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December 30, 2018 - Singing the Lord's Song

12/30/2018

*OPENING SENTENCES & GREETING                    (from the angels’ song in Luke 2)
“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you;
he is the Messiah, the Lord.
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                           Isaiah 52:7-10, NIV

7 How beautiful on the mountains
    are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
    who bring good tidings,
    who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
    “Your God reigns!”
8 Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
    together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion,
    they will see it with their own eyes.
9 Burst into songs of joy together,
    you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people,
    he has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
    in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
    the salvation of our God.

PSALTER                                                                                                   Psalm 98, NLT

1 Sing a new song to the Lord,
    for he has done wonderful deeds.
His right hand has won a mighty victory;
    his holy arm has shown his saving power!
2 The Lord has announced his victory
    and has revealed his righteousness to every nation!
3 He has remembered his promise to love and be faithful to Israel.
    The ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.

4 Shout to the Lord, all the earth;
    break out in praise and sing for joy!
5 Sing your praise to the Lord with the harp,
    with the harp and melodious song,
6 with trumpets and the sound of the ram’s horn.
    Make a joyful symphony before the Lord, the King!

7 Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!
    Let the earth and all living things join in.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands in glee!
    Let the hills sing out their songs of joy
9 before the Lord,
    for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with justice,
    and the nations with fairness.

GOSPEL READING                                                                              John 1:1-14, NCV

1 In the beginning there was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him. 4 In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.

6 There was a man named John who was sent by God. 7 He came to tell people the truth about the Light so that through him all people could hear about the Light and believe. 8 John was not the Light, but he came to tell people the truth about the Light. 9 The true Light that gives light to all was coming into the world!

10 The Word was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world did not know him. 11 He came to the world that was his own, but his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who did accept him and believe in him he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They did not become his children in any human way—by any human parents or human desire. They were born of God.

14 The Word became a human and lived among us. We saw his glory—the glory that belongs to the only Son of the Father—and he was full of grace and truth.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                Colossians 3:12-17, NCV

12 God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So you should always clothe yourselves with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Bear with each other, and forgive each other. If someone does wrong to you, forgive that person because the Lord forgave you. 14 Even more than all this, clothe yourself in love. Love is what holds you all together in perfect unity. 15 Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking, because you were all called together in one body to have peace. Always be thankful. 16 Let the teaching of Christ live in you richly. Use all wisdom to teach and instruct each other by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 Everything you do or say should be done to obey Jesus your Lord. And in all you do, give thanks to God the Father through Jesus.

CHRISTMAS MEDITATION      Singing the Lord’s Song

We probably find it easier to sing the Lord’s song this time of year than any other. For all the commercial and theatrical Christmas songs out there, plenty of people sing or play instrumental versions of traditional Christmas carols that share the story of Christ’s birth. Christmas carols come from and are loved by peoples of many different nations.

According to one history site the first “Angel’s hymn” sung for a worship service in Rome was in the year 129. But Christmas carols in various languages became popular in the Middle Ages after St. Francis started the practice of Nativity Plays in Italy. Music told the story as the play was enacted, and out of this perhaps, a new generation of Christmas carols was born. The trend spread across Europe with carols in French, German, Spanish and other languages, not just Latin anymore.

Not every carol told the biblical story. There were some embellishments, localized versions or some based on legend. In spite of the Puritans who eliminated many forms of music from worship, carols survived in England until a time they could again be enjoyed in official Christmas Eve performances. Carols finally flourished in the Victorian era with orchestral accompaniment. Street singing of carols was popular as were candlelight Christmas Eve worship services that included much singing. Into this tradition 100 years ago came the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, as we shared here on Christmas Eve, with carols and scriptures combined to tell the story from the fall of humanity to the birth of our Savior.

(the above information comes from this website: https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/carols_history.shtml )

Perhaps you noticed the common thread running through our scripture choices today.
The opening came from the Christmas narrative in Luke 2; it is the song the angels sing to the shepherds. In the prophecy from Isaiah, as good news comes in a foretelling of Messiah, the watchman is to shout for joy and others respond with joyful songs. Do you hear in Isaiah the future hint of the angels bringing good tidings of great joy for all people?

Psalm 98 tells us to sing a new song as we tell of God’s wonderful deeds. We are called to break into songs of joy and praise with instruments as well as voices, because God has remembered his promise of faithful love to all people. Isn’t that exactly what both Zechariah and Mary did? The words to their songs are recorded in Luke 1; we cherish them as the Benedictus and the Magnificat. We sang versions of each of these during the season of Advent. In these songs of praise each expectant parent is grateful for the blessing their child will bring, John as the Baptist and Jesus as Messiah. But the songs also remember the promises God made to their ancestors and give thanks that God keeps those promises. Magrey deVega actually calls Luke the “Ultimate Advent Playlist” in his book, Awaiting the Already. He compares it to a Rogers and Hammerstein musical where, “Something happens to someone, and then they sing about it.” (p. 48)

As John’s Gospel begins, his topic is the Word and the Light. He doesn’t refer to singing, but these verses could themselves be a hymn. They are laid out as a poem in most Bible versions, just as the songs of Zechariah and Mary are set. There is a rhythm to reading them I can easily imagine set to a melody, and indeed we know some verses have inspired great music including Handel’s Messiah. “And the Glory of the Lord” is one of my favorites.

Then we come to Colossians and a summary of Paul’s teachings on the aspects of being a good Christian. As he extols virtues like kindness and patience, the necessity of forgiveness, the importance of love and obedience, he also expects us to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” with gratitude in our hearts. Singing the Lord’s song is part of what it is to be a Christian. Maybe only a few of us have the talent to sing in RiverChor, for example, but we can still sing hymns here in worship or sing along with a radio or CD at home or in the car. Maybe you just hum and think the words in your head, but all of this is a way to offer our thanks and praise to God.

Music is one of my favorites among God’s many gifts. I said years ago I would rather go blind than deaf, because I would miss music too much. For me music can be both exciting or soothing. It has a profound capacity to carry my memories, and it is an excellent form of teaching. You pick up as much theology from repeated hymns as you do from any one sermon.

Before Jessika was born, I often sang to her what I called teaching songs. The ABC song was to get started on the alphabet. Ten Little Indians was for counting, but I added a verse of Ten Little Maidens for gender equality. Jesus Loves Me was the beginning of her Christian Education. I don’t remember why I chose to do that, but I was very diligent about it, and I repeated those songs to Tali.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that having a song on your mind can brighten your day. I know people who need music to get going in the morning or to tackle the chores. It has been demonstrated that students do better on tests with classical music in the background. I was playing string versions of Christmas carols while I wrote this message. Karla and I talked about music in the office this week. I need to find the CD player that used to be in there. Friday she listened to KLove on her phone and asked if country was ok, too. Meanwhile I listen to either Kpop or contemporary Christian on my computer, and some days bookkeeping requires classical.

What I’m saying is that more than one genre of music can allow God to work in and through you. I believe God loves many forms of music, each style as unique as the children he created. Magrey deVega referred to a study reviewed in Social Psychology and Popular Science journal showing that phenomenon of getting a chill down your spine when you listen to some music is a real thing. Music can trigger a response in your hypothalamus causing goosebumps. But here’s the thing, it seems to depend more on your “openness to experience” than to what genre of music is played. My guess is different things might trigger a response in different people, or perhaps a well sung phrase would do it for me no matter what genre. (p.48)

The whole time I was reading deVega’s chapter on the music in Luke, I was thinking to myself of another verse from Psalms that poses a different scenario. It’s the verse behind one of the songs in the musical “Godspell.” The verse asks, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4, GW)

For the exiles in Babylon, it was very hard to keep singing the Lord’s songs when they were surrounded by a foreign culture and expected to participate in that society, especially when they were to bow down and worship the king or his statue. On the one hand, the loss of their homeland and way of life would fill them with so much sorrow they didn’t feel like singing, or all they could sing were laments. On the other hand, when you are in a foreign culture for decades and encouraged to blend in, eventually you absorb that culture and sometimes forget aspects of your own.

I think this intersects our own experience in some ways, because for us older folks the world today can feel pretty foreign compared to our youth. Technology has brought so many changes, but there are changes in values as well. Many of us struggle with what that means in terms of worship and sharing our Christian faith. We feel like the faithful remnant of the exile when we come on Sunday morning. Not everyone is looking for the same style of worship, but the foreign feeling comes when we realize many people aren’t looking for worship at all. Many live day to day lives without recognizing a need for God or the need for a Savior. So, how do we sing the Lord’s songs in that foreign landscape?

I’ll be honest, I’m raising the question for you to ponder more than I am offering you answers. It is a question each of us has to answer in our own way. But let me refer you back to some of today’s scriptures for a hint. Our passage from Colossians began “God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So…” and it goes on to give us clues of how we are to live as God’s people in this world. Metaphorically they are all ways we sing the Lord’s song even in a foreign land. We do it with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, unity, peace, gratitude and obedience.

If you look at the other scriptures from Isaiah and Psalms we are to sing or shout the good news, and bring glad tidings to others. If you can’t sing it like the angels, then be like the shepherds who went out of Bethlehem rejoicing and telling everyone the things they had heard and seen. Dare to talk about the things God has done in your life!

When you need encouragement, turn again to John, and remember that as dark as things may seem at times, the light shines in the darkness (even the darkness of your own soul or the darkness of the world gone awry) and the darkness cannot put that Light out! Perhaps there is a bit of melody singing itself in your mind. If the message of that song is something appropriate, perhaps it is the Light making itself known within you.

As we continue to enjoy a few more Christmas carols today, sing your heart out and rejoice. Make your melody to God our Creator and Jesus our Savior, as you share God’s good news in song.

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December 23, 2018 - Radical Renewal

12/22/2018

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*OPENING SENTENCES & GREETING                                                   Psalm 36:5-7, NCV
Lord, your love reaches to the heavens,
    your loyalty to the skies.
Your goodness is as high as the mountains.
    Your justice is as deep as the great ocean.
Lord, you protect both people and animals.
God, your love is so precious!
    You protect people in the shadow of your wings.

OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                                  Psalm 113:5-9, CEB
Who could possibly compare to the Lord our God?
    God rules from on high;
6     he has to come down to even see heaven and earth!
7 God lifts up the poor from the dirt
    and raises up the needy from the garbage pile
8         to seat them with leaders--
        with the leaders of his own people!
9     God nests the once barren woman at home--
        now a joyful mother with children!

Praise the Lord!

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                     Matthew 1:18-25, NLT
18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
    She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
    which means ‘God is with us.’”

24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

SERMON                                         Radical Renewal
Throughout the Advent season, everyone asks, “Are you ready for Christmas?” By today that becomes a dangerous question, because what most folks mean when they ask are some of the following:

Have you decorated?
Have you baked?
Are your cards in the mail yet?
Are the gifts purchased and wrapped?
Is the house ready for company or are you ready to travel?

That being the question, my answer is no, but I give myself grace by remembering that there are 12 days of Christmas, and my family doesn’t celebrate until we are halfway through them. I still have time for some of those things and others won’t happen this year. Christmas is almost here, but there may be ideas that have to wait until later or even next year. As you heard in the announcements, we aren’t quite ready as a church for Christmas Eve either. While many things are ready to slide into place, we still have a couple hospitality roles to fill.

I like the decorations, the cookies, the cards and the travel plans. I love our Christmas Eve worship service. They are all a work in progress and so are we. As individuals, as a church, as a society, we are not a finished product. God is still at work in us and through us.

What Advent could ask of a more spiritual nature is this, “Are you ready for Jesus?” That’s a far more serious question. You may or may not have made room in your holiday and your life for Jesus to play a starring role. I may be more in tune with God this Advent than in some seasons past, but I still have a long way to go.

Jesus comes to bring a radical renewal of the way we think and the way we live in this world. You caught some of that in the reading tidbits as we lit the advent candles. In God’s timing, things will change. Empires come and go whether we are talking about Old Testament regimes from Babylon to Persia to Greece and even Rome or equally true of leadership in any sector in our world today. No one holds office forever, though some may stay in one position for a very long time. When we perceive humans leading out of a greedy or arrogant nature, it helps to remember their power to control or coerce, to dominate and even manipulate does not last forever. That baby of Bethlehem still invites us to a radically new way of life based on godly principles at every level: government, economics, health care, community, church, education, commerce, immigration, environment and more. The power structures of society must be transformed, but on a more personal level, the power struggle within our own lives must also be resolved. Our dark sides (and we all have them in some form) cannot continue to control us.

We do not do this alone. We bet on the baby. Brueggemann points out that the king born in “filth & poverty” in Bethlehem (Celebrating Abundance, p. 54) is God keeping God’s promises but with a twist. God is intent on “turning the world back to its sanity,” because society goes insanely overboard in unhealthy, unbalanced ways. For example:

We lament a world filled with violence, yet our focus on blame does not resolve it.
We have economic strategies that fail to anticipate all the consequences.
We argue over the effects of global warning while hesitating to do what it would take to reverse them.
We fill our lives with stuff and activities rather than nurturing relationship and reflection.

In the midst of this reality, not all that different now than it was back then, God came not as a warrior but as a baby. Think about how people respond to babies. Their innocent look and playful nature can disarm the crankiest among us. God did not threaten us with punishment but invites us to change. God came to build relationships not policies, yet out of those relationships our policies will be more compassionate and realistic.

Psalm 36 used in our opening sentences invites us to trust God’s faithfulness. It is a common theme in the psalms to recite that God’s faithful love endures to all generations. In this psalm God’s love and loyalty reach beyond the skies, God’s goodness, high as the mountains and God’s justice, deep as the sea. It reminds me of a psalm that warns us not to put our trust in princes, (Psalm 146:3) and another that warns not to trust chariots or horses. (Psalm 20:7-8) The things of this world, wonderful as they may be, will ultimately fail us, but not God. God may seem hidden for a while, but God remains; just as the sun is still there behind a cloud or shining on the opposite hemisphere. One day sun and stars may burn out, but even then, God remains.

There are certainly times we want to hide or retreat from concerns and responsibilities, days we can barely drag ourselves out of bed. But it does us no good to run away or bury our head in the sand like an ostrich. We read in Psalms that we take refuge under God’s wing. (Psalm 91:4) or as Luke writes, Jesus wants to gather us like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. (Luke 13:34) I think it means metaphorically to climb into God’s embrace and remember that we are loved.

A significant concept in either of today’s psalms is to begin with affirming who God is. Before we pray, before we begin our day, before the work or the food or the play, let us begin by affirming who God is in our world and in our lives. We are meant to focus on God and not ourselves. As I read one of the devotions this week, I scribbled in the margins, “When you are discouraged, make it a practice to list all the positive attributes of God you can remember. Let that exercise become a prayer and that prayer become a way of life.” So, I challenge you, list out loud, write in your journal or pray quietly that God is good, God is faithful, God is kind, God is just, God is merciful, God is radiant, God is creative, God is… you keep filling in those blanks and see how far you can go. It will add color and texture as you build up your faith.

Another concept for Advent is turning. We think of it in the word repentance more often for Lent, but once upon a time, Advent was also a season of repentance. Think how often in these four weeks I have brought up John the Baptist and his admonition to “Repent!” For radical renewal to come, we must indeed turn. John reminded people of the great prophet Elijah. Malachi ends our Old Testament with these words that in our Christian heritage tie the two men together.

“Look, I am sending Elijah the prophet to you,
        before the great and terrifying day of the Lord arrives.
Turn the hearts of the parents to the children
    and the hearts of the children to their parents.
            Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6)

Turning is significant. When we are turned toward the world, we are distracted and led astray. When we turn toward God, we find our focus and our path again. When we turn away from each other we become lonely or self-absorbed, maybe both. When we turn back to those God has put in our lives, we find relationship and sometimes, purpose. When we even turn away from ourselves, we get truly lost and become something we are not until we can’t even recognize the person God created us to be. When the world turns toward greed rather than generosity, to power and control rather than sharing, to violence rather than caring, we are in big trouble. The turning back, as Brueggemann points out, brings healing. It brings reconciliation. He sees that in Malachi’s promise of Messiah, a reconciliation between generations, between states or gender or anything else that divides us. Our world needs that healing.

So, how do we live into God’s Kingdom of radical renewal? We’ve been touching on this all through Advent. I’m reminded of the Ghandi quote, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” I’m reminded of Walter Rauschenbusch whose work on the Social Gospel I read in seminary. In researching his thinking anew I found this quote: “The essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God.” I fully believe that, but sadly he goes on to say, that so far this has been a failure.

In order for the radical newness of God’s kingdom to come about we are called to be active participants. That doesn’t necessarily mean letter writing campaigns or protests or bumper stickers and yard signs, although you may be called to such activities for a worthwhile cause. But more importantly living as citizens of God’s kingdom now means many of the basic behaviors called for in Romans 12. Brueggemann points out. generosity, hospitality and forgiveness. Looking further I would add sincerity, empathy, devotion, equality, honesty, compassion, and shalom in the fullest sense of that word. If we live with such integrity and in partnership with God, it will affect the world around us, and in time the world can change.

The world changed when God came in a baby born to an unwed mother named Mary, and a bewildered but righteous man named Joseph became step father to God’s Son. Willing to listen to God’s dream and participate in God’s plan, this couple partnered with God accepting the role God asked each of them to play. Though they surely could not see either the big picture or all the details, they were obedient to their portion of it. You could say that they bet on the baby, because they were willing to believe the tidings of God’s messengers.

We sing about Jesus’ subsequent birth as a silent, holy night where all is calm and bright forgetting that event actually heralds a revolution. Jesus came in humble manner, but he came to turn the world upside down just as he turned over the tables of the moneychangers in the courts of the Temple. Jesus came to upset corrupt systems, unfair practices, and business as usual when that business oppressed, victimized, or excluded any of God’s precious people, and we are ALL precious to God!

Advent invites us, like Joseph, to bet on the baby, to do the right thing rather than the easy thing, to trust the promises of the Old Testament, to believe that God is paying attention and will not let corrupt empires or self-serving leaders last forever. Change is always in the air wherever the Spirit of God is blowing. As much as we may dread change, there are things in our world and in ourselves that we know must be transformed for all God’s children to survive. We anticipate the radical newness Jesus wants to bring. Let us then dare to be yoked with Christ, shoulder our share of the load, and work together without fear or anxiety. Let us celebrate the Christmas that has come, and the Christmases yet to come, and the blessings of God’s presence in our midst. Let us sing the good news of “Glory to God and peace on earth.”

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December 16, 2018 - What Christ Came to Do

12/15/2018

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OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                               Isaiah 65:17, GW
17 I will create a new heaven and a new earth.
    Past things will not be remembered.
    They will not come to mind.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                     Matthew 11:2-11, NLT
2 John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, 3 “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”

4 Jesus told them, “Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen— 5 the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.” 6 And he added, “God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.”

7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds. “What kind of man did you go into the wilderness to see? Was he a weak reed, swayed by every breath of wind? 8 Or were you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes? No, people with expensive clothes live in palaces. 9 Were you looking for a prophet? Yes, and he is more than a prophet. 10 John is the man to whom the Scriptures refer when they say,

‘Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
    and he will prepare your way before you.’

11 “I tell you the truth, of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he is!

SERMON                                   What Christ Came to Do

What do you expect for Christmas? We are long beyond the age to send our wish list to Santa, though we may have shared it with a family member or a friend. You may have expectations of where or what you will eat for dinner.   You have expectations of how you will prepare and how you will celebrate. Some of your expectations will go exactly as planned, and some won’t. But it will be the little surprises of the holy days that you will cherish later. It will be the card or poinsettia you didn’t expect to receive, the visit or phone call that delighted you, the carolers you heard or even the stranger you helped. Plans and expectations are great, but sometimes the surprises are even better. It was like that with Jesus.

There were among the Jews expectations of what Christ, God’s anointed, Messiah would come to do. Some expected a king to continue the royal line of David. Scriptures said it poetically. “A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1) This was understood to mean that someone would be born in the family line of King David whose father was Jesse. The prophets spoke of one coming to sit on David’s throne to reign with justice and righteousness and establish a kingdom of peace that would never end. Even Gabriel said to Mary, “The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. 33 He will rule over Jacob’s house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.” (Luke 1:32b-33) But by the time Jesus was born David’s throne was long gone. Their king, Herod the Great, was a worship God or care for God’s people. The Jews weren’t looking for that kind of king, and their memory of King David was more legend, a rosy gold cultural memory and maybe not the whole truth.

Because of King Herod and the Roman occupation, some Jews, particularly the Zealots, were expecting God to send a fighter who would lead a rebellion to overthrow the Romans and kick them out of Judea. Perhaps they wanted someone more like Judah (AKA Judas) Maccabeus and his priestly father, Mattathias, who led the revolt against the Seleucid Empire of Antiochus IV and those Hellenized Jews who supported him. Stories from that Maccabean revolt, the cleansing of the Temple and restoration of worship is what is celebrated by Hanukkah. We know that revolt against the Roman occupation was Judas Iscariot’s expectation of Jesus.

However, Jesus was different. There’s no getting around that! He was not what was expected, not as God’s anointed, not as a king, not even as a rebel. Jesus didn’t come as royalty or a scholar or a politician or a commander. Jesus came as a commoner, a teacher who knew carpentry and hung out with fishermen and tax collectors. As a literal translation of John 1:14 reads, he put on flesh and tabernacled among us. Tabernacle refers to a tent. In other words, Jesus pitched his tent on our battlefield and joined our human struggle as one of us, and yet as more than us. Jesus came with the knowledge and power and authority and vision of God. We do not have those things on our own, but Christ offers to share them as he invites us to come. We have only to stretch out our hand in response, get up on our feet and follow him.

If Jesus was not what some expected, what did Jesus come to do? We need to remember that even if some Jews had picked up their own interpretations, going back to the scriptures themselves still provides the clearest answer which Jesus himself would point out. Isaiah expected the One sent by God to be filled with God’s Spirit and to come with wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. The One who comes from God could be expected to know and share God’s vision for creation and humanity with it. We could expect that One to have the wisdom and power to achieve God’s vision, to know God’s heart but also to understand our human way of thinking and our weakness for temptation. We could expect that One to love and reverence God leading us to do the same.

We had the sense when John the Baptist preached repentance in the wilderness that he believed what God revealed, that this One was his own cousin, Jesus. But months later, in Herod’s prison, John begged for reassurance that his message and his declaration had not been in vain. He sent his own disciples to inquire, “Are you the One we have been expecting? Or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3) It may shock you to consider John the Baptist as having doubts. But it makes sense to me that at the end of life or at certain other stress points along the way we may look at how we have lived or what we believed and wonder if we did it right. Why would John be any different; he was human just like us?

Jesus responded by asking John to examine the evidence. Did Jesus fulfill the expectations Isaiah had set forth in other prophetic proclamations, that the blind would see and the deaf hear, the lame would leap, that captives would be released, that Good News would be preached to the poor. These expectations Jesus set forth as his mission. Was it happening? As we read the stories from the gospels, we know the answer is yes.

Jesus asks John, what do you see? What do you think? Jesus asks the same of all of us throughout time. Don’t believe just because someone told you to believe. Look at the evidence, but not just in the Bible, the witness of the past. Look at your own life and the lives of those around you. Do you experience Jesus with skin on in anyone today? Do you see evidence of answered prayer? Does the work of transforming hearts and lives continue? Does healing of body, mind and spirit still happen? Is there any justice, mercy or kindness in the world? Then Jesus is still at work among us!

We can also continue to ask, what do you expect to see and hear? I realized maybe people don’t come to church to listen to preachers, because they already know what they expect us to say. I might think that way myself, if God hadn’t insisted I become a preacher. There are many preachers and teachers who speak to me through their books or their video presentations. However, there are also other voices I hear as prophetic: musicians, poets, dancers, artists. There’s a South Korean rap artist through whom I perceive God’s voice not only in the lyrics of his music, but through a letter he posted online for fans last Memorial Day or through his UNICEF speech at the United Nations. In his band’s message to Love Yourself before you can authentically love others, I hear an echo of Jesus quoting the Old Testament, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39)

Jesus came to bring something new into being, just as Isaiah had said long before, to create a new heaven and earth. I think that is not so much a new physical place for the future as it a new way of life here and now leading to the future. That is why the former things cannot dominate our minds. If we focus on the past, we won’t be open to God’s vision for the future. But as we await something new without knowing exactly when or what or how, we may also lose confidence.

We can’t put God on our timetable, but we also can’t ignore God’s intentions. Brueggemann’s devotion on this topic challenged me. For example, there are those among Christianity who try to read a timeline into Revelation, so there have been debates between pre-millennial and post-millennial theories. I’ll be honest that doesn’t interest me in the least. For me those phrases are better suited to mean before or after the year 2,000 rather than a theological stance on eschatology. Even as I banty those words about some of you wonder what I’m talking about. For some of us such debates are irrelevant.

Here’s the truth I do see. We live between Christ coming once and Christ coming again. We live between Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22. We live between the paradise of Eden or the paradise of heaven, between birth and eternal life after death. We cannot realistically live in the past or in the future. We have nowhere to live but between, for that is where the here and now exists.

The journey from paradise lost through our chaos to paradise reborn is not determined by humans alone. The winds of change come with ruah, meaning wind or breath, God’s breath as we identify the Holy Spirit. When the ruah blows over the chaos, as we read in Genesis 1, the world is re-created. That breath of God was in Jesus and blew through the disciples at Pentecost. God’s wind still blows over the chaos in us and in our world to re-create us and to give life to that stump of a faithful community which sometimes seems dead. Out of our decay, God can still bring new life if we are willing to let go, to be caught in the whirlwind, and trust God to set us refreshed and renewed in a new world where hope comes true. The Spirit blows over the embers of our passion to bring the flame back to life. Perhaps for now only artists and poets can imagine it, but God awaits all God’s plans to be fulfilled and for that stump to grow again and bear fruit.

In one of this week’s devotions, Brueggemann shared views that some hold of God or heaven to which I had strong reactions. I know there have been and still are people who believe that God is either dead or irrelevant. I never thought the God issue is closed as one person put it. I believe God is on-going and still in the process of creating, in other words that God is still actively involved in our world every day and always will be. For me heaven is not closed, nor is it empty as some might claim. I don’t think of heaven as a physical or future place, but as a spiritual dimension where we meet God, just as Moses went up the mountain or into the tabernacle to meet with God. A particular location may aid you in focusing your attention on the spiritual world that surrounds us, but the point is not the location, it’s opening yourself to meet with God. If that heavenly realm is where humans are invited to live with God, then heaven is hardly irrelevant.

Brueggemann suggests that for some… (and don’t be too shocked by this, but listen to what he means) for some, God is a capitalist consumer with an insatiable appetite, meaning that God wants what God wants, and it’s our job to provide it. If there really are people who have created that self-projected image of God, I pity them. I wouldn’t believe in that fake god either. But I can see that as people wrestled in the past or struggle in the present with the greed or lust of power-hungry authorities that rise in any society from time to time, it would be easy to suspect that God is like that, too. However, our God is the opposite of a self-serving, greedy or demanding consumer. Our God is instead a self-emptying, generous giver of all good gifts in abundance far beyond most human recognition. That is some of the good news Jesus still brings to the poor! God and heaven and kingdom are NOT what we imagined from the stereotypes of the world and society around us.

If you ask me what the new thing is that God wants to bring to us, I would say it’s a set of values that are very old and dear, but that the world often loses along the way. I believe God’s vision includes justice with mercy and forgiveness. I believe God wants kindness and respect to be a foundation for peace. I believe God wants us to care for other forms of life, to nurture and restore what we can of the environment. I believe God wants compassion to flow from us like a healing rain, so that hope and healing can blossom and bear fruit. That would look like paradise to me.

Here’s what is needed for that to happen: First, dare to believe that God is still at work in our world re-creating in and through us a new day. Second, repent, literally turn away from the old ways of the world and turn toward God’s vision. Third, come and follow; join a new way of living out God’s intentions.

That change comes one person at a time. We cannot change others, but we can choose to change ourselves. I watch a show that travels to various places around the world and sometimes showcases environmental issues. For example, in Chile or Antarctica where the ice cap is melting or this week in the Maldives where the coral reefs and dying and as the waters sink the islands of the Maldives are disappearing. One explorer recognized that he could not change the entire situation, but he could change his own way of doing things toward a healthier world.

Please know each of us can only do our part and live as witness to this coming of the kingdom of God. It’s an invitation, not coercion. We each have a choice, but the choices of many will affect the direction of society in general. We can choose to continue to live a greedy, selfish, pleasure-seeking, addicted, power and status-hungry way of life as the world often presents to us. Or we can tip the balance toward a healthier, more compassionate and caring way of life for all people and all creation.

Advent asks us to make these choices. Advent asks us to hear the stories of our past as God’s people, and to see where we went wrong at various times in our history. Advent asks us to look at the world around us now and honestly, objectively view not just the world, but our own attitudes and participation in society. Advent asks us to repent where we have gone astray from God’s intentions, to turn back to God’s vision, to change the world by first asking God to change us. Advent asks us then to live with hope and faith, to celebrate peace and joy and love wherever we find them, to be prophets pointing to God’s kingdom wherever it is evident. Advent asks us to prepare ourselves and witness to others, just as John the Baptist once did, that God comes to live among us.

We prepare with anticipation for the ways Jesus will continue to come and to work in our world. Some of our expectations will go exactly as planned and some won’t. There will be surprises along the way, but some of those surprises of how God chooses to work among us will bring the most delight and be the very things we cherish. God does not work according to human agendas, but invites us to turn, to come, and to participate in God’s vision for this world God is still re-creating. That, my friends, is good news worth celebrating!

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December 9, 2018 - A New World View

12/8/2018

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OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                                Isaiah 9:6-7, NIV
    For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace
    there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
    will accomplish this.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                            Mark 6:49-52, GW
    49 When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought, “It’s a ghost!” and they began to scream. 50 All of them saw him and were terrified.

Immediately, he said, “Calm down! It’s me. Don’t be afraid!” 51 He got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped blowing. The disciples were astounded. 52 (They didn’t understand what had happened with the loaves of bread. Instead, their minds were closed.)

SERMON                                        A New World View
As we have said more than once this year, we will be challenged by many kinds of storms. Life is about how you handle them. Will we cower in fear as the disciples did in Mark’s brief version of the storm at sea? Because they lived out of fear, they didn’t see their reality accurately. They thought Jesus was a ghost. But Jesus immediately reassures them, “Calm down. It’s me. Don’t be afraid!” As Mark’s comments suggest, “their minds were closed.” (from Mark 6:49, 52) Jesus had fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and fish. Since he had overcome their scarcity, he could also overcome their chaos. But for Jesus to overcome our problems, we have to let go of preconceived notions and be willing to believe. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, continues to remind us, “Calm down. It’s me. Don’t be afraid!”

That’s a message that rings through the Advent and Christmas story. “Don’t be afraid.” It’s what the angel says to Zechariah, to Mary, to Joseph and to the shepherds. “Don’t be afraid.” It is God’s message in other Bible stories as well. Such encouragement doesn’t offer false hope. It admits the reality of the world around us. But it also challenges us with a choice. Are we going to give up or hide? Are we stubbornly going to fold our arms across our chests and DEMAND proof that all will be well? Or will we lean on faith and rest on God’s promise? Are we going to trust and obey?

Magrey deVega agrees that for the characters in the Advent and Christmas stories, fear was a reasonable response, but he says, “it is also a call to resistance, and a refusal to let the trauma of external circumstances consume” us. Zechariah had to learn the hard way and was rendered silent for the nine months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, but that gave him time to see God’s promise growing in her belly until John was born. Joseph chose trust over fear and took Mary as his wife in spite of the scandal. Herod chose fear over faith and it led to the slaughter of innocents. Mary questioned the angel yet chose to believe that if God could give Elizabeth a child, indeed “Nothing is impossible for God” just as the angel said. (Luke 1:37) Fear gave each of them a choice as it does for us. Some chose God, but Herod chose fear.

Fear often dominates our world. We’re afraid of terrorists, of illness, of a stock market crash, of assorted phobias, and of people different from ourselves. Out of fear we develop a scarcity mentality, that there won’t be enough time or money or resources or help to meet our needs. Out of fear we run away or hide from challenges that might have helped us grow. Out of fear we draw lines and set barriers to keep others out and lock ourselves into a particular way of life. Out of fear we label people, but God doesn’t see us as our color, gender, position, nationality or even religious membership. If God is behind Paul’s claim that, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female,” then we are all free as children of God to enjoy a world where lines aren’t drawn in the sand, where there is room and welcome for everyone.

When I was young, I was afraid of bombs and of the world coming to an end, then later of cancer and car accidents and becoming handicapped. Lately I’ve been impatient and anxious over things that don’t work. These too are fear. I need to hear Jesus’ voice, “Calm down. I’m here. Don’t be afraid,” just as friends have reminded me.

I think God let me experience that, so I could glimpse what is true for so many, the anxiety of living in a time when things don’t always work out the way we think they should. We look around us or listen to the news; we hear other stories along with our own concerns, and we wish things would change. But I suspect that some of the change has to take place within us and come from us. Too often we only want our circumstances to change, but what if God asks us to change? We aren’t sure we like that idea!

When we experience this world as chaotic, we need a new world view, not a fear-based, limited perspective of our circumstances. We need God’s vision for all the possibilities God has in store. Brueggemann suggests that fear comes from a hardened heart. I think that phrase means that we are “set in our ways.” If we are unwilling to be flexible, to be stretched, to be shaped by the Creator of the universe, we become too hard and stiff. When we set “in stone” our perspective of how things ought to be, we can’t receive God’s new vision for us.

At a time when Babylon was marching toward Jerusalem to conquer Judah and other territory building an empire, Isaiah shared God’s vision of one coming to establish God’s kingdom with justice and righteousness. It was a vision that kept the faithful remnant going, enduring, hoping, praying, waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled. This is how we should wait not only through the practice of this Advent but in an extended Advent season as we wait for the fullness of God’s kingdom, for justice and righteousness to truly reign here on earth.

Luke records a time when Jesus hinted to his disciples that there is a whole other layer of reality that most of us miss. They had just come back from a two by two mission, going about living out what Jesus did, teaching and doing good. They were amazed at what God allowed them to do in Jesus’ name! He said to them, “Happy are the eyes that see what you see. I assure you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see and hear what you hear, but they didn’t.” (Luke 10:23-24) Their mission had briefly exposed a glimpse of the power and glory of God’s kingdom and the privilege of working within it.

The very next story is the young lawyer who asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tests him asking what the law says. His response summarizes the law “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27 paraphrased) To live out these commandments is to live in the Kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven” (from the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:10)

The Kingdom comes in God’ steadfast love and our response to it. Brueggemann describes that love as “solidarity in need” and “transformative.” (Celebrating Abundance, pp. 24-25) First, God’s love meets us in our need. It is the constant love of Psalm 25 as used in our prayer of confession earlier. God coming to earth in Jesus is God’s ultimate expression of solidarity with humanity. But God wants to do more than meet our need. God wants to transform us and the world around us. We are called to be extensions of God’s steadfast, constant love to the world, as we love our neighbor in ways that meet their needs and bring the transformation they also need.

Jesus, Messiah, Emmanuel came and comes and will come again to transform this world toward God’s vision. Jesus works in us and through us to accomplish that purpose. His work continues when we participate in that mission. The Bible tells us that the Kingdom of God is near, is among us, is in our midst. Christ is still with us as the Holy Spirit works toward this vision. But the Kingdom is not yet complete. It will come one day in all its fullness. This is what we wait and prepare for and remember in the season of Advent. For me that future fullness of God’s Kingdom is the promise left us in Revelation 21-22 at the end of the New Testament. It echos the hope-filled visions and promises of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets.

Remember that Jesus said God’s purpose is sometimes hidden from those in power. God often reveals his visions to the poor, the powerless, the oppressed or the vulnerable, instead of to the ones whom society sees as best suited and most able.
Wasn’t that true in the Advent stories? King Herod didn’t get it at all, because he could only see his own desire for power. For him everything else was an obstacle. The Magi from the East did see the vision whether or not they fully understood it. They were willing to submit to the mystery and travel to a foreign land to see its fulfillment in a culture and religion not their own. Zechariah, as a priest, should have understood it best, but he hesitated to trust God beyond his immediate circumstance. Joseph and Mary were skeptical at first, but each chose to put their faith in the vision shared by the angel, even without seeing all the details.

As you hear God’s Word this season, and as you look at the world of need around you, consider what God’s vision for this world might yet be. Ask yourself where Jesus is still at work and where you might participate. Learn to seek God’s kingdom where you don’t expect to find it. But when you do, I pray you will choose to hear God’s message. “It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” I hope you will choose, in spite of your fears, to share in God’s mission wherever you find it.

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December 2, 2018 - Awaiting the New

12/1/2018

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OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                   Isaiah 65:18-19, 25, NIV
But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
    and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
    and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
    will be heard in it no more.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
    and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                           Luke 3:15-16, CEB
15 The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ. 16 John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

SERMON                                        Anticipate the New

Though we think of December as the end of the year, today is the first day of the Christian calendar, the first Sunday of Advent. This is a season of anticipation and preparation. Although the commercial world has been heavily Christmas focused for a month already, and radio stations have been playing Christmas music, Christmas itself isn’t here for another 23 days. In our fast paced, hurry up world, we don’t know how to wait for Christmas, but you can’t understand the impact of Christ’s arrival if you haven’t spent a long time waiting. Really, 4 weeks is nothing compared to the 400 years or more that God’s people, as we read about them in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, were quietly, stubbornly, intentionally waiting for Messiah, whom we believe came in Jesus.

A few churches ago, I wrote a skit for the youth group and children’s choir to perform for Advent. The repeated theme was “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” and it had lines in between with individual kids asking, as if a child in the back seat, “Are we there yet?” “Is it time yet?” Let’s admit that we can be like impatient children when it comes to Christmas. But as adults, we miss out on the spiritual richness of Advent if we skip over it too quickly.

This year, I invite you into a spiritual retreat with me on these four Sundays of Advent, to hit the pause button, to take time to slow down just as the snow storm may have forced you to do earlier this week, to think in ways perhaps you haven’t thought before about what God was really up to, what God is still up to, as we consider the deeper meanings of the season. My commitment to Advent 2018 is to stay a week ahead reading a devotional by Walter Brueggemann, Celebrating Abundance.  The very first day, even before I finished the 2-page reading, God invited me to go find an empty notebook and start journaling. Much of what I will share with you comes from those reflections. I’ll also draw from Awaiting the Already, an Advent study we are reading in the Wednesday morning group.

This week, in preparation mode, we begin with John the Baptist. The Gospel of Mark begins, not with Jesus’ birth, but with his cousin John preaching repentance. John is the new Elijah, a seemingly crazy, certainly passionate, prophet out in the wilderness. John quotes Isaiah, as he tells his audience and us to prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. (Is. 40)

Let’s take a look at those major themes: preparation, repentance, wilderness, and the hope they point toward.

Biblically, the word prepare can mean to create something like a building or a vessel to contain something else. But prepare can also mean getting ready for a great event. As we prepare during Advent, we are asked to get ourselves ready to receive God’s love, to be the vessels through which God’s compassion and mercy will be poured. (Magrey deVega, Awaiting the Already, p. 18) We are also preparing for the arrival of Christ, not just once upon a time as a baby, but coming into our world ever again. This is the same word used when Jesus sent the disciples to prepare the Passover meal, which we remember again today as we celebrate Holy Communion. That night Jesus was preparing himself to be that vessel through which God’s love would be poured out to the world and preparing his disciples to continue the mission.

John’s primary message was “Repent!” John urgently demands change and reform. I love the way the Common English Bible translates repentance as “changed hearts and lives.” Jesus didn’t come into our world to maintain the status quo but to significantly change the way we humans think and behave regarding ourselves, our neighbor, our world, and our God. John’s urgency suggests we dare not wait until the last minute. What if we wait too long to change our ways, not just as individuals, but as a society, as humankind. Haven’t we already waited too long to change our attitudes and actions on climate change, on abuse and harassment, on human trafficking, on affordable medical care for everyone, on equal respect for all peoples? As humanity, we still need to repent, to change our ways. This is how we prepare for Christ in the wilderness of our world.

Everyone experiences wilderness in their lives. It may simply have been the snow last Sunday and trying to dig out on Monday. It may be pain or depression. It may be trying to navigate insurance policies. It may be loss through death or divorce. It may be disasters, the fires in California or the earthquake in Alaska. It may be the fear of violence or the minefield of politics. It may be a spiritual dry spell or wondering what will become of Christian faith and church.

It is in the wilderness that God wants to reshape us and our world. It is not done easily. Every biblical image I can think of to go with this theme of transformation is harsh, pressured, and painful: the potter at the wheel, a woman kneading bread, the refiner’s fire, the grapes crushed for wine, the press squeezing oil from olives, beating grain on the threshing floor. The process of transformation is hard on the one being transformed and hard work for the one transforming us, yet from our raw materials something beautiful and useful is created. God is preparing us to be vessels of God’s love and peace and hope and joy and purpose.

We prepare a way through the wilderness of our lives or our world, not passively, but actively seeking God’s presence, God’s plan, the new thing God is doing. We slow down not to watch TV or take a nap, but to intentionally listen to God’s Word and God’s inspiration and prayerfully ask what God wants us to change. Our Advent devotion earlier suggested ways we might, like John, decrease so Christ can increase. We are challenged this season to decrease fear and increase our trust in God. We are challenged to decrease a scarcity mentality and embrace God’s promise of abundance. One simple example that came to mind last week would be to decrease Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending frenzies and increase Giving Tuesday generosity instead.

To turn away from the way our world thinks and behaves is what John still challenges us to do; that is the repentance he calls for in our day and time. That is how we prepare the way for God’s glory to enter our wilderness and bring about the newness for which we hope. As I sat in my new chair, in my new home, and looked out my new window toward a new view, God was challenging me to think in new ways, to reflect on God’s message to the world today and new ways of expressing it. I pondered what newness looks like to the refugees at the Mexican border, or to David with a new job, or to a friend facing a new way of life.

Advent challenges us to focus not on a quaint story from 2000 years ago, but to look for that new thing God is doing in our world today. Christ comes to us anew each year in every season, but Advent especially reminds us of that, if we are listening on a deeper spiritual level. The poetry of Isaiah’s message, later influencing John’s ministry, speaks to the soul not only of the past, but imagines and wonders and dares to hope in the possibilities of the future. That is what Advent asks us to do.

So, let me offer you one way you might participate. As I reflected on some of the devotions for this week, I thought of the hope many of you shared that you would like to see more people in worship with us. At some point that takes actively going out and inviting people to come to church, but it also takes spiritual preparation. Here’s what came to mind. What if many of you took time over the next four weeks, to come and sit in the sanctuary in meditative imagination? What if you dared to imagine that the sanctuary is full: filled with believers, with seekers, with doubters, here for whatever reason, experiencing God’s presence, together, each in his or her own way? Sit a bit on Sunday after fellowship or when you arrive early. Come during office hours if you’re in the neighborhood or when you come to study or volunteer. Many of you church leaders have a key, so come whenever it is convenient for you, but come and pray and dare to imagine what God might want to accomplish here. Listen for how God is asking you to be part of that transformation. Dare to believe that God continues to prepare us as a vessel to Receive Christ, Reach Out and Share God’s Love.

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November 25, 2018 - Hope

11/25/2018

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THEME VERSE FOR TODAY                                                                   Hebrews 6:19, NLT
This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.

OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                                      Isaiah 40:31, NIV
    but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                          Romans 5:1-5, GW
    Now that we have God’s approval by faith, we have peace with God because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done. 2 Through Christ we can approach God and stand in his favor. So, we brag because of our confidence that we will receive glory from God. 3 But that’s not all. We also brag when we are suffering. We know that suffering creates endurance, 4 endurance creates character, and character creates confidence. 5 We’re not ashamed to have this confidence, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

SERMON                                                   Hope
We hope for many things…

Hebrews 11 begins: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.” To have hope is an act of faith! My faith in God allows me to hope for things that I believe are within God’s will, hope not as wishful thinking, but that conviction that God’s purposes will be fulfilled. Hope allows me to lean into the future with less worry and less fear, not for a smooth road necessarily, but for a future worth the effort, worth the pain, worth the frustrations along the way. That is the hope that becomes an anchor for my soul, firm and secure, because it is grounded in my faith in God and God’s promises.

An anchor holds a boat or even a ship fast in the water; it can even help it ride out a storm without getting lost at sea. We need that in the stormy waters of our lives when we feel so lost. When the tasks are overwhelming, when someone hurts us, when we receive bad news, when a loved one dies. We need a place to anchor our souls. At those times why wouldn’t we trust the one who breathed that soul into the first human being?

God created all of life, plant and animal, but when God formed Adam out of the dust, God breathed his own Spirit, his ruach, into Adam’s nostrils. As Max Lucado says, God gave him more than oxygen, he gave Adam a soul. He goes on to say, “Your soul separates you from animals and unites you to God.” (Unshakeable Hope, p, 156)

That union takes place not just here on earth, not just in our physical body. The soul is more than that; it rests with Christ in the inner sanctuary, behind the curtain as our theme verse in Hebrews tells us. That inner sanctuary referred in Old Testament times to the most sacred place in the tabernacle God instructed Moses to have built. Behind that curtain rested the Ark of the Covenant carrying the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. The top to that Ark was called the Mercy Seat, considered to be God’s throne when God held court, if you will, among God’s people. When Moses went into that tent we call the tabernacle, it was to meet with God. When he came out he had to wear a veil, because being in the presence of God’s full glory caused his face to shine so bright, the people couldn’t look at him.

In the Temple that Solomon built, that inner space was again part of the design and was called the Holy of Holies. It could be entered only by the High Priest, and even he could only enter once a year on Yom Kippur to make atonement by sacrifice for God’s people asking God to forgive all their sin. When we talk about Jesus behind the curtain, we are referring to Jesus as the Highest Priest who sacrificed himself to atone for our sin, to grant us mercy and reconcile us with God.

The book of Revelation refers often to that heavenly throne room of God and those who worship there. Here is one example from Chapter 4: “9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the one seated on the throne, who lives forever and always, 10 the twenty-four elders fall before the one seated on the throne. They worship the one who lives forever and always. They throw down their crowns before the throne and say,

11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God,
        to receive glory and honor and power,
            because you created all things.
                It is by your will that they existed and were created.” (Rev. 4:9-11)

In the final scene of chapter 22 there is this promise: “There will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.” (v.3)

Hope anchors our soul, tied by a life line more secure than the strongest cable, to God’s throne room in the heavens where the Lamb of God, who is Jesus, sits at God’s right hand, and together they reign over this world we know and all the worlds beyond our human grasp. Christ reigns supreme over the entire universe. It is the ultimate image for Christ the King, and that is where hope in Christ, anchors our soul. We are not lost, we are not adrift on the seas of worldly troubles, we are tied securely to the Mercy Seat of God, the throne room of Christ.

When his disciples were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus walked across those waves, climbed into their boat and commanded the waves and the winds to be still. When are tossed about by the storms of life, Jesus comes to us if we welcome him, and again, can bring peace and stability to our soul. By faith our Hope is anchored in Christ our King.

Max tells the story of a man in Texas who faced such a literal storm with his family. The rains that came down he described as a “once in a century flood…The Blanco River came up twenty-eight feet in ninety minutes.” (p. 158) The family climbed to the second story of their cabin, but eventually clung to a mattress floating the turbulent waters. Jonathan had several broken bones, but much worse lost his wife and two children to that flood. Two weeks later, he spoke at their funeral, was very honest about the pain and grief left by that tragedy, but also managed to share his faith with the verse from our call to worship, to trust God rather than lean on our own understanding. Jonathan knew the reality of the phrase, “cry me a river” and he knew that anger, frustration and confusion that go with such loss. But even so he anchored his hope in the reunion they would one day share in heaven. He expressed that hope and faith not as “I wish,” but as “I know.” (p, 160)

The Bible encourages us to “pray always and never lose hope.” (Luke 18:1) The two do go together. If you have no hope, there is no reason to pray, but if believe in the power of prayer, there is every reason to have hope. Again, our hope is in God’s purpose and plan not just our own limited view or desires.

The scripture I have used as a benediction throughout this series comes from Romans 15:13 and includes the phrase to “abound in hope.” Lucado plays a bit with that word abound. Rain abounds in a downpour. Yosemite abounds with trees of all sizes. A cotton field abounds in fluffy white cotton. We are more likely to see fields that abound with corn, the Mississippi abounds with water, and by the end of today our yards may abound with snow. Does that give you an image of what it means to abound with hope? It is hope that fills us up and overflows, that is beyond the scope of our limited vision.

Sometimes that hope isn’t our first reaction when things go wrong. Max tells a story on himself of taking a break from writing this book and going to play golf. But a message from another staff member didn’t sit right with him. At each successive tee he got more defensive and angrier. He admits that by the fifth hole he had resigned, fired the guy, gone on strike and moved to Mexico, all of course, just in his own mind. Then God reminded him about the book he was writing on Unshakeable Hope, and some of the scripture promises he has shared with us these past few months began to work in him. I will admit that last Wednesday, as I pushed myself to get the house ready for company while still faced with uninstalled furnishings and a mountain of boxes, I got tired and cranky and ran out of hope, even though I had started this sermon that morning. I, too, needed the well-loved verse from Isaiah 40 that was our Old Testament reading today.

    Those who wait on the Lord, shall renew their strength.
    They shall mount up on wings as eagles.
    They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (v.31)

If life were smooth, we wouldn’t need hope. But if life were too smooth, we would be weak, rather than strong. That is why our New Testament reading reminds us that,

    Trouble produces endurance,
    endurance produces character,
    and character produces hope. (Romans 5:3b-4a)

Trouble will come, but God can use it to build us up. Paul tells us as he wrote to the Romans, that hope abounds by the power of the Holy Spirit. The hope produced by troubles will not disappoint us, because God’s love is poured through us by the Holy Spirit. I begin to get the image that the Holy Spirit is that extraordinarily strong cord that tethers our anchor of hope to the Mercy Seat of God and the throne of Christ our King. God, and none other is the source and the strength of our hope no matter what we face. I pray that as you enter Advent, the season of hope, you will indeed abound in hope inspired by the Holy Spirit, trusting in Christ and in the promises of God.

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November 18, 2018 - Justice

11/17/2018

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
Give us ears to hear your Word, O God, minds to comprehend your message for each of us today, and hearts full of compassion to carry out your will.

THEME VERSE FOR TODAY                                                                Acts 17:31, NCV
God has set a day that he will judge all the world with fairness, by the man he chose long ago. And God has proved this to everyone by raising that man from the dead!”

OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                    Jeremiah 12:1-3a, MEV

Righteous are You, O Lord,
    that I plead with You.
Indeed, let me talk with You about matters of justice.
    Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
    Why are all those happy who deal very treacherously?
2 You have planted them; indeed, they have taken root;
    they grow; indeed, they bring forth fruit.
You are near in their mouth,
    but far from their mind.
3 But You, O Lord, know me;
    You have seen me and tested my heart toward You.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                             Luke 18:1-8, CEB

Jesus was telling them a parable about their need to pray continuously and not to be discouraged. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him, asking, ‘Give me justice in this case against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused but finally said to himself, I don’t fear God or respect people, 5 but I will give this widow justice because she keeps bothering me. Otherwise, there will be no end to her coming here and embarrassing me.” 6 The Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 Won’t God provide justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he be slow to help them? 8 I tell you, he will give them justice quickly. But when the Human One comes, will he find faithfulness on earth?”
                                                                                                    Revelation 20:7-12, GNT

7 After the thousand years are over, Satan will be set loose from his prison, 8 and he will go out to deceive the nations scattered over the whole world, that is, Gog and Magog. Satan will bring them all together for battle, as many as the grains of sand on the seashore. 9 They spread out over the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people and the city that he loves. But fire came down from heaven and destroyed them. 10 Then the Devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had already been thrown; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

11 Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sits on it. Earth and heaven fled from his presence and were seen no more. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small alike, standing before the throne. Books were opened, and then another book was opened, the book of the living. The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.

SERMON                                                  Justice

Justice pairs so well with so many words. It doesn’t often stand alone.

My ex-husband and his favorite professor used to debate the pairing of justice and peace. David insisted justice had to come first for there to be peace. Since David grew up as a third world tribal that makes perfect sense from his background. Dale Brown, a pastor and professor in the Church of the Brethren, expected peace to bring justice. This also makes sense coming from one of the three traditional peace denominations. My United Methodist tradition has a Peace and Justice special Sunday about the same time of year as your Presbyterian Peace and Global Witness offering. Whichever comes first, I believe they do belong hand in hand. I think it would be difficult to experience peace without justice. I long for justice and peace to be the daily truth in every land.

Many times, we think of justice as fairness. If someone cheats at a game or anything else, we say it isn’t fair. We see it as unjust. When I hear someone assume that God chooses or favors one people over another, I see that as unfair. I think it’s an injustice to them and to God. We want life to be fair, though it isn’t always. We expect God to be fair, though life’s circumstances sometimes seem unjust. The laws in Leviticus call for fair justice, not to treat anyone differently based on status or economics. Paul told the Colossians to be “just and fair” to their servants. (4:1) Psalm 9 assures us that God will establish justice and judge all people fairly. If we are to live in God’s justice, then we must do the same.

The pairing I have engraved in my mind from Hebrew studies is justice and righteousness, since mishpat and tzedeqah are often side by side in Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament. They are joined 41 times in the Common English Bible translation. David was said to rule with justice and righteousness. We know that when he did sin, he sincerely repented striving then to do what was right. Psalm 97 says God’s “throne is built on righteousness and justice.” I like this Proverb (16:8) “Better a little with righteousness than great profits without justice.” Isaiah declares that God wants justice and righteousness from us. “I will make justice a measuring line and righteousness a plumb line. Hail will sweep away your refuge of lies, and floodwaters will wash away your hiding place.” (28:17) The prophet Amos was adamant as well. “Doom to you who turn justice into poison and throw righteousness to the ground!... But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:7,24) God takes the combination of justice and righteousness very seriously.

Many of us would put law and justice together meaning that in our judicial system we expect justice in the verdict made by the jury and the sentence pronounced by the judge. That determination is symbolized by the statue of Lady Justice holding her scales, measuring the weight of each argument and the facts of the case.

This would also fit how justice is used in the Bible. In some verses as I looked at multiple translations words like judgement or decision were used interchangeably with the word justice. The Bible has courtroom scenarios picturing God’s justice. Job fearfully imagines going to court with God and wishes for a mediator to come between them. (Job 9)   In the prophet Jeremiah, God declares in Chapter 2 that he will take his people to court for turning away from him. In Chapter 12 as we read earlier, Jeremiah is pleading with God about matters of justice. Another translation simply says, God, if I take you to court, you will win.

What does God’s justice look like? Max Lucado gives three interesting aspects in his chapter on Justice as part of our Unshakable Hope. First, that God will pardon his people. (p.146) Second, that God will praise his servants. (p.148) Third, that God will honor the wishes of the wicked. (p. 150) That’s not what you expected? Me, either, so let me share a little more of what Max says about each of these.

As Paul so bluntly reminds us in Romans 3, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In other words, if God’s justice is like a courtroom, every one of us would be indicted and take our turn as defendant. It may be for seemingly little things, little white lies or stretching the truth, being jealous of what someone else has or how someone else is treated, complaining all the time rather than giving thanks for what is good, or it might be imagining what it would be like if…you fill in the blank with your favorite temptation…, and dwelling on that in your mind even though you would never act on it. All of these can be sin.

But if we believe that Jesus is indeed our Savior, then our courtroom scene goes like this. Jesus is the advocate standing beside us, and for every charge that is made against us, Jesus doesn’t deny what we did, but states what he has already done to deal with it. The price, the punishment, and our forgiveness were already accomplished at the cross. So, when the case concludes, and the verdict is read, we will hear “Not guilty!” for every charge. This is where I believe mercy is best paired with justice. Thanks to Christ, God’s justice is tempered with mercy, and Jesus has become the Mediator Job requested.

Another aspect of God’s justice according to Max Lucado, isn’t about punishment, it’s about rewards. We are called to be God’s people, to serve God to the best of our abilities. When we have done that, even though we will have had bad days, tough times, and not always lived up to our fullest potential perhaps, if we have always returned to serve God, we hope to hear what the Bible proclaims, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” (from Matthew 25:23)

The point Max made that may have surprised you the most is God honoring the wishes of the wicked. But here is what he means by that. Picture again the courtroom scene. You know in our judicial system, that if someone cannot afford an attorney one will be provided. But you also know that the defendant has the right to refuse council and present his case alone. What Max is saying as part of God’s justice is about those who reject God, who don’t accept Christ, who have chosen to stand alone without an advocate by their side. When they come before God for judgement, God will accept that choice and allow them to stand alone without his Son to help them. For each charge read against them there will be no response in their defense. What then do you think their verdict will be? I find that very sad, but I get that it is fair and just.

There are many times in life when it seems like that final justice never comes. We wonder today as Jeremiah did millennia ago why the wicked seem to prosper. Will justice ever come? For some this question churns inside until they begin to think they ought to take matters into their own hands. They can’t trust the human legal system to get it right, so they go out on their own for revenge. That’s a dangerous pairing, justice and revenge. It has a high risk of the innocent being in harms way, of the wrong person being punished, of not hearing with compassion the whole story, of perpetuating a feud that needs to end. The Bible is very clear that vengeance is God’s privilege and God’s only. In Romans 12, Paul quotes it from Deuteronomy 32. “Don’t try to get revenge for yourselves, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. It is written, Revenge belongs to me; I will pay it back, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19) Thus, when humans seek revenge, they become guilty as well. Rather than taking justice into our own hands to that extent, our theme verse for today is the promise that God has set a date for the whole world to be judged. Leave justice in God’s hands.

That doesn’t mean to give up or ignore injustice. While we are not judge or jury, warden or executioner, it is our place to speak up, to witness, to tell the truth, to bring the situation to light, and to plead for justice within our human legal systems and with God through prayer. That’s what Max is suggesting by sharing the story of the widow and the judge, a parable Jesus told his disciples to encourage them to never give up. The judge may be tired and want to ignore the widow’s problems, but as she continues to bang on his door, he will in the end grant her justice if for no other reason than to get some peace and rest. Don’t you think advocates and modern-day prophets speaking out for various justice issues feel like that widow banging on the judge’s door? But because of their persistence, someone will eventually listen to the case and hopefully do what is right. A lot of news stories feel like that to me.

We may not see justice on all issues in our lifetimes. We may never know how God chooses to work in the lives of those who strive so hard against all that God intends. But there is an ultimate promise of justice that we cling to as Christians, that Jesus wins the final battle against evil, that the harm caused in this world will ultimately be healed in the next. The imagery in Revelation symbolizes that final battle and Christ’s victory defeating the beast. Daniel already hinted at it in the Old Testament. Both Daniel in Chapter 7 and Revelation in Chapter 20 then show God on his throne in judgement of the world. In that courtroom scene, those who come against God’s people will receive their sentence, and those who have put their hope in God and chosen to serve God will receive their reward.    I like that Revelation goes even beyond that to deal with the hurt and the pain that evil has caused. In Chapter 22 we are shown the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

It is very hard to watch someone you love being hurt or to know a life has been taken away by criminal action. We abhor the violence in our world stirred up by hatred. We want justice! But as I read these scriptures and others, I am reminded that it is our job to witness, to pray, to reach out to victims, and when we are able, to reach out with God’s grace even to perpetrators. We are called to forgive those who hurt us, and those who hurt our family or friends. If for no other reason, perhaps we can do this in gratitude for the mercy Christ has shown to us in forgiving our sin. We are to take a stand and speak up for justice and to live our lives as justly and rightly as we are able with God’s help! But it is not our job to judge humankind. It is not our job to take revenge. Only God can finally fully balance the scales of justice, and we must respectfully let God do what it is God’s work to do. For that we can give thanks, and wait with hope, for the fulfillment of God’s plan to redeem and restore this world that God loves so much. The best pairing for the word justice, I realize I have used often as I write this message; the best pairing for the word justice is that it belongs to God.

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November 11, 2018 - Power

11/11/2018

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THEME VERSE FOR TODAY          Acts 1:8, NCV
When the Holy Spirit comes to you, you will receive power. You will be my witnesses—in Jerusalem, in all of Judea, in Samaria, and in every part of the world.”

OLD TESTAMENT READING      Isaiah 44:2-4, GNT
I am the Lord who created you;
    from the time you were born, I have helped you.
Do not be afraid; you are my servant,
    my chosen people whom I love.

3 “I will give water to the thirsty land
    and make streams flow on the dry ground.
I will pour out my spirit on your children
    and my blessing on your descendants.
4 They will thrive like well-watered grass,
    like willows by streams of running water.

NEW TESTAMENT READING       John 3:1-8, NCV
There was a man named Nicodemus who was one of the Pharisees and an important Jewish leader. 2 One night Nicodemus came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we know you are a teacher sent from God, because no one can do the miracles you do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot be in God’s kingdom.”

4 Nicodemus said, “But if a person is already old, how can he be born again? He cannot enter his mother’s womb again. So how can a person be born a second time?”

5 But Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born from water and the Spirit, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. 6 Human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised when I tell you, ‘You must all be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wants to and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where the wind comes from or where it is going. It is the same with every person who is born from the Spirit.”

SERMON                                                  Power
Today’s message is on power, specifically the power of the Holy Spirit, admittedly one of my favorite topics. The Holy Spirit is the source of power for Christian living and for the Church. Jesus promised his disciples that when he ascended to heaven, he would send the Holy Spirit to them. Luke records it this way, “I am sending to you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49, ISV) This promise is repeated in today’s theme verse spoken just before Jesus returned to heaven.

When we talk about the power of the Holy Spirit the illustration I have often used is plugging into electricity. Appliances and electronics all need to tap into a power source or have their batteries charged for the on switch or power button to have any effect at all. Our lives are equally ineffective if we ignore the source of strength and power God offers us through the Holy Spirit. You may think you are succeeding on your own for a while, but sooner or later you run out of spiritual energy or wisdom and need to let the Holy Spirit do its work in you.

Some Christian churches neglect teaching about the Spirit, though it has been a significant part of our theology from the beginning of the Church. I think that has led to Max Lucado’s observation that some Christians think God and Jesus are enough, and they lose out on the Spirit’s benefits. Max points out this is as effective as a two-legged tripod or a two wheeled tricycle. They are unstable without the third leg or the third wheel. Our faith and witness are also unstable without the Holy Spirit. God seems to have a fondness for putting things in threes. A triangle is the most stable form in structural design. I love this verse I’ve often used in weddings; after Ecclesiastes 4 talks about the benefit of two together, it suddenly adds this bit of wisdom, “A three strand cord is not easily broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12) God works in our lives as Creator, as Savior, and as Spirit. Not one or two but all three are important.

Here’s another illustration from Max on how the Holy Spirit helps us. It gives us a P.U.S.H. I’m used to that acronym meaning Pray Until Something Happens, but Lucado uses it to outline the work of the Holy Spirit in a way I hadn’t considered before. P is for Power; U, for Unity; S, for Supervision; H, for Holiness. We’ll come back to this in a minute, but first Max’s story.

Max let a bike riding friend talk him into participating in a bike race that included a half mile steep climb. Mind you, Max was not in physical condition for this, but the friend said he could do it. As they took off, those in good condition with plenty of practice miles sailed through the course and made it up the hill. The friend crossed the finish line while Max and some others were huffing and puffing, struggling up that hill. Then Max felt pressure on his back, and his move up the hill got easier. His friend had come back and literally gave Max a hand up the hill walking behind him pushing him to keep his promise that Max could finish this race. Wow! (This story is told pages 131-132 in Unshakeable Hope,)

Maybe you can relate to needing that kind of push or helping hand. I sure can, especially through this moving process. But I can also relate to what Max intends by this illustration, to point out that the Holy Spirit gives us that push, that help when we are open to receiving it. I rely on Holy Spirit assistance every day. I am often astounded at the end of the day what was accomplished, knowing the Spirit gave me the time, the words, the energy, whatever it was I needed to do my best.

Back to what Max meant by P.U.S.H. P is for Power. The Holy Spirit is the power behind creation. It was the force that hovered over the face of the deep when God spoke to organize the chaos. The Spirit was the breath of life God breathed into the first humans. The book of Job makes this significance clear. “14 If God were to take back his spirit and withdraw his breath, 15 all life would cease, and humanity would turn again to dust.” (Job 34:14-15, NLT) The Holy Spirit is also the force of rebirth, of making us a new person when we accept Jesus into our lives as we read in Nicodemus story from John 3. Jesus told him, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.” (v.5) It is then that the Holy Spirit works within us to bring the fruits of the Spirit developing our character toward that of Christ, and the Spirit brings us gifts to enable our ministry on behalf of Christ.

U is for Unity. Ephesians 4 talks about the unity of the Spirit. “3 You are joined together with peace through the Spirit, so make every effort to continue together in this way.” (v.3) Lucado points out that we do not create that unity ourselves. It comes from the Spirit, but we are asked to cooperate with it. We talk about how divided our world is today by people who choose not to get along, not to accept each other. It’s obvious we are not all cooperating with that unity. Isn’t this another aspect of grieving the Holy Spirit? I like this translation of Psalm 133:1, “Oh, how wonderful, how pleasing it is when God’s people all come together as one!” The Spirit of God works toward that goal. Let’s choose to cooperate wherever God gives us opportunity.

S is for Supervision. Everyone needs supervision on some level or accountability in some way. To me, the Holy Spirit provides that as what we call our conscience. John 16:8 tells us, “When the Helper comes, He will show the world the truth about sin. He will show the world about being right with God. And He will show the world what it is to be guilty.” Lucado adds, though, another aspect of a supervisor, the task of keeping things running smoothly. The Holy Spirit has that function in the Church. Max lists several ways the Spirit does this:

Comfort (Acts 9:31)
Guidance (John 16:13)
Revelation (John 16:13)
Intercession (Romans 8:26)
Witness (Romans 8:16)

And more. (p. 135)

H is for holiness. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make us holy. In Wesleyan terms I learned this as God’s Spirit working in us before we know Christ (Prevenient Grace), acquitting us when we say “Yes” to Christ (Justifying Grace) and changing us from the inside out as we live in Christ (Sanctifying Grace). That last part, sanctification, is the process of making us holy. After listing various sins in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul goes on to say, “Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (v.11, NET)

I keep a scrub brush by my bathroom sink. When soap and hot water don’t seem like enough to get my hands truly clean, I scrub my fingertips to get under the nails. I might also use it to get a spot out of my clothes before the stain sets. You can think of the Holy Spirit like that, scrubbing us clean. We heard this in our Pardon after confession this morning from Paul’s letter to Titus, “He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5b)

As you think over these aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, in the Church, and in our world, look back at the foolishness of trying to live out our ministry in Christ without the help of the Holy Spirit Christ sent to us. We need the power, the unity, the supervision, and the holiness God’s Spirit provides. Paul wrote bluntly to the new Christians at Galatia, “How can you be so foolish! You began by God's Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power?” (Galatians 3:3, GNT) To the church at Ephesus he emphasized that the Holy Spirit is God’s seal upon you. “You believed in Christ, and God put his stamp of ownership on you by giving you the Holy Spirit he had promised.” (Ephesians 1:13b, GNT)

God intended for us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, to live as fully as possible for God’s glory which benefits us as well. There are times when we recognize we aren’t living that way. We might ask ourselves what’s getting in the way. Are there impediments to the work of the Spirit in us? Max lifts several concerns expressed in the Bible. Then he asks these blunt questions: “Are you persisting in disobedience? Are you refusing to forgive someone? Are you harboring hatred? Are you persisting in an adulterous relationship? Immoral activity? A dishonest practice? Are you feeding your flesh and neglecting your faith? If the answer is yes, you are quenching the Spirit within you.” (p.137) Any of these things will prevent you from living the full and abundant life God offers you through the Holy Spirit. Is it worth it? I don’t think so.

We need to let the Holy Spirit work within us, to make necessary changes in our lives. Some of my friends can attest to how much I have thrown out in the moving process, things I no longer need, things that are just in the way. In the same way, there are attitudes and habits, behaviors and hurts, regrets and grudges we need to get rid of from our interior lives as well. Instead we want to be filled with the Holy Spirit to enjoy the good things God wants to give us. I’ve purchased various things for my new home that are a better fit, that will serve me better well into my future. The Holy Spirit wants to do that for us too, planting positive characteristics in us, and empowering us with spiritual gifts to use for God. We can be empowered by the Spirit to do the work God has called us to do and to live abundant and blessed lives as God wants for us. Let’s not settle for anything less!

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November 4, 2018 - Joy

11/3/2018

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THEME VERSE FOR TODAY                                                                Psalm 30:5, NLT
For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.

*OPENING SENTENCES & GREETING                                             Psalm 47:1-2,5-6, NLT
Clap your hands, all you people!
Shout joyfully to God with a joyous shout!
Because the Lord Most High is awesome,
he is the great king of the whole world.
God has gone up with a joyous shout--
the Lord with the blast of the ram’s horn.
Sing praises to God! Sing praises!
Sing praises to our king! Sing praises

*CONFESSION AND PARDON                                                               1 John 1:9, GW
God is faithful and reliable. If we confess our sins, he forgives them
and cleanses us from everything we’ve done wrong.

Merciful God, we confess that we dwell on the negative side of life, focused too much on what is wrong in our lives and our world. We fail to see the blessings and love with which you surround us. We get bogged down by our inadequacies and fail to rejoice in the abilities you gave us. We get frustrated by the things we cannot do for ourselves and fail to recognize the help you offer through others. We see the problems in our world but don’t pause often enough to celebrate the good news. Teach us to find the joy that you bring to us and to our world, even in spite of struggle or circumstance. Out of that joy, let us live and offer hope!

In Christ there is forgiveness and joy and hope.  Thanks be to God!
OLD TESTAMENT READING                                                             Psalm 30:1-5, GW
    A psalm by David sung at the dedication of the temple.

1 I will honor you highly, O Lord,
    because you have pulled me out of the pit
        and have not let my enemies rejoice over me.
2 O Lord my God,
    I cried out to you for help,
        and you healed me.
3 O Lord, you brought me up from the grave.
    You called me back to life
        from among those who had gone into the pit.
4 Make music to praise the Lord, you faithful people who belong to him.
Remember his holiness by giving thanks.
5 His anger lasts only a moment.
His favor lasts a lifetime.
    Weeping may last for the night,
        but there is a song of joy in the morning.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                         John 20:11-18, CEB

11 Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. 12 She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. 13 The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” 14 As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

17 Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18 Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her.
                                                                                                          1 Peter 4:12-14, NLT

12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. 13 Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.

14 If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you.

SERMON                                                     Joy
Joy comes in the morning. That’s the promise. But oh the nights we may endure before. Our gospel focus this morning continues the Easter theme we began last week. Easter is a source of our joy, and it indeed followed the darkest of nights for Jesus’ followers. Today we look at Mary Magdalene.

Not everyone remembers the beginning of her story, that when this Mary and Jesus first met she was possessed by seven demons. (from Luke 8:2) You can take that literally or figuratively. Either way her life was miserable, and she was likely an outcast.

Liz Curtis Higgs portrays her as an older woman, maybe forties or fifties, dealing with the traumas of life. Unlike the movie portrayals, Liz is convinced Mary was NOT a prostitute, but possibly someone who struggled with mental health issues. Her fictional character based on Mary from Magdala, named Mary Margaret Delaney, is a recluse in Lincoln Park Chicago, who lost her daughter to suicide and her husband to divorce. She is a cutter and a kleptomaniac, who lives in a brownstone, both a cat lady and a horder, a formerly religious woman who is now afraid of God, someone the entire community avoids until Pastor Joshua intentionally befriends her. The real Mary of Magdala had her own issues, ones we can only guess, but we do know that Jesus intentionally befriended and healed her, and her gratitude lasted a lifetime.

Mary Magdalene followed Jesus, listened to him, provided financial support for his ministry, and was always there in the background helping where she could. Jesus gave her back a good life, and she was determined to give her life for him. She was there with his mother, when Jesus was hung on the cross. She saw it all. She watched him die. Can you imagine the grief and shock, the horror and sorrow she endured that night? Of course, you can. You’ve experience grief too often yourselves. The weeping may indeed last through the night, through many nights.

But for Mary, joy did come in the morning, on the morning after the Sabbath when she went with others to complete the task of caring for Jesus’ body. It was the only remaining way she could still serve him. Joy didn’t come immediately with sunrise. She embarked on a sad task. She worried about that great big stone. Then she was startled to find the tomb open and shocked to find it empty. She kept asking where the body had been taken. She was still crying. But then the man she supposed was the gardener spoke her name and everything changed. She knew that voice. It was Jesus. He was indeed alive! Now her relief and joy overflowed.

We know that feeling, too. We stew and worry over something. Things go awry. Fear gets hold of us. Worry consumes us. We are overwhelmed trying to work through the challenges of life. We may even shed tears in our frustration. But then something works. Things fall into place. Help comes. Good news arrives. There is a flood of relief and maybe even tears of joy.

Mary recognized Jesus when he called her by name. God knows you by name. Isaiah 49:16 includes these words, “Jerusalem, I can never forget you! I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” While it is said of a community of people, it is often interpreted as also pertaining to each of us as individuals. I believe it is true for both, for God’s people as individuals and God’s people as community. The Gospel of John quotes Jesus comparing himself to a good shepherd. In John 10:4 he declares, “Whenever he has gathered all of his sheep, he goes before them and they follow him, because they know his voice.” Just as Mary recognized Jesus’ voice, so, he said, would all his followers. We might not take that literally, but as believers we should come to recognize when it is Jesus’ message reaching us, rather than the many other voices of the world trying to get our attention. John 10 goes on later to say, “14 “I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep and they know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock, with one shepherd.” Mary found joy hearing Jesus’ voice and knowing he was alive, so may we find joy in hearing Jesus’ message for us in our daily lives, on our difficult days, after our dark nights of sorrow or turmoil. Jesus brings us not only comfort but even joy. Joy comes in the morning!

Max Lucado suggests we find that joy even in the simple fact that God loves us. He shares this snippet from a priest who visited his uncle in Ireland. After watching the sunset together Uncle Seamus was smiling. The priest commented that his uncle looked very happy. “I am,” he responded. “The Father of Jesus is very fond of me.” (p.123) God is fond of you. God loves you. I know folks who find it so hard to love themselves they can’t believe that God loves them. But everything I believe in the Bible says that God does indeed love you! It doesn’t say you are perfect. Far from it. It doesn’t say you have earned or deserved any special love. These are not the basis for God’s love. God loves you, because God chooses to love you. That’s what makes it so amazing, so special, such a reason for joy!

Listen to that message in the poetry of Psalm 103,
“8 The Lord is merciful and loving,
    slow to become angry and full of constant love.
9 He does not keep on rebuking;
    he is not angry forever.
10 He does not punish us as we deserve
    or repay us according to our sins and wrongs.
11 As high as the sky is above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who honor him.
12 As far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our sins from us.”

Now listen to Mary Cushman’s story from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Her time of weeping came with her own depression during these hard times. Her husband only made $18 a week, but some weeks he was too sick to work. She took in laundry and ironing to help make ends meet. Their five children wore clothes from the Salvation Army store. They had a tab mounting at the grocery now up to $50, and then the owner accused her son of stealing. That was her breaking point. With no hope in sight, at home with her five-year-old, she plugged up the windows and turned on the gas without a flame. As she convinced her little girl to lay down with her for a nap, the radio in the kitchen was still playing. Then came the hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!” It turned her thinking around. She got up, turned off the gas, opened the windows and doors, and spent the rest of the day giving thanks for her healthy children. They lost the house eventually, but they survived the Depression. They had a future. Those kids grew up and married. Grandchildren were born. Mary found joy again and again, and she knows how much she would have missed if she had given up too soon. (This story is on pages 124-126 of Unshakeable Hope.)

Crying may last the night or many nights, but a morning of joy will dawn, if we wait, if we trust, if we believe. When faced with those hard times we all have, I still cling to a promise that is a favorite for many from Jeremiah 29:11. “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Mary Magdalene’s story lives up to that promise, so does Mary Cushman’s, so does mine, and so does yours, though you might not see all of it yet.
Wait and watch for what joy will come to you!

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October 14, 2018 - God Gets You

10/14/2018

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*CONFESSION AND PARDON
As we come before our loving God, let us come not with fear or shame, but to confess our guilt and seek forgiveness.

God of mercy and grace, we humbly confess that we often fail to life up to all you would hope for us. We are not always kind. We harbor thoughts that would embarrass us to speak out loud. We speak at times without thinking through how we might be heard. We fail to do the right thing, the loving thing. We dwell on the negative rather than reach for the positive goodness you offer. Forgive us all the ways we disappoint you, and teach us a better way.

Our God is indeed slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Without that promise, how could we stand? But the good news is that through Jesus Christ, God forgives us all we have done or failed to do. You are forgiven!  Thanks be to God!

*SONG OF PRAISE                            Gloria Patri                                                      #579

*THE PEACE
The Prince of Peace binds us in peace with one another and with God.
May the peace of Christ be with you.  And also with you.

Word
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
As we read your sacred word, may we find courage and strength for our daily lives and hope for today and the future. Amen.

THEME VERSE FOR TODAY                                                           Hebrews 4:15, NLT
This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

OLD TESTAMENT READING                                             Lamentations 3:21-23, CEB
21 I call all this to mind—therefore, I will wait.

22 Certainly the faithful love of the Lord hasn’t ended; certainly God’s compassion isn’t through!
23 They are renewed every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

NEW TESTAMENT READING                                                     John 1:1-5, 9-14, NCV
1 In the beginning there was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him. 4 In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.

9 The true Light that gives light to all was coming into the world!

10 The Word was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world did not know him. 11 He came to the world that was his own, but his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who did accept him and believe in him he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They did not become his children in any human way—by any human parents or human desire. They were born of God.

14 The Word became a human and lived among us. We saw his glory—the glory that belongs to the only Son of the Father—and he was full of grace and truth.

                                                                                               Hebrews 4:14-16, Message
14-16 Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

SERMON                                           God Gets You

A frequent plot twist used in romantic comedies is a misunderstanding. In real life they may not be so funny, but instead lead to serious conflict. One of the common conditions of human life is to feel misunderstood. We think to ourselves, no one gets me. But the promise to anchor our hope today is that God gets you. Why, because coming in Jesus, God experienced life as a human experiences it. Yet the Spirit of God sees all our thoughts and our past experiences from the inside out. God understands what is going on with us, even better than we do ourselves.

John's Gospel expresses this good news, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (1:14) It's a scripture we recognize, but what does it mean? The Word, as it's used in the first chapter of John's gospel is not the written Word but the living Word, the Word that spoke creation into being, the very Word of God. That Word, put on human flesh and came to live with us for a time as Jesus.

Paul expressed the same concept in his letter to the Colossians (1:19). I like this translation: "For it pleased God to have his full being live in his Son." (CJB)

This is the mystery we refer to as incarnation. We believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine simultaneously. The eternal One who made all things came to us as a baby born of a human mother to share this earthly life with us.

The incarnation may be a concept we find hard to explain, but it is a source of hope for us. The only image I can come up with to even remotely express the concept is a sponge soaked in water. It's a sponge, and if you just look at it sitting in the sink that's all you see, a sponge. But that sponge is full. It contains within its ordinary structure all the water it can possibly hold, more than we can imagine. Jesus looked as ordinary as the next guy in early first century Judah. But Jesus contained within that human body the fullness of God's Spirit, more than those around him recognized, more than we can imagine.

Max Lucado writes, "So human he could blend in unnoticed for thirty years. So mighty he could change history and be unforgotten for two thousand years." (p. 76)

Because he is one with God we worship Christ. We saw that power break through when he fed thousands with a few fish and loaves of bread, when he calmed the storm at sea, when he healed many who were crippled or diseased, when he called Lazarus out of the tomb after four days. Those glimpses of his divine nature give us the hope that Jesus can help us when we pray. We also dare to believe then that he has the authority he claimed on earth to forgive sins. We pray for that mercy, that Jesus will forgive us, even as he forgave the thief from the cross.

But because Jesus chose to live a life wrapped in human flesh, Jesus also gets it when we are in pain. He knew what it was like growing up: to play, to do chores, to learn prayers and scriptures as well as a trade. Jesus had the same growing pains and struggles in his teenage years. He even caused his parents to worry when he stayed in the Temple on his own at the age of 12. Jesus knew what it was like to have goals, to face obstacles, to be different from those around him. He got hungry and thirsty just as we do. He got angry with injustice and frustrated with hypocrites. He knew what it was to be tired and what it was like to need some time alone. He was misunderstood, abandoned, and betrayed. He knew pain and grief, disappointment and sorrow. All the physical and emotional things we feel, Jesus felt them, too. This is why Max Lucado says that Jesus gets us; he understands us through his own experience of human life.

From time to time I have said that everyone needs a venting partner. When the tough stuff of life builds up, we need a safety valve so we don't explode. There are people I can be that honest with or just grumble to; they can do that with me, too. Most of the time the conversation can then move on to better things or end with some humor shared. Of anyone, God is the safest to listen when I need to vent. Jesus understands when circumstances aren't what I want or when people are difficult to be around. He experienced that, too. But even then it's important to make my prayer conversations about more than my complaints. For God and especially for myself, it's helpful if those conversations also include listing my gratefuls, that shift in attitude beyond grumbling.

Jesus even experienced temptation as we do, though in the power of God Jesus was able to hold fast to his choice NOT to sin. This is why he is best qualified to be our high priest, our access to God's grace. Jesus understands our weakness as the writer to the Hebrews put it, but Jesus holds the way open for us to return to God. We don't need to be embarrassed to ask Jesus for help, for mercy, forgiveness, because he knows what it's like from our perspective. He was one of us.

Some may argue that since Jesus didn't give in to sin, he couldn't really understand how we feel. But Lucado points out that in spite of being sinless himself, Jesus accepted feeling the full weight of sin more than any one of us will ever have to face. While on the cross, Jesus allowed himself to bear all the sins of all people of all time, he felt all the hurt, the guilt, the regrets, the consequences of every human sin. Only God could bear that much pain and not lose the resolve to take it all away from us. He understands our sin better than we do.

Paul wrote about this. In his second letter to the Corinthians, "Christ never sinned! But God treated him as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God." (5:21, CEV) From his first letter to Timothy this statement of faith, "There is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the human Christ Jesus," (2:5, CEB)

As people have offered to help me pack to move, I'm embarrassed by the condition of an apartment that is cluttered and not always clean. But knowing I will never get nine years of stuff into boxes on my own, I've accepted that help from people who know me well enough I trust them to love me in spite of my mess. It's like that with God. I could be embarrassed by many things in my life, but I need God's help. So, in spite of my flaws and failures, I accept help from God who especially loves me in spite of my mess.

I think the whole point of this chapter on incarnation is that two-fold benefit of Jesus being both human and divine. Jesus understands us and can help us. Sometimes God sends us help through other humans. Sometimes only God can truly help. The promise is, that the one who can help us, will.

In Max Lucado's story for this chapter, that is the point. In a college women's softball game, the score came down to an iffy batter, but that day she hit the ball over the fence and started to run the bases. Her coach realized in her surprised sprint she failed to touch first base. As Sara heard the coach yell, she turned back to first and popped a knee, barely making it to the base by dragging her body in pain. She couldn't stand, but if she didn't run, the game for the playoff spot was lost. The rules wouldn't allow her team to help her. The umpires debated. The first base player was a senior named Mallory, and of course she wanted to win the game and go to the playoffs, but not like this. Mallory asked if she could carry Sara to homeplate. The ump decided okay. So with help from the short stop and first base player of the opposing team, Sara completed her first ever home run. As Lucado says, "The only one who could help did help." (p. 79)

In this human life we are all going to fall. There are going to be times that we are in so much pain we can't move, maybe physically, maybe emotionally. Sometimes God is the only one who can help us. God can, and God will. Jesus is the one God sent to carry us home. Anchor your hope on that!

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December 30, 2018 - Singing the Lord's Song

December 23, 2018 - Radical Renewal

December 16, 2018 - What Christ Came to Do

December 9, 2018 - A New World View

December 2, 2018 - Awaiting the New

November 25, 2018 - Hope

November 18, 2018 - Justice

November 11, 2018 - Power

November 4, 2018 - Joy

October 14, 2018 - God Gets You

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