“On Christmas Day"

Among the many Christmas carols that are sung through the holiday season, there are a few that just do not make sense to me. First, there is the French tune, Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella. This carol was introduced to me, when we sang it in college, in French, and I wondered what in the world it was about. I’ve read through the Christmas story many a time and have yet to come across anyone named Jeanette or Isabella that is involved in the birth of Christ. Furthermore, I’m having a hard time understanding what good a torch is. Normally when I think of torches I think of angry villagers chasing someone out of town. But this song is one of many that are taken from local legends in different cultures that try to expand on the Christmas story, to make it more human, more relevant. The Little Drummer Boy is another one of these. Jeanette and Isabella are the legendary daughters of the innkeeper who gives Mary and Joseph the stable to stay in. The legend tells of them running back and forth between the inn and the stable and making sure that Mary and then the baby Jesus get everything they need.

We Three Kings is another carol that causes difficulty when compared to the Biblical story. This is so much so that when the Covenant Church put together their last hymnal, they consciously left it out. I like to point out that all the problems in the song are there in the title. There weren’t necessarily three of them, and they weren’t kings. Once you get past this, though, the song is quite wonderful. Perhaps we should sing it “We Magi of Orient are”.

But the one song that takes the cake for me is the simple Christmas tune, I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In. This one makes absolutely no sense to me at all. In the song we hear about three ships that come sailing into Bethlehem on Christmas Day, in the morning, with the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus on board. It all sounds great, but the problem is that Bethlehem is not exactly the kind of town that had a place where ships could come since it is on the side of a hill, quite a ways away from any bodies of water. But it’s still a great song.

The fact is that we have a number of Christmas traditions that really have nothing to do with the center of what Christmas is really all about. We have things that we have grown up with. We have things that we are used to. We have an understanding of Christmas that sometimes keeps us from experiencing Christmas to its fullest. Between our trees and our presents and our listening for Santa to land on our roofs, we sometimes let the hype keep us from the Christ.

Christmas is, quite simply, about a Savior being born. It is about God keeping a promise to his people in an unusual and unexpected way. God could have sent the Savior with all the bells and whistles, but instead he chose to use the subtle approach. With Christmas we remember that God sent his promised Son, but not as a king as was expected, but as the son to a refugee couple who didn’t even have a place to stay. The Word became flesh. God became man. The divine was wrapped up in swaddling clothes. And when this world-changing event happened, it was so great that angels appeared in the hills to sing about it and praise God. But kings were not gathered and told about it. Ships were not sent to guard Jesus. And no palace was prepared for the newborn king. Instead the angels shared this great news with a group of sheep herders out in the fields, men who were known for their tall tales and their lack of trustworthiness. And then God showed the truth to a group of astrologers and magi from the east, when they opened scripture to see where the Messiah was to be born. And after they came to worship this king which they found in such an unusual setting, God warned them in a dream to keep what they had seen a secret. Again, not the normal way a king is born. Jesus was born in secrecy and early in his life, his family had to flee to Egypt to protect his life.

The Christmas story, as so much of Jesus’ life is, is a story of contradictions. And yet, it is worth celebrating with our traditions and customs. It is worth gathering together with family and friends. It is worth exchanging gifts with our friends and loved ones and singing Christmas carols that don’t totally make sense. For the gifts remind us of the center of Jesus’ ministry and teaching. Jesus was very focused on your care for those around you. Jesus wanted us to show that we love God by loving our neighbors. Jesus told us that what we do for the least of these we do for him. This makes sense because as we see in the Christmas story, Jesus spent time being the least of these, there wasn’t even a real bed for him to spend his first night in, instead he had to sleep in a feeding trough in a barn. But this is also the center of what we are doing when we exchange gifts. We are sharing our love for each other, we are living outside ourselves and remembering how we love those who are close to us.

And the Christmas songs, though they don’t always get everything right, do teach us about the truths of Christmas in a powerful way. When we sing We Three Kings we think of the journey these magi go on, traveling long distances to worship the newborn Messiah. And we realize that we are called to journey to Christ as well. It is in the Christmas songs that we focus on Jesus as Emmanuel. This is such an important name for Jesus, for it means God with us. Christmas is the celebration of God becoming one of us. Christmas is the celebration of God being with his creation, with his people, in a way that he never was before. And when we think of that name, Emmanuel, we realize that it doesn’t only refer to something that happened when Jesus was born. It is referring to God’s interaction with us today. For God is still with us in a very real way. Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birth. But Jesus has been born in each of us. When we realize God’s love for us and when we confess our sins and ask him into our lives, he is born in our hearts, and we are reborn. And this is also worth celebrating at Christmas: Jesus born in our hearts; Jesus alive in our lives.

And then there’s that weird song that has Jesus and his mother arriving in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. It has Jesus arriving on three ships, and we wonder what in the world it has to teach us about Christmas, and we wonder how in the world it actually connects to the Christmas story. There are no ships in the Christmas story and it seems that Mary and Joseph (who isn’t even in the song) arrived in Bethlehem before Jesus was born, and Jesus was born while they were staying in Bethlehem. And you wonder whether we should just shove this song out of the collection totally and pretend it doesn’t exist because it has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.

But the song written in a port town of England a few hundred years ago actually does have something to say to us. It reminds us that when we celebrate Jesus’ birth, we are not just celebrating what happened in Bethlehem. Christmas is about Christ coming to this world. Christmas is about God being with us. We didn’t need to be one of the shepherds watching their sheep to know Christ with us. We didn’t need to be the Magi traveling from far lands to present gifts to our Messiah. We didn’t need to be the animals in the stable to experience Christ in our lives. Jesus is there for us today. He is on three ships for those who live on the sea. He is in the barn for those who live on a farm. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. He is with us if we only ask him to be.

This Christmas, as you spend time with your family and celebrate Jesus’ birth; remember that Christmas is about God being with us wherever we are and in whatever we face. Jesus was born in a stable about 2010 years ago. He was born in your heart when you asked him in. And he lives with us and cares for us no matter what. And this Christmas Day let us remember the joy that comes with knowing that God is with us, and God will continue to be with us. Amen.

Luke 1:39-56 "From Despair came Hope"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 21st, 2003.

When I turn on the radio station during the Christmas season and hear Christmas songs, I am struck by the bittersweet sound of them. This is a time of rejoicing and celebration. This is a time to sing upbeat songs like Joy to the World… yet many of the songs both in the religious carols and the fun Christmas songs are sung in minor keys and have this melancholy feel to them. “I’ll be home for Christmas” has this sad overtone in it that states that I probably won’t be home for Christmas, but I will at least be there in spirit, so celebrate even though I am not going to be with you. My mother’s favorite Christmas song is called “Stop the Cavalry” a song about WWII and asking Winston Churchill to stop the battles so that the singer can go home to his wife who has been waiting for him three years long in the nuclear fallout zone. It is an odd song.

We have the same in our Christian music collection. Two of my favorite Christmas carols are “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Lo, How a Rose Er Bloometh”. Both in minor keys and with this sad undertone to them. Now there are good upbeat songs for Christmas, and we can celebrate with those also, but I think there is a reason for the bleakness of many Christmas songs. Christmas is a time of hope. It is a time where we hope for things to be better than they are. Hope acknowledges the state that things are in and does not ignore the problems of the world. But hope trusts that God will do something to change the world and make it into a better place. Hope has a bittersweet taste to it because it recognizes the troubles that surround it. So as we hope on Christmas, we sing songs that acknowledge the bitter as well as the sweet. A good Christmas song will not be all sweet, but the good ones are not all bitter either. They acknowledge the trouble, in the case of “I’ll be home for Christmas” they acknowledge the fact that the singer probably won’t be able to make it home to their loved ones for the holiday. But they also leave the hearer with hope, telling the hearer that if the person is unable to make it home (which they are going to try to do to the best of their ability), they will at least be there in their dreams… in spirit. Hope in the midst of despair.

I. Despair

We have spent these last four weeks, this advent season, remembering what it is that Christ brought to this world with his incarnation. He brought so much that I chose just a couple areas to talk about… We have talked about music coming out of silence, we have talked about Jesus’ light shining forth in a world that loves darkness. We have talked about God’s promises and how he always stays true to them even when we live in uncertainty. These are only the beginning and do not really do justice to that which the incarnation brought to the world… but they are a start. God was made man. The divine became mortal. God entered his creation as a part of it. The night that Jesus was born was a holy night, a night specially filled with God’s glory. Now you all know that Jesus was not born on December 25^th. We don’t know when he was born, but we chose as a church hundreds of years ago to set aside a day in December to celebrate his birth. The end of December is a time of hope. Days are now getting longer and spring is approaching once again. It is not here, but it is in the near future. And so, each year we come together to celebrate the miraculous wonder of Jesus’ birth and to open presents and sit around a Christmas tree and do a number of things that make the holiday special for each of us.

But we remember that Jesus coming into the world was just the beginning, and the culmination of what we are celebrating this Christmas season comes in our celebration of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus’ return from the dead, Jesus’ resurrection. I have been encouraging you these last weeks to not only think of Jesus entering this world, but also the miraculous changes when Jesus enters your heart, how he changes and makes you complete. So today we are going to spend time talking about how God takes a place filled with despair and fills it with hope. And to do this we are going to look a little bit at Jesus’ mother, Mary.

One thing that I love about the Christmas story is the same thing I love about the whole story of Jesus. God worked in the life of Jesus in unusual ways. God continued, throughout Jesus’ life to turn people’s expectations on their head. More, he continued to use seeming defeats to bring victory. This is true in the Christmas Story almost as much as in the crucifixion. God caused an unwed girl to become pregnant. He also timed this so that the unwed girl would be traveling with her new husband (who almost divorced her for being unfaithful to him) when she was supposed to deliver this child conceived if not born out of wedlock.

Jesus was born into scandal in a part of the country his parents were not familiar with. Women were stoned for what happened to Mary. Joseph could have called her out and made a spectacle of her and she could have been killed… Joseph wasn’t the kind of man to do this, so instead he thought of divorcing her in secret so that she could have a better chance, but God explained to Joseph what was going on and he stayed with her. But people in the time knew how to count and figured out that Jesus was probably not Joseph’s son. So, among those who know Joseph and Mary, Jesus was born in disgrace, and more than Jesus being disgraced by this, Mary would have been talked about with ridicule and shame. Yet here, in today’s scripture we read Mary’s praise psalm: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior… From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.”

This praise psalm doesn’t come from what God has already done. For God has caused Jesus to be born into scandal. Mary sings this song of praise because she knows what God is going to do through Jesus. Because she knows that Jesus is going to be the Messiah that was promised. Because she knows that she will bear the light of the world to the world. Mary believed all these things, she trusted all these things because she had hope.

II. Hope

I Corinthians 13 tells us that there are three things that we must have as followers of God. These three are faith, hope and love. We spend a lot of time on faith… for we know that it is by grace we are saved, through faith. We know that faith is the thing that brings us into relationship with God and we know that this faith is not of ourselves, it is a gift of God. We spend a lot of time on love… for Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind… and the second greatest which is like it is to love your neighbor as yourself. But then we come to hope. Throughout the Bible, when hope is talked of, we are told that people place their hope in God… they trust God to do something for them that they are unable to do for themselves. Faith is belief in, love is longing for, and hope… hope is trusting.

Hope acknowledges your own inadequacies, hope acknowledges your own weaknesses, but hope trusts God to be greater than those inadequacies or weaknesses. Hope sees the world for what it is, a messed up place where sin runs rampant and we are easily distracted away from our faith. A place where we think that love is about what makes us feel good instead of something that gives to others without thought of what it will receive in return. But hope sees past this world, it sees past the present. It sees the possibilities and it trusts the promises.

This world could easily fall into despair. It would be quite simple. We see the continuation of war… after each victory, there seems to be more bloodshed. We see this country continue down a path that seems to be pushing us farther and farther from God. We see in Europe a post-Christian society where people by and large don’t think about spiritual things at all and we see our country heading that same direction. We deal with bills and medical problems and the stress that our jobs place upon us. We see the divorce rate go up and materialism grow in our society. This is all happening. This isn’t me trying to make you all feel bad about the situation… this is the way things are at this time. And there are two responses we can have to it. The first is to despair and figure that God has lost, the world is going to be turned over to secularism and we have, as a church, become obsolete. This despair is a viable option and some have decided that it is all that is left to us. These people have given up on God and given up on the church… often they have given up on themselves. In some ways I don’t blame them. If you are one of these people I don’t blame you. If you are relying on what we as individuals can do, if you are relying on human abilities, this is the only option truly open to you. But I want to tell you about the second option.

The second is to have hope, trusting that God will work wonders in us and through us. Hope does not deny the problems we deal with, it just trusts that God is greater than these problems. God is greater than any of these problems.

And therefore we have Mary singing in a place of despair about God’s greatness. Hope is what allows song and praise when things aren’t going the way we want. The apostles, after Jesus had ascended into heaven, found themselves in prison at times and dealt with horrible things, yet they sang from their prison cells… because of hope. Hope is what allows someone to enter into the darkness with a small light, trusting that the light will be enough. Hope is what we hold on to as we wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

III. Response

But hope does not and cannot come from ourselves. We don’t create hope and we don’t hope in ourselves. Hope is a gift from God, it is something that comes to us, like faith and love, because of his grace. Hope is not something that we can build up ourselves by keeping our thoughts uplifted. Hope is not having a rosy attitude in the face of any problem. Instead it is something that we can ask God to give us, so that we not fall into despair.

Hope calls for response, it calls for us to do something. It is something that we have received from God, and we find that we must always act upon the things we receive from God. God never just gives us something to play with and keep for ourselves. No, God wants us to use the gifts he gives us, and use them to be a light in this world. Also, God’s gifts, be them hope, love or faith, grow the stronger as they are used. Just like muscles in our body… if you exercise them, they will grow, but if you don’t they become weak. So we are called to exercise our hope… do some hope pushups.

And there is an important way to exercise our hope. John Weborg talks about this in the most recent issue of the Covenant Companion in his column. He states that prayer is the most hopeful act a Christian does. Prayer… our way to exercise our hope. Prayer is coming before the throne of God in hope that he will listen and act upon our needs. Prayer is trusting God to stay true to his promises. Prayer involves praising God… remembering how it is that God has been good to you and thanking him for this. Prayer involves calling to God to ask him to forgive us for our sins, this is a hope directly in the power of Jesus and a hope in the salvation that we are promised. Prayer involves petition, praying for God to touch the world around us with his power. This is all about hope that God hears us and that God knows what is best for us and that God will act for us when we ask him. Prayer is an act of faith and it is also an act of love, but it is all about hope.

These last four weeks we have been celebrating Advent: a time of preparation for Christ’s coming. On Thursday we will be celebrating Christmas… the actual celebration of Christ’s birth on this world. But these last four weeks have been a time to remember the importance of prayer, the importance of hope. We are not there yet. The world around us is in ruin… and nothing we can do will fix it. But God has promised to do miraculous things in this world and God can do these things. So let us be in prayer for the world around us. Let us be in prayer for those around us who need help. Let us be in prayer for ourselves, that God heals us of the things that we are struggling with. Let this prayer come from hope, hope that is from God and hope that is in God.

And living in that hope, we can join with Mary in her song, a song praising God and paying attention to the great things that God has done, as well as talking about the great things that God will do. This Christmas, I pray that we all are filled with God’s hope. I pray that we are able to see the great things that God has done, and through grace we are filled with a hope that allows us to call out to God in prayer for the world that needs him so much.

Isaiah 40:1-8; Mark 1:1-8 "From Uncertainty came Promise"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 14th, 2003.

“I promise.” Two little words with so much power. Quite often we think that they are synonymous with “I swear”, but they are not. When you swear to something (which we are not really supposed to do because we are always to tell the truth) you are swearing to the truthfulness of what it is you are about to say. A promise is much more than that. You don’t promise about a truth that you need to convince someone of. Rather, when you promise, you are agreeing to do something; you are making a commitment; you are setting your feet upon a certain path. Promises come in all shapes and sizes. There are promises that we make and receive without thinking, casual promises that we don’t give much thought to. These are the things that we agree to do (and often in our minds we’re just agreeing to the possibility of doing them). I made a promise to our cat a couple nights ago. We had been out all day so she had been locked up all day and when we got home I told her we wouldn’t lock her up any more that night. Thankfully, cats can’t hold us at our word, cause she started acting up later on and we had to put her in her room or possibly see the Christmas tree come tumbling down.

There are other promises that we make that are more far-reaching… like the ones made on our wedding days, or the ones we make when we enter into a contract with someone.

The problem with promises nowadays is that we don’t pay much attention to ones that are kept. Instead we focus on broken promises. We have grown used to broken promises, we let ourselves expect people to break their promises, and we feel that there is a place where we can get away with breaking our promises… especially if we are making them to our cats.

Yet we serve a God who keeps promises. He has made numerous promises to people throughout history. He has made promises to you and me. And he has yet to break a promise. So, this morning, let’s forget about all those promises we have made that we haven’t followed through on; let’s forget about those promises that have been made to us which we hold against people. Instead let’s focus on real promises, the promises of God, the promises that have been fulfilled throughout history and will be fulfilled in God’s wonderful time.

I. Uncertainty

Music out of silence, Light out of darkness, and now promises made and kept to a people whose lives were full of uncertainty. This advent season we are looking at the change that Christ brought into this world. We are looking at the fact that the world changed when God sent his Son to be a part of it. There is a joke about how children look at their parents and grandparents and look at the television shows that their parents and grandparents watched and they wonder if there was color when their parents and grandparents were growing up. The movies and television shows were in black and white… perhaps the world they grew up in was black and white.

I don’t wonder this about my parents or my grandparents… but I do wonder about those who lived before Christ. Now, honestly, I know there was color before Christ, but I wonder if it was less bright, I wonder if the world was less alive. When God becomes human and dwells on the world he created, there’s got to be something in the world that changes.

But Christ coming to the world on Christmas morning, though it did change the world is not the only thing that changed. We each are changed when Christ enters our lives and becomes a part of our life. We don’t come to church on Sunday because it’s our responsibility, we don’t come here because it’s what we are supposed to do. We come to church to celebrate with each other the change that Christ has made in each of our hearts… and we come to church to open our hearts to God so that he can change them more. If you don’t know this, if you have yet to ask Christ to change your heart, then you’re missing out, you are lacking something that is vital, and I would love to share that vital thing, the presence of Christ with you.

Today we are going to talk about how Jesus brings promise to our lives where there was uncertainty. And as I have these last two weeks, I am going to begin, briefly, by talking about the lack of promise, uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a horrible place to live in. It is a place where we all actually do live at different points throughout our lives. We are uncertain about so much in our lives. We are uncertain about our jobs, whether we will have good crops this year, how our children will turn out. We are uncertain about our health, about our futures, and often we find ourselves uncertain about our relationship with God.

We are not the first to feel this way… people throughout history wondered about all of these things. The world Jesus was born into had these same uncertainties and others. They worried about the hostile nation, Rome, that was ruling them. They worried about whether God was going to answer his promise, whether God was going to send a Messiah which he promised. They also worried about themselves. They worried about the laws that they were supposed to follow, whether they could save themselves or not; whether they could be good enough to earn salvation on their own; whether God loved and cared for them.

One can be overwhelmed by uncertainties, by questions, by worries. The uncertainties, if we allow them, can make our lives quite bleak and lead us to despair, which we will be talking about next week. But there is hope, which we will also be talking about next week. And the hope comes from promise. Not human promises, ones made by fallible people who are not always ready to hold to the things they promise, but heavenly promises that will not easily be broken.

II. Promise

In the passage that was read this morning from Isaiah, we are introduced to a people who were in need of promise. We are introduced to a nation who is in exile, who is paying for sins committed and cannot find comfort in anything… And God makes a promise to them through Isaiah… God promises relief, physical relief. God’s promises are not pie in the sky promises, purely spiritual. They are promises that affect our daily lives. So God promised to the exiled people of Israel that they would be free from the exile, their hard service would come to an end. Past what we read this morning we are shown a God who will come in power to rule and he will reward those who are his people.

The people in Isaiah are a people living in a time of uncertainty, they are a people living in toil and trouble, in pain. And God promises redemption. God promises to come to them himself and to change their world. This is obviously a prophecy and a promise that God is interested in fulfilling. And we see the fulfillment of the promise, or at least the initial fulfillment of it, in the gospel.

Mark begins his gospel not with Jesus’ birth nor with Jesus’ childhood. Instead he begins it with the one who came before Jesus, John the Baptist. And the gospel begins with the promise that was made in Isaiah, showing that it is being answered in the events chronicled in the gospel. Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah’s promise was that a messenger would come preparing the way. Preparing the way for what? For the glory of the Lord to be revealed. The promise in Isaiah is actually greater than that, though. It includes a promise of comfort for God’s people, a promise of God’s glory shining forth for all to see, a promise that the suffering that God’s people were in the midst of would come to an end. What wonderful promises… they seem to tie in quite well with what Jesus brought to this world. The glory is there (as it seems to continue to show itself when we talk about Jesus). So is the comfort and peace.

It’s important to look at the people as they lived in expectation of the promise. There were promises made, and the people believed these promises with certainty. Uncertainty is an ugly place to live, it also is something that we don’t need to live in in every part of our lives. We are used to broken promises. We are used to people making promises that they have no intention of keeping. Or we are used to people intending to keep promises, but then failing to do so. But God’s promises are not like that. God’s promises are always kept.

My parents spent much of their early adult life as non-Christians. My grandmother spent the whole time praying for them. When God touched their lives with his glory, and they came to know him, my father called my grandmother to share the good news with her. He was a bit worried because he thought she might get so excited she might hurt herself. So he had her sit down and told her that her daughter, my mother, had accepted Christ and was again a part of God’s flock. My grandmother did not leap for joy, she didn’t shout out in excitement. Instead, she sat there calmly and said, “I knew it would happen. I’ve been praying for it daily and God is faithful in his promises.” That is a faith and a trust in God that is powerful to me… mostly because it came from my grandma, but there is definitely a strength in it. My grandmother had known that God kept his promises, she had seen this throughout history and throughout her own life, and she trusted God to continue to do that very thing.

Each of the gospels in the New Testament are about God keeping his promise. And they each begin differently in their desire to show that God does keep his promises. Luke tells of the birth and childhood of Jesus, showing how it is true to scripture. Matthew begins with a genealogy, sharing with the readers that Jesus is the promised descendant of David come to be king. And then wise men come to worship this king. John ties Jesus’ coming to the creation of the world… which is important because one of the first promises God made was at the fall when he promised that the seed of Eve would conquer Satan… something that is fulfilled in Christ.

But Mark doesn’t want to begin right away with Jesus. Instead he uses the one crying in the wilderness to prepare us for Jesus. I love the image we have of John the Baptist… clothing made of camel’s hair, a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey… a wild man prophet. This wild man prophet is out in the wilderness preaching that people need to repent from their sinful ways and turn back to God… and as this wild man prophet is the beginning to an answer to God’s promise, he is making his own promises for God. For he shares that one will come after him who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist is already trying to help people to better understand the promise that God has made. He is sharing that the answer to the promise will come, but not as people expect. They expect a king to rule over Israel, and Jesus will be doing so much more than that.

III. Fulfillment

Jesus was the answer to God’s promise. His coming to this world answered a promise made at the beginning of time, and again and again. Jesus, in everything he did throughout his life and death and resurrection, was keeping promises that God had made. That is why throughout the gospels we hear it said that, “This was done so that the scripture may be fulfilled.” This began with Jesus’ birth which we celebrate in a week and a half, and continued through his death and resurrection. But these moments were not the only place Jesus was fulfilling prophecy. He also did so throughout his life in the teachings he taught, in the healings he performed, in his very presence in the world. What is important to pay attention to, though, is that Jesus wasn’t the answer that the people expected. The people expected an earthly savior to come and rescue them from Rome. Jesus fulfilled the promise of God, whether the people were expecting him to or not. Jesus kept the promises that God had made.

But Jesus not only kept the promises of God, he made new promises to his followers. And how do we know that these promises will be kept? Because we saw God and Jesus keep promises before. So like my grandmother before me, I trust the promises that God has made to us all and to me. I trust the promise he made which says that he has a plan for me, personally. This is a promise he made to each one of us, and it is a powerful promise, a promise of empowerment, a promise of meaning and vision for our lives. I trust the promise that he made to care for us, like he does for the birds and the flowers. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask for God to give us our daily bread… we ask God to give us the things that are necessary for us to not just survive, but thrive. I pray this prayer knowing that God will answer it. I trust the promise that Jesus made as he ascended into heaven… He promised to be with his people, to be with you and me until the end of the age. He promised to be an active part of the world, he promised to work in our lives and in the lives of those around us. I trust that this is a promise that Jesus keeps. I trust in the promise that Jesus made that stated that when two or more are gathered in his name, he is present. I believe that Jesus is present here now because of that promise. There are promises that God made throughout scripture. He will fulfill them.

This holiday season, in the midst of uncertainty, I encourage you to trust the promises that God has made to you. Believe that God has the power and the desire to bring them to fulfillment. God’s timing is odd, and he doesn’t always fulfill promises they way that we expect… but the God who was born in glory, and at who’s birth the angels sang, this God will be true to his promises. Amen.

John 1:1-4; 3:19-21 "From Darkness came Light"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from December 7th, 2003.

There is something about darkness which is difficult to deal with. When you cannot see what is around you, your eyes play tricks on you. I remember as a child worrying about the shadow of a tree limb outside my bedroom window. I knew what it was, for it was not menacing in any way in the daytime. But at night with the shadows and darkness, it was just eerie. The way the shadow played against my curtains caused it to look like a nose. And I wondered what kind of creature outside would have such a nose. Darkness is the time that we dream up the monsters that we are most scared of. I remember nights where I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but was scared of what might be under my bed, so I would jump as far away from the bed as possible to make sure that I would be safe. I never had this problem in the morning, when it was bright enough to see. Darkness is the time that we allow our doubts and worries to overwhelm us.

I personally was scared of the dark for a long time… until I realized that darkness is as light to God and just because my eyes could not see that which was around me clearly, that didn’t mean that it was different. It’s like the Veggie Tales song which tells us that “God is bigger than the boogie man”. We have the light of Christ in us and with us. We have his radiance shining ‘round about us. Though at times it might seem dark to us, it is not dark to God and he will shine our way.

I. Darkness

Here we are in the second week of Advent. We are looking at the way that Christ has affected this world and changed it. We are remembering that things grow and change when Christ enters into them. This is true of the world. The world changed in a miraculous way when Jesus entered it 2000 years ago. Angels sang, a star shone down where it hadn’t been before, promises were answered and a people without hope found it again. But this is also true of us as individuals. When we ask Jesus into our hearts, our lives change. They become something wonderful. We discover that there are things that we had been missing, but now we are complete. Last week we looked at music and how important it is to our relationship with God and how it came out of silence when Jesus was born. This week we are looking at light and as with music and silence, we will not truly be able to understand light, God’s light, until we understand darkness.

In Genesis we are told that the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God then started the creation with a command, saying, “Let there be light.” And creation listened to God, as it always does; and there was light, and it was good.

So at the beginning of the Bible, at the beginning of time, there was darkness and God brought light… What is important to note is that the darkness, again, did not mean God was not present. We are told very specifically that God was there in the midst of the darkness, for the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, but it was darkness.

By the third day of creation God decided that there needed to be light in the darkness of night as well so we ended up with the stars and the moon. This is important because it meant that we as well as all of creation would be protected from absolute darkness, though on some cloudy nights, we get pretty close.

Now we tend to look at darkness as representing evil and light as representing good, especially when we read about it in the New Testament. I understand this way of reading it, but I’m not sure it is the most accurate way to look at it. In John 3 we see this relation between darkness and evil very clearly spelled out. If you read verses 19 and 20 you hear a direct correlation. “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” It seems that this passage is correlating darkness and evil… but it is not. John 1:5 tells us that “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” I grew up hearing that translated as “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.” Interesting that overcoming and understanding have the same meaning here.

Darkness isn’t a synonym for evil. Rather, darkness is a hope that we have to hide our evil from God. So when we sin we hope that the darkness, the lack of light will hide our sins from God. We hope to be like a military unit and use the darkness to hide our movements, to disguise what it is that we are doing. We think we can be stealthy with our sin, because of the darkness. And that is why those who love evil seek the darkness. But we are not able to hide our sins in the darkness, no matter what we believe. We were shown in Genesis 1 that even in the darkness of primordial earth, God was present.

Darkness isn’t about evil as much as it is about lack of light, lack of the ability to see clearly, lack of understanding. Darkness isn’t something… it has no form, it has no essence, it has not substance of its own… instead, darkness is a lack of something. When you take light away darkness comes in. When you add light, darkness retreats. You adjust darkness by adjusting light. You cannot make darkness brighter… but you can make light dimmer.

Living in darkness hoping to hide our sins, hoping to hide our imperfections, hoping to hide our faults from God and others and often even from ourselves, keeps us away from the light. We might think that we are protecting ourselves from God’s eyes, hiding our sins from God. This just isn’t the case, it’s a fool’s errand. So let’s not make the mistake of those who love evil. Let’s move out of the darkness and into the light… into the light of Jesus.

II. Light

So Jesus is born, and with Jesus light comes into the world. John 1 is very much tied to Genesis 1. Both begin talking about the beginning… and God in the beginning. They both begin by talking about the creation of the world… but John 1 spiritualizes the creation of the world in a way that Genesis 1 does not. We are told that Jesus, the Word, was with God in the beginning, during the creation, and we are told that Jesus was a part of the creation. “Through him all things were made… In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Jesus is the Word and in Jesus there is life and in that life which is in Jesus we see light. In John 9 Jesus tells us that he is the light of the world. He tells us this in the midst of healing a blind man. But he also talks about how it is that he is the light of the world when he is in the world… and he talks about night coming. I think this is interesting because it makes me wonder what happens to Jesus’ light when he leaves the world. When he ascends back to heaven and leaves the church in charge.

That is also very clear throughout Jesus teaching. Jesus tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that they are the light of the world. We, you and I, are the people who are to bring light to the world around us. We reflect Jesus’ light in our lives and bring light to those around us. Today’s bulletin cover quotes from Isaiah… “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” Our response when we see the light of Jesus, the light that is Jesus, is to shine ourselves… to reflect that light to the world around us. We are human moons, reflecting the sun’s rays in the night. The sun is bright and shines throughout the day. It gives off its own light. It’s a giant nuclear ball of fire that gives light and heat and even radiation. But the moon does not give off any light. It is just a big rock in the sky. Yet we see light when we see the moon. Where is that light coming from? It’s coming from the sun. The moon does not give off its own light it gives off the sun’s light. That is our responsibility. We are moons in the night. We are able to see the sun and reflect the sun in the darkness. The light banishes the darkness, it makes it fade.

Christ is the light of the world. He brings things out into the open. He makes things understandable. We, as Christians are called to step into that light, to enjoy the heat and the clarity. We, as Christians are called to bask in the light of Christ. What a wonderful thing to do… basking in the light of Christ. But a part of that basking means that we are also called to be reflectors of that light, shining it into the shadows where people are trying to hide from God, hide from us, hide from each other, and hide from themselves.

How do we reflect God’s light? By living the life that Jesus called us to. By being a positive influence in the world around us. By sharing our faith, our stories of how God has worked in our lives with others. By loving those around us with a godly love. By caring for those who need care.

III. Glory

Now when we think of light and we think of the Christmas story we often think of the Bethlehem star. The star which guided the unspecified number of wise men, not kings, to the place of Jesus’ birth… sometime in the first two years of Jesus’ life, not on the night he was born. It’s amazing what a song can do to get it wrong. But this is not the only instance of light in the Christmas story. The scripture in John tells us that light was born that night in Jesus… and it compares Jesus coming into the world to the coming of light from the darkness at creation. And light also plays a role in the story of the angels, which we read last week. A quick reminder… this is a story we hear year after year so I hope you know it very well. Shepherds watching their sheep; an angel appears… calms them down because they are so scared… tells them about a king born in Bethlehem wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger… is joined by a heavenly host praising God and singing… Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to those with who God is well pleased… the angels leave and the Shepherds go to Bethlehem to see this wonder…

When the angel appeared, though, we are told that the glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds… notice how when we talk about the Christmas story we fall into the fancy language, “shone round about,” and “the shepherds were sore afraid.” A better way to say this is that when the angel appeared there was a bright light and the shepherds were scared to death. Light, here in the story of the shepherds, is described as glory, and for good reason.

Glory is pure. Glory is radiant. The glory of God shines with an intensity that we cannot understand. Glory is not a physical light… though I believe that there was a physical light accompanying it with the angels. Glory is a spiritual light. It is a light that is holy, is pure, is clean… and it is a light that makes holy, makes pure, makes clean. But glory is not always a physical light. Jesus talks about the Glory of God when he raises Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus tells people to roll away the stone so that Lazarus might come out, people question him, even Martha, Lazarus’ sister. Jesus responds to her question with this phrase, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God.” The glory of God can be seen in actions… it can be seen in the miracles that Jesus did… it can be seen in the wonder of something that seemed impossible but wasn’t. God’s glory shines forth when Jesus’ kingdom grows.

Advent… Christmas… is a time of wonder, it is a time to acknowledge how much greater God is than us and celebrate that greatness of God. But though we celebrate the greatness of God, glory shows up in the small things… so does light. Glory showed up in a manger with a group of refugees crowded in a stable. The light of the world entered the world in such mean estate. So this advent season, look for God’s glory not only in the big things like Jesus’ second coming… look for God’s glory in the small things… and look to bring God’s glory to those around you. Be a moon, reflecting the light of Christ, the glory of God, throughout the darkness. Help those in need, care for the poor and the sick, love the sinner, share the gospel story with those who have not heard it, be a friend to the unsaved so that they might see Christ’s light reflected in you. Reflect Christ to those who live in darkness. Quite often, they will not understand the light… they will wonder what the light is about… but soon, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they will discover that life is much easier to live in the light. Let us all live in the light and invite those around us to live in the light this holiday season. Amen.

Luke 2:8-15 "From the Silence came Music"

This year, my advent series is incorporating the work of someone else, so I am not comfortable posting it as my own. Therefore I will be posting my sermons from Advent 2 years ago. This one is from November 30th, 2003.

Growing up I had a piano teacher who belonged to a musical society. I am not sure what the name of the group was that he belonged to, but they would make a point of listening for angel song on Christmas Eve. They believed that the angels rejoiced and celebrated each Christmas in honor of Christ… and so they would listen very closely at night on Christmas Eve. They would listen to the dogs bark. They would listen to the wind through the trees. I’m not sure they listened to the cars driving by, but they listened to the things going on around them in the world… in creation to see if they could hear angel song. What would this angel song sound like? It sounded perfect. They listened for harmony and perfect pitch in the sounds of nature…

It’s a strange thing to do, it’s kind of an odd way to spend Christmas Eve. But that’s what my piano teacher and his friends did… There’s a romantic notion to what they did. I wonder how many of them actually believed that angels were actually singing and how many of them were a part of the group because they just thought it would be neat if angels sang. How many of them believed and how many of them hoped?

The fact is that on the night of Jesus birth, where there was silence, music shot forth. Whether by angels or creation, you’ve got to believe that Jesus’ entering this world must be celebrated greatly. So, on Christmas Eve’s I listen, as my piano teacher did… to see if I hear music where I would not have expected to find it. I have not yet heard angels sing… but it is possible.

I. Silence

Here we are, during the first week of Advent. Christmas is upon us. We will be spending the next four weeks looking at how thankful we can be that Christ came into this world. We are going to look at what it is that the world was like without Christ and what the world can be like with Christ. This affects the whole world. Before Christ the world was a certain way… and when Christ entered it he changed it. But this also affects each of our lives. Before Christ we are a certain way… but when we ask Christ to enter our lives they are changed… and they are changed for the better.

So we’re going to be looking at music, light, hope and promise. Promise is important. So is hope. And Jesus is the light of the world. But music? Sure it’s nice, sure it’s pretty, but is it really that important? Is it really something worth spending a whole sermon talking about? Hopefully I’ll be able to show you that it is.

To understand music and how wonderful it is we need to begin without it… in silence. We need to be like the shepherds were, in their fields at night. Sitting around in silence… sure they were probably talking with each other… sure they might have even had the noises of the wilderness all around them. But they were just doing what they always did. They were just going about their business like they did every night. There was nothing special going on in their lives. They were trudging on in silence.

Silence can be boring, silence can be painful, silence can be deadly. Silence, bad silence, destroys us. It keeps us from moving forward. Silence in relationships kill them. When people don’t talk, they grow apart. This is true in relationships with friends, with families and with God.

But this doesn’t mean that all silence is bad. There is silence where we wait to hear from God. There is silence, sheer silence, where God speaks. This happens to Elijah in the Old Testament. There is silence where we wait on God and we don’t fill the world with our own noises. There is silence that is lack of noise for noise sake. People told me that one of the most difficult things about moving to Iowa would be the silence. I would not hear cars and ambulances driving by all night, and the silence would be overwhelming. In truth this has been a good thing for me. It is something that I have enjoyed much about Iowa, about Albert City. I don’t need the extra noises. I don’t need to talk just to hear a voice, though Lisa might disagree with that statement. I’m okay with silence in worship. For many it is uncomfortable, but for me it is enjoyable.

This good silence is all silence where one party quiets down to hear the other party speak. I think specifically of the earlier mentioned story of Elijah where he ran away to a mountain, being pursued by people who wanted to kill him. There, at the mountain he waited on the Lord. And a great thunderstorm came… and he was sure that he would hear God in the thunderstorm, but he didn’t. And a sheer silence came, and that was the place where God spoke. In the midst of the thunderstorm maybe God was speaking, but it was being drowned out by all the noise. We sometimes do this in our own lives… create our own thunderstorms so that we cannot hear God or others speak. Maybe this is the very reason that it was shepherds that the angels appeared to. Because they were not surrounded by noise like the rest of the world. For shepherds were not the most reliable people and tended not to be believed by those around them… so angels appearing to them is not the best way to make Jesus’ birth known. But, they were people who were used to silence, who were comfortable in it. They were people who knew how to listen.

II. One voice in the night

So, in the midst of the good silence, that which is waiting upon the Lord, listening for the Lord to speak, and the bad silence, that which destroys that which keeps people from communicating with each other… a voice comes out.

For the shepherds the voice began as many angel voices do… saying “Don’t be afraid.” I think sometimes that people who draw pictures of angels refuse to read their Bibles. When we look at nativity scenes we see angels that are beautiful and sweet. We see pictures of adorable cherubs floating around on wings that are too small for them. But every time an angel shows up to people in the Bible, when that angel is not disguised as a human, the angel’s first words are always “Don’t be afraid.” Now is this an angelic greeting? Is this the way that angels say “Hello” to each other? I don’t think so… instead, I think that angels are something fierce to behold. I think that we would probably be running in terror if we were to see them… if our legs would work to get us going.

So an angel appears to the shepherds and calms them down… The angel tells them that there is good news for them… Jesus, the savior is born. The angel, the messenger, delivers the message. That is the actual definition of angel. It is not “heavenly being” but rather “messenger of God” This is not to say that the angels were not heavenly beings… of course not… but they have a mission… they have a purpose… and whenever we encounter them, it is because they are fulfilling their purpose to be messengers of God.

And what joyous news this messenger brought. A Savior, from the house of David… born in David’s hometown.

But here is a somewhat unique place in the Bible. For the angels usually give their message and then go on their way. They do their duty and they move on. Perhaps they are very busy. Perhaps they are just work oriented. But here, on the night of the incarnation, at the point of the Messiah being born, the angel lingers, and the angel brings friends… and these friends sing and praise and glorify God… these friends bring music!

III. Many voices singing

You wouldn’t know it turning on the radio, but praising of God is what music is for. Am I saying that it’s wrong to listen to a love song… am I saying that it’s wrong to listen to music that isn’t about God? No. Secular music, in its many forms is not necessarily evil. Some of my favorite music is Irish and Scottish folk music; jigs and reels and ballads. This music is fun. It is exciting. It is secular… But music has a way of entering our hearts… entering our souls. This is one of the reasons that it is such a powerful way of communicating with God. So, be careful about the music you are listening to. Does it work to put things in your heart that shouldn’t be there? If so, you need to be careful.

In the Bible we come in contact with music in a number of different areas. We are treated in Ezekiel to a glimpse of heaven with angels worshiping God and singing God’s praises. In the Psalms we are introduced to a number of songs. Some are joyous, some are laments… but they were songs that were directed to God. We are introduced in the Bible to the Song of Solomon… a song that is secular, showing what love can be… describing our love for each other as well as showing a type of what our love for God is about. In the New Testament we are told of people praising God to such a point when Jesus comes to Jerusalem that Jesus is asked to silence his followers… they’re making too much of a racket. Jesus responds… and here’s what causes me to buy my piano teacher’s way of spending Christmas Eve… Jesus responds that if the people were silent, the rocks and trees would sing to God. Really? Really!

We are told that the early church liked to praise and worship God with music. When Paul was imprisoned, he sang and praised God. When the church gathered together they sang and praised God. And when Revelation describes the end times, it describes people around the throne of God, singing and praising God.

So… in the Bible we see people sing, we see them dance and we see them praise God. We also see people sing for other reasons. We see the possibility of the rocks, trees and mountains singing, clapping their hands and dancing. This is actually described and prophesied about in a couple places in the Bible. And we see angels in heaven, singing and praising God. But here, at Jesus’ birth, we see something unique, we see angels on earth singing and praising God. And their song is one of glory and it is a song of peace. Christmas is known throughout the world as a celebration of peace. Whether people are Christian or not, they think of peace when they think of Christmas… they think of the hope for peace and they think of the possibility of peace. Where does peace come into the Christmas story? Here. With the angel’s song.

Where there was silence there is now music. Where people were waiting, they are now rejoicing. Where they were listening, now they are singing.

Music is, in many ways about beauty. In harmony, in unity, in joy and in sadness, music is about beauty. One can listen to a song that is a song of lament, that brings down the spirit… and be enraptured by the beauty of the song. One can listen to a song that is full of joy… full of promise and excitement… and be moved forward by the beauty of the song.

The angels, fierce angels who cause people to run in terror, brought beauty to the world in their song as they glorified God with their praises upon Jesus’ birth. Jesus himself brought beauty to this world by coming down to be among us… to be incarnate… to be one of us. Let us revel in that beauty.

This holiday season I invite you to avoid the dangerous silence. I encourage you to talk with those who you haven’t talked with. I pray for you to reconcile with those who you have silence between.

This holiday season I invite you to seek the silence that listens to others and for God. I encourage you to not build up a thunderstorm around yourself that keeps you from hearing others or God.

This holiday season I invite you to join in with all of creation in the song of joy, in the song of peace, in the song of glory… as we come together celebrating Christ’s coming into this world 2000 years ago. Bringing his teachings to us. Bringing his love to us… and sacrificing himself for us. But we also sing in anticipation, for we know that Christ will return… so let us sing to him asking him to come back. To come to us in our need, to come to us in our pain, to bring his glory and peace to our lives and to this whole world.

1 Kings 3:3-15 "What You Ask For"

As I’ve mentioned before, right before we came here in August of 2003 Lisa and I spent a week in the Pacific Northwest sailing with her sister and her husband. In preparation for the trip my brother-in-law, Mark made himself flashcards with nautical terms on them as he re-acquainted himself with what he felt he needed for the trip. Occasionally, I would receive an email from Mark asking me for clarification on whether the waters we would be sailing in were governed by Col Regs or not. I would frantically look up on my computer what in the world a Col Reg was, find it, and email him back in a non-chalant way, “Of course, the inland rules don’t apply in the islands” as if I knew exactly what he was talking about. I actually had known the Col Regs, my dad had gone over them with me as I sailed with him as a child, but I had never known what they were called.

On our vacation I discovered this was true about a number of things. Mark knew the terminology, he was book-smart in the ways of sailing, but I was the one who had spent over a week on the water almost every year of my childhood. There is a wisdom that comes with experience.

My dad skippered for a living. He has been and continues to be an expert when it comes to safety and navigation on the water. And I learned a lot sailing with him as a child. I have experience on a boat. Nothing you can learn in a class will prepare you for actually being out in the water. And, since Lisa and I made it out here okay at the end of that August, it seems my experience paid off, after all, we both survived, we didn’t sink the boat, and neither of us went overboard.

But what happens when someone is put into a position where they have no experience? What happens when someone is given a job, given a responsibility that they are not ready for? Do we put forward a brave face and pretend we know what we’re doing or, like Solomon, do we turn to God and ask for wisdom? Nothing is a substitute for experience, but even experience is not a substitute for the wisdom that is from God.

I. Beginning a Tough Reign

In today’s reading we see Solomon at the beginning of his career. Let me help set it up for you: his father, David, has given him the kingship and he has put down an uprising by his half-brother, Adonijah. Solomon began his reign in desperation, having to fight for it. Solomon began as king having to grasp at the kingship, it was anything but a smooth transition. Here we have the first hereditary transition from father to son in Israel’s history, and those around Solomon don’t want it to go smoothly, and they wonder whether he has what it takes, and they work to sabotage him. Not a great beginning.

Then he receives a genie with not three wishes, but one. God appears to Solomon and asks what it is that Solomon would like to receive. Solomon could ask that his power be centralized; he could ask that God make sure he lives his whole life as king. He could ask that he live and rule for a long time. And it even seems that God is expecting the answer to be one of these.

But Solomon surprises us (and God?) by thinking beyond himself and asking for… and you know the story here… he asks for wisdom. Well, not exactly. Let’s look at what it is that Solomon does ask for.

Solomon first reminds God what it is that he has done for David. He acknowledges that it is God who put him on the throne, and then asks God for an understanding mind to rule God’s people. He asks to be able to discern between good and evil.

Basically, what Solomon is asking for are the skills he needs to be a good king. He is not asking for generic wisdom nor is he asking to be a philosopher. I’ve heard the difference between being smart and being wise described as follows: Being smart is knowing the truth about something. Being wise is applying that so that it affects the way you live. Solomon was asking for knowledge. The knowledge he was asking for was knowledge between good and evil. But it is not enough just to know what is right and what is wrong. To truly live in wisdom, this needs to change the way he lives. But again, it’s more than this that he is asking for.

Let’s look at the way he asks for it… and this is my irreverent paraphrase, “God, you made my dad king and now you’ve decided I should be king. I don’t know what in the world I’m doing here, so if you want me to be king you’d better zap me with something to give me the skills I need to be a good king.”

Now, often I hear of Solomon’s humility. I hear about Solomon being wise beyond his years just in his choice for a request from God. I personally believe that it is something more basic than this that is happening here. I believe that Solomon realizes the responsibility he has before him and he is afraid that he is not up to it.

I kind of know how Solomon feels. It is odd being one of the youngest adults in the church and being the pastor of that same church. Experience, which is so important on the sea, is something that most everyone here has spades more of than me. Now I’m not trying to get down on myself in any way, but rather am trying to acknowledge doubts that sometimes cross my mind. The honest truth is that we all have these moments of doubt where we wonder if we are truly prepared for the things that God has set before us. These questions arise and we have multiple options.

II. Superman and the Cowardly Lion

One option would be to ignore them completely and imagine that we are well able to handle anything this world has to throw at us. I would like to call this the Superman approach. Now I know, much to your loss, most of you don’t read comics, but we all know a little about Superman: He’s strong, he’s fast, he can fly, and every time he encounters an opponent or a crisis, he powers his way through. Superman knows what his strengths are and he uses them… again and again.

Now, unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work as well for us as it does for Superman. First, we can’t outrun a speeding bullet or leap over a tall building. Second, when someone just uses their strengths again and again, they never grow, and they don’t discover new strengths and gifts. Mostly, going it alone makes one cocky and will lead in the end to failure.

A second option in the face of doubt about our abilities would be the option of not trying the new thing at all. This I would like to refer to as the Cowardly Lion approach. This is simply the point where you let your fears and anxieties rule you. In The Wizard of Oz the Cowardly Lion automatically responded in fear to everything. If something happened to him, his default response was to be scared of it. He let his fears define him. This is not healthy. Living by your fears keeps you in the same job for years when you long for something different. Living by your fears keeps you from discovering new skills that you didn’t know you had. Living by your fears means that you make decisions based on what could go wrong instead of trusting God to work in your life. In the end, when you let your anxieties dictate to you what you are not willing to do, you will not grow, you will not experience God or life to the fullest, you will spend your life longing for something more and wondering why you are never truly happy.

So, you can try to be Superman and do it yourself, saving the day again and again until you are finally beaten by the foe that is too great for you. Or you can be the Cowardly Lion and live a life that is defined by your fears. As you can imagine, neither of these options appeals to me so I say go with option three, do what Solomon did: Acknowledge your anxieties and fears, there probably is some reason for them, but then lay them before God and ask God in his power to give you the gifts you need as you step forward in faith.

Solomon was aware of his shortcomings. He knew about the learning curve ahead of him. He did not ignore these, nor did he allow them to stop him in his tracks.

Instead he gave these up to God and asked for help. And God answered.

Solomon asked to be a good ruler and God offered him good judgment and wisdom. God also gave Solomon all the things he could have asked for but didn’t. God not only promised wisdom that was adequate for Solomon, he offered deep wisdom for Solomon.

III. Genie in the Bottle

Now earlier, I referred to Solomon’s genie, and sometimes I fear that that is how we like to think of God. We pray for a good parking spot at Walmart so we don’t have to walk too far or we pray to win the lottery. You turn on the television and see people preaching that if you follow God you will never have a problem or trial in your life. You will live comfortably and never have to work or want for anything. It can sound good, but when you really think about it you know that God doesn’t call for us to be lazy and expect to have everything handed to us.

In the beginning of this passage God asks, “What should I give you?” God is in no way offering to cater to Solomon’s every whim. God didn’t even promise that he would grant Solomon what he asked. When you read the old legends about genies, not only do they offer whatever you ask, but it always goes wrong. The genies are mischievous and find a loophole in what you ask that keeps you from really enjoying it. They stick to the letter of your request and don’t offer anything more.

God, on the other hand, wanted to hear Solomon’s request before promising to fulfill it. He specifically states in verses 11 and 12 that it is because of what Solomon requested that he will honor it. “Because you asked for this and not worldly things, I will grant it to you,” he says. And then God does something that no genie has ever been known to do. He gives Solomon more than he asked for.

Now Solomon, like the rest of us, finds a way to mess it all up later in life and the kingdom is split when his son takes over. This is the way we are, even the wisest of us can mess up and I wouldn’t be surprised if Solomon began to think that he deserved the gifts that he had received from God. I know he got to the point where he felt that he didn’t need God anymore. As Solomon got more experience later in life, he forgot where it all came from. I do know that he relied on treaties with countries that he had sealed with marriages to keep him out of trouble instead of relying on God.

On that same sailing trip with Lisa, her sister and her husband, I spent the first couple days getting my crew and myself comfortable with my leadership. After a couple days I had made some really good decisions that were proven to be wise and then I pulled off an incredibly perfect docking against a difficult current at Friday Harbor. Things were going well and I got cocky. I laughed at the boat that came in next to us, on the other side of the dock, because they missed their first approach and had to try again. They should be more careful, like me. As we were preparing to leave Friday Harbor the next morning I watched a power boat that didn’t really know what he was doing. He pulled out and almost hit the boat behind him. People came to the dock and helped push him out so he could get going. No damage was done, but I laughed at the fact that this guy didn’t really know what he was doing. You’ve got to understand, sailor’s automatically look down on power boaters. We tend to think they try to power their way through everything without really paying attention to the surroundings. I rolled my eyes, thinking “power boaters” and figured I’d show everyone how it’s really done.

Well, you can imagine what came next: my majestic departure! Well at least I can say that I didn’t do anything that would cost any damage to my crew, my boat or others, but my departure was completely sloppy and the only thing that got us out was, you got it, people pushing our bow out for us. I had gotten cocky and thankfully, the only thing it cost us was our pride.

The rest of the trip, you found me being much more careful and taking things much more seriously, and it showed. When we forget ourselves and start to believe that the gifts are rights; that we’ve earned all we’ve been given, there is when we fail.

As a young man, Solomon asked God to help him and to guide him because he knew he couldn’t do it himself. Later in life, when he had more experience, he began to get cocky and think that he had earned all the wisdom he had. This, unfortunately, is a mistake we all tend to make.

Maybe this is part of what Jesus meant when he told us we are all to respond to him with a faith and faithfulness like children. As children we are willing to trust in someone else. As children, we haven’t deceived ourselves into thinking we can handle everything on our own yet. As children, we are willing to ask for help when we need it.

Are we ready to ask for God to make us the best we can be at what we are doing? Are we ready to allow God to bestow those gifts in a way that does not puff us up? Are we ready to turn to God for wisdom instead of the world?

It’s not just about us as individuals. We need to come to God as a church, as a congregation. As Solomon prayed and asked God to make him the best king he could be, we need to come before God and ask God to make us the best church we can be: a church that can make a difference to those around it; a church that will welcome those who don’t know God and teach them about him; a church that is a light in the darkness. A church where people are growing in their faith and a church that reaches out to bring people into new faith in Christ.

Let us pray for God to make us these things. He just may surprise us and answer the unspoken prayers as well. There are churches that pray to be big and they are. There are churches that pray to have money, and they do. But it’s the church that prays for God to make it a good, wise and faithful church that God wants… and God will answer this prayer for us. Amen.

2 Kings 2:1-18 "Chariot of Fire"

In the midst of the glut of over-the-top reality T.V. shows there is “The Apprentice” This year it has grown into two shows, one continuing as contestants compete to get a job working for Donald Trump, a new one showing contestants competing to work for Martha Stewart. Contestants are broken into teams and are given tasks that will hopefully show their skills and their faults so that they can be weeded out until there is only one left, the apprentice. Through these shows one gets the opportunity to see what it takes to make it as a multi-billion dollar business person, and one learns a little about what it is that drives a lifestyle that I just cannot identify with.

Donald has shared with us that of utmost importance to him is loyalty. Even when you don’t like the way those above you are doing things, even if you think you could do it better, even if they are taking the ship down with them, you need to stand by your superiors, show them that you are loyal, and that way when you are in need, they will stand by you. If someone is unloyal, they are untrustworthy and not worth hiring.

Martha believes that women need to be particularly strong in the business world. She will not allow a person to cry in the conference room. Crying is a weakness that cannot be shown. Martha reminds her contestants of all she has done and been through, even her months in jail, and said that there was no room in the midst of those for tears.

Both Donald and Martha make good points, though I believe that they overstate their cases a fair amount. I think that loyalty doesn’t always mean following your leader off a cliff, and though I believe that strength is needed, I don’t necessarily believe that tears are always a sign of weakness. But the concept of the Apprentice goes back much earlier than these television shows. There is an early edition of “The Apprentice” found in 1^st and 2^nd Kings when we watch Elijah and Elisha and we see Elijah has taught Elisha what it means to be a prophet of God, he teaches him the sacrifices that need to be made, he teaches him the pain and the joy he will find. Elisha shows great loyalty to Elijah and he sheds a tear when Elijah is taken from him. But what makes him a great apprentice is that he does follow in Elijah’s footsteps and carry on his legacy in his own way. He continues the ministry that Elijah had started, and great things happen.

I. A Fiery Life

Elijah lived a life that seemed to constantly come in contact with fire. You could go as far as saying he was a man of fire. Last week we remembered the story of him standing on Mount Carmel calling down fire from heaven to prove that God was God and there is no other. After this mighty victory for Elijah and for God, life did not become easier, and he fled and ran away from the King of Israel and his wife, who were out to kill him. When Elijah ran away he came in contact with a great wind, ruah, he then experienced an earthquake, then a great fire, and then that still silence where God spoke to him. Again with the fire.

In 2 Kings 1 we hear about the king of Samaria, Ahaziah, who falls and is bed-ridden. And he sends his men to consult with the priests of a foreign god. Elijah is sent to tell him that he has made a mistake by consulting with foreign gods instead of consulting with the one true God. So Ahaziah sends three captains to Elijah along with 50 men each, to bring Elijah to the king. The first two approach Elijah and order him to come with them. Fire comes down from heaven to burns them and their men up. The third comes before Elijah with humility, and Elijah goes with him. More fire from heaven.

And then here, in our reading this morning, again we see fire, but we are seeing more than just fire, we also see a great wind, a whirlwind that takes Elijah up into heaven. This is a fitting end for this great prophet. For Elijah’s life and ministry was a whirlwind and his spirit was of fire. He struggled against a country that had fallen completely away from their God, and he was trying to pull them back. And he needed a fiery disposition to handle the ministry that he faced. And he was constantly moving from place to place, to go where God sent him and to stay away from those out to kill him. And here also, he left a successor, Elisha, who would carry on in ministry after him.

But before we really get into this scripture, we need to wipe away what we have learned in Sunday School and go directly back to what the Bible says. That’s right, I’m telling you to wipe away what you learned in Sunday School and instead look closely at what the Bible says. You see, we all learn this story of how Elijah is carried off by a fiery chariot into heaven and therefore is one of the few people in the Bible who never died. Well, all the parts are there, but they aren’t all in their right places. Let’s read exactly what did happen. It begins in chapter 11. As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” We’ve got the chariot of fire and we’ve got a whirlwind. Later in the passage it is made clear that Elijah was taken up to heaven, not just blown away to the land of Oz or some other part of the country. But it doesn’t say anywhere that the chariot of fire was what Elijah rode up to heaven. So, noting this difference between what we think we know and what the scripture actually says, let us look closely at the end of Elijah’s life here on earth to see what we can learn from it.

Today’s scripture begins by acknowledging the fact that this is the end of Elijah’s life and ministry on this earth. The narrator knows it, Elijah knows it, Elisha knows it, even various prophets they run into know it. Elijah’s time is up. But Elisha is not ready to let go yet. Now you need to understand Elijah and Elisha. They are not father and son, rather they are more like a man and his apprentice. Elijah is Elisha’s teacher and his mentor. He has taken Elisha from working the fields and has trained him up in the ways of the Lord. And now there is a big elephant in the room and nobody wants to acknowledge it. Elijah is going away and Elisha is going to be on his own.

II. The Games we Play

So today’s scripture begins with everyone knowing what is coming and nobody willing to talk about it. They both decide to play games with the truth. They both decide to pretend that everything is fine even though it is not. Elijah doesn’t want to deal with the fact that he will be leaving Elisha so he makes up an excuse. “God has called me to go to Bethel. Stay here.” But Elisha isn’t ready to let go. “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” Then a group of prophets come up speaking the truth to Elisha and asking him if he knows that Elijah is going to be leaving him today. Elisha’s response: “I know, shhhhh!” Elisha knew that this was the end of his mentor, his master, his friend, but he didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t want to admit it. He wanted everybody to pretend everything was fine and go on as if nothing was wrong. Bet you didn’t know that Elisha was Swedish. He was upset about what he faced, he knew that Elijah had reached his end, but it was better to keep it inside. It was better to keep it quiet. It was better to pretend that nothing was wrong, even though everybody knew that something was wrong. He thought that if he acted like everything was fine, then everything would be fine. He thought that if he pretended the world was okay, then life would go on the same way it had.

And so the games continued. We discover that at Bethel Elijah tries again to ditch Elisha. “Stay here, I’m going to Jericho.” Again Elisha refuses. And again, prophets come up to Elisha to talk with him about what is coming and he quiets them, “Shhh”. So Elijah tries a third time to get rid of Elisha. “I’m going to the Jordan.” And a third time Elisha refuses to leave his master. So they come to the Jordan River and we see a miracle. Elijah takes off his hairy cloak, or his mantle, and he roles it up and strikes the water with it. The water parts and Elijah and Elisha cross the Jordan on dry land. They do this like Israel crossed dry land as they came out of Egypt. They do this like Israel crossed the Jordan as they entered the Promised Land.

And now, since the end is near, since they’ve crossed the Jordan, they break out of their games. Elijah acknowledges the elephant in the room. He asks Elisha what he can do for him before he is taken from him. “I am going to be leaving you now, how can I say goodbye, what can I give you?”

Elisha’s response sounds odd to our 21^st century ears. “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit.” It’s not what it sounds like, though. You see, Elisha isn’t asking to be twice the prophet that Elijah was. He isn’t asking to be twice as great or twice as miraculous. Instead he is asking for something much more personal, and much more powerful.

The double portion is what the eldest son would inherit from his father. A father in that day who had three children would divide their inheritance up in four portions. The first son would get two and the other two would each get one. If a father had four children, the inheritance would be divided in fifths, with the eldest getting two fifths and the others receiving one fifth. You get the idea. Elisha was asking to be the inheritor of Elijah’s gifts. He was asking to become more than just an apprentice. He was asking to be a son to Elijah, and not any son but his eldest son. Elisha sees more in this relationship than just a business or trade relationship. Elijah has become his father and he wants to continue Elijah’s legacy after he has gone. Elijah’s response, “If you stick with me until the very end then you will be my son.” And Elisha does.

Then we come to the fiery chariot, which separates the two of them. Then Elijah is taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. I cannot even imagine such a thing… later in the scripture, in verses 16 through 18 we see that neither do the prophets who waited for Elisha on the other side of the Jordan. They wanted to go search for Elijah around the mountains, thinking that maybe the whirlwind deposited him somewhere. Elisha knew better. He knew that Elijah was with God. He knew that God had brought his great prophet up to his heavens, into his presence. But even in this wonder of Elijah’s ascent to heaven, Elisha is saddened. He cries out and he tears his garments in half in his grief. Here Elijah has been one of the few in this world who was able to escape death. Elisha didn’t have to deal with watching his master die, instead he saw as clearly as possible that Elijah was being taken to heaven. When a loved one dies for us, we accept in faith that they are now with God. Elisha didn’t need to accept this in faith, he saw his loved one ascend as clear as day. But he was filled with tears just the same. He grieved at his loss, even though he knew the wonders of what Elijah looked forward to. And he cried out, “My father! My father!” acknowledging that he had indeed received the double portion, acknowledging that he was Elijah’s spiritual son.

III. Carry on

Elisha went back to the Jordan River and crossed over it in the same way that he had with Elijah earlier in the day. Now he knew that he was to carry on the mission and ministry of Elijah. He was able to see, and so were the other prophets, that God was with him in the same way that God had been with his master, his father.

Now Elisha did not have the same ministry that Elijah had. For one thing, he didn’t seem to be into fire in the same way Elijah was. Elisha was a great prophet, and he obviously followed Elijah. But his ministry was his own. He didn’t do the same things Elijah did and he had his own message for the people of Israel.

Sometimes we see someone great and we feel lacking because we aren’t them. We think that we could be a great speaker if only we could speak like Billy Graham. We see someone teach and wish we could teach like them. We see someone farm and wish we could farm like them. We watch someone who dedicates their life to mission work, and we feel like we are lacking because we are not as brave as them, not as trusting in God to care for us so far outside our comfort zones.

But God isn’t calling us all to be Elijah. He only called two people to be Elijah. Elijah himself, and then John the Baptist, who was Elijah returned, preparing the way of the coming Lord. The rest of us have our own role to fill. The rest of us have our own place in this world.

This isn’t an excuse to be mediocre. No, we are called to give it our all. God wants us to offer our best, our first fruits, to him. We can be inspired by those we never think we’ll live up to. We can take their lives and use them to inspire our lives, but then we must realize that we have our own marks to make. Elisha didn’t become Elijah, though he carried on his ministry. No, Elisha used the gifts that God gave him, not the gifts that God gave someone else. And his ministry was also a great one. We can do the same. We can allow God to use us and we can trust that God will give us all we need to do what he calls us to do. We can allow those who go before us to inspire us and we can then be comfortable with what God does use us for.

Paul talks about this in his first letter to the Corinthians. He tells us that we are all parts of the body of Christ, but we are not all the same part. “Now if the foot should say, ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (1 Cor 12:15-19). Let us find our gifts that God has given us. Let us be inspired by that hand or that eye or that ear that we are not. But let us not think that we are limited in what we are or what we can do by what we are not. Instead, let us use the gifts that God gives us and follow the path that God has set before us. Amen.