangers Christians and churches must avoid. We must remember that on our journey the most important things to know are, where we come from and where we are going. Where we come from is that place where Jesus Christ is the son of the living God who died that we might live. Where we come from is that place where we are called to be like him and treat others as he treated them. Where we come from is that denomination begun in Western Pennsylvania that has graced this land for two hundred years in an attempt to shed the conventions of division, denominationalism in order to focus on the truth of Jesus Christ. Where we come from is this church which has sought to bring those beliefs to the city of Connellsville for over 180 years. This is the place from where our faith comes, but we, Christians living in this current generation are charged to take it forward. Not to move away from the faith that Christ gave us, but to move closer to living the way that Christ calls us to live and to being the church that Christ calls us to be. This is where we are going to the place where we always do unto others as we would have them do unto us. The place that we are going to is the place where none go without. The place that we are going is that place where sin has no power and death has no sting. The place that we are going to is the place where peace and justice, mercy and grace reside. How do we get to this place without forgetting where it is we began? By following the Light of the World. This is the light which will be our guide; Jesus Christ, who would only let those without sins cast stones, who called on his fellow religious leaders to be more compassionate than self righteous, who healed the sick and cared for the suffering, who tells us that, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” But that is the key. We must follow, we do not have the choice of standing still. Anytime we follow anyone there is the chance of getting lost, and when the one whom we follow can walk on water, rise from the grave, and ascend into Heaven, it would be easy to get lost. But as long as we know where we come from. As long as we know our history and celebrate our roots. And as long as we know where we are going. As long as we know the kind of Christians and the kind of church that we want to be. We will not be lost. Jesus Christ is referred to as the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and that is what he is for us. We may wander like the Israelites did in between, but so long as we know that Christ is our beginning and so long as we know that Christ is our end, we will find our way at last.
