LENTEN LESSONS ON LIVING
"Faithfulness"(Second in the Series)
Mark 8:31-38
March 4, 2012
Second Sunday in Lent
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Former Senator Mark Hatfield tells of touring Calcutta with Mother Teresa and visiting the so-called "House of Dying," where sick children were cared for in their last days, and the dispensary, where the poor would line up by the hundreds to receive medical attention. Watching Mother Teresa minister to these people, feeding and nursing those left by others to die, Hatfield was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the suffering she and her co-workers face daily. "How can you bear the load without being crushed by it?" he asked. Mother Teresa replied, "My dear Senator, I am not called to be successful, I am called to be faithful."
Faithfulness – this is the second of the “Core Virtues” of the Christian life that we’re looking at in this series on “Lenten Lessons in Living.” It’s number seven in the list of the nine “Fruit of the Spirit” that the Apostle Paul gives in Galatians 5. What I mean by “faithfulness” today is not so much faith in a particular set of doctrines, but faithfulness as…
The willingness to see something through to the end, even when faced with challenges and difficulties.
Faithfulness is very much a character trait that I would like to possess. I want to be the kind of person who can be counted on – by my family, by my friends, by fellow believers, and by God. I’m sure that you want to be that kind of person, too.
In today’s Scripture reading for this Second Sunday in Lent, Jesus sets the challenge of the Christian life squarely before us. He doesn’t sugarcoat it one bit. It’s a challenge that clearly requires faithfulness to the utmost.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Mark 8:34-35)
The disciples heard Jesus’ words, but they didn’t really understand them, not yet.
Their faithfulness was to be severely tested, as ours is throughout our lives. Will I be faithful to my spouse? Will I be there for my family and friends when they need me? Can God really count on me? That’s what faithfulness means – seeing something through to the end – a marriage, a friendship, a commitment – even when faced with challenges and difficulties.
Rather than just talk about what faithfulness means, I want to illustrate it with the story from the 3rd chapter of the Book of Daniel about the three young men who ended up in the fiery furnace –
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (or “Rack, Shack, and Benny” as they’re known in the “Veggie Tales”).
Each part of their story gives us dramatic illustration of the power of faithfulness. First there was…
1) THE CHALLENGE THEY FACED.
The situation was that the three young men were Jews living in a foreign country, Babylon, because they (along with Daniel) had been taken there with the first group of exiles in 605 B.C. They were “strangers in a strange land.” Because of their extraordinary skills and abilities, they had quickly risen to important posts in the royal court.
But now, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, had erected a huge golden statue of a god and ordered the people to bow down and worship it whenever the king commanded. Failure to do so would result in the penalty of being thrown in the fiery furnace.
So the three young men were faced with a decision: should they worship the statue and spare their lives, or refuse to bow down to it and risk death?
Rack, Shack and Benny refused to bow down. Their faith in the One God would not allow them to bow down to other gods or images. They refused to follow the crowd, no matter the cost. They were determined to be faithful to God.
Choices have to be made by all of us all the time. In such choices, faithfulness is forged. For us, it’s usually not a matter of life and death, but our faithfulness is still put to the test.
I’ve been interested this week in the story of little Beren Academy, the Orthodox Jewish School from Houston that made the Private and Parochial School playoffs in basketball.
Their semifinal game against Dallas Covenant was scheduled for 9 p.m. Friday night. That’s during the Jewish Sabbath, so the school told the tournament organizers that they couldn’t play. Could the game be rescheduled to earlier in the day? TAPPS told them “too bad” and they would have to forfeit the game. Beren was prepared to forfeit the game rather than play on the Sabbath.
But after a firestorm of controversy in the press and the threat of legal action, the game was finally changed to Friday afternoon, before the beginning of the Sabbath. I admire Beren for sticking to their beliefs. I wonder how many Christian schools would have refused to play on Sunday if it were required?
We face the temptation to compromise our principles on an almost daily basis. What will it hurt to cheat just a little bit on my taxes? After all, the government gets enough of my money as it is. What’s the harm in looking at my neighbor’s paper to get a few answers on the test? It’s just one grade. I’ll study harder next time.
The compromise may seem like a small thing at first, but it can have disastrous results. Like the New York family that bought a ranch out West where they intended to raise cattle. Friends visited and asked if the ranch had a name. “Well,” said the would-be cattleman, “I wanted to name it the Bar-J. My wife favored Suzy-Q, one son liked the Flying-W, and the other wanted the Lazy-Y. So we’re calling it the Bar-J-Suzy-Q-Flying-W-Lazy-Y.” “But where are all your cattle?” the friends asked. “None survived the branding.”
The three young men remained faithful. Our faithfulness is strengthened when we refuse to compromise. When someone tells a racist, sexist, or off-color joke, do you let them know what you think? When the sales clerk at the store gives you too much change, do you give it back? Faithfulness tells us the right thing to do.
But how could the young men demonstrate such courage? Did they know something the king didn’t? The secret was in…
2) THE CONFIDENCE THEY POSSESSED.
King Nebuchadnezzar had challenged them: “Who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?” Listen to the answer they gave the king:
“Your threat means nothing to us. If you throw us in the fire, the God we serve can rescue us from your roaring furnace and anything else you might cook up, O king." (Dan. 3:16-18, The Message)
Their faith in God was so strong that they couldn’t imagine any circumstance when God wouldn’t see them through, no matter how difficult or even impossible.
When we’re in trouble or up against it, we need to remember all the times when God has seen us through. As someone has said, when we face an obstacle we need to learn to say, not “God, look at my great problem,” but “Problem, look at my great God.”
Faithfulness means knowing we can trust in God’s goodness and God’s purposes no matter what happens. That gives us confidence.
Their steadfast refusal to worship the statue made the king so angry that he ordered them tied up and thrown in the furnace. What a terrible experience. Yet, what a wonderful experience it turned out to be, as we notice…
3) THE COMPANIONSHIP THEY ENJOYED.
The king looked in the furnace and he couldn’t believe his eyes. He thought they’d be burned up in a matter of moments. But instead he saw three men walking around in the middle of the fire and a fourth figure who, the king said, looked like a “son of the gods.”
One thing is clear. If God hadn’t delivered them from the fire, God had delivered them in the fire. Was it an angel or was it Jesus himself in the furnace with them? We don’t know for sure, but it was nothing less than a miracle.
God will not always deliver us from the difficulties and challenges of life, but God will always give us a companion to see us through – and that companion is God’s own Son, Jesus Christ.
Weren’t Jesus’ very last words to the disciples…
“Remember, I am with you always…” (Matt. 28:20)
When the three young men came out of the fire without so much as a singed eyebrow or the smell of smoke on their clothes, the king knew something remarkable had happened and it made a profound impression on him. He confessed…
“Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him.” (Dan. 3:28)
This is a good lesson for all of us to remember. Whenever we face a challenge, whether it’s to our faith, our family, or our friends, we must not compromise. And when the fire of pain, disappointment or disillusionment comes, just remember that God is right there with us in the furnace, in the trials we face in life, making our faithfulness even stronger. Amen.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sermon: LENTEN LESSONS IN LIVING: Self-Control
(First in the Series)
Mark 1:9-15
Feb. 26, 2012
First Sunday in Lent
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
As I mentioned last Sunday, during Lent we are going to focus on some of the “core virtues” of the Christian faith in this series I’m calling “Lenten Lessons in Living.” Last week I suggested that one definition of what it means to be a Christian is that…
A Christian is a person who is trying to become more like Jesus Christ.
We will never become 100% like Jesus in this life, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. But we need some standard to use to measure our progress. Our hope should be to be more like Jesus today than yesterday and more tomorrow than today. It’s a continual process that lasts as long as we live.
I have found that a good place to start is the list of the “fruit of the Spirit” that Paul gives in Galatians 5:22-23:
• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Generous goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-control
Since there are nine “fruit” in that list and not that many weeks in Lent, we will only be able to look at six of them and I’ve added a couple of others that aren’t on that list (obedience and self-sacrifice). But I hope these messages are helpful to all of us as we seek to be more and more like Jesus.
I was amazed when I looked at the lectionary readings for this year at how these virtues tied in so well with at least one of the Scripture lessons for each week. These virtues help define the kind of person each of us as Christians are in the process of becoming.
If you’ve ever wondered what the “end result” of the process of Christian formation is supposed to be, these virtues are a good description. As we are growing in our faith, we will become more loving, more patient, more hopeful, experience more joy and peace, and so forth.
Today, since the traditional Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Lent is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, which we just read from Mark’s Gospel a moment ago, we’re going to start with the core virtue of…
SELF-CONTROL
It’s last in Paul’s Galatians list of the Spirit’s fruit, but we’re going to make it first on our list, because without self-control we can’t overcome the “works of the flesh” and without it the other “fruit of the Spirit” won’t be evident.
When we talk about the core virtues we’re talking about character. Character is different than success, talent, or even reputation.
I heard someone say once that reputation is what other people think about you. Character is what you know to be true about yourself. Thomas Paine is reported to have said this about the difference between reputation and character…
“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”
As they say, character is who we are when no one’s looking. On Friday I was on my way to Walmart to pick up some prescriptions. I’m usually very careful when I’m driving on FM 902 to observe the 55 mph speed limit. But I was in a hurry and I wasn’t feeling all that great so I thought it would be okay to go a little faster so I could start taking the medicine all the sooner.
After all, no one would be looking. Who would know if I sped a little (just about 10 mph over). Unfortunately, someone was watching. As I came over a hill I passed a DPS car going the opposite way. I looked in my rear-view mirror and I knew as soon as I saw his brake lights come on that I was in trouble. So, I just pulled over and waited for him.
Fortunately, the trooper showed me a lot of grace. Maybe he felt sorry for me in my illness, but he just gave me a warning. Character means obeying the law, even when no one’s looking. I had a valuable reminder in this experience.
Self-control is a key component of Christian character. It’s important for everyone, but it’s especially important for those of us who desire to be followers of Jesus Christ.
And since my time is limited this morning, let me illustrate how important self-control is to character by using the stories of two biblical characters – one who had self-control and one who didn’t.
Of course, it goes without saying that Jesus is the chief example of Christian character, and he showed model self-control in his encounter with Satan when he was tempted in the wilderness for forty days. Although Mark doesn’t list the three temptations, we know from reading the other Gospels that they involved:
• Turning stones into bread.
• Throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple to let the angels rescue him.
• Bowing down to worship Satan in exchange for lordship over all the kingdoms of the world.
Jesus refused each temptation because he knew that they would lead him away from what his true mission on earth as Messiah was to be. Jesus is the best model of self-control we can find.
If we are to deal with temptation in a way other than just to give in, we need to develop self-control. But let’s look at two characters other than Jesus, because we might be able to identify a little better with them. They are both from the Old Testament.
The first character is Samson, whom you can read about in Judges 13-16. He’s the one who had a problem with self-control. Today we might call it “poor impulse control.” Isn’t that a label that’s given to some children nowadays?
There was a famous experiment done in the 1960s at Stanford University by Dr. Walter Mischel an American psychologist. Mischel used a group of 4-year olds and told them they could either have one marshmallow right now or they could wait 20 minutes while the researcher ran an errand, and when he came back they could have two marshmallows.
Some children could wait but most couldn’t (about 70%) – they had to have the marshmallow right away. They would cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so they couldn’t see the marshmallows. They kicked the desk, tugged on their pigtails, and stroked the marshmallows like they were stuffed animals.
Mischel then followed the children into adulthood, and he found that the children who could wait were more successful in life than those who couldn’t. The kids who couldn’t wait had more behavioral problems and lower SAT scores than those who could.
If Samson had been in that experiment when he was four, he would have grabbed the marshmallow right away. Samson, as you might remember, lived during the period of the Judges, before Israel had a king to rule them. It was a time, Scripture says, when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Samson had been dedicated to God for a special purpose by his parents even before he was born. Because of this vow, which included not cutting his hair, Samson grew to have amazing physical strength and was a mighty warrior.
But Samson was the kind of person who, when he saw something he wanted, he had to have it right away – no self-control. One day he saw a beautiful Philistine woman, a foreigner, and told his parents he had to have her for his wife. Never mind that God had forbidden marrying foreigners – Samson wasn’t to be denied and he married the woman.
Another time, he killed a lion with his bare hands. Some time later he came upon the lion’s carcass and found inside it a beehive and lots of honey. He reached in and grabbed a handful of honey and ate it, even though the vow he was under prohibited touching any kind of dead body, even an animal.
And then there was the whole thing with Delilah, another Philistine woman. Samson fell madly in love with her (do you detect a pattern?), even though the Philistines were using her to get the secret of Samson’s strength, which was his long hair. Samson finally told Delilah his secret, and she betrayed him. They cut off his hair, gouged out his eyes, and threw him in prison. His hair eventually grew back and he regained his strength long enough to destroy a house full of Philistines, but he died along with them.
That’s the price we pay for a lack of self-control. Our appetites get the best of us and we get in trouble, each time seemingly worse than the last. In 1 Corinthians 9:25 the Apostle Paul says…
Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. (1 Cor. 9:25)
It may have been that way back in Paul’s day, but then again, Paul didn’t know Bode Miller, the U.S. ski racer who had such disappointing results at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Miller had something of a “bad boy” reputation and it may have been his lack of self-control when it came to staying out late and partying in Torino that cost him his expected gold medals at the Games.
He came back four years later at Vancouver with renewed discipline and commitment and redeemed his image when he finally won gold, as well as a silver and a bronze.
Proverbs 5:8-9 says…
Keep to a path far from immorality … lest you give your best strength to others … and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent, you will say, "How I hated discipline!"
Those words could have been written on Samson’s tombstone. But compare Samson’s lack of self-control to another character in the Bible…
Joseph. Joseph was the son of Jacob and great-grandson of Father Abraham. He was the one with the “Technicolor Dreamcoat” who was sold into slavery in a foreign country by his jealous brothers.
But God was looking out for Joseph, and he ended up in Egypt, working for Pharaoh’s right-hand man, Potiphar. Joseph was young and handsome, and Potiphar’s wife took a fancy to him. When she tried to put the moves on him one day in her bedroom, Joseph, whose self-control was as much present as Samson’s was absent, ran the other way as fast as he could.
Potiphar’s wife was so enraged that Joseph had refused her that she falsely accused him of rape and Joseph was thrown in jail, even though he was innocent.
However, God was still looking out for Joseph and eventually he not only got out of jail but became Pharaoh’s right-hand man and later was in a position to save his whole family, his father and even the brothers who’d sold him into slavery, in a time of famine.
Do you see what a difference self-control can make in our lives? Samson had little or none, and look how he ended up. Joseph had great self-control, and God used him in a mighty way.
We see the results of lack of self-control all around us in the world: drug and alcohol abuse; violence toward family members and strangers; sexual immorality, divorce, and broken families. I see my own lack of self-control in my waistline when I eat the things I know I shouldn’t and don’t eat the things I should.
You may be thinking, “I’d like to have the self-control of a Joseph, but I just can’t do it. Every time I try to resist temptation, I fail.” But you see, self-control isn’t something you get through effort, through working harder. We may be born with a certain amount of self-control, but …
Self-control is also a gift. It’s one of the “fruit of the Spirit,” remember, along with love, joy, peace, patience and the rest. When you allow Christ to take charge of your life, the Holy Spirit will give you self-control as a gift. It’s a gift you have to practice and use and develop to be sure, but Christ has promised this gift, and Jesus always keeps his promises.
Fasting is one of the traditional spiritual disciplines of Lent that can help us cultivate the fruit of self-control. By voluntarily giving up something we enjoy, we learn, as Jesus said to Satan in his time of temptation: “People do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Maybe we can fast from one meal a week, donate what we would have spent to charity, and spend the time we would have spent eating reading the Bible or praying. That’s just one idea.
Jesus faced temptation in the wilderness and mastered it because of his self-control. As we begin our Lenten journey together, let us draw on the gift of self-control that comes from the Spirit so that we can master the unique temptations we all will face. Amen.
Mark 1:9-15
Feb. 26, 2012
First Sunday in Lent
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
As I mentioned last Sunday, during Lent we are going to focus on some of the “core virtues” of the Christian faith in this series I’m calling “Lenten Lessons in Living.” Last week I suggested that one definition of what it means to be a Christian is that…
A Christian is a person who is trying to become more like Jesus Christ.
We will never become 100% like Jesus in this life, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. But we need some standard to use to measure our progress. Our hope should be to be more like Jesus today than yesterday and more tomorrow than today. It’s a continual process that lasts as long as we live.
I have found that a good place to start is the list of the “fruit of the Spirit” that Paul gives in Galatians 5:22-23:
• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Generous goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-control
Since there are nine “fruit” in that list and not that many weeks in Lent, we will only be able to look at six of them and I’ve added a couple of others that aren’t on that list (obedience and self-sacrifice). But I hope these messages are helpful to all of us as we seek to be more and more like Jesus.
I was amazed when I looked at the lectionary readings for this year at how these virtues tied in so well with at least one of the Scripture lessons for each week. These virtues help define the kind of person each of us as Christians are in the process of becoming.
If you’ve ever wondered what the “end result” of the process of Christian formation is supposed to be, these virtues are a good description. As we are growing in our faith, we will become more loving, more patient, more hopeful, experience more joy and peace, and so forth.
Today, since the traditional Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Lent is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, which we just read from Mark’s Gospel a moment ago, we’re going to start with the core virtue of…
SELF-CONTROL
It’s last in Paul’s Galatians list of the Spirit’s fruit, but we’re going to make it first on our list, because without self-control we can’t overcome the “works of the flesh” and without it the other “fruit of the Spirit” won’t be evident.
When we talk about the core virtues we’re talking about character. Character is different than success, talent, or even reputation.
I heard someone say once that reputation is what other people think about you. Character is what you know to be true about yourself. Thomas Paine is reported to have said this about the difference between reputation and character…
“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”
As they say, character is who we are when no one’s looking. On Friday I was on my way to Walmart to pick up some prescriptions. I’m usually very careful when I’m driving on FM 902 to observe the 55 mph speed limit. But I was in a hurry and I wasn’t feeling all that great so I thought it would be okay to go a little faster so I could start taking the medicine all the sooner.
After all, no one would be looking. Who would know if I sped a little (just about 10 mph over). Unfortunately, someone was watching. As I came over a hill I passed a DPS car going the opposite way. I looked in my rear-view mirror and I knew as soon as I saw his brake lights come on that I was in trouble. So, I just pulled over and waited for him.
Fortunately, the trooper showed me a lot of grace. Maybe he felt sorry for me in my illness, but he just gave me a warning. Character means obeying the law, even when no one’s looking. I had a valuable reminder in this experience.
Self-control is a key component of Christian character. It’s important for everyone, but it’s especially important for those of us who desire to be followers of Jesus Christ.
And since my time is limited this morning, let me illustrate how important self-control is to character by using the stories of two biblical characters – one who had self-control and one who didn’t.
Of course, it goes without saying that Jesus is the chief example of Christian character, and he showed model self-control in his encounter with Satan when he was tempted in the wilderness for forty days. Although Mark doesn’t list the three temptations, we know from reading the other Gospels that they involved:
• Turning stones into bread.
• Throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple to let the angels rescue him.
• Bowing down to worship Satan in exchange for lordship over all the kingdoms of the world.
Jesus refused each temptation because he knew that they would lead him away from what his true mission on earth as Messiah was to be. Jesus is the best model of self-control we can find.
If we are to deal with temptation in a way other than just to give in, we need to develop self-control. But let’s look at two characters other than Jesus, because we might be able to identify a little better with them. They are both from the Old Testament.
The first character is Samson, whom you can read about in Judges 13-16. He’s the one who had a problem with self-control. Today we might call it “poor impulse control.” Isn’t that a label that’s given to some children nowadays?
There was a famous experiment done in the 1960s at Stanford University by Dr. Walter Mischel an American psychologist. Mischel used a group of 4-year olds and told them they could either have one marshmallow right now or they could wait 20 minutes while the researcher ran an errand, and when he came back they could have two marshmallows.
Some children could wait but most couldn’t (about 70%) – they had to have the marshmallow right away. They would cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so they couldn’t see the marshmallows. They kicked the desk, tugged on their pigtails, and stroked the marshmallows like they were stuffed animals.
Mischel then followed the children into adulthood, and he found that the children who could wait were more successful in life than those who couldn’t. The kids who couldn’t wait had more behavioral problems and lower SAT scores than those who could.
If Samson had been in that experiment when he was four, he would have grabbed the marshmallow right away. Samson, as you might remember, lived during the period of the Judges, before Israel had a king to rule them. It was a time, Scripture says, when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Samson had been dedicated to God for a special purpose by his parents even before he was born. Because of this vow, which included not cutting his hair, Samson grew to have amazing physical strength and was a mighty warrior.
But Samson was the kind of person who, when he saw something he wanted, he had to have it right away – no self-control. One day he saw a beautiful Philistine woman, a foreigner, and told his parents he had to have her for his wife. Never mind that God had forbidden marrying foreigners – Samson wasn’t to be denied and he married the woman.
Another time, he killed a lion with his bare hands. Some time later he came upon the lion’s carcass and found inside it a beehive and lots of honey. He reached in and grabbed a handful of honey and ate it, even though the vow he was under prohibited touching any kind of dead body, even an animal.
And then there was the whole thing with Delilah, another Philistine woman. Samson fell madly in love with her (do you detect a pattern?), even though the Philistines were using her to get the secret of Samson’s strength, which was his long hair. Samson finally told Delilah his secret, and she betrayed him. They cut off his hair, gouged out his eyes, and threw him in prison. His hair eventually grew back and he regained his strength long enough to destroy a house full of Philistines, but he died along with them.
That’s the price we pay for a lack of self-control. Our appetites get the best of us and we get in trouble, each time seemingly worse than the last. In 1 Corinthians 9:25 the Apostle Paul says…
Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. (1 Cor. 9:25)
It may have been that way back in Paul’s day, but then again, Paul didn’t know Bode Miller, the U.S. ski racer who had such disappointing results at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Miller had something of a “bad boy” reputation and it may have been his lack of self-control when it came to staying out late and partying in Torino that cost him his expected gold medals at the Games.
He came back four years later at Vancouver with renewed discipline and commitment and redeemed his image when he finally won gold, as well as a silver and a bronze.
Proverbs 5:8-9 says…
Keep to a path far from immorality … lest you give your best strength to others … and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent, you will say, "How I hated discipline!"
Those words could have been written on Samson’s tombstone. But compare Samson’s lack of self-control to another character in the Bible…
Joseph. Joseph was the son of Jacob and great-grandson of Father Abraham. He was the one with the “Technicolor Dreamcoat” who was sold into slavery in a foreign country by his jealous brothers.
But God was looking out for Joseph, and he ended up in Egypt, working for Pharaoh’s right-hand man, Potiphar. Joseph was young and handsome, and Potiphar’s wife took a fancy to him. When she tried to put the moves on him one day in her bedroom, Joseph, whose self-control was as much present as Samson’s was absent, ran the other way as fast as he could.
Potiphar’s wife was so enraged that Joseph had refused her that she falsely accused him of rape and Joseph was thrown in jail, even though he was innocent.
However, God was still looking out for Joseph and eventually he not only got out of jail but became Pharaoh’s right-hand man and later was in a position to save his whole family, his father and even the brothers who’d sold him into slavery, in a time of famine.
Do you see what a difference self-control can make in our lives? Samson had little or none, and look how he ended up. Joseph had great self-control, and God used him in a mighty way.
We see the results of lack of self-control all around us in the world: drug and alcohol abuse; violence toward family members and strangers; sexual immorality, divorce, and broken families. I see my own lack of self-control in my waistline when I eat the things I know I shouldn’t and don’t eat the things I should.
You may be thinking, “I’d like to have the self-control of a Joseph, but I just can’t do it. Every time I try to resist temptation, I fail.” But you see, self-control isn’t something you get through effort, through working harder. We may be born with a certain amount of self-control, but …
Self-control is also a gift. It’s one of the “fruit of the Spirit,” remember, along with love, joy, peace, patience and the rest. When you allow Christ to take charge of your life, the Holy Spirit will give you self-control as a gift. It’s a gift you have to practice and use and develop to be sure, but Christ has promised this gift, and Jesus always keeps his promises.
Fasting is one of the traditional spiritual disciplines of Lent that can help us cultivate the fruit of self-control. By voluntarily giving up something we enjoy, we learn, as Jesus said to Satan in his time of temptation: “People do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Maybe we can fast from one meal a week, donate what we would have spent to charity, and spend the time we would have spent eating reading the Bible or praying. That’s just one idea.
Jesus faced temptation in the wilderness and mastered it because of his self-control. As we begin our Lenten journey together, let us draw on the gift of self-control that comes from the Spirit so that we can master the unique temptations we all will face. Amen.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Sermon: "The Human Touch"
Mark 1:40-45
Feb. 12, 2012
Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
We live in an age of contradictions. We have more labor-saving devices at our disposal than ever before, yet we constantly complain that there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
We order a Diet Coke to go with our Big Mac and fries and apple pie and then we go to the gym to exercise.
We live in a time when communication is more immediate than we would have ever dreamed possible, through cell phones, e-mail, text messages, Facebook, Twitter – yet many people feel more isolated and the world seems more impersonal than ever.
We would rather send an e-mail than get up and go talk to the person in the office next door.
We would rather carry on a conversation via text messages than talk to someone person to person.
I’ve had my kids send me a text when we’re both inside the same house, just in different rooms.
And I don’t know how many times I’ve gone into restaurant. There will be four people sitting at a table and they’re all staring at their phones – not talking to each other.
Think about how “lost” and “isolated” we feel if we lose cell phone or internet service for even a few hours. We can’t imagine how we ever lived without such things.
When we took our cruise to the Lands of the Bible last November, I didn’t have cell phone service and I didn’t use the internet the whole time. It felt very strange at first and I felt very out-of-touch, but after a day or two it felt very liberating. I don’t think it would be a bad idea if we all took occasional “breaks” from our technology, but I’m afraid many of us would start having “withdrawal” symptoms.
Technology can be helpful in all kinds of ways, but too often it substitutes for real communication. I believe the phrase is: “high tech, low touch.” The more sophisticated our technology becomes, the less actual human contact we have.
George Barna’s organization, which does a lot of research of the American religious scene, conducted a survey a few years ago. They called 3,400 churches to see how many had an actual human being answer the phone. They found that even after repeated attempts, a real live person did not pick up the phone at 55% of the nation’s churches.
The good news is that United Methodist Churches led the way with 64% having a human answer. If you call our church on weekdays between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm, chances are you’ll get to talk to a real person, unless all the lines are busy, and then you’ll get our voice mail. Even I answer the phone sometimes, and a lot of people sound surprised when they get me directly. We try to keep it personal.
Churches rely much more on webpages, e-mails, Facebook, and text messages nowadays than they do on the old-fashioned phone call or, heaven forbid, an actual face-to-face visit.
It’s a shame, though, when even the church becomes impersonal, because as our world becomes more and more complex, it seems that people are starving even more for human contact, human touch. The challenge, at least for the church, is to be both “high touch” and high tech. We can use the latest technology to reach people. But we must never lose the human touch.
Virginia Satir, one of the key family therapists of our time, said that we need to get four hugs a day for survival, eight hugs a day for maintenance and 12 hugs a day for growth.
Now, I’ll confess, I’m not normally a “touchy-feely” kind of guy. I just wasn’t raised that way. A lot of us men aren’t. But I still need the human touch. And there are some people in this church that I just know aren’t going to settle for a handshake, even a two-handed one, at the door. They want a hug. And it feels good. The church should be at least the one place in this world that hasn’t become impersonal, where you can still experience a human touch.
I like the story told by John Drescher about a little boy lying awake, terrified by a storm late one night. From his dark shadowy room he cries out to his father, “Daddy, come, I’m scared.” Daddy replies, very truthfully, “Oh, son, God loves you and he’ll take care of you.” But the boy isn’t satisfied, and he shouts back, “I know God loves me and that he’ll take care of me, but right now I need somebody with skin on.”
And you know what, God knows that we human beings are like that. We need somebody with some skin on when we’re lonely or frightened or facing a problem that’s too big for us to handle on our own.
We need a touch that’s both divine and human. And God took care of that when God sent God’s only Son into the world as a human being to show us the face of God “with skin on.”
We know from reading the New Testament that Jesus performed many healing miracles. Sometimes they involved touch and sometimes they didn’t, even when healing the same condition.
In Luke 17 we have the story of Jesus healing ten people with leprosy. He does that from a distance.
But in today’s reading from Mark 1, Mark lets us know that Jesus healed this leper by touch – “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” The healing word is also included: “Be made clean!”
I can’t draw any conclusions about why Jesus healed with touch sometimes and not others, but I think it represents the very presence of God touching that person who needs healing.
In this story, it also shows us that Jesus didn’t let taboos stand in the way of helping someone in need. Lepers were not supposed to be touched. People back then believed it had the possibility of spreading the disease. It also made the person who touched the leper “unclean.” Jesus wasn’t worried about that. This was just a person who needed healing, and Jesus touched him with his healing power.
John 1:14 says (in the words of The Message)…
The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. (John 1:14, The Message)
Jesus is God “with skin on.” Jesus is God in flesh and blood, because God knew, after sending us kings and priests and prophets and law-givers, that that was the only way God was going to reach us – by becoming one of us.
Paul Harvey tells the story of one raw winter night when a farmer heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.
Touched, the farmer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights, tossed some hay in the corner, and sprinkled a trail of bird seed to direct them to the barn.
But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, still hid in the darkness, afraid of him. He tried various tactics: circling behind the birds to drive them toward the barn, tossing bird seed in the air toward them, retreating to the house to see if they’d flutter into the barn on their own. Nothing worked. He, a huge alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn’t understand that he just wanted to help.
He went back inside the house and watched the doomed sparrows through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky: If only I could become a bird – one of them – just for a moment. Then I wouldn’t frighten them so much. I could show them the way to warmth and safety. At the same moment, another thought dawned on him. He had grasped the whole principle of the Incarnation.
The concept of a Sovereign being, larger than the universe he created, confining himself to a human body is too much for some people to believe. And yet that’s exactly what we believe as Christians. How is it that Paul puts it in Philippians 2…?
When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human. 8Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death--and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. (Philippians 2:5-8, The Message)
Jesus became a human being, and not just any human being, but a servant, and he walked this earth, just like us, touching people all along the way. He healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever by touching her hand (Matt. 8:15). He healed two blind men when he touched their eyes (Matt. 9:29). He healed this man with leprosy through his touch.
God still touches us through Jesus Christ, not in a physical way, but even more powerfully and wonderfully, through God’s Holy Spirit.
My hope and prayer for all of us today is that we let Jesus Christ touch us in a deep and personal way. If we want to know God, who sometimes can seem distant and removed from us, we can know God by having a personal relationship with God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.
Christ’s touch can do amazing things. His touch can bring us healing in our body, our mind, our spirit, and in our relationships. His touch can give us strength when our own strength is fading and we’re not sure we can take one more step. His touch can bring forgiveness when the burden of guilt and shame we’re carrying seems overwhelming.
Bill Gaither wrote a wonderful song in 1963 entitled, "He Touched Me." Listen to the words:
Shackled by a heavy burden
‘neath a load of guilt and shame
then the hand of Jesus touched me
And now I am no longer the same.
Since I met this blessed Savior
Since he cleansed and made me whole
I will never cease to praise him
I'll shout it while eternity rolls.
And then, once we’ve let Jesus touch us and heal us and forgive us and give us life, we are called to go out and touch others with his love. We are called to be Jesus “with skin on” to the people who don’t know him yet or who are looking for him, maybe without even realizing what they’re looking for.
That’s what this former leper did. Even though Jesus told him to go straight to the priest and not say anything to anyone, instead …
…he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word…
As a church, we here at First UMC, because of our size and location, are uniquely and powerfully positioned to give people the “human touch” they are craving. That’s important for us to remember, because sometimes we may get an “inferiority complex” if we compare ourselves to other very large churches that have thousands of members.
Just because a church has lots of people doesn’t make it more personal. In fact, it can sometimes be very impersonal. You can be just another face in the crowd. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve gone to big churches just so they can be anonymous for a while.
But we don’t want that ever to happen here at our church. We want everyone who comes here to receive the “human touch,” the touch of Christ through us. We are the right size to know each other by name; to know when someone’s in the hospital or they’ve lost their job or they just had a baby.
If you’re an usher or a greeter, I hope you shake the hand of every person who comes through the door. During the time of greeting, go out of your way to shake hands or hug someone nearby. There are people who live alone, who don’t have family nearby, who may go a whole week without any meaningful human contact or touch. That’s why we greet one another at the beginning of each service: so that everyone who wants it will be touched at least once this week.
Some of us deliver Meals on Wheels or DASH, mainly to elderly and disabled people. One of the reasons those programs are so important is not just the food, but the fact that those folks get a visit and a word every day to make sure they’re okay.
And we can touch people with the love of Jesus not just here at church, but out in the world.
You may have heard the little poem that begins,
"Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today."
We are called to be Christ’s hands in the world, touching lives with hope, joy, comfort, and love.
In just ten days, we will enter the season of Lent and draw near to the Cross of Christ. Rev. Rosemary Brown wrote a short poem to ponder as we move toward Lent in this year of our Lord, 2012.
It goes like this:
The skeptic stood at the foot of the cross and asked,
"What happens now to the work you've done?"
And Jesus whispered, "I've my disciples to carry on!"
"Well, what happens if they fail you, Son of Man?"
the skeptic sneered.
"I have no other plan," Jesus sighed,
And then he died.
We are Christ’s only plan for ridding the world of leprosy, the diseases of heart and mind and soul and body that keep us from being whole. And like the leper made well, we will need to tell everyone about this Savior who touches us and makes us whole!
God became human, put skin on, so we would know God is real and that God loves us. Let us be Christ’s human touch on earth until he comes again. Amen.
Feb. 12, 2012
Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.
We live in an age of contradictions. We have more labor-saving devices at our disposal than ever before, yet we constantly complain that there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
We order a Diet Coke to go with our Big Mac and fries and apple pie and then we go to the gym to exercise.
We live in a time when communication is more immediate than we would have ever dreamed possible, through cell phones, e-mail, text messages, Facebook, Twitter – yet many people feel more isolated and the world seems more impersonal than ever.
We would rather send an e-mail than get up and go talk to the person in the office next door.
We would rather carry on a conversation via text messages than talk to someone person to person.
I’ve had my kids send me a text when we’re both inside the same house, just in different rooms.
And I don’t know how many times I’ve gone into restaurant. There will be four people sitting at a table and they’re all staring at their phones – not talking to each other.
Think about how “lost” and “isolated” we feel if we lose cell phone or internet service for even a few hours. We can’t imagine how we ever lived without such things.
When we took our cruise to the Lands of the Bible last November, I didn’t have cell phone service and I didn’t use the internet the whole time. It felt very strange at first and I felt very out-of-touch, but after a day or two it felt very liberating. I don’t think it would be a bad idea if we all took occasional “breaks” from our technology, but I’m afraid many of us would start having “withdrawal” symptoms.
Technology can be helpful in all kinds of ways, but too often it substitutes for real communication. I believe the phrase is: “high tech, low touch.” The more sophisticated our technology becomes, the less actual human contact we have.
George Barna’s organization, which does a lot of research of the American religious scene, conducted a survey a few years ago. They called 3,400 churches to see how many had an actual human being answer the phone. They found that even after repeated attempts, a real live person did not pick up the phone at 55% of the nation’s churches.
The good news is that United Methodist Churches led the way with 64% having a human answer. If you call our church on weekdays between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm, chances are you’ll get to talk to a real person, unless all the lines are busy, and then you’ll get our voice mail. Even I answer the phone sometimes, and a lot of people sound surprised when they get me directly. We try to keep it personal.
Churches rely much more on webpages, e-mails, Facebook, and text messages nowadays than they do on the old-fashioned phone call or, heaven forbid, an actual face-to-face visit.
It’s a shame, though, when even the church becomes impersonal, because as our world becomes more and more complex, it seems that people are starving even more for human contact, human touch. The challenge, at least for the church, is to be both “high touch” and high tech. We can use the latest technology to reach people. But we must never lose the human touch.
Virginia Satir, one of the key family therapists of our time, said that we need to get four hugs a day for survival, eight hugs a day for maintenance and 12 hugs a day for growth.
Now, I’ll confess, I’m not normally a “touchy-feely” kind of guy. I just wasn’t raised that way. A lot of us men aren’t. But I still need the human touch. And there are some people in this church that I just know aren’t going to settle for a handshake, even a two-handed one, at the door. They want a hug. And it feels good. The church should be at least the one place in this world that hasn’t become impersonal, where you can still experience a human touch.
I like the story told by John Drescher about a little boy lying awake, terrified by a storm late one night. From his dark shadowy room he cries out to his father, “Daddy, come, I’m scared.” Daddy replies, very truthfully, “Oh, son, God loves you and he’ll take care of you.” But the boy isn’t satisfied, and he shouts back, “I know God loves me and that he’ll take care of me, but right now I need somebody with skin on.”
And you know what, God knows that we human beings are like that. We need somebody with some skin on when we’re lonely or frightened or facing a problem that’s too big for us to handle on our own.
We need a touch that’s both divine and human. And God took care of that when God sent God’s only Son into the world as a human being to show us the face of God “with skin on.”
We know from reading the New Testament that Jesus performed many healing miracles. Sometimes they involved touch and sometimes they didn’t, even when healing the same condition.
In Luke 17 we have the story of Jesus healing ten people with leprosy. He does that from a distance.
But in today’s reading from Mark 1, Mark lets us know that Jesus healed this leper by touch – “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” The healing word is also included: “Be made clean!”
I can’t draw any conclusions about why Jesus healed with touch sometimes and not others, but I think it represents the very presence of God touching that person who needs healing.
In this story, it also shows us that Jesus didn’t let taboos stand in the way of helping someone in need. Lepers were not supposed to be touched. People back then believed it had the possibility of spreading the disease. It also made the person who touched the leper “unclean.” Jesus wasn’t worried about that. This was just a person who needed healing, and Jesus touched him with his healing power.
John 1:14 says (in the words of The Message)…
The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. (John 1:14, The Message)
Jesus is God “with skin on.” Jesus is God in flesh and blood, because God knew, after sending us kings and priests and prophets and law-givers, that that was the only way God was going to reach us – by becoming one of us.
Paul Harvey tells the story of one raw winter night when a farmer heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.
Touched, the farmer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights, tossed some hay in the corner, and sprinkled a trail of bird seed to direct them to the barn.
But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, still hid in the darkness, afraid of him. He tried various tactics: circling behind the birds to drive them toward the barn, tossing bird seed in the air toward them, retreating to the house to see if they’d flutter into the barn on their own. Nothing worked. He, a huge alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn’t understand that he just wanted to help.
He went back inside the house and watched the doomed sparrows through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky: If only I could become a bird – one of them – just for a moment. Then I wouldn’t frighten them so much. I could show them the way to warmth and safety. At the same moment, another thought dawned on him. He had grasped the whole principle of the Incarnation.
The concept of a Sovereign being, larger than the universe he created, confining himself to a human body is too much for some people to believe. And yet that’s exactly what we believe as Christians. How is it that Paul puts it in Philippians 2…?
When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human. 8Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death--and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. (Philippians 2:5-8, The Message)
Jesus became a human being, and not just any human being, but a servant, and he walked this earth, just like us, touching people all along the way. He healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever by touching her hand (Matt. 8:15). He healed two blind men when he touched their eyes (Matt. 9:29). He healed this man with leprosy through his touch.
God still touches us through Jesus Christ, not in a physical way, but even more powerfully and wonderfully, through God’s Holy Spirit.
My hope and prayer for all of us today is that we let Jesus Christ touch us in a deep and personal way. If we want to know God, who sometimes can seem distant and removed from us, we can know God by having a personal relationship with God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.
Christ’s touch can do amazing things. His touch can bring us healing in our body, our mind, our spirit, and in our relationships. His touch can give us strength when our own strength is fading and we’re not sure we can take one more step. His touch can bring forgiveness when the burden of guilt and shame we’re carrying seems overwhelming.
Bill Gaither wrote a wonderful song in 1963 entitled, "He Touched Me." Listen to the words:
Shackled by a heavy burden
‘neath a load of guilt and shame
then the hand of Jesus touched me
And now I am no longer the same.
Since I met this blessed Savior
Since he cleansed and made me whole
I will never cease to praise him
I'll shout it while eternity rolls.
And then, once we’ve let Jesus touch us and heal us and forgive us and give us life, we are called to go out and touch others with his love. We are called to be Jesus “with skin on” to the people who don’t know him yet or who are looking for him, maybe without even realizing what they’re looking for.
That’s what this former leper did. Even though Jesus told him to go straight to the priest and not say anything to anyone, instead …
…he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word…
As a church, we here at First UMC, because of our size and location, are uniquely and powerfully positioned to give people the “human touch” they are craving. That’s important for us to remember, because sometimes we may get an “inferiority complex” if we compare ourselves to other very large churches that have thousands of members.
Just because a church has lots of people doesn’t make it more personal. In fact, it can sometimes be very impersonal. You can be just another face in the crowd. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve gone to big churches just so they can be anonymous for a while.
But we don’t want that ever to happen here at our church. We want everyone who comes here to receive the “human touch,” the touch of Christ through us. We are the right size to know each other by name; to know when someone’s in the hospital or they’ve lost their job or they just had a baby.
If you’re an usher or a greeter, I hope you shake the hand of every person who comes through the door. During the time of greeting, go out of your way to shake hands or hug someone nearby. There are people who live alone, who don’t have family nearby, who may go a whole week without any meaningful human contact or touch. That’s why we greet one another at the beginning of each service: so that everyone who wants it will be touched at least once this week.
Some of us deliver Meals on Wheels or DASH, mainly to elderly and disabled people. One of the reasons those programs are so important is not just the food, but the fact that those folks get a visit and a word every day to make sure they’re okay.
And we can touch people with the love of Jesus not just here at church, but out in the world.
You may have heard the little poem that begins,
"Christ has no hands but our hands to do his work today."
We are called to be Christ’s hands in the world, touching lives with hope, joy, comfort, and love.
In just ten days, we will enter the season of Lent and draw near to the Cross of Christ. Rev. Rosemary Brown wrote a short poem to ponder as we move toward Lent in this year of our Lord, 2012.
It goes like this:
The skeptic stood at the foot of the cross and asked,
"What happens now to the work you've done?"
And Jesus whispered, "I've my disciples to carry on!"
"Well, what happens if they fail you, Son of Man?"
the skeptic sneered.
"I have no other plan," Jesus sighed,
And then he died.
We are Christ’s only plan for ridding the world of leprosy, the diseases of heart and mind and soul and body that keep us from being whole. And like the leper made well, we will need to tell everyone about this Savior who touches us and makes us whole!
God became human, put skin on, so we would know God is real and that God loves us. Let us be Christ’s human touch on earth until he comes again. Amen.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Sermon: "Haven't You Heard?"
Isaiah 40:21-31
February 5, 2012
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know.
Maybe I should say, sometimes we need to be reminded of things we knew but for some reason have forgotten.
Our memories can get a little fuzzy at times, especially as we get older. One of my favorite comic strips, “Pickles,” portrayed this very well the other day. Earl, an elderly gentleman, is standing in the middle of a store, talking to his wife on his cell phone. “Hello, Opal, it’s me Earl,” he says.
“Yes, I’m at the store. No, there’s nothing wrong. I just can’t remember what I was supposed to buy here,” he tells her.
Then, with Opal’s help, he has a moment of recognition: “Oh yeah. That’s what it was! Memory foam pillows!”
Lots of things besides advancing years can contribute to our tendency toward forgetfulness. Sometimes when I get really busy and I’m trying to hold several things in my mind all at once, I can’t hold on to all of them. That’s why I have a tendency to make lists. If you went in my office right now and looked on my desk, you’d find several lists reminding me of things I need to do.
I think when we get really tired, that can affect our memory too. During the day I think of things that I want to do when I get home, but if it’s been a really long day and I come home exhausted, all those things just fly out of my head and all I can think about is changing clothes and going to bed.
That’s what we’re dealing with in this passage from Isaiah 40 today. The people of Israel are tired. They are exhausted. Their strength has given out.
Why? Because they were conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. They were invaded and conquered. They were utterly defeated. Their Temple in Jerusalem, their pride and joy, the symbol of God’s presence among them, was destroyed.
Not only were they defeated, but many of them, their best and their brightest, were carried away into exile in Babylon.
So they began to think that God had forgotten about them. How do we know that? Look at verse 27:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Maybe some of them thought that God couldn’t see them all the way over in Babylon, so God had forgotten about them.
Have you ever felt like that, that God had forgotten about you or that God wasn’t really interested in your problems or in the trouble you were going through? If so, then you can identify with the people of Israel.
Isaiah addresses their feelings of abandonment by reminding them of what they already know, or should know, about God.
“Don’t you know?” Isaiah asks them. “Haven’t you heard?” Of course they had heard about God. They had heard about God all their lives. But they’d forgotten. So Isaiah helps them remember some things about God that should help them feel better.
He reminds them that God is the creator of all that is:
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
So there’s nowhere on earth they can go that God won’t know where they are.
He reminds them that their Babylonian captors may seem to be in control, but God is the one …
… who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
The time is coming when the Babylonian princes and rulers will be blown away like so much grass in the wind.
And he reminds them that God is still as strong as ever:
…he is great in strength, mighty in power…
…He does not faint or grow weary…
The Israelites had grown tired during their time of captivity and maybe they thought God was tired too. But God wasn’t tired. God was still God. And Isaiah reminds the people in captivity in Babylon that God will renew their strength. In one of the most beautiful promises in all of Scripture, Isaiah tells the people:
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
And God will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, and make you to shine like sun, and hold you in the palm of God’s hand.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know but we’ve forgotten because we’re just tired from the way life has beat us up and let us down; the way it’s chewed us up and spit us out; the way it’s left us battered and lying in the dust:
That our God is an awesome God and he still reigns from heaven above.
That our problems might be great but that our God is greater.
That we worship and serve the Creator of the universe; the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords; the One who sits above the circle of the earth; the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.
That no one can compare to our God and no one is God’s equal.
So when we get tired; when we get faint and weary; when we fall exhausted into our beds at night…
All we have to do is wait upon the Lord and he will renew our strength.
We will mount up with wings like eagles.
We will run and not get weary. We will walk and not faint.
The Lord invites us to his table this morning, bidding us to come and renew our strength by receiving the grace and power he offers us in this holy meal.
Eat this bread, drink this cup. Remember the One who gave his body and blood for us, and receive your strength. Amen.
February 5, 2012
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know.
Maybe I should say, sometimes we need to be reminded of things we knew but for some reason have forgotten.
Our memories can get a little fuzzy at times, especially as we get older. One of my favorite comic strips, “Pickles,” portrayed this very well the other day. Earl, an elderly gentleman, is standing in the middle of a store, talking to his wife on his cell phone. “Hello, Opal, it’s me Earl,” he says.
“Yes, I’m at the store. No, there’s nothing wrong. I just can’t remember what I was supposed to buy here,” he tells her.
Then, with Opal’s help, he has a moment of recognition: “Oh yeah. That’s what it was! Memory foam pillows!”
Lots of things besides advancing years can contribute to our tendency toward forgetfulness. Sometimes when I get really busy and I’m trying to hold several things in my mind all at once, I can’t hold on to all of them. That’s why I have a tendency to make lists. If you went in my office right now and looked on my desk, you’d find several lists reminding me of things I need to do.
I think when we get really tired, that can affect our memory too. During the day I think of things that I want to do when I get home, but if it’s been a really long day and I come home exhausted, all those things just fly out of my head and all I can think about is changing clothes and going to bed.
That’s what we’re dealing with in this passage from Isaiah 40 today. The people of Israel are tired. They are exhausted. Their strength has given out.
Why? Because they were conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. They were invaded and conquered. They were utterly defeated. Their Temple in Jerusalem, their pride and joy, the symbol of God’s presence among them, was destroyed.
Not only were they defeated, but many of them, their best and their brightest, were carried away into exile in Babylon.
So they began to think that God had forgotten about them. How do we know that? Look at verse 27:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Maybe some of them thought that God couldn’t see them all the way over in Babylon, so God had forgotten about them.
Have you ever felt like that, that God had forgotten about you or that God wasn’t really interested in your problems or in the trouble you were going through? If so, then you can identify with the people of Israel.
Isaiah addresses their feelings of abandonment by reminding them of what they already know, or should know, about God.
“Don’t you know?” Isaiah asks them. “Haven’t you heard?” Of course they had heard about God. They had heard about God all their lives. But they’d forgotten. So Isaiah helps them remember some things about God that should help them feel better.
He reminds them that God is the creator of all that is:
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
So there’s nowhere on earth they can go that God won’t know where they are.
He reminds them that their Babylonian captors may seem to be in control, but God is the one …
… who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
The time is coming when the Babylonian princes and rulers will be blown away like so much grass in the wind.
And he reminds them that God is still as strong as ever:
…he is great in strength, mighty in power…
…He does not faint or grow weary…
The Israelites had grown tired during their time of captivity and maybe they thought God was tired too. But God wasn’t tired. God was still God. And Isaiah reminds the people in captivity in Babylon that God will renew their strength. In one of the most beautiful promises in all of Scripture, Isaiah tells the people:
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
And God will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, and make you to shine like sun, and hold you in the palm of God’s hand.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know but we’ve forgotten because we’re just tired from the way life has beat us up and let us down; the way it’s chewed us up and spit us out; the way it’s left us battered and lying in the dust:
That our God is an awesome God and he still reigns from heaven above.
That our problems might be great but that our God is greater.
That we worship and serve the Creator of the universe; the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords; the One who sits above the circle of the earth; the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.
That no one can compare to our God and no one is God’s equal.
So when we get tired; when we get faint and weary; when we fall exhausted into our beds at night…
All we have to do is wait upon the Lord and he will renew our strength.
We will mount up with wings like eagles.
We will run and not get weary. We will walk and not faint.
The Lord invites us to his table this morning, bidding us to come and renew our strength by receiving the grace and power he offers us in this holy meal.
Eat this bread, drink this cup. Remember the One who gave his body and blood for us, and receive your strength. Amen.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sermon: "The Reluctant Prophet"
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
January 22, 2012
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Jonah is one of those stories from the Bible that we think we know well, but if we’re asked to retell it, we might be a little fuzzy on the details. A little boy was asked what we learn from the story of Jonah and the whale. His answer: “People make whales sick.”
Well, that’s one thing we can learn from the ancient story of Jonah. People do make whales sick. But there are other lessons in this book too.
Many sermons have been preached on the futility of trying to run away from God. Remember, Jonah tried to run away to Tarshish when God first told him to go to Nineveh to tell the people there of God’s punishment. Tarshish was the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. That’s how he ended up in the belly of that great fish, when the crew of the ship Jonah was traveling on threw him overboard in the midst of a great storm at sea. They did it at Jonah’s request, because Jonah sensed that the storm was God’s punishment for him running away.
As someone has said, though, “You can’t ever run far enough to get away from God.” And they were right. Jonah learned that lesson.
But there’s an even more important lesson to be learned from this famous story and I’m sure most of you already know it: the main purpose of this most famous of all fish stories is to reveal the greatness of God’s love for all people – Jew and Gentile alike.
The last words of this book are among the most beautiful in all the Scriptures. Jonah wants God to destroy the people of Nineveh, Israel’s sworn enemies, but God says to Jonah:
“You have pity on a gourd which you did not plant, which I grew up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern their right hand from their left and also much cattle?”
God’s universal love. That’s the primary lesson of the book of Jonah, the “reluctant prophet.”
But there’s another lesson: it’s about a God who isn’t afraid to change his mind.
That may sound strange at first – the idea that God would change his mind. We’re used to thinking of God as immutable, unchangeable; absolutely the same yesterday, today, and forever.
But there are examples in the Old Testament of God changing his mind.
When God was ready to destroy the city of Sodom for its great wickedness, Abraham succeeded in getting a promise from God that he wouldn’t destroy the city if Abraham could fiund as few as ten righteous people living there. Abraham wasn’t able to find even ten so the city was destroyed, but at least God was swayed by Abraham’s argument.
When God was about ready to destroy the Hebrew people at Mt. Sinai because they’d made a golden calf and worshiped it, Moses interceded on their behalf and Scripture says, “the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.”
God chose a man named Saul to be the first king of Israel, but it soon became clear that Saul wasn’t worthy of such great responsibility, so God had young David anointed to be the new king.
The God of the Old Testament wasn’t afraid to mark out a new direction for his people when something wasn’t working.
Consider Jonah’s predicament. God gives Jonah the assignment of preaching to the people of Nineveh. Jonah is to tell them that God is going to destroy their city because of their wickedness.
Then an amazing thing happens. All the people of Nineveh actually listen to what Jonah says and they believe that they’re about to be destroyed. So they all repent. From the king in his palace all the way down to the lowly streetsweeper, they all turn from their sins.
When that happens, God changes his mind. He decides not to destroy Nineveh.
This embarrasses Jonah beyond belief. He’s already told the people of Nineveh that God’s going to destroy them. Now God isn’t going to do it. Jonah feels utterly humiliated.
He didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place. It would have been a little like an American going to Moscow at the height of the Cold War and telling the people in the Kremlin to repent.
Jonah wanted to see the people of Nineveh destroyed. They had invaded Israel in the 700s B.C. and destroyed the land and carried people away into slavery. Jonah hated the Ninevites.
He didn’t want to go and preach to them because he knew that God would have mercy on them and not destroy them.
He tells God, “That’s why I tried to run away to Tarshish in the first place. I knew you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing (Jonah 4:2).
Jonah is so upset with God that he goes out and sits on a hillside overlooking Nineveh to mope. He’s angry enough to sit there until he dies.
We can all probably think of times in our own lives when we’ve been disappointed (at least a little bit) that God didn’t “zap” someone that we thought deserved getting zapped. We might wonder why God let Osama bin Laden go on living for ten more years after 9/11.
We humans have a tendency to want God to be generous in his forgiveness of our sins but very strict in his forgiveness of the sins of others.
What do we do with a God who changes his mind? Who says he’s going to destroy people and then lets them off the hook? Is God like a permissive parent who can’t follow through on punishment because his heart is too tender? Don’t we need God to sometimes show some “tough love?”
What are some circumstances that might prompt God to change his mind?
For one thing, prayer seems to change God’s mind.
Doesn’t it? Isn’t that why we pray most of the time, hoping to change God’s mind?
Not all prayers are like that. I like the story of the brother and sister who were playing in the cow pasture when suddenly the old milk cow lost her temper and started running toward the two children.
Because she was older and bigger, the sister was able to climb the nearest tree while Johnny ran for the fence. Perched on a limb, the sister screamed out her advice: “Run, Johnny, run!”
As he neared the fence, she yelled, “Slide, Johnny, slide!” He did but his pants got caught on the barbed wire. Her last bit of advice was, “Pray, Johnny, pray!”
The only prayer Johnny had ever heard was the one his father said at mealtime so that’s the one he used: “Lord, we thank thee for that which we are about to receive.”
I don’t know if I could offer a prayer of thanksgiving in those circumstances. I think I’d be praying that God would somehow change that old cow’s disposition.
Sometimes our prayers are prayers of thanksgiving, or supplications, or prayers for forgiveness. More often than not, though, we pray for God to change his plan.
So often when we pray we’re trying to change something: to change dry weather to rain; to change someone’s health situation or a bad habit they have. Or maybe we pray for someone whom we wish God would change.
I read not long ago of a couple who were having a lot of problems in their marriage. The wife thought the husband needed to change and the husband thought the same thing about the wife. Every night the woman prayed that God would change her husband, and the husband prayed that God would change his wife. But no change happened.
The couple went separately to talk to their pastor about the problems in their marriage. They were getting close to divorce. The pastor suggested that they change their prayers. Instead of asking God every night to change their spouse, the pastor told each one that they should start giving God thanks for their partner. Stop praying about the things you want God to change and restrict your prayer to the things about the other person that you are grateful for.
Each spouse did this, not aware that the other was doing the same thing. Slowly, a change started to come over the marriage. There was a different climate in the home. Resentment changed to acceptance. Love began to grow once again. All because prayers for the other to change turned into prayers of thanksgiving.
So often, though, when we pray it is to change God’s mind.
From reading the story of Jonah, we might also conclude that repentance changes God’s mind.
Nineveh repented and God decided not to destroy the city. We repent and God changes his attitude toward us, right?
Obviously, we all stand in need of repentance. One four-year-old fashioned a prayer after what he thought he heard in church in the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our trash baskets,” he prayed, "as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.” We all admit that we have trash in our baskets. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us denies that.
We know that sin is a barrier to our relationship with God. Sin is brokenness, alienation. The longer we stay in our sin, the harder it is for us to turn to God.
There’s an old legend according to which God said to his angels, “Go down to earth and bring back the most precious thing in the world.” One angel brought back a drop of blood from a soldier who died in battle defending his country. God said, “Indeed, the courage of one who gives their life for their country is precious, but it’s not the most precious thing on eearth.”
Another angel brought back the dying breath of a nurse who caught a disease while nursing a child back to health. God smiled at the angel and said, “The selfless devotion of one who saved the life of a child is very precious, but it is also not the most precious thing on earth.”
Finally, the third angel caught the tear of a farmer who was about to kill the man who was stealing his cattle, until he watched the thief kissing his children goodnight and tucking them into bed, and repented in tears of his murderous desire for revenge. God said, “You have brought me the most precious thing in the world – the tear of repentance which opens the gates of heaven.”
Repentance is important, but does it change God’s mind? Mature faith understands that it’s not God’s mind that needs changing, but ours.
It was never God’s purpose that Nineveh be destroyed. God wanted them to repent and be saved. Remember John 3:17, the verse right after the much better known John 3:16 – “For the Son did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” That is always God’s will – salvation.
Someone once said that prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of God’s willingness.
God is the one who knows our needs and whose will is ever directed to his children’s good.
It’s natural for us to pray when we know things need changing. That’s the most human response to danger or heartache in the world. But we need to understand that even while we’re praying, a loving God is already at work – in all things working for good for those who love him.
Even more than praying that God change his plans, we need to pray that God will change us so we will trust God more. The most effective prayer is to pray that regardless of outward circumstances, we will be victors through him who loves us and gave his life on our behalf.
The prayer that never fails is: “Not my will, but your will be done.”
We’re not sure if Jonah ever learned the lesson God was trying to teach, that God’s love is for everyone, even for our enemies, even for the Ninevites.
As Thomas Carlyle put it: “And Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking. And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs to come around to his way of loving.”
It wasn’t God who needed a change of mind, but Jonah. That’s our greatest need too. To bring our lives into such total and complete harmony with the love and purpose of God that God’s plan is our plan and our plan is God’s plan.
What do we learn from the story of Jonah? That people make whales sick, yes. But also that the mature believer is one who seeks always to bring his or her life into line with the purposes and will and mind of God. Amen.
January 22, 2012
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Jonah is one of those stories from the Bible that we think we know well, but if we’re asked to retell it, we might be a little fuzzy on the details. A little boy was asked what we learn from the story of Jonah and the whale. His answer: “People make whales sick.”
Well, that’s one thing we can learn from the ancient story of Jonah. People do make whales sick. But there are other lessons in this book too.
Many sermons have been preached on the futility of trying to run away from God. Remember, Jonah tried to run away to Tarshish when God first told him to go to Nineveh to tell the people there of God’s punishment. Tarshish was the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. That’s how he ended up in the belly of that great fish, when the crew of the ship Jonah was traveling on threw him overboard in the midst of a great storm at sea. They did it at Jonah’s request, because Jonah sensed that the storm was God’s punishment for him running away.
As someone has said, though, “You can’t ever run far enough to get away from God.” And they were right. Jonah learned that lesson.
But there’s an even more important lesson to be learned from this famous story and I’m sure most of you already know it: the main purpose of this most famous of all fish stories is to reveal the greatness of God’s love for all people – Jew and Gentile alike.
The last words of this book are among the most beautiful in all the Scriptures. Jonah wants God to destroy the people of Nineveh, Israel’s sworn enemies, but God says to Jonah:
“You have pity on a gourd which you did not plant, which I grew up in a night and perished in a night. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern their right hand from their left and also much cattle?”
God’s universal love. That’s the primary lesson of the book of Jonah, the “reluctant prophet.”
But there’s another lesson: it’s about a God who isn’t afraid to change his mind.
That may sound strange at first – the idea that God would change his mind. We’re used to thinking of God as immutable, unchangeable; absolutely the same yesterday, today, and forever.
But there are examples in the Old Testament of God changing his mind.
When God was ready to destroy the city of Sodom for its great wickedness, Abraham succeeded in getting a promise from God that he wouldn’t destroy the city if Abraham could fiund as few as ten righteous people living there. Abraham wasn’t able to find even ten so the city was destroyed, but at least God was swayed by Abraham’s argument.
When God was about ready to destroy the Hebrew people at Mt. Sinai because they’d made a golden calf and worshiped it, Moses interceded on their behalf and Scripture says, “the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.”
God chose a man named Saul to be the first king of Israel, but it soon became clear that Saul wasn’t worthy of such great responsibility, so God had young David anointed to be the new king.
The God of the Old Testament wasn’t afraid to mark out a new direction for his people when something wasn’t working.
Consider Jonah’s predicament. God gives Jonah the assignment of preaching to the people of Nineveh. Jonah is to tell them that God is going to destroy their city because of their wickedness.
Then an amazing thing happens. All the people of Nineveh actually listen to what Jonah says and they believe that they’re about to be destroyed. So they all repent. From the king in his palace all the way down to the lowly streetsweeper, they all turn from their sins.
When that happens, God changes his mind. He decides not to destroy Nineveh.
This embarrasses Jonah beyond belief. He’s already told the people of Nineveh that God’s going to destroy them. Now God isn’t going to do it. Jonah feels utterly humiliated.
He didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place. It would have been a little like an American going to Moscow at the height of the Cold War and telling the people in the Kremlin to repent.
Jonah wanted to see the people of Nineveh destroyed. They had invaded Israel in the 700s B.C. and destroyed the land and carried people away into slavery. Jonah hated the Ninevites.
He didn’t want to go and preach to them because he knew that God would have mercy on them and not destroy them.
He tells God, “That’s why I tried to run away to Tarshish in the first place. I knew you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing (Jonah 4:2).
Jonah is so upset with God that he goes out and sits on a hillside overlooking Nineveh to mope. He’s angry enough to sit there until he dies.
We can all probably think of times in our own lives when we’ve been disappointed (at least a little bit) that God didn’t “zap” someone that we thought deserved getting zapped. We might wonder why God let Osama bin Laden go on living for ten more years after 9/11.
We humans have a tendency to want God to be generous in his forgiveness of our sins but very strict in his forgiveness of the sins of others.
What do we do with a God who changes his mind? Who says he’s going to destroy people and then lets them off the hook? Is God like a permissive parent who can’t follow through on punishment because his heart is too tender? Don’t we need God to sometimes show some “tough love?”
What are some circumstances that might prompt God to change his mind?
For one thing, prayer seems to change God’s mind.
Doesn’t it? Isn’t that why we pray most of the time, hoping to change God’s mind?
Not all prayers are like that. I like the story of the brother and sister who were playing in the cow pasture when suddenly the old milk cow lost her temper and started running toward the two children.
Because she was older and bigger, the sister was able to climb the nearest tree while Johnny ran for the fence. Perched on a limb, the sister screamed out her advice: “Run, Johnny, run!”
As he neared the fence, she yelled, “Slide, Johnny, slide!” He did but his pants got caught on the barbed wire. Her last bit of advice was, “Pray, Johnny, pray!”
The only prayer Johnny had ever heard was the one his father said at mealtime so that’s the one he used: “Lord, we thank thee for that which we are about to receive.”
I don’t know if I could offer a prayer of thanksgiving in those circumstances. I think I’d be praying that God would somehow change that old cow’s disposition.
Sometimes our prayers are prayers of thanksgiving, or supplications, or prayers for forgiveness. More often than not, though, we pray for God to change his plan.
So often when we pray we’re trying to change something: to change dry weather to rain; to change someone’s health situation or a bad habit they have. Or maybe we pray for someone whom we wish God would change.
I read not long ago of a couple who were having a lot of problems in their marriage. The wife thought the husband needed to change and the husband thought the same thing about the wife. Every night the woman prayed that God would change her husband, and the husband prayed that God would change his wife. But no change happened.
The couple went separately to talk to their pastor about the problems in their marriage. They were getting close to divorce. The pastor suggested that they change their prayers. Instead of asking God every night to change their spouse, the pastor told each one that they should start giving God thanks for their partner. Stop praying about the things you want God to change and restrict your prayer to the things about the other person that you are grateful for.
Each spouse did this, not aware that the other was doing the same thing. Slowly, a change started to come over the marriage. There was a different climate in the home. Resentment changed to acceptance. Love began to grow once again. All because prayers for the other to change turned into prayers of thanksgiving.
So often, though, when we pray it is to change God’s mind.
From reading the story of Jonah, we might also conclude that repentance changes God’s mind.
Nineveh repented and God decided not to destroy the city. We repent and God changes his attitude toward us, right?
Obviously, we all stand in need of repentance. One four-year-old fashioned a prayer after what he thought he heard in church in the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our trash baskets,” he prayed, "as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.” We all admit that we have trash in our baskets. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us denies that.
We know that sin is a barrier to our relationship with God. Sin is brokenness, alienation. The longer we stay in our sin, the harder it is for us to turn to God.
There’s an old legend according to which God said to his angels, “Go down to earth and bring back the most precious thing in the world.” One angel brought back a drop of blood from a soldier who died in battle defending his country. God said, “Indeed, the courage of one who gives their life for their country is precious, but it’s not the most precious thing on eearth.”
Another angel brought back the dying breath of a nurse who caught a disease while nursing a child back to health. God smiled at the angel and said, “The selfless devotion of one who saved the life of a child is very precious, but it is also not the most precious thing on earth.”
Finally, the third angel caught the tear of a farmer who was about to kill the man who was stealing his cattle, until he watched the thief kissing his children goodnight and tucking them into bed, and repented in tears of his murderous desire for revenge. God said, “You have brought me the most precious thing in the world – the tear of repentance which opens the gates of heaven.”
Repentance is important, but does it change God’s mind? Mature faith understands that it’s not God’s mind that needs changing, but ours.
It was never God’s purpose that Nineveh be destroyed. God wanted them to repent and be saved. Remember John 3:17, the verse right after the much better known John 3:16 – “For the Son did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” That is always God’s will – salvation.
Someone once said that prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of God’s willingness.
God is the one who knows our needs and whose will is ever directed to his children’s good.
It’s natural for us to pray when we know things need changing. That’s the most human response to danger or heartache in the world. But we need to understand that even while we’re praying, a loving God is already at work – in all things working for good for those who love him.
Even more than praying that God change his plans, we need to pray that God will change us so we will trust God more. The most effective prayer is to pray that regardless of outward circumstances, we will be victors through him who loves us and gave his life on our behalf.
The prayer that never fails is: “Not my will, but your will be done.”
We’re not sure if Jonah ever learned the lesson God was trying to teach, that God’s love is for everyone, even for our enemies, even for the Ninevites.
As Thomas Carlyle put it: “And Jonah stalked to his shaded seat and waited for God to come around to his way of thinking. And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs to come around to his way of loving.”
It wasn’t God who needed a change of mind, but Jonah. That’s our greatest need too. To bring our lives into such total and complete harmony with the love and purpose of God that God’s plan is our plan and our plan is God’s plan.
What do we learn from the story of Jonah? That people make whales sick, yes. But also that the mature believer is one who seeks always to bring his or her life into line with the purposes and will and mind of God. Amen.
Sermon: "You Are Not Your Own"
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
January 15, 2012
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything.
Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, and yet God will do away with both. The body isn’t for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.
God has raised the Lord and will raise us through his power. Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of Christ? So then, should I take parts of Christ and make them a part of someone who is sleeping around? No way!
Don’t you know that anyone who is joined to someone who is sleeping around is one body with that person? The scripture says, The two will become one flesh. The one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Avoid sexual immorality!
Every sin that a person can do is committed outside the body, except those who engage in sexual immorality commit sin against their own bodies. Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?
Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
I have to hand it to Ed Young, Jr., pastor of Fellowship mega-Church in Grapevine (it’s one across Hwy. 121 from Bass Pro Shop on your way to DFW Airport). I may not always agree with his methods, but he does seem to have a knack for getting local and even national media attention for himself and his church.
A few years ago he rented the American Airlines Center in December for the church’s Christmas Worship experience, and then the next year announced that the church wouldn’t have worship on Sunday because it was Christmas Day and they expected low attendance.
Last Christmas (2010) Eve they showed a 3-D video in church and gave everyone special 3-D glasses to watch it.
The night before Super Bowl XLI (2007), the church gave away two tickets and airfare to the game in Miami as a way of attracting people who don’t usually come to church.
In one of his most controversial moves in November 2008, he challenged the married members of his 20,000-member church to conduct a “sexperiment” in which they would have “marital relations” for seven straight days.
And then he and his wife got back in the news this weekend by spending 24 hours in bed together on the roof of the church to promote their book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse. I have to question their common sense a little bit, doing it on one of the coldest weekends of the year so far, but news reports said they were warmly dressed.
The Youngs say they do these things to counter the media’s portrayal of an ungodly and unhealthy view of sex in our culture, and instead generate healthy discussion about a biblical view of sex and marriage, a topic that is often “taboo” in churches.
I agree that the church (and even some preachers!) tends to be a little embarrassed about “S-E-X” and so we either tiptoe around the topic or avoid it altogether. I agree with Ed Young that the church is the second best place to talk about sex; the first place is in the home. It seems that more and more we are content either to leave the discussion about sex to the schools and expect them to teach our children or just not talk about it at all.
I appreciate what our congregation does with the “Created by God” curriculum that deals with human sexuality for fifth and sixth graders. That’s not too young to be talking about what the Bible says about these things.
It’s certainly true that the Bible speaks quite a bit about sex and marriage. There’s a whole book in the Old Testament, “The Song of Songs,” that deals with romantic love.
The Bible tends to take a very realistic view toward sex and marriage. On the one hand, it holds up the ideal created by God, of one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage. On the other hand, the Bible recognizes that human beings don’t always live up to the ideal.
Just as that ideal is challenged today as outdated or unrealistic, it was challenged in biblical times by things like polygamy and adultery and prostitution. And as much as we might want to sweep the topic under the rug, we can’t when we encounter passages like today’s text from 1 Cor. 6 that, like I said, we might want to rate as “PG-13,” if not “R.”
Believe me, I was tempted to choose one of the other texts to preach on this morning. The story about Samuel hearing the call of God as a young boy is a good one. So’s the one about Philip telling his friend Nathanael about Jesus. They are both good stories about discipleship and hearing the call of God.
But there was something about this word of Paul that kept pulling me back and inviting me, or challenging me, to say something about it. So that’s what I decided to do.
This passage is not only about sexual morality and immorality. Paul uses that topic to make a larger point about our relationship with Christ.
There were some things going on in the church in Corinth that must have caused Paul a great deal of heartache and many sleepless nights. Paul founded the church in Corinth and spent the better part of two years there, but after he left all kinds of problems arose. The church was divided into warring factions. Christians were suing each other in court. Paul’s authority was being questioned. Marriage and divorce problems troubled the church. The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead was even under assault.
And it looks as if Corinth’s reputation as a center of immorality had bled over into the church. Under the guise of the saying, “I have the freedom to do anything,” it looks like at least some Corinthians were doing just that – anything they wanted, including sleeping around outside of marriage and with prostitutes, claiming I guess that what they did with their bodies didn’t really matter – just the spirit.
So Paul has to set them straight. He doesn’t do it by quoting laws and rules and commandments to them. That’s what Paul the Pharisee might have done.
But Paul the Apostle knows that it goes beyond religious laws and rules. The problem with the Corinthians who are doing these things is not religion – it’s relationship. Rules can only take you so far: do this, don’t do that. The problem usually isn’t that we don’t know the difference between right and wrong. We know what we should do and what we shouldn’t. It’s that we go ahead and do the things that we know are wrong.
If it were just a matter of following the rules, all we’d have to do is make sure everyone knows the rules and this would be a perfect world. But here’s the problem with that: I know the speed limit is 55, but I still drive 65; I know McDonald’s French fries are bad for me, but I go ahead and eat them; I know I should exercise every day, but I still let it slide.
I don’t need a refresher course on the rules. I know the rules. I need to be changed from within. I need a reason to want to obey the rules, to want to do what’s good for me, to want to do the right thing. I need a power inside of me much stronger than my own weak willpower. I don’t need more rules. I need a relationship!
And Paul, in his genius, directs me to the source of that power and to the nature of that relationship. It’s in the very last part of today’s reading. We may have gotten so distracted by all that “sleeping around” and “sex” business that we missed the most important part, so let me read it again:
Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
You don’t belong to yourself. You are not your own. You have been bought and paid for by someone else, and it’s that someone else who directs your life now. That’s the where the power comes from. We are not on our own. We have help!
This is an idea that goes against what lots of people believe. We like to think that we are in charge of our own lives – masters of our own fate; captains of our own ships. We don’t have to take orders from anyone. We answer only to ourselves.
But think about that for a moment. I don’t think that kind of complete self-reliance is even possible, but even if it were, would we really want to live that way? Life is about relationships: loving and being loved; caring and being cared for. It would be awfully lonely to live only for ourselves.
I know I need to exercise more and take care of my health better – eat healthier, lose weight, get in shape. I heard or read something a while back that helped me be a little more serious about that. This person said that if we just do these things for ourselves, we’ll always have an excuse to put it off or not do it.
This advice said: don’t think about doing it just for yourself, but think about doing it for the other people in your life. That makes sense. Other people are counting on me to be healthy and to be around for a while: my mom, my wife, my children, the congregation that counts on me. I want to be around for my grandchildren, if I ever have any. I don’t need to be healthy just for myself, but for the people I love, the people who depend on me.
I don’t belong just to myself. I belong to others and they belong to me. We count on one another to be there when we’re needed.
Paul is saying that as Christians, even more than we belong to other people, we belong to God. Other people have a claim on us – our time, our health, our presence and strength. But God has the ultimate claim on us because, as Paul says, we are not our own; we don’t belong just to ourselves; we have been bought with a price. We belong first and foremost to God.
The price God paid for us was the life of his one and only Son Jesus Christ on the cross. God not only created us in the first place, but when we, as human beings, had fallen under the power of sin, God bought us back by sending his Son to offer his life in our place so that we could be forgiven of our sin and have new and everlasting life with God.
When we look at the things Paul is talking about in this passage it makes a big difference. Now we see it’s not just about ourselves and what we do with our bodies. Jesus Christ is involved now. We belong to him.
As Paul says in verse 15, as Christians we are members of, parts of, the body of Christ. So we belong to Christ and we belong to one another. Everything we do, in one way or another, affects not only ourselves, but also other people and even Christ himself.
We are united with Christ. We are part of him and he is part of us. A very simple way to think about it is this: when I read a book or watch a TV show or a movie, it’s not just me doing it, it’s Jesus and I together. Every internet site I visit, Jesus is looking at it with me. We might do a lot of things differently if we approached it that way.
Paul says that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is within us. So everything we do, everything we say, even everything we think, has the potential of bringing glory to God or bringing dishonor to God.
When we invite Jesus Christ into our lives, the Holy Spirit takes up residence too. But don’t think of the Holy Spirit as a “killjoy” who’s there to keep you from having any fun. God wants you to life a joyous, loving, faith-filled and grace-filled life.
The Holy Spirit is there, living in his “temple,” to give us the strength and the power we need every day to live for God. That’s the purpose of our lives ultimately: to bring honor and glory and praise to God, the one who created us and the one who bought us for a price through Jesus Christ.
When we live each day with that sense of God’s presence in our lives, of Jesus Christ being with us everywhere we go – at home, at school, at the grocery school, in the car, at work, at play – then we won’t have to think so much of rules of right and wrong. We will just know the right thing to do and the holy way to live because Jesus will be living in us and through us. And we will truly glorify God in our lives. Amen.
January 15, 2012
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything.
Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, and yet God will do away with both. The body isn’t for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.
God has raised the Lord and will raise us through his power. Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of Christ? So then, should I take parts of Christ and make them a part of someone who is sleeping around? No way!
Don’t you know that anyone who is joined to someone who is sleeping around is one body with that person? The scripture says, The two will become one flesh. The one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Avoid sexual immorality!
Every sin that a person can do is committed outside the body, except those who engage in sexual immorality commit sin against their own bodies. Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?
Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
I have to hand it to Ed Young, Jr., pastor of Fellowship mega-Church in Grapevine (it’s one across Hwy. 121 from Bass Pro Shop on your way to DFW Airport). I may not always agree with his methods, but he does seem to have a knack for getting local and even national media attention for himself and his church.
A few years ago he rented the American Airlines Center in December for the church’s Christmas Worship experience, and then the next year announced that the church wouldn’t have worship on Sunday because it was Christmas Day and they expected low attendance.
Last Christmas (2010) Eve they showed a 3-D video in church and gave everyone special 3-D glasses to watch it.
The night before Super Bowl XLI (2007), the church gave away two tickets and airfare to the game in Miami as a way of attracting people who don’t usually come to church.
In one of his most controversial moves in November 2008, he challenged the married members of his 20,000-member church to conduct a “sexperiment” in which they would have “marital relations” for seven straight days.
And then he and his wife got back in the news this weekend by spending 24 hours in bed together on the roof of the church to promote their book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse. I have to question their common sense a little bit, doing it on one of the coldest weekends of the year so far, but news reports said they were warmly dressed.
The Youngs say they do these things to counter the media’s portrayal of an ungodly and unhealthy view of sex in our culture, and instead generate healthy discussion about a biblical view of sex and marriage, a topic that is often “taboo” in churches.
I agree that the church (and even some preachers!) tends to be a little embarrassed about “S-E-X” and so we either tiptoe around the topic or avoid it altogether. I agree with Ed Young that the church is the second best place to talk about sex; the first place is in the home. It seems that more and more we are content either to leave the discussion about sex to the schools and expect them to teach our children or just not talk about it at all.
I appreciate what our congregation does with the “Created by God” curriculum that deals with human sexuality for fifth and sixth graders. That’s not too young to be talking about what the Bible says about these things.
It’s certainly true that the Bible speaks quite a bit about sex and marriage. There’s a whole book in the Old Testament, “The Song of Songs,” that deals with romantic love.
The Bible tends to take a very realistic view toward sex and marriage. On the one hand, it holds up the ideal created by God, of one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage. On the other hand, the Bible recognizes that human beings don’t always live up to the ideal.
Just as that ideal is challenged today as outdated or unrealistic, it was challenged in biblical times by things like polygamy and adultery and prostitution. And as much as we might want to sweep the topic under the rug, we can’t when we encounter passages like today’s text from 1 Cor. 6 that, like I said, we might want to rate as “PG-13,” if not “R.”
Believe me, I was tempted to choose one of the other texts to preach on this morning. The story about Samuel hearing the call of God as a young boy is a good one. So’s the one about Philip telling his friend Nathanael about Jesus. They are both good stories about discipleship and hearing the call of God.
But there was something about this word of Paul that kept pulling me back and inviting me, or challenging me, to say something about it. So that’s what I decided to do.
This passage is not only about sexual morality and immorality. Paul uses that topic to make a larger point about our relationship with Christ.
There were some things going on in the church in Corinth that must have caused Paul a great deal of heartache and many sleepless nights. Paul founded the church in Corinth and spent the better part of two years there, but after he left all kinds of problems arose. The church was divided into warring factions. Christians were suing each other in court. Paul’s authority was being questioned. Marriage and divorce problems troubled the church. The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead was even under assault.
And it looks as if Corinth’s reputation as a center of immorality had bled over into the church. Under the guise of the saying, “I have the freedom to do anything,” it looks like at least some Corinthians were doing just that – anything they wanted, including sleeping around outside of marriage and with prostitutes, claiming I guess that what they did with their bodies didn’t really matter – just the spirit.
So Paul has to set them straight. He doesn’t do it by quoting laws and rules and commandments to them. That’s what Paul the Pharisee might have done.
But Paul the Apostle knows that it goes beyond religious laws and rules. The problem with the Corinthians who are doing these things is not religion – it’s relationship. Rules can only take you so far: do this, don’t do that. The problem usually isn’t that we don’t know the difference between right and wrong. We know what we should do and what we shouldn’t. It’s that we go ahead and do the things that we know are wrong.
If it were just a matter of following the rules, all we’d have to do is make sure everyone knows the rules and this would be a perfect world. But here’s the problem with that: I know the speed limit is 55, but I still drive 65; I know McDonald’s French fries are bad for me, but I go ahead and eat them; I know I should exercise every day, but I still let it slide.
I don’t need a refresher course on the rules. I know the rules. I need to be changed from within. I need a reason to want to obey the rules, to want to do what’s good for me, to want to do the right thing. I need a power inside of me much stronger than my own weak willpower. I don’t need more rules. I need a relationship!
And Paul, in his genius, directs me to the source of that power and to the nature of that relationship. It’s in the very last part of today’s reading. We may have gotten so distracted by all that “sleeping around” and “sex” business that we missed the most important part, so let me read it again:
Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
You don’t belong to yourself. You are not your own. You have been bought and paid for by someone else, and it’s that someone else who directs your life now. That’s the where the power comes from. We are not on our own. We have help!
This is an idea that goes against what lots of people believe. We like to think that we are in charge of our own lives – masters of our own fate; captains of our own ships. We don’t have to take orders from anyone. We answer only to ourselves.
But think about that for a moment. I don’t think that kind of complete self-reliance is even possible, but even if it were, would we really want to live that way? Life is about relationships: loving and being loved; caring and being cared for. It would be awfully lonely to live only for ourselves.
I know I need to exercise more and take care of my health better – eat healthier, lose weight, get in shape. I heard or read something a while back that helped me be a little more serious about that. This person said that if we just do these things for ourselves, we’ll always have an excuse to put it off or not do it.
This advice said: don’t think about doing it just for yourself, but think about doing it for the other people in your life. That makes sense. Other people are counting on me to be healthy and to be around for a while: my mom, my wife, my children, the congregation that counts on me. I want to be around for my grandchildren, if I ever have any. I don’t need to be healthy just for myself, but for the people I love, the people who depend on me.
I don’t belong just to myself. I belong to others and they belong to me. We count on one another to be there when we’re needed.
Paul is saying that as Christians, even more than we belong to other people, we belong to God. Other people have a claim on us – our time, our health, our presence and strength. But God has the ultimate claim on us because, as Paul says, we are not our own; we don’t belong just to ourselves; we have been bought with a price. We belong first and foremost to God.
The price God paid for us was the life of his one and only Son Jesus Christ on the cross. God not only created us in the first place, but when we, as human beings, had fallen under the power of sin, God bought us back by sending his Son to offer his life in our place so that we could be forgiven of our sin and have new and everlasting life with God.
When we look at the things Paul is talking about in this passage it makes a big difference. Now we see it’s not just about ourselves and what we do with our bodies. Jesus Christ is involved now. We belong to him.
As Paul says in verse 15, as Christians we are members of, parts of, the body of Christ. So we belong to Christ and we belong to one another. Everything we do, in one way or another, affects not only ourselves, but also other people and even Christ himself.
We are united with Christ. We are part of him and he is part of us. A very simple way to think about it is this: when I read a book or watch a TV show or a movie, it’s not just me doing it, it’s Jesus and I together. Every internet site I visit, Jesus is looking at it with me. We might do a lot of things differently if we approached it that way.
Paul says that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is within us. So everything we do, everything we say, even everything we think, has the potential of bringing glory to God or bringing dishonor to God.
When we invite Jesus Christ into our lives, the Holy Spirit takes up residence too. But don’t think of the Holy Spirit as a “killjoy” who’s there to keep you from having any fun. God wants you to life a joyous, loving, faith-filled and grace-filled life.
The Holy Spirit is there, living in his “temple,” to give us the strength and the power we need every day to live for God. That’s the purpose of our lives ultimately: to bring honor and glory and praise to God, the one who created us and the one who bought us for a price through Jesus Christ.
When we live each day with that sense of God’s presence in our lives, of Jesus Christ being with us everywhere we go – at home, at school, at the grocery school, in the car, at work, at play – then we won’t have to think so much of rules of right and wrong. We will just know the right thing to do and the holy way to live because Jesus will be living in us and through us. And we will truly glorify God in our lives. Amen.
Sermon: "The Other Wise Man"
Matthew 2:1-12
January 8, 2012
Epiphany Sunday
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.
On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
You may wonder why we are talking about the wise men now two weeks after Christmas. Trees have been taken down, decorations have been put away. Although you may have noticed that we still have the Nativity Scene displayed in the sanctuary for one more Sunday.
That’s because today we are observing Epiphany Sunday. We could have done it last week, but because it was also New Year’s Day we wanted to focus on that theme and save Epiphany for today.
The Day of Epiphany is actually January 6, which was Friday of last week. That’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas. You could legally leave your Christmas decorations up until then and you wouldn’t be in violation of any major codes or statutes. If they’re still up now, however, you may have the Liturgical Police knocking on your door.
Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as a human being. Western Christianity remembers the visit of the wise men to Jesus at Epiphany. The Eastern Church focuses more on the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River when he was an adult. Both were ways that Jesus was made known to the world as the Son of God.
The story of the wise men has been open to a lot of speculation over the centuries, mainly because the Gospel story tells us so little about them. We tend to think we know more about them then we really do.
We don’t even know how many there were – we say three, but that’s because they brought three gifts.
We don’t know what country they came from – Matthew says the “East,” and we usually say Persia. We don’t know that they rode camels or that they were “kings.” That comes from Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, passages we read this morning, that talk about kings and camels and gifts that came to be seen as Old Testament prophecies of the wise men.
We don’t know their names, either, although tradition has called them Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar for the last 1500 years.
We don’t know when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem, although it was likely some time after Jesus’ birth because by then they were in a house.
Speculation about the wise men has led people like John H. Hopkins, Jr. to write hymns like “We Three Kings.”
And it led Henry Van Dyke, an American author and Presbyterian minister who lived from 1852-1933, to add his own contribution to the wise men legend in the form of a short story that is still popular today.
Van Dyke is probably best-known to us as the author of the lyrics to the popular hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” set to Betthoven’s “Ode to Joy.” He wrote many other hymns and poems.
In 1896 he wrote a short story titled, “The Other Wise Man.” I first became acquainted with it about 30 years ago, when someone asked me to read an abridged version aloud at a church Christmas gathering.
“The Other Wise Man” is about a 40-year-old Persian astrologer named Artaban who has spent his life studying the stars. He has seen the star which he believes heralds the birth of a promised King of Israel.
He plans to meet his three friends and fellow astrologers, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, in Babylon and together they will journey to Judea to worship and pay homage to the king. Artaban sells all his possessions and buys three jewels – a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl – which he plans to give as tribute to the King.
Artaban travels for ten days to Babylon, and just three hours before he is to meet the three wise men, he encounters the form of a man lying in the road, moaning. What should he do? If he stops to help the man, he will be late to meet the others and they will leave without him.
He decides to stop and help the man and spends several hours taking care of him until his strength returns. The stranger has nothing of value to offer Artaban, but tells him that he is a Jew and that according to prophecy the King he seeks will not be born in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem.
Sure enough, Artaban arrives in Babylon after the others have left. He must sell the sapphire to buy a train of camels and supplies for the journey since he has missed the caravan.
He arrives in Bethlehem three days after the other wise men have departed, after seeing the Christ child. He stops at the home of a young mother with a baby and learns that Joseph of Nazareth took the Child Jesus and his mother Mary and fled away secretly in the night to go to Egypt.
Suddenly there’s a noise of wild confusion in the streets of Bethlehem and the cry, “The soldiers! The soldiers of Herod! They are killing our children!”
The young mother clasps her child to her in terror. Artaban stands guard in the doorway of her home, and when the captain of the guard comes, carrying a bloody sword, Artaban tells him, “I am all alone in this place, and I am waiting to give this jewel to the prudent captain who will leave me in peace.”
The captain takes the ruby and moves on down the street. The woman blesses Artaban for saving her baby, but now he has lost two of his jewels meant for the King.
Artaban spends the next 33 years of his life traveling to Egypt and many other places, helping people in need all along the way, but never finding the King he had been seeking.
He finally ends up in Jerusalem, during the Passover, on the very day that Jesus of Nazareth is to be crucified. He concludes that this is the One he’d been seeking and decides to offer his pearl as ransom for the King’s life.
But as he follows the crowd to Golgotha, he encounters a young woman being dragged down the street by soldiers, about to be sold as a slave.
She throws herself at Artaban’s feet and begs him to save her from a fate worse than death.
Artaban isn’t sure if this is his great opportunity or his last temptation, but he gives the pearl to the girl for her ransom.
At that moment, an earthquake shakes the ground and the sky grows dark. A heavy roof tile falls and strikes the old man on the temple. The girl bends over him. She hears a voice through the twilight, like music from a distance.
Then the old man’s lips begin to move, as if in answer: “Not so, my Lord: for when did I see thee hungry and feed thee? Or thirsty, and give thee drink? When did I see thee a stranger and take thee in? Or naked, and clothe thee? When did I see thee sick or in prison, and come unto thee? Three and thirty years have I looked for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my King.”
The sweet voice came again and the girl heard it, very faint and far away. But now it seemed as though she understood the words: “Truly, I say unto thee, inasmuch as thou hast done it unto the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”
A calm radiance of wonder and joy lights Artaban’s face and a long breath of relief exhales gently from his lips.
Van Dyke’s story concludes: “His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted. The Other Wise Man had found the King.”
We may understand our lives as one long quest to perform some grand and glorious gesture for God. We may tell ourselves, when I finally have enough money and time, maybe after I retire, then I will be able to do something great for God.
Then I will be able to go on a mission trip or I will teach Sunday School or I will help pay the salary of an overseas missionary.
But the story of the “Other Wise Man” reminds us that the Christian life is really about what we do on the way to meet the King. We may not realize that the hour we give each week delivering Meals on Wheels or mentoring a child once a month at the school or the tithes we place in the offering plate every Sunday are all ways of worshiping God in Jesus Christ.
We may hear the story of the wise men journeying hundreds of miles through trackless desert to Bethlehem to kneel down before the infant King to pay him homage and give him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and wish that we could do something dramatic like that for our Lord.
But that forgets that we all have gifts of time, talent, and treasure that we can use each and every day, right here at home, to serve those whom Christ places before us, inviting us to see his face in their faces: the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the homeless, the sick and the imprisoned.
Each one of us can be Artaban, the Other Wise Man (or Wise Woman), using our gifts in ordinary ways every day to help improve the lives of God’s children. And in that way, we too will find the King. Amen.
January 8, 2012
Epiphany Sunday
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.
On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
You may wonder why we are talking about the wise men now two weeks after Christmas. Trees have been taken down, decorations have been put away. Although you may have noticed that we still have the Nativity Scene displayed in the sanctuary for one more Sunday.
That’s because today we are observing Epiphany Sunday. We could have done it last week, but because it was also New Year’s Day we wanted to focus on that theme and save Epiphany for today.
The Day of Epiphany is actually January 6, which was Friday of last week. That’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas. You could legally leave your Christmas decorations up until then and you wouldn’t be in violation of any major codes or statutes. If they’re still up now, however, you may have the Liturgical Police knocking on your door.
Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as a human being. Western Christianity remembers the visit of the wise men to Jesus at Epiphany. The Eastern Church focuses more on the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River when he was an adult. Both were ways that Jesus was made known to the world as the Son of God.
The story of the wise men has been open to a lot of speculation over the centuries, mainly because the Gospel story tells us so little about them. We tend to think we know more about them then we really do.
We don’t even know how many there were – we say three, but that’s because they brought three gifts.
We don’t know what country they came from – Matthew says the “East,” and we usually say Persia. We don’t know that they rode camels or that they were “kings.” That comes from Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, passages we read this morning, that talk about kings and camels and gifts that came to be seen as Old Testament prophecies of the wise men.
We don’t know their names, either, although tradition has called them Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar for the last 1500 years.
We don’t know when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem, although it was likely some time after Jesus’ birth because by then they were in a house.
Speculation about the wise men has led people like John H. Hopkins, Jr. to write hymns like “We Three Kings.”
And it led Henry Van Dyke, an American author and Presbyterian minister who lived from 1852-1933, to add his own contribution to the wise men legend in the form of a short story that is still popular today.
Van Dyke is probably best-known to us as the author of the lyrics to the popular hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” set to Betthoven’s “Ode to Joy.” He wrote many other hymns and poems.
In 1896 he wrote a short story titled, “The Other Wise Man.” I first became acquainted with it about 30 years ago, when someone asked me to read an abridged version aloud at a church Christmas gathering.
“The Other Wise Man” is about a 40-year-old Persian astrologer named Artaban who has spent his life studying the stars. He has seen the star which he believes heralds the birth of a promised King of Israel.
He plans to meet his three friends and fellow astrologers, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, in Babylon and together they will journey to Judea to worship and pay homage to the king. Artaban sells all his possessions and buys three jewels – a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl – which he plans to give as tribute to the King.
Artaban travels for ten days to Babylon, and just three hours before he is to meet the three wise men, he encounters the form of a man lying in the road, moaning. What should he do? If he stops to help the man, he will be late to meet the others and they will leave without him.
He decides to stop and help the man and spends several hours taking care of him until his strength returns. The stranger has nothing of value to offer Artaban, but tells him that he is a Jew and that according to prophecy the King he seeks will not be born in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem.
Sure enough, Artaban arrives in Babylon after the others have left. He must sell the sapphire to buy a train of camels and supplies for the journey since he has missed the caravan.
He arrives in Bethlehem three days after the other wise men have departed, after seeing the Christ child. He stops at the home of a young mother with a baby and learns that Joseph of Nazareth took the Child Jesus and his mother Mary and fled away secretly in the night to go to Egypt.
Suddenly there’s a noise of wild confusion in the streets of Bethlehem and the cry, “The soldiers! The soldiers of Herod! They are killing our children!”
The young mother clasps her child to her in terror. Artaban stands guard in the doorway of her home, and when the captain of the guard comes, carrying a bloody sword, Artaban tells him, “I am all alone in this place, and I am waiting to give this jewel to the prudent captain who will leave me in peace.”
The captain takes the ruby and moves on down the street. The woman blesses Artaban for saving her baby, but now he has lost two of his jewels meant for the King.
Artaban spends the next 33 years of his life traveling to Egypt and many other places, helping people in need all along the way, but never finding the King he had been seeking.
He finally ends up in Jerusalem, during the Passover, on the very day that Jesus of Nazareth is to be crucified. He concludes that this is the One he’d been seeking and decides to offer his pearl as ransom for the King’s life.
But as he follows the crowd to Golgotha, he encounters a young woman being dragged down the street by soldiers, about to be sold as a slave.
She throws herself at Artaban’s feet and begs him to save her from a fate worse than death.
Artaban isn’t sure if this is his great opportunity or his last temptation, but he gives the pearl to the girl for her ransom.
At that moment, an earthquake shakes the ground and the sky grows dark. A heavy roof tile falls and strikes the old man on the temple. The girl bends over him. She hears a voice through the twilight, like music from a distance.
Then the old man’s lips begin to move, as if in answer: “Not so, my Lord: for when did I see thee hungry and feed thee? Or thirsty, and give thee drink? When did I see thee a stranger and take thee in? Or naked, and clothe thee? When did I see thee sick or in prison, and come unto thee? Three and thirty years have I looked for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my King.”
The sweet voice came again and the girl heard it, very faint and far away. But now it seemed as though she understood the words: “Truly, I say unto thee, inasmuch as thou hast done it unto the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”
A calm radiance of wonder and joy lights Artaban’s face and a long breath of relief exhales gently from his lips.
Van Dyke’s story concludes: “His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted. The Other Wise Man had found the King.”
We may understand our lives as one long quest to perform some grand and glorious gesture for God. We may tell ourselves, when I finally have enough money and time, maybe after I retire, then I will be able to do something great for God.
Then I will be able to go on a mission trip or I will teach Sunday School or I will help pay the salary of an overseas missionary.
But the story of the “Other Wise Man” reminds us that the Christian life is really about what we do on the way to meet the King. We may not realize that the hour we give each week delivering Meals on Wheels or mentoring a child once a month at the school or the tithes we place in the offering plate every Sunday are all ways of worshiping God in Jesus Christ.
We may hear the story of the wise men journeying hundreds of miles through trackless desert to Bethlehem to kneel down before the infant King to pay him homage and give him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and wish that we could do something dramatic like that for our Lord.
But that forgets that we all have gifts of time, talent, and treasure that we can use each and every day, right here at home, to serve those whom Christ places before us, inviting us to see his face in their faces: the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the homeless, the sick and the imprisoned.
Each one of us can be Artaban, the Other Wise Man (or Wise Woman), using our gifts in ordinary ways every day to help improve the lives of God’s children. And in that way, we too will find the King. Amen.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Sermon: "Living with the End in Mind"
Matthew 25:31-46
January 1, 2012
New Year’s Day
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
"Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
"Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
"And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
"Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
"Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
"Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This may sound strange, but one of the sections of the newspaper I almost always read is the Obituaries. As we grow older that may become more common, but I have done it for a long time.
I read the obituaries in the local paper to see if members of the church or people I know or their relatives have passed without me hearing about it.
I read the obituaries in the Dallas paper looking for people who were members of the churches I’ve served over the years in Wylie, Lancaster, Frisco, and Dallas. I also look for colleagues in the ministry who may have passed.
But sometimes obituaries of people I’ve never met catch my attention and I read them: prominent citizens, businesspeople, civic leaders, but also just ordinary people who meant something special to their family and friends.
It’s interesting to see how some people are remembered. Most obituaries contain just the bare minimum of information – name, date and place of birth and death, surviving family members, and maybe a little about their education or their memberships. This is probably because papers like the Dallas Morning News charge for obituaries by the inch, so long ones can run into the hundreds of dollars.
But the longer ones can tell a lot about what was important to the person who died. Sometimes hobbies are included. For example:
“In addition to her accomplishments in the business world, she was a wonderful cook and a skilled seamstress. She loved Christmas, family get-togethers, flowers, bird-watching, and trips to the Ozarks.”
Sometimes volunteer activities are mentioned:
“After her retirement, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels and the New Hope Learning Center.”
There are sometimes personal notes:
“She was a good, kind, and gentle woman and was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend.”
“Until the end, his mind never stopped … always planning, building, designing, and creating. He was a vibrant, funny, engaging and loving man and father.”
If the person was religious, sometimes their church activities are included:
“She served the church in many capacities including Sunday School teacher and church librarian, and as a member of numerous committees and boards.” (That sounds like a Methodist, and indeed she was!)
Here’s one that really impressed me:
“Dick was born with severe cerebral palsy. Though he never spoke an understandable word, nor attended to his personal physical needs, nor fed himself food nor drink, he still learned limited reading and to type on a prepared IBM machine … When he was 10 or 12 years old he made it known God had called him to preach and preach he did in his own way! He had been in Sunday School and church all his life, and with his keen mind and over-sensitive hearing, he learned the Word of God. God’s work well done for those who made his life good.”
I hope this doesn’t sound too morbid to you, but have you ever stopped to think about what you would want your obituary to say? I have. I haven’t gone so far as to write my own obituary, though I’ve known people who have. But I have thought about how I would like to be remembered when that time comes (which I hope is not too soon, but we never know, do we?).
When I was younger I hoped to be remembered for writing important books or being elected as a delegate to General Conference or maybe being a district superintendent or a bishop.
As I’ve grown older and, I hope, a bit wiser, I’ve realized there are more important things to be remembered for.
Now, I’d like to be remembered as a good son, a good brother, a good husband and father and friend.
I’d like to be remembered by the churches I’ve served as a good pastor and a good member of the communities where we’ve lived.
Most of all, I’d like to be remembered as someone who was faithful to God and who lived out his faith in ways that made a real difference in the lives of others.
One night Diane Sawyer was interviewing Billy Graham on ABC News. She asked the question, "Billy, when you die, how do you want people to remember you?" Billy said, "I don't know what people will think of me, but what I'd really like is to hear the Lord say to me when I get to Heaven, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" Then he paused and looked at her and said, "But I don't think that He will."
Now if Billy Graham doesn’t expect to hear those words when he gets to heaven, what hope is there for the rest of us? He’s preached the Gospel to more people than anyone who’s ever lived.
Maybe what Billy Graham meant was that when we stand before God for judgment, it won’t depend on how many souls we’ve saved, how many sermons we’ve preached or how many books we’ve written. What will matter most is did we offer our lives to Jesus Christ as a “living sacrifice” and invite him to be our Lord Savior. That’s how our sins are forgiven and we receive the gift of eternal life – through faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
But once we are saved by grace through faith, God expects us to offer service to him through our lives. I don’t know who first coined the phrases, “Living with the end in mind” or “Living life backwards,” but I have found them helpful in thinking about the meaning and purpose of my life.
“Living with the end in mind” just means thinking about how we want to be remembered when our life is over, and then starting to live now to make that a reality.
If our philosophy of life is nothing more than “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse” or “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” then that will take our lives down one path.
But as followers of Jesus Christ we know that’s not what life is about. In our passage today from the “Great Judgment” scene in Matthew 25, Jesus gives us a very clear picture of “living with the end in mind.” He presents a scene of judgment at the end of time based on what we have done (or not done) for the “least of these” in terms of very this-worldly needs: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.
He’s saying, when the end comes, whether it’s the end of history or the end of my life, this is what’s going to matter: taking care of the people who are least-equipped to care for themselves. Because we’re not doing it just for them, but we’re doing it for Christ himself.
Jesus is inviting us to live each day with this picture of the end in mind – of the sheep being separated from the goats – and of ourselves being amongst those who say, “Lord, when was it we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and we took care of you,” and hearing Jesus say to us, “As you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”
And then we work backwards from there, and we begin to see the face of Christ in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned, and we begin to do for them as we would do for Christ himself.
If we wait until the end, it’s too late. Let’s live now with the end in mind. That’s how we live life to the fullest right now. That’s how we live for Jesus Christ in the New Year.
Amen.
January 1, 2012
New Year’s Day
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
"Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
"Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
"And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
"Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
"Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
"Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This may sound strange, but one of the sections of the newspaper I almost always read is the Obituaries. As we grow older that may become more common, but I have done it for a long time.
I read the obituaries in the local paper to see if members of the church or people I know or their relatives have passed without me hearing about it.
I read the obituaries in the Dallas paper looking for people who were members of the churches I’ve served over the years in Wylie, Lancaster, Frisco, and Dallas. I also look for colleagues in the ministry who may have passed.
But sometimes obituaries of people I’ve never met catch my attention and I read them: prominent citizens, businesspeople, civic leaders, but also just ordinary people who meant something special to their family and friends.
It’s interesting to see how some people are remembered. Most obituaries contain just the bare minimum of information – name, date and place of birth and death, surviving family members, and maybe a little about their education or their memberships. This is probably because papers like the Dallas Morning News charge for obituaries by the inch, so long ones can run into the hundreds of dollars.
But the longer ones can tell a lot about what was important to the person who died. Sometimes hobbies are included. For example:
“In addition to her accomplishments in the business world, she was a wonderful cook and a skilled seamstress. She loved Christmas, family get-togethers, flowers, bird-watching, and trips to the Ozarks.”
Sometimes volunteer activities are mentioned:
“After her retirement, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels and the New Hope Learning Center.”
There are sometimes personal notes:
“She was a good, kind, and gentle woman and was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend.”
“Until the end, his mind never stopped … always planning, building, designing, and creating. He was a vibrant, funny, engaging and loving man and father.”
If the person was religious, sometimes their church activities are included:
“She served the church in many capacities including Sunday School teacher and church librarian, and as a member of numerous committees and boards.” (That sounds like a Methodist, and indeed she was!)
Here’s one that really impressed me:
“Dick was born with severe cerebral palsy. Though he never spoke an understandable word, nor attended to his personal physical needs, nor fed himself food nor drink, he still learned limited reading and to type on a prepared IBM machine … When he was 10 or 12 years old he made it known God had called him to preach and preach he did in his own way! He had been in Sunday School and church all his life, and with his keen mind and over-sensitive hearing, he learned the Word of God. God’s work well done for those who made his life good.”
I hope this doesn’t sound too morbid to you, but have you ever stopped to think about what you would want your obituary to say? I have. I haven’t gone so far as to write my own obituary, though I’ve known people who have. But I have thought about how I would like to be remembered when that time comes (which I hope is not too soon, but we never know, do we?).
When I was younger I hoped to be remembered for writing important books or being elected as a delegate to General Conference or maybe being a district superintendent or a bishop.
As I’ve grown older and, I hope, a bit wiser, I’ve realized there are more important things to be remembered for.
Now, I’d like to be remembered as a good son, a good brother, a good husband and father and friend.
I’d like to be remembered by the churches I’ve served as a good pastor and a good member of the communities where we’ve lived.
Most of all, I’d like to be remembered as someone who was faithful to God and who lived out his faith in ways that made a real difference in the lives of others.
One night Diane Sawyer was interviewing Billy Graham on ABC News. She asked the question, "Billy, when you die, how do you want people to remember you?" Billy said, "I don't know what people will think of me, but what I'd really like is to hear the Lord say to me when I get to Heaven, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" Then he paused and looked at her and said, "But I don't think that He will."
Now if Billy Graham doesn’t expect to hear those words when he gets to heaven, what hope is there for the rest of us? He’s preached the Gospel to more people than anyone who’s ever lived.
Maybe what Billy Graham meant was that when we stand before God for judgment, it won’t depend on how many souls we’ve saved, how many sermons we’ve preached or how many books we’ve written. What will matter most is did we offer our lives to Jesus Christ as a “living sacrifice” and invite him to be our Lord Savior. That’s how our sins are forgiven and we receive the gift of eternal life – through faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
But once we are saved by grace through faith, God expects us to offer service to him through our lives. I don’t know who first coined the phrases, “Living with the end in mind” or “Living life backwards,” but I have found them helpful in thinking about the meaning and purpose of my life.
“Living with the end in mind” just means thinking about how we want to be remembered when our life is over, and then starting to live now to make that a reality.
If our philosophy of life is nothing more than “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse” or “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” then that will take our lives down one path.
But as followers of Jesus Christ we know that’s not what life is about. In our passage today from the “Great Judgment” scene in Matthew 25, Jesus gives us a very clear picture of “living with the end in mind.” He presents a scene of judgment at the end of time based on what we have done (or not done) for the “least of these” in terms of very this-worldly needs: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.
He’s saying, when the end comes, whether it’s the end of history or the end of my life, this is what’s going to matter: taking care of the people who are least-equipped to care for themselves. Because we’re not doing it just for them, but we’re doing it for Christ himself.
Jesus is inviting us to live each day with this picture of the end in mind – of the sheep being separated from the goats – and of ourselves being amongst those who say, “Lord, when was it we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and we took care of you,” and hearing Jesus say to us, “As you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”
And then we work backwards from there, and we begin to see the face of Christ in the faces of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned, and we begin to do for them as we would do for Christ himself.
If we wait until the end, it’s too late. Let’s live now with the end in mind. That’s how we live life to the fullest right now. That’s how we live for Jesus Christ in the New Year.
Amen.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sermon: "Did Jesus Ever Go Home to Bethlehem?"
(I wrote this story after returning from a trip to the Holy Land in 1997. While in Bethlehem, I wondered if Jesus and his family had ever returned there while Jesus was young to hear the story of his birth.)
DID JESUS EVER GO HOME TO BETHLEHEM?
Luke 2:1-7
Dec. 25, 2011
Christmas Day
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Joseph, Mary, and the young Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem for their annual Passover pilgrimage to the holy city. Every time they came to Jerusalem, Joseph and Mary remembered a previous journey, just a few short years before, when a census, and not a holy day, had caused them to travel from their home in Nazareth to Jerusalem and the extraordinary events that had surrounded that trip.
Jesus had begun to express some curiosity about the circumstances surrounding his birth, so Mary proposed a side trip to Joseph. “Do you suppose we could spend an extra day here and go to Bethlehem?” she asked. “We haven’t been back since we had to leave in such a hurry for Egypt when King Herod was hunting for all the baby boys. It’s just a few miles to Bethlehem and our son might enjoy seeing where he was born. I think I would like to see it again myself.”
“I suppose it would be all right,” said Joseph. “Jesus is getting old enough to begin to understand what a special birth it was. And everyone should have the chance to see where they were born.”
As they left the gates of Jerusalem the next morning and began to walk the few short miles to Bethlehem, known as the city of David, Joseph started telling Jesus the story.
“Your mother and I were living in Nazareth. We had not been engaged for very long. I had paid the bride’s price to your grandfather and we had begun to plan the wedding feast that would make us husband and wife. I was happier than I had ever been and looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her, when something happened that almost ended us before we had even begun.
“One of my brothers came to my carpenter’s shop one day and told me some very disturbing news; he had heard from a reliable source that your mother, my beloved Mary, was expecting a baby! I couldn’t believe my ears. There was no way it could be true, since we had not yet come together as husband and wife.
“While the Word of God was clear that an unfaithful fiancée was to be punished severely, I couldn’t think of such a thing. My only thought was for your mother’s reputation. So I decided to divorce her quietly and not bring shame on either of our families.
“But that very night I had a dream that changed my plans completely. An angel appeared to me and told me that the Holy Spirit was the Father of the baby Mary was expecting, which, of course, was you, and that I should go through the marriage.
As we have tried to teach you, son, we should always follow God’s wishes. So I resolved to marry your mother, though I felt unworthy to be the earthly father of such a special child.
The angel also told me that we were to name you Jesus, which as you know, means “Yahweh is salvation,” because you would save your people from their sins. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what all of that meant, but somehow it was all in fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah had foretold: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God with us.’ ”
Mary continued the story. “I didn’t know what your father would think when he found out I was expecting you, since it had all happened so quickly. One moment I was planning a nice quiet life with my new husband and looking forward to raising a family, when out of the blue an angel appeared to me and told me that I had found favor with God and that I had been chosen to give birth to a child who would be called Jesus and the Son of the Most High God.
“I asked the angel how that was possible, since your father and I weren’t married yet, and he told me that Joseph wasn’t going to be the father -- the Holy Spirit was. I almost fainted from shock. The angel reminded me that with God nothing was impossible. I thought, if that’s what God has planned for me how can I say no. So I told the angel I was God’s willing servant.
“I wouldn’t have blamed your father if he’d thought I was crazy or lying when I told him that story. But he said an angel had told him the same thing in a dream and that we would go ahead with the wedding. I knew then that God couldn’t have blessed me with a kinder or more understanding husband, or you with a wiser or better father.”
“But why was I born in Bethlehem?” asked the young Jesus. “You haven’t told me that part of the story yet.”
“I was just getting there, son.” Joseph said, as they approached the outskirts of the village of Bethlehem.” “Your mother and I were beginning to get used to the idea of having a baby, even though some people still talked about us behind our backs. We made plans for our wedding, which we had set for shortly before you were to be born. But Caesar Augustus had other plans.
“He was getting ready to raise taxes and wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anyone in the remotest corner of the world of his vast Roman Empire, so he ordered that every person had to go to their hometown to be counted. That meant that I would have to come all the way here to Bethlehem from Nazareth, since I am of David’s line, and as you know, Bethlehem was the home of our ancestor, King David. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, with your mother getting ready to have you any day. I couldn’t leave her home alone, since she had to be counted with me, so like good citizens we set out for Bethlehem, following the same route we have just traveled.”
“It was the worst trip of my life,” said Mary. “Your father bought a donkey for me to ride, but there was no way I could get comfortable on those rough roads.
“We had hoped we could make the journey to Bethlehem, be counted, and get back home to Nazareth before you were born. But it wasn’t to be. You just couldn’t wait. Bouncing up and down on the back of that donkey probably didn’t help matters either.”
About that time the three of them stopped in front of a building that from its appearance and the people coming and going was clearly an inn for travelers.
“The trip here had been so hurried that we didn’t have time to make arrangements to stay with relatives,” said Mary. “So we stopped here at this inn in hopes that they would have a room. I had begun to feel the labor pains and knew that the time for your arrival had come.
“The innkeeper was kind to us, but he explained that his inn was full because of all the out-of –town visitors from the census. But he told us that if we were willing, we could sleep in the stable behind the inn with all his guest’s animals.”
The family had walked around behind the inn and were now standing outside the entrance of a cave that served as a stable.
“At first I wouldn’t even think of such a thing,” said Joseph. “How could my wife give birth and my son be born in a stable full of animals? But your mother soon convinced me that there was no time to search for other lodging. The pains were coming more often now. If the straw was clean and a warm fire could be built, a stable might be the best we could hope for.”
“This is where you were born, Jesus. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could in this small cave, and before long, you entered the world,” said Mary. “I was worn out from the journey and the donkey and labor, but as soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew it was all worth it. You were truly a blessing from the Lord. We wrapped you in swaddling cloths and laid you right here in this manger. This feed trough was your very first bed. I promise you, because you had entered our lives, this stable seemed like a palace.”
“And while you and your mother slept,” said Joseph, “I had a lot of time to think. I realized that even our coming to Bethlehem had been part of God’s plan. I thought of the promises of the Messiah that have sustained our people for hundreds of years. And of that one promise in particular spoken by the prophet Micah: ‘But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who is one of the little clans of Judah, from you, shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, who origin is from old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall be one of peace.’
“Even though we don’t understand it all completely yet, my son, we know that God has very special plans for you. We knew it from before you were born and we knew it when on the night you were born shepherds invaded our peaceful cave telling us that an angel had announced to them while they were watching their flocks that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem, and that they would find him wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in this very manger.”
Mary said, “Ever since that very special night in this humble stable, I have treasured the words the angels spoke to the shepherds and pondered them in my heart: ‘Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’”
“Now that you have come back here to Bethlehem, which is your home like Nazareth is your home, and you have seen the inn and the stable and the manger, you will understand even more what a special child you are and what grand and glorious plans your heavenly Father has for You. You are still so young, and you have a lot of growing up to do, but don’t ever forget that you have a mother and father who love you very much, and a heavenly Father who loves you even more.”
“We’d better get started back to Jerusalem,” said Joseph. “We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow, and I am anxious to get back home.”
DID JESUS EVER GO HOME TO BETHLEHEM?
Luke 2:1-7
Dec. 25, 2011
Christmas Day
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Joseph, Mary, and the young Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem for their annual Passover pilgrimage to the holy city. Every time they came to Jerusalem, Joseph and Mary remembered a previous journey, just a few short years before, when a census, and not a holy day, had caused them to travel from their home in Nazareth to Jerusalem and the extraordinary events that had surrounded that trip.
Jesus had begun to express some curiosity about the circumstances surrounding his birth, so Mary proposed a side trip to Joseph. “Do you suppose we could spend an extra day here and go to Bethlehem?” she asked. “We haven’t been back since we had to leave in such a hurry for Egypt when King Herod was hunting for all the baby boys. It’s just a few miles to Bethlehem and our son might enjoy seeing where he was born. I think I would like to see it again myself.”
“I suppose it would be all right,” said Joseph. “Jesus is getting old enough to begin to understand what a special birth it was. And everyone should have the chance to see where they were born.”
As they left the gates of Jerusalem the next morning and began to walk the few short miles to Bethlehem, known as the city of David, Joseph started telling Jesus the story.
“Your mother and I were living in Nazareth. We had not been engaged for very long. I had paid the bride’s price to your grandfather and we had begun to plan the wedding feast that would make us husband and wife. I was happier than I had ever been and looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her, when something happened that almost ended us before we had even begun.
“One of my brothers came to my carpenter’s shop one day and told me some very disturbing news; he had heard from a reliable source that your mother, my beloved Mary, was expecting a baby! I couldn’t believe my ears. There was no way it could be true, since we had not yet come together as husband and wife.
“While the Word of God was clear that an unfaithful fiancée was to be punished severely, I couldn’t think of such a thing. My only thought was for your mother’s reputation. So I decided to divorce her quietly and not bring shame on either of our families.
“But that very night I had a dream that changed my plans completely. An angel appeared to me and told me that the Holy Spirit was the Father of the baby Mary was expecting, which, of course, was you, and that I should go through the marriage.
As we have tried to teach you, son, we should always follow God’s wishes. So I resolved to marry your mother, though I felt unworthy to be the earthly father of such a special child.
The angel also told me that we were to name you Jesus, which as you know, means “Yahweh is salvation,” because you would save your people from their sins. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what all of that meant, but somehow it was all in fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah had foretold: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God with us.’ ”
Mary continued the story. “I didn’t know what your father would think when he found out I was expecting you, since it had all happened so quickly. One moment I was planning a nice quiet life with my new husband and looking forward to raising a family, when out of the blue an angel appeared to me and told me that I had found favor with God and that I had been chosen to give birth to a child who would be called Jesus and the Son of the Most High God.
“I asked the angel how that was possible, since your father and I weren’t married yet, and he told me that Joseph wasn’t going to be the father -- the Holy Spirit was. I almost fainted from shock. The angel reminded me that with God nothing was impossible. I thought, if that’s what God has planned for me how can I say no. So I told the angel I was God’s willing servant.
“I wouldn’t have blamed your father if he’d thought I was crazy or lying when I told him that story. But he said an angel had told him the same thing in a dream and that we would go ahead with the wedding. I knew then that God couldn’t have blessed me with a kinder or more understanding husband, or you with a wiser or better father.”
“But why was I born in Bethlehem?” asked the young Jesus. “You haven’t told me that part of the story yet.”
“I was just getting there, son.” Joseph said, as they approached the outskirts of the village of Bethlehem.” “Your mother and I were beginning to get used to the idea of having a baby, even though some people still talked about us behind our backs. We made plans for our wedding, which we had set for shortly before you were to be born. But Caesar Augustus had other plans.
“He was getting ready to raise taxes and wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anyone in the remotest corner of the world of his vast Roman Empire, so he ordered that every person had to go to their hometown to be counted. That meant that I would have to come all the way here to Bethlehem from Nazareth, since I am of David’s line, and as you know, Bethlehem was the home of our ancestor, King David. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, with your mother getting ready to have you any day. I couldn’t leave her home alone, since she had to be counted with me, so like good citizens we set out for Bethlehem, following the same route we have just traveled.”
“It was the worst trip of my life,” said Mary. “Your father bought a donkey for me to ride, but there was no way I could get comfortable on those rough roads.
“We had hoped we could make the journey to Bethlehem, be counted, and get back home to Nazareth before you were born. But it wasn’t to be. You just couldn’t wait. Bouncing up and down on the back of that donkey probably didn’t help matters either.”
About that time the three of them stopped in front of a building that from its appearance and the people coming and going was clearly an inn for travelers.
“The trip here had been so hurried that we didn’t have time to make arrangements to stay with relatives,” said Mary. “So we stopped here at this inn in hopes that they would have a room. I had begun to feel the labor pains and knew that the time for your arrival had come.
“The innkeeper was kind to us, but he explained that his inn was full because of all the out-of –town visitors from the census. But he told us that if we were willing, we could sleep in the stable behind the inn with all his guest’s animals.”
The family had walked around behind the inn and were now standing outside the entrance of a cave that served as a stable.
“At first I wouldn’t even think of such a thing,” said Joseph. “How could my wife give birth and my son be born in a stable full of animals? But your mother soon convinced me that there was no time to search for other lodging. The pains were coming more often now. If the straw was clean and a warm fire could be built, a stable might be the best we could hope for.”
“This is where you were born, Jesus. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could in this small cave, and before long, you entered the world,” said Mary. “I was worn out from the journey and the donkey and labor, but as soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew it was all worth it. You were truly a blessing from the Lord. We wrapped you in swaddling cloths and laid you right here in this manger. This feed trough was your very first bed. I promise you, because you had entered our lives, this stable seemed like a palace.”
“And while you and your mother slept,” said Joseph, “I had a lot of time to think. I realized that even our coming to Bethlehem had been part of God’s plan. I thought of the promises of the Messiah that have sustained our people for hundreds of years. And of that one promise in particular spoken by the prophet Micah: ‘But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who is one of the little clans of Judah, from you, shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, who origin is from old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall be one of peace.’
“Even though we don’t understand it all completely yet, my son, we know that God has very special plans for you. We knew it from before you were born and we knew it when on the night you were born shepherds invaded our peaceful cave telling us that an angel had announced to them while they were watching their flocks that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem, and that they would find him wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in this very manger.”
Mary said, “Ever since that very special night in this humble stable, I have treasured the words the angels spoke to the shepherds and pondered them in my heart: ‘Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’”
“Now that you have come back here to Bethlehem, which is your home like Nazareth is your home, and you have seen the inn and the stable and the manger, you will understand even more what a special child you are and what grand and glorious plans your heavenly Father has for You. You are still so young, and you have a lot of growing up to do, but don’t ever forget that you have a mother and father who love you very much, and a heavenly Father who loves you even more.”
“We’d better get started back to Jerusalem,” said Joseph. “We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow, and I am anxious to get back home.”
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