Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 - A Time To...

There is a saying, you could even maybe call it a proverb, that says that the reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. Sometimes, when you look back at certain times in your life it feels that everything is happening at once. Other times, you may look and wonder if anything is really happening in your life at all.

Christmas Day was one of those times where it seemed everything was happening at once. We were trying to celebrate Christmas, we had our 7am Christmas service at the church, Lisa’s parents were arriving in the evening, and Bronte chose this day and this time to come down with her first stomach flu. It was not pretty, and it was not great timing at all. We had about three or four Christmas themed outfits that we kept changing her into after she vomited on the one before. It took us a while to figure out that we were dealing with more than a little spit-up. We would put her in an outfit and we’d head back under the tree to play with presents with her and next thing we knew, we’d need to find another outfit for her. I guess the reason we didn’t catch on right away was that Bronte wasn’t acting sick at all, she was her usual, cheery, smiley self so we figured she couldn’t really be sick. She didn’t begin to act sick until the next morning.

I ended up spending a chunk of the afternoon on Christmas Day driving around Storm Lake looking for something that might be open so that I could get some Pedialyte, a water with electrolytes in it, basically Gatorade for babies, which the Emergency Room nurse suggested we feed her. Of course, since it was Christmas Day, nothing at all was open and so I eventually found myself at the Emergency Room begging them for some Pedialyte to get us through the night. They were very gracious and did that very thing for us, truly saving us from having to bring Bronte to the hospital to keep her from dehydrating.

Bronte’s first sickness was not exactly fun for us and it clearly wasn’t fun for her, but it wasn’t a horrible crisis either. We are thankful that things weren’t any worse. But the whole experience reminded me how time works. It reminded me that we can have the best laid plans and be all set up to do what it is that we are planning to do, and then something will happen that will change everything. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are different times in our lives, different seasons. It tells us there are times to love, celebrate, plant, heal, dance and mend. But there are also times to hate, die, mourn, weep, tear down and even (though it doesn’t say it in these words) be sick.

We are in the middle of the Christmas Season. We are celebrating the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. And we are also celebrating the turning of the year: the ending of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. What season are you in? And what are you going to do with the season that you are in? We can learn from the author of Ecclesiastes, that we can accept the season we are living through and find ways to thrive in it, for everything that God puts before us, no matter how difficult and trying it may be, is there to strengthen us and help us through.

I. The Problem with Prosperity Gospel

I must admit that I continue to struggle with people who say that if you are a Christian, then nothing bad will ever happen to you. This message, which is quite vocally preached in some Christian circles, tells us that we are called to live victoriously as Christians and therefore if there are any problems in our lives, we are doing something wrong with our faith. This message comes from an understanding of the faith that I’m not terribly crazy about. It looks at our faith as something that is about receiving from God instead of truly being a relationship with God. If faith is only about receiving blessings from God, then it becomes an issue of asking God, “What have you done for me recently?” And this is not one of the questions I believe that we should be asking God.

I don’t think much of this prosperity gospel because it doesn’t line up with the faith that I have found in my life. It doesn’t line up with the God I know and it doesn’t line up with scripture either. The fact is that our lives have seasons. They have times of plenty and times of want. They have times where things seem to be going well and they have times where you wonder if God is really with you. And this is captured so beautifully in Ecclesiastes 3.

There is something terribly poetic about Ecclesiastes 3: the contrasts between the good times and the bad; the juxtaposition of the two is just beautiful. I truly wish some of the bad things weren’t in the list. Many people wish there wasn’t a time for weeping or mourning in the list. But I wish there was never a time for war. I wish there was never a time to hate. But this is a part of the world we live in. It is a part of what we experience in the world. And just by listing it out, Ecclesiastes allows us to find meaning in the difficult times as well as the joyous ones. Without war could we truly appreciate peace? Without mourning could we know the joys of dancing?

When we accept that all of this is a part of the world we live in we can find strength through it all to help us move forward in the difficult times and help us to remember God in the good times. I’ve said before that it seems to me that when everything is going well, when you are in the times of joy and dancing and laughter, you sometimes forget about God. You begin to rely on yourself a bit too much. You begin to believe that all your fortunes are of your own making.

II. The Dark Night of the Soul

But sometimes we have the opposite happen. Sometimes we go through a long time of mourning. Sometimes we look around and we wonder if peace will ever come again. These times are an important part of the world we live in. I would even go as far as to say that they are an important part of the Christian life. Some Christians have even come up with a name for these difficult times. St. John of the Cross, a 16^th century priest referred to the difficult time as the dark night of the soul. The term has stuck and it is still talked about in those terms today. For St. John of the Cross, the dark night of the soul is a time where God seems distant, where problems seem overwhelming, where questions seem abundant, where faith is difficult. St. John of the Cross spoke of the dark night of the soul as a time where prayer became difficult and God seemed unrelatable. But he also believed that in the midst of the crisis of faith there was blessing. He believed that instead of just being a test of faith, the dark night was a time for the faith to grow and prosper and become even deeper.

If you spend time praying when praying seems impossible, if you cast your cares upon God when God seems unrelatable, if you allow yourself to surrender to a God who you aren’t sure you believe in, then you will find strength and growth. And when God reveals himself to you once again you will find yourself on even more sure footing.

This concept of the dark night of the soul has been translated to a modern context in the overly pithy poem “Footprints in the Sand”. The poem talks about a person complaining because they looked at their life and saw two sets of footprints in the sand, one set for themselves and one for Jesus, who was walking beside them. But at the difficult times in their lives, they would only see one set of footprints. The author of the poem asked why Jesus abandoned him during those difficult times. And of course, Jesus responds by saying that he didn’t abandon in the times of trial. Rather, the reason you only see one set of footprints is that Jesus was carrying him through the difficult times.

III. What do we do

But Ecclesiastes 3 doesn’t just spend time focusing on the juxtaposition between good things and bad things happening in their seasons. It comes up with an understanding of the world that at first seems somewhat depressing or maybe just pragmatic. Ecclesiastes as a book talks about the fact that there is so much that we just don’t have control over, it is better for us just to live our lives to the best of our ability and let God sort it out. Ecclesiastes seems to be telling us that if we’re searching for meaning to our lives. If we’re searching for understanding or greater purpose, we may just find ourselves disappointed.

But I’m not sure that the book is trying to actually be depressing as it asks this question. I think that it might actually be a good question to ask, and the answer that is found in chapter 3, if you really let it sink in is quite powerful. It begins at verse 12: “I know that there is nothing better for us than to be happy and do good while we live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”

Sometimes I think we are looking for a little too much from God, from our faith, from our lives. We sometimes think that we are all destined to some sort of greatness. And we are, but the true greatness that we receive doesn’t happen here on this earth. It happens when life on this earth is over and we are in eternity. What we have to look forward to in this world is that we can eat, drink, and find satisfaction in the work that we do. Ecclesiastes tells us that this is a gift from God. Are we willing to accept that gift? Are we willing to take it and find meaning, find purpose in it? Do we find satisfaction in what we do? Are we finding ways to experience joy in our lives and do good? This is what we are called to each and every season of our lives. And if we live this out, we will find joy and strength in the good times and the bad: when Bronte is vomiting up on Christmas Day as well as when she’s being her sweet, good-natured, normal self; when we find ourselves in times of mourning as well as when we find ourselves in times of laughter.

God does have a plan for you. He does have a purpose for your life. Know this, accept it, believe it. And find joy and happiness in your life, it isn’t worth spending too much time on the negative. And if you cannot find happiness right now, be about doing good, for if you seek out ways to do good, the happiness will come. And God will be with you, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And he promises a great eternity ahead. But for today, for this life, do as the author of Ecclesiastes recommends: eat, drink and do things that bring you satisfaction. This is truly a gift from God. Amen.

Luke 2 (Christmas Morning) - Mary: Woman of Contemplation

I. Making Sense of It All

When you are working your way through life, sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to you. Things happen in a way where you just cannot see God working through it. But then, when you look back at what happened, you begin to make sense of it and you can clearly see God’s hand in it.

I finished my studies at North Park Seminary in 2001. I was looking for a place to do my internship and not having much luck. I was wondering what God’s plan was for me. I had a couple interviews with churches to see if I could intern there and have the internship turn into full-time ministry. But none of these things worked out. Then I fell into a full time job working with developmentally disabled adults in Chicago and worked out a part-time internship at the church I was attending, one that I didn’t get paid for. It seemed that my plans for my life were being put on hold. It seemed like things weren’t going where I wanted to see them go. I wondered how God was working his plan for my life, or perhaps, if I were on my own. Now, looking back, it is easy to see God at work in my two extra years in Chicago. My work with the developmentally disabled adults was a real blessing to me, and my internship was a great experience. And when my internship was done and I could graduate, I was called here to minister in Albert City.

I wonder this Christmas morning if Mary had a similar experience. She had been told by God that her son would be the Son of God. She had been told that he would be the Messiah, whom the people of Israel had been waiting for for centuries. And then she found herself traveling to a distant town, away from home and family right around when she was due. When she got there there was no place for her to give birth and so she ended up in a stable, surrounded by animals, laying her newborn son, the future king of Israel, in a cattle trough.

I wonder what she thought of this turn of events. You see, we know the Christmas story so well, we hear it year after year and it is a part of the fabric of our celebration of the holiday. But for Mary it was all new. She didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what was to come. And things sure didn’t seem to be going the way that she would have expected.

And then a group of dirty shepherds show up and tell her that angels appeared to them. Wow, maybe God is at work after all, even though what he is doing doesn’t seem to make sense. And later on, maybe even a year later, magi from the east show up with gold, incense and myrrh. Maybe Jesus actually will be king. But then Mary and her family have to flee to Egypt to protect Jesus from being killed. Life doesn’t go as we plan it, does it?

II. Pondering

There is a recurring phrase, though, throughout Luke’s telling of the Christmas story and Jesus’ childhood. The recurring phrase is that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Mary knew there was something special about her son. She knew Jesus was going on to special things. And so everything that she saw that was unusual, everything that didn’t really make sense to her, she remembered and thought about. And then, looking back at these things later, understanding them in context with each other, she was able to make sense of God’s plan through Jesus. This is the life of contemplation. This is what is valuable about spending time thinking on the things of God. Contemplation, thinking on the things of God, allows us to catch a glimpse of God truly working in this world. It is not enough, I believe, to go about doing the things of God. It is not enough, I believe, to just trust that God is working in the events around your life and so then just go about your life expecting to never understand what is going on. No, God wants us to think on the things that he is doing. He wants us to spend time seeking out his will and focusing on what it is that he is doing for and through us. The book Experiencing God, which one of our adult Bible studies on Sunday mornings is studying, talks about it this way, find out what it is that God is doing in the world, and then get involved in that. And the way to see what God is doing in the world is to do what Mary did. Treasure up the things you see going on. Study the work of God. Learn from it and watch as God makes sense of the world to you. This is what Mary did as she watched God work in unusual and unique ways with Jesus.

III. God’s Plan

But what was God’s plan? Why did Jesus come as a poor baby? Why did Jesus come to die a criminal’s death at a much too young age of thirty-three? It doesn’t make terribly much sense.

Lisa and I had our own nativity about nine months ago. We didn’t have to travel a terribly long distance, though we did have to drive through the fog in the middle of the night. And we didn’t have to go to a stable to give birth, instead of a stable, we had a wonderful maternity ward at the Storm Lake hospital. Seeing the difference between what we experienced and what Jesus experienced in his birth reminds me of how great God’s sacrifice was in sending his Son as a baby. Babies are about as helpless as you can possibly be. When Jesus was born about the only thing he could do was cry. God chose to send his Son in a way where he would be totally and completely reliant upon Mary and Joseph. And he allowed him to be born in a cattle shed. And we see a little later, when Jesus was dedicated in the temple when he was 40 days old, that Mary and Joseph give the offering that the poor would give. Mary and Joseph were not people of means. They were truly poor. This is the way that God chose to enter the world. It really doesn’t make much sense.

But, again and again, after experiencing something that just didn’t make sense in any way, God would do something that would show Mary that he was really at work in Jesus’ life. The birth in a stable didn’t make sense for God’s Son, but the angel-song and the magi showed that God was truly at work. Jesus’ death didn’t make much sense but his resurrection showed that God was at work.

This Christmas morning I want to encourage you to spend some time looking at the way that God has worked in your life. Things may not make sense for you; they may seem to go against what your plans for your life were. But God is at work. He is doing great things, even today. So I encourage you to follow Mary’s example and treasure up the things of God in your heart and ponder them. See what God is doing and get behind it. Study the ways of God and see how it is that he is working in and through you. Let this contemplation of God allow you to see him at work even in the most confusing things. God could just surprise you with shepherds, with magi, with a prophetess speaking words of wisdom to you, or even with resurrection when all you can see is death. Amen.

Luke 1:39-56 - Mary: Woman of Justice

As the choir sang about this morning, the shepherds witnessed something miraculous and marvelous that Christmas night. Angels appeared before them and glory shone round about them. And the angels sang praise to God and offered peace on earth. Every Christmas people dream of peace on earth. And every Christmas we realize that we have a long way to go to get there.

Peace between nations is far off. Back in the eighties we saw the end of the cold war and we thought this might be a coming peace. But since that time we have not known peace at all. And once again, this year, we have troops on the other side of the world, celebrating Christmas away from their families and their loved ones. I am sure that they are praying for peace on earth this Christmas, just as they are trying to bring peace to Iraq themselves.

Peace between individuals is far away also. We have broken homes and broken relationships all around us. People are hurting and suffering alone and the pretend at peace, but it is really not there.

But the angels talked of peace on earth and I wish it were something that we could find in this world. I look around and it seems forever distant. And yet it was sung of that Christmas night. Jesus was meant to bring peace to this world, even though we don’t see it. To understand the peace that Jesus brings we need to look a little earlier in the Christmas story than the nativity or the shepherds. We need to look back at Mary’s song and the justice that she knew God would bring.

I. Banned

The song of Mary which we read this morning is often known as the Magnificat. This is the first word in the song in Latin. The Magnificat plays an important role in more liturgical churches, particularly the Catholic Church. It gets sung regularly in worship as it is the first real song of praise to God that we find in the New Testament. And it is a song written by Mary. Obviously the Catholics are going to like it. And yet, I was shocked to find out that in the 80s, in Guatemala, a country that at the time was between 75 and 80 percent Catholic, it was illegal to speak the Magnificat in public. That’s right; the government of Guatemala found gentle Mary’s song so subversive, so dangerous, that they banned it.

Now I must admit, I expect this kind of thing in certain governments. Governments that are autocratic, governments that try to reduce freedom will often try to take people’s religion from them. In some Islamic countries in the Middle East and in Africa it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Communist Russia outlawed Christianity in all forms and Communist China has a husk of Christianity allowed so they can say that they support religious freedom though it is clear through their practices that they don’t. The government of Guatemala was in the midst of revolution in the 80s and has never been a stable government. So maybe it makes sense for them to try to take people’s faith away from them.

But it wasn’t people’s faith that the Guatemalan government was trying to steal from them. They were allowed to remain whatever religion they wanted. They didn’t have their Bibles removed from them, they weren’t told they couldn’t worship, they were just not allowed to recite the Magnificat, the song of Mary in public.

The government of Guatemala found something dangerous in Mary’s song. They found something powerful in the way that the people were responding to it. And they were scared of it.

As we continue our Advent look at Mary, Jesus’ mother, we will look at her song this morning. What do we find revolutionary in it? Does it have the power in it that the government of Guatemala was so scared of? Or is it just a nice song written by a young woman who was praising God for what he was going to do?

II. Mary’s World

Mary’s song and the danger seen in it by the wicked and the rulers becomes clear, once again, when we look at it in the context of Mary’s world. Mary and her people lived lives of subjugation. They were ruled over by people whom they didn’t want ruling over them. Rome controlled the world. It is because of Roman rule that Mary ended up not being able to give birth at home, but rather in Bethlehem, because of a census. Because of the rule of the Romans, Mary and all of her people felt helpless and week. They could not live the way they wanted. Their worship had to conform to the expectations of their Roman masters. And Rome had placed King Herod in charge of the area that Mary lived in. King Herod was not a kind ruler. When Mary sings that the Lord “has brought down rulers from their thrones”, anybody hearing this would know what rulers she was talking about. She was talking about Herod the great. And here was a teen aged, unwed pregnant girl singing a song that proclaimed the end of Herod’s reign. This takes courage. It takes willpower. It takes a great faith in the power of God to bring about his will.

Think forward a little bit in the Christmas story for a moment, if you will. The Magi come from the east, to King Herod the Great, and tell him of a great king that they see coming to Israel. What is Herod’s response? It is to murder children around the country, to protect his throne. This is the kind of ruler that Herod is. He will do anything to retain his power. He even killed his own family to make sure that he would remain king. He was ruthless and hard. And Mary, a young girl, stands up to him, through song, as she acknowledges what it is that she believes God is going to do through her son, Jesus. Scot McKnight puts it so well in his book, The Real Mary:

If you were a first-century poor woman, if you were hungry and oppressed, if you had experienced the injustices of Herod the Great, and if you stood up in Jerusalem and announced that the proud and rulers and the rich would be yanked down from their high places, it is likely you’d be tried for treason and put to death for disturbing the “peace.”

If you were Herod or one of his twelve wives or one of his many sons with hopes of the throne, you would have heard these words as an act of protest, if not revolution or rebellion. Even if you, as Mary, were to argue with your accusers that these are words straight out of the Bible, you’d be accused of subversion, of wanting your son to become the next king. You just might end up crucified. (McKnight, 23)

But Mary’s subversion is not an earthly subversion. Her treasonous words weren’t to round up people to revolt. No, Mary saw God as the worker in these things. She saw God as someone who was on the side of justice. She saw God as the one acting to bring about this reversal in fortunes. She sees God as the one who will give food to the hungry, and she understands this because she herself is hungry. She sees God as the one who will put an end to the current problems in the world, the current injustices, the current pains.

But Mary didn’t understand all the details. We need to realize that, along with most of God’s people, she didn’t get what God was doing initially. Mary didn’t know at the beginning that God was sending his Son to die on a cross. She believed that her son would probably be an earthly king. She believed that God was going to put an end to the reign of Herod and begin the reign of Jesus. She didn’t know how God was going to change the world through her son, she just knew that he was. And she believed that this offered hope to the weak and the downtrodden and the poor. She believed this because God was using a poor young girl to bring about his coming kingdom. She believed this because she truly believed in the justice of God.

III. God of Justice

You see, both sides of the political stream get this wrong. The conservatives believe that it is the individual’s role to give food to themselves. They believe that everybody has the opportunity to make it and those who have failed have only themselves to blame. They’re wrong. It is not the individual who is responsible for taking care of themselves, it is God who reaches down to care for them.

The liberal believes that it is the government’s role to help the hungry. Actually, they’re closer to the truth in this area than the conservative. For, again and again, throughout the Old Testament prophets and even here, God is promising to come in and make right the things that the government has failed at. But, though they may be more on the right path, here, they still have it wrong. For, once again, Mary says it so clearly, it is God who will bring justice to this world. God is the only one capable of it. God is the only one who will not let self-interest get in the way of justice.

Mary was a woman of justice in that she pointed the way to a God of justice. Mary believed that God was going to do great things through her coming son. She had hope that God would bring an end to the suffering of her people. She had faith that God would stay true to his promises. And so she sang a song and prayed a prayer praising God for something that he had not yet done.

But here we are, two thousand years later, and the poor are still poor and there are still hopeless people out there. Was Mary’s song of justice just a fleeting hope, or is it more than that? Well, I believe that the fact that the song was banned in the 80s in Guatemala shows that it is more than just a fleeting hope.

There is power in Mary’s song. It is the power of speaking something into existence. Justice is still needed in places around this world. Sometimes, justice is needed even here in America. And we believe that Jesus can bring it. But how?

Are we willing to wait for Jesus’ second coming? Are we willing to accept that justice will never be on this earth until he comes again? I’m not willing to admit that. Oh, deep down I know that in a way it is true. As long as sin is in this world we will never know justice completely. The powerful will always lord it over the weak. Those who have will always take advantage of those who don’t.

But we do believe that Jesus came to this earth 2000 years ago and his coming made a difference. We believe that he came to save us from our sins and give us eternal life, but he must have come to save us from the earthly results of sin as well. I think he did. And he did in this way. We are told in scripture that we are the body of Christ. As the church, God is using us to work his will in this world. We are God’s hands, feet and voice. God is still a God of justice, but he has a new way to bring it. We, like Mary in her day, are called as the people of God to bring justice to the world around us. It’s an overwhelming job that God’s given us. But he’s given us the resources to do. We are told that he has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and to move us forward in our faith.

People talk a lot at Christmastime about peace on earth. It’s in a lot of songs and on many banners. It’s something that is worthwhile to focus on each and every Christmas. It was proclaimed by the angels on that first Christmas night. How will we ever find peace on earth? When justice reigns. So, this Christmas, take a cue from Mary and do what you can to bring justice to your world; in song, in word, or in deed. God is ready to work justice through you as he did through Mary.

Luke 1:26-38 "Mary: Woman of Faith"

Well, we ended up canceling church last Sunday because of ice. So my Advent season is going to be very short. Next week we are having our children's Christmas program and then we have one more Sunday in Advent. I will finish up this series on Christmas Morning with our Christmas service. This sermon is somewhat racy as it talks about an unwed mother. Also, I mention it in the text, but I'm using Scot McKnight's The Real Mary quite seriously in this sermon series.

I. Why Mary

This year I plan to spend the Advent season looking at Jesus’ mother, Mary. This can be a dangerous place to go. Catholics through the centuries have built Mary up to such a place, put her on such a pedestal, that she is barely human anymore. They have called her the mother of God, they have prayed to her, they have talked about her faith being perfect in a way that human faith cannot ever be. They have exempted her from original sin, which afflicts every human. But Protestants have protested this goddess worship of Mary and have gotten back to a more scriptural version of a young woman who was chosen by God for great things. But in rejecting the Catholic extra-biblical ideas about Mary, many of us Protestants have rejected Mary altogether. We don’t want to make the same mistakes that the Catholic church made in regard to Mary so we’ll avoid spending much time talking about her.

And yet Mary is the center of the Christmas story. It is her faith that allows Christmas to happen in the first place. We are told throughout the Gospel of Luke that Mary pondered these things in her heart and we realize that Luke is telling us that he talked to Mary when writing the Gospel, giving her a chance to tell of Jesus’ birth as she experienced it. When, in the fullness of time, God was ready to send his Son, it was Mary whom he chose to be Jesus’ mother. Mary was not a goddess, but she was special.

I am reading a book by Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University, called The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus and it truly is an inspiring book. In the book we see that when we don’t place Mary on such a high pedestal, we discover that we can learn from her faith and her life. We can see how she was faithful to God and God was able to use this to bring about great things in the world.

So, this Advent season, let’s set aside our fear of being too Catholic and instead look at Mary and see what she can offer to us as Christians. We can definitely learn from her and grow in faith as we see that she was a woman of strong faith and great faithfulness.

II. A Difficult Situation

I don’t think we truly allow ourselves to understand Mary’s great faith until we allow ourselves to understand the world she lived in. The fact that she went along with what Gabriel told her in today’s scripture is quite amazing. You see, by agreeing to be the mother of Jesus, Mary was agreeing to begin a path down a long and difficult road, one that would make her an outcast, one that would eventually lead to her watching her son die on a cross at the young age of thirty-three. Of course she didn’t know that she would experience her son’s death. She probably believed that her son would be an earthly king, just as so many others believed.

But she did know that she would be ostracized and gossiped about when people found out that she, an unwed and engaged mother, was pregnant. You see, life has changed much in the last 2000 years. We treat unwed mothers much differently than they were treated in Jesus’ day. In fact, in Jesus’ day the laws were set that if a woman was pregnant outside of wedlock, they could be killed for this.

So, when Mary agreed to be Jesus’ mother, she was acting out in faith and facing death to do so. It gets a bit worse, though. You see, in Mary’s day, women would argue that they weren’t responsible for their pregnancy, and when they argued this they would be forced to participate in the bitter waters test. The bitter waters test was not a pleasant one. Mary, if Joseph had asked it, would have been brought before the priest, and be placed under oath and told to drink “bitter waters”: a mixture of dust, holy water, and a written curse that the priest would have written out in ink and put in the water. The written curse would say this, “may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb to miscarry and your abdomen swell.” It was believed that if the woman was guilty she would become sick. If she didn’t become sick, it was believed that she was not guilty of adultery.

But this also isn’t the worst of it. You see, in Mary’s day, this was practiced in front of large groups of people and the suspected adulteress would be paraded in front of them in full humiliation. Furthermore, the bitter waters that they would drink would often cause them to become sick and even miscarry.

By agreeing to God’s plan to bring Jesus into the world in such an unusual way, Mary was face this possibility in her life. But Mary trusted God. She trusted that God would not ask something of her and then betray her. And so she responded to Gabriel with words of faith: “may it be to me as you have said.”

III. Great Faith allows God to do Great Things

There are two traps that people tend to fall into when they see this faith of Mary. One is to take it for granted and undervalue it. We do that when we ignore the risks she was willing to take to be faithful to God. We do that when we convince ourselves that anybody in Mary’s situation would have done the same thing. We do that when we allow ourselves to think that Mary’s faith was easy. Having faith, being faithful to God when circumstances are against you, is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be difficult. It is meant to be work, to be hard. Faith is not supposed to be simple. It asks much from us, sometimes our very lives.

The second trap that some fall into is to elevate Mary’s faith up to such a height that we put her in a place that no other mortal could possibly reach. We elevate her to the place of goddess and look at her faith and faithfulness as superhuman. When we do this we miss the truth that we are all called to this great faith that Mary showed when Gabriel appeared to her.

You see, Mary isn’t someone to look up to as the perfect example that we can never reach. Instead, when we see her step out in faith, we realize that we are called to the same kind of life-risking faith. Without faith Mary would not have accepted the words that Gabriel had for her. She would have told God that she was too young or not ready. She would have said no to God’s great plan for her life and Jesus wouldn’t have been born. Think about that for a minute. God relied on the faith of one woman, Mary, and because of her faith he was able to bring us his Son, Jesus.

When we step out in faith, when we respond to God in the way Mary did, saying “may it be,” God is able to bring around great things in our world as well. It’s a strange thing, the way God works. He continually looks for ways to find faithful followers to work through. He continues to call to people and ask them to step out in faith and move forward. And when they do he then uses their faith to change the world, to save it. He did it for Mary. He saved the world through her. And he can do it for us as well.

And so we can look at Mary and see her as a woman of true faith. We can see her resolve in a difficult situation. We can see that she was willing to step out in faith even though it would take her to a very difficult place. And we can find it in ourselves to do the same thing. Maybe we might not have an angel appear to us and tell us we are going to be the parent of the Savior of the world. But we do have God asking us to step out in faith. How are we going to respond? Amen.

An Introduction to my Advent Sermons

Assuming that we don't get snowed out this weekend (it's looking possible), I am going to have three sermons this Advent season. The third week of Advent will be our annual Christmas program put on by the Sunday School. We then will be having a worship service on Christmas morning as well, but I haven't decided whether I'm going to continue from my sermon series or just do a traditional Christmas message that morning. Anyway, this is my article for the church newsletter introducing the theme of the Advent sermons.

As Evangelicals, we tend to not spend much time thinking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. We don’t want to elevate her too high or begin to believe a number of extra-biblical things about her. So we relegate her to our manger scenes, where she sits serenely (having just given birth) and remains fairly quiet.

But I think there is something we can learn from Mary. There is an inner strength that we find in her when we read about her in scripture. There is a deep faith, a great love for Jesus, and a contemplative spirit that treasures the experiences that God has given her. Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University, has written a book about Mary entitled The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus. In the book (which is very good), he argues that Mary is not only a woman of faith, but a woman of justice, of wonder, of sorrow, of faithfulness and a woman to remember.

This Advent season we are going to be spending some time looking at Mary during worship. We are not going to be spending time looking at the controversies that surround her and I’m definitely not going to encourage anyone to pray to her. Instead we are going to look at her faith, her sense of justice and her sense of wonder and see what we can learn from them. We can learn to have a faith like Mary’s, one which faces great peril to do what God has asked. We can learn from Mary’s sense of justice, she saw God as a God who could overturn sin in the world and bring justice to the poor and the weak. And we can learn to ponder the ways God works in our life with the wonder that Mary had. In Luke there is a common refrain in the stories we hear about Jesus’ birth and childhood: Mary pondered these things in her heart. We can learn to do the same.

So I encourage you to come on a journey with me this Advent season. I encourage you to come back 2000 years with me as we look at the life of a young woman who answered God’s call to a life of faithfulness. We will see that it was a difficult path that Mary took. We will see that when she said “yes” to God, she gave up a lot in her life. She would eventually see her son die a horrible death at too young an age. But Mary’s faith is what allowed God to send his Son into the world and for this we are very grateful. So, let us follow the path that Mary trod. Let us learn from her, not because she is better than us, but because she is one of us, one of us who allowed God to truly work in her life. And let us hope to do the same in our lives.

Revelation 1:4-8 "Jesus Is Coming"

I did not like this sermon terribly well on paper. It did not flow and I was a bit worried about preaching it. But, as usual, I was surprised when I did preach it as it really did preach well. Of course, some things were changed as I preached the message. I spent more time on the idea of worship being connected to heaven (as the story of the Orthodox Church coming to Russia led me). But here is the sermon in its written (somewhat weak) form.

My mother doesn’t like watching movies with sad endings. Her reasoning behind this is quite simple. She feels that she has enough bad things that she has to deal with in real life, enough things to make her feel bad about the world around her. This is especially true as she works at a hospital and often sees people in bad situations. When she wants to take a break from the world, when she wants to relax and sit down to something that she hopes she will enjoy, she wants it to end on a positive note.

When we have watched a movie that we wanted her to see, often the movie will have a part of it where things aren’t going well, but if we assure her that the movie ends well, she will often be able to make it through the difficult parts. And a good, strong, happy ending often makes the hard times in a movie or a book well worth it.

Today we are celebrating “Christ the King” Sunday. This is the week that we celebrate that Jesus is going to return to this earth in power and in glory. He is going to right all the wrongs and put an end to sin and evil. This is the week where we look forward to what is to come and allow ourselves to hold fast to the promise. Like my mom and movies, we can find strength through the difficult times in our lives because we know that there is a happy ending. We know that Jesus is triumphant; we know that we have picked the winning side. And hopefully this gives us strength, hopefully this gives us courage, hopefully this allows us what we need to make it through the difficult times, the hard times in our lives.

Let us open in prayer

I. The Beginning and the End

The book of Revelation can be confusing. It can be so confusing that it actually comes with a warning label. Now, when you go to a store and look at music or DVDs you will see them rated so you know what it is you will get. The book of Revelation is sort of like this. Except the warning label isn’t on the cover, it’s at the end of the book, after you’ve read it. It tells us that if you hear the words of prophecy in this book and add to them or subtract from them, the same will happen to you. And yet I know of a lot of people who have added or subtracted from the words and prophecies of Revelation. It is hard to read the book of Revelation without adding to it or subtracting from it, without working through it to try to make it make sense in some way. Many churches have avoided this by avoiding the book altogether, but this also can be dangerous, as the book of Revelation has something important to say to each of us.

But I know that it took me a while to find out what the important thing that Revelation had to say was. Eventually, though, it did come to me, and I don’t mean that it came to me through some great revelation or great epiphany, it came to me as I studied the book with fellow students in college. We discovered and we realized that the book of Revelation isn’t as much about laying out the future as it is about worshipping God and Jesus. It is a book about worship. John, when he receives this great vision tries to kneel down and worship the angel who is sharing this vision with him, and the angel says to worship God alone.

Throughout Revelation people are worshipping all sorts of things, and the true church, the real Christians are the ones who worship God alone. And, I think this is where it becomes most clear, this vision was given to a church who was facing persecution and even death for their faith. If they chose not to follow the worship practices of the world around them, they could die for this. And Revelation offers real and strong hope to them. It tells them that the world will seem to get horrible, but in the end they will join with all of God’s saints in worshipping Jesus at the foot of his throne.

The beginning and the end of the book talk about the fact that Jesus is coming again. The book automatically shows us that God’s idea of time is a bit different from ours, because Jesus says that he is coming back soon, and it’s been 1900 years since this was written. But this does not mean that we can ignore the promise here at the beginning and the end of the book. Jesus will come back again, he will come back in glory and bring an end to the evil in this world. This becomes very real and a very important part of the book when we realize what it is that the people the book was being sent to were going through. We see how important it is when we notice that the words we read this morning from Revelation 1, specifically verses seven and eight are repeated, at some points almost word for word, in Revelation 22, verses 12-13, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” And then, at the very, absolute end of the book, at verse 20, again we here, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

When all else is said and done, when you’ve plugged in the maps of how the last days are going to work themselves out, when you’re done trying to figure out who the Anti-Christ is or the ten headed dragon or the new city of Babylon, the center of this book is there right at the beginning and right at the end. Jesus is coming back. He will return with a great reward and all people will bow before him. And here we are, in the midst of everything in this world, and we have the opportunity to bow before him now.

II. Why Worship

One might ask why it is that we worship God. After all, why do we need to sing him praise, without our songs of worship and praise is God any less holy or righteous or great? Of course not. But we worship him because it is a response to what he has done for us. I like to tell people that the reason for worship is that we are responding to the great things that God has done. We are saying thank you, we are reminding each other of how great our God is, we are reminding ourselves of God’s work in this world. Worship is our time to think back on the ways that God has been faithful to us and remind ourselves of the great things that God has done.

We are about to reset the clock on the church year and prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming and birth. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent and we remember those who awaited the coming of the Messiah with bated breath. And we remember that with the knowledge that the Messiah did come and did great things in his time on this planet. And at Eastertide we celebrate Jesus’ greatest accomplishment, his resurrection from the dead. In worship we remember the great things that God has done. We act them out in unique and powerful ways.

But we also remember that the story isn’t over, we aren’t just remembering that Christ came 2000 years ago, born of a virgin, teaching and preaching around Galilee, suffering and dying for our sins, being raised from the dead to reign with God the Father. The Bible tells a great story of God interacting with God’s people again and again and continuing to work in their lives to bring them closer to him. But the story presented in the Bible, is not over. We haven’t yet seen the ending. Today we celebrate that the ending is yet to come, and a glorious ending will it be. You see, we worship God because of what he has done, but that isn’t the only reason we worship him. We also worship him because of what he is yet to do.

Not only that, worship is a piece of how we experience heaven. The story is told of how Christianity was introduced to Russia. More than 1000 years ago Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev was interested in selecting an appropriate religion for his new nation. His emissaries investigated the main religions of the day, including Roman Catholicism and Islam. But it was only after visiting the church in Constantinople, where the Orthodox Church was based that they found what they were looking for. In their report to the duke, the emissaries noted that in Orthodox worship there was such solemn splendor that they had a hard time knowing whether they were in heaven or on earth.

Now we can argue about the concept of a leader of a country deciding the religion and faith of his people and we can argue a bit about the wonders of the Orthodox faith, but this story does give us a great example of what our worship has the opportunity to be. It is our chance to not only remember the past and what God has done for us, but it also is the opportunity for us to experience a glimpse of heaven even now.

III. The New Heaven and the New Earth

Jesus is coming again. It could be today, it could be another 1000 years from now. We don’t know the day nor the hour, but we do know that he will return, and it will be glorious. Do you see the hope that this offers us? We have a happy ending to look forward to and so we can face whatever difficulties we worry about. The concerns, the pains, the trials that are so very real to you today, that seem overwhelming, will be as nothing compared to the joy and contentment you will experience when Jesus returns. Though this present earth is messed up and full of evil, the new earth will truly be a glorious thing.

We worship a king who will be a just and mighty ruler. We worship a king who will protect us from all evil and keep us from all pain. We worship a king who will not lord it over us but will welcome us along with all of his subjects to the great banquet feast. Heaven is a wonderful thing to look forward to; it is a glorious future for us. And it is really in or future. It isn’t some myth that we’re being sold. It isn’t a placebo to help us get through our difficult lives. It is a true hope of what is to come.

So let us live our lives looking forward. Let us catch a glimpse of Christ, our King, who will take us to a better place: a place of glory, a place of peace. Let us worship God today knowing that we will join with all people to worship him on that last day. And let us catch a glimpse of that great promise, that Christ is coming again and we have something amazing and wonderful to look forward to. Amen.

Luke 6:20-31 "What's a Saint?"

I. A Saint?

A question I like to ask myself about this time every year is, “What is a saint?” Now there are a couple ways to answer the question. The first, most obvious answer is that a Saint is a member of a football team located in New Orleans. Of course, this is not the answer I’m looking for. Others will look at the proper, catholic definition for a saint: someone who has passed away who was a strong Christian through their lives, and who had some miracle attributed to them by the Catholic Church after their death. I’m not terribly comfortable with this definition either. Though the Catholic Church is fairly rigorous with their desire for proof for miracles, I’m not sure miracles play any role in the qualifications for sainthood. And what’s up with the whole having miracles attributed to you after your death. How can they prove that you are connected to the miracle after you’ve gone on to be in Jesus’ presence? I figure the real saints are going to be too busy worshiping God to spend too much time worried about doing miracles down here on earth.

So, I guess I’m stuck with the good ol’ protestant definition of saint: someone who is a child of God, someone who has been saved by Christ. The early Protestants did a good job of democratizing our understanding of sainthood. They said that there aren’t different levels of Christianity. There aren’t normal Christians and Super Christians. Instead, once we have accepted Christ, we are all saved and we are all, therefore, saints. A saint isn’t a perfect person, a saint is a forgiven sinner. And today, as we celebrate All Saints Day, we remember the saints who have gone before us, guiding our path with their witness, and we look at our own calling as saints as well.

II. Qualifications

Well, since the concept of saint has been brought to the masses, since we recognize that all of us are saints we might choose to allow ourselves the easy way out. We might allow ourselves to figure that since we’ve been saved, since we’ve prayed the prayer, we’re where we need to be and don’t need to do much else. If we allow ourselves to live this way, I believe that we are making a mistake.

You see, I don’t think that it’s an accident that the scripture for All Saints Sunday comes from Luke 6. Jesus is describing here what it is that he calls us to be as his followers. Jesus is telling us what the qualifications for a saint are. Jesus is reminding us of what it means to be a child of God. There’s nothing in here about praying a prayer or accepting Jesus into your heart. No, Jesus is calling us to something deeper and more meaningful. Jesus is calling us to faith and faithfulness. Here, in Luke 6, we have a description of what a child of God looks like; here we have qualifications if we are interested in taking that on in our lives. I think it’s important, with our protestant theology, to realize that this description, these qualifications, aren’t just for a few, they are for all saints, all Christians.

And so we look at them and find ourselves wanting:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

I squirm when I read these verses. First of all there’s the whole part about hungering and weeping and being poor. It seems here that God wants his children to be poor. This doesn’t match what I’ve been taught about Christianity. Doesn’t God want the best for me? Well, yes, but the best doesn’t necessarily have to do with money. It is much easier to read Matthews sermon where Jesus talks about being poor in spirit and hungering for righteousness. And I know that Jesus taught using those words some times. But other times, Jesus taught using these words and I find them a bit harder to accept. Being poor, weeping, hungering, these are good things. God makes promises to those who endure these things because he honors people who go through them. In Jesus’ eyes, being a saint is about suffering for God. Again, I squirm when I read this. I’m not comfortable with this message, but that is what it is.

This is not the Christianity that I was sold. There was nothing in it about suffering. Oh, there are Christians in other parts of the world who have to suffer for their faith, there are Christians in the past who were persecuted because of what they believed, and we can look up to these martyrs, but we also thank God that we don’t have to deal with the things they deal with.

And then we come to this passage, telling us that God blesses those who are persecuted, telling us that the riches the world has to offer aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, telling us that suffering for the sake of Christ is actually a good thing.

Jesus didn’t just preach this, he lived it. He lived a life of suffering. Jesus could have come to earth as a king. He could have ruled from a palace with many servants. But he chose the life of a homeless man during his three year ministry. He chose to travel from town to town and learn to rely on those around him to meet his needs. He could encourage his disciples to ask God for their daily bread because that is the way that he lived. So he wasn’t looking down at the poor when he told them they would be blessed. He wasn’t giving platitudes from on high. He was speaking from among them.

Jesus knew what hunger was as well, he knew what it was to weep. These were real things to him. And Jesus knew what it meant to suffer for his message. For, he suffered in the ultimate way as he headed to the cross. These were real things to him. This is the way that he lived. And he told his disciples, and I believe, us as well, that this is the way that the child of God is to live.

III. A Cloud of Witnesses

Have you turned your life over to Jesus? Terrific! Did you pray a prayer asking Jesus into your heart? Wonderful! Now, find a way to start living it. Being a saint, which we all are, means that we are called to a difficult life. It means that life can and often will be difficult. It means a life of sacrifice. It means that you can’t always put your own needs first. Often we forget about the work involved in being a saint, and yet, there it is. There aren’t levels of Christianity. There aren’t normal Christians and then Super Christians who really have to work at it. We are all called to work at it in our own way in our own lives.

Think back to those saints who have gone before. Think back to those parents and grandparents that truly lived the life. Think of the example that they have been to you. And remember how much they put into their faith. Remember how God came first in their lives. And know that if we want to truly honor them then we are called to the same life of sacrifice for our faith. We will find the same blessing in Jesus’ eyes that they found when we are willing to suffer for God.

Paul tells us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. He reminds us that we are not alone in our faith. We can remember those who have gone before, we know that there are children of God around the world today. He offers this comfort. But it is not only comfort. It is also encouragement for us to struggle on. Since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, we can struggle on in the faith. Since we have saints who have gone before us, since we are standing on their shoulders, we cannot just sit back on our laurels and allow our faith to be simple and easy. So let us seek to be the children of God that Jesus calls us to be. Let us seek to be the saints that Jesus calls us to be. It isn’t easy, but we’re in good company, and we have many saints who have gone before cheering us on and encouraging us forward. Amen.

John 2:13-22 "Jesus and Reformation"

I. Luther’s Reformation

About 500 years ago there was a problem in the church. People did not have access to God’s word and basically took the church at their word. And people in power in the church took advantage of this. And Martin Luther entered into this story by seeing that the church was abusing its power and doing what he could to put an end to that abuse. Martin Luther didn’t want to break off from the Catholic Church, at least initially, he wanted to see that church reform and take back the truth that they had once held to.

But truths that seemed obvious to Luther as he studied scripture were not as obvious to those in charge and the Catholic Church decided that it wasn’t in need of reform. And therefore Luther broke off from the Catholic Church and began a pattern that has continued for 500 years that when people disagree with what the church says about something, they leave and start over.

I actually find this kind of sad. On the one hand, Luther’s complaints about the church were real and needed to be heard and the changes he suggested were changes that needed to be made. It was more than necessary for people to have access to Scripture in their own language so they could learn from it themselves instead of relying on others to tell them what it meant. And the horrible idea of indulgences, that you can buy forgiveness from your sins, is definitely something that needed to fall by the wayside. But it is sad that the church had to fracture. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say that there is one church and we are all a part of it together? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could disagree about some of the things that the Bible talks about without feeling the need to exclude those around us because they don’t agree with us?

Luther brought reformation to the church, which it needed, but in the process he fractured the church. And I believe that there has to be a better way. The Covenant Church is also a church that separated from the church that went before it. It separated from the Lutheran church, specifically the Swedish Lutheran church. It separated from the Swedish Lutheran church because at the time Swedes were born Lutheran and you didn’t have to do much more than be born to consider yourself a Christian. The early Mission Friends believed that faith needed to be something more than this. They believed that the Swedish Lutheran Church had fallen away from truth much as Luther believed the Catholic Church had fallen away from truth. They believed that personal relationship with Jesus was necessary to faith and to religion. And again, they were right. Most Lutherans I know today would agree with that, just as most Catholics I know today agree that indulgences are wrong.

But one thing I love about the Covenant Church is that we don’t exclude others. We don’t try to teach that we are the only ones with access to truth. We see ourselves as a part of the bigger, greater church of God. And yet, as individuals, I fear that we sometimes forget this. I fear that we sometimes do think that we might have a tighter rein on truth than other churches around us. We might look down on them for their inaccuracies or problems. This is a dangerous place for us to go. This is not where reformation should lead.

II. Jesus’ Reformation

During his ministry, Jesus saw problems with the way that God’s people were worshipping God. He saw problems in their understanding of their faith and their practice of their religion and he was troubled by this. People were often too focused on following the letter of the laws instead of catching the truth behind the laws that God had given them.

It is funny because often when I hear people talk about the spirit behind a law they are doing so to explain why they did not choose to follow the law. They say that though they did not follow the letter of the law, their actions were in line with the spirit of it. Very few of us follow the letter of the law when it comes to driving the speed limit. But many of us will follow the spirit of that same law by being sure that we are driving safely and in control of our vehicle.

But when Jesus teaches people about following the spirit of the law, he doesn’t use this as an excuse to sin. No, the spirit of a law, for Jesus is more important and often harder to follow than the letter of that law. And the spirit behind all of God’s laws is to love God and love others. If you truly follow this way of life you will find yourself keeping God’s commandments in every way.

But this wasn’t the only problem that God’s people had in Jesus’ day; that they were too interested in being legalistic about God’s laws. They also weren’t worshipping right. In today’s scripture we see Jesus clearing out the temple with a whip. He is upset because he came to the temple hoping to find a place where people were worshipping God in truth and love and instead he found a marketplace. He was hoping that it would be a place where God was exalted but instead he found it to be a place where money and profit were exalted. Those in power, the religious leaders, instead of wanting to make God and worship available to everyone, were interested in figuring out how they could profit from the people’s faith. When people are trying to profit from other’s faith, there is a problem. This is obvious in today’s story, when Jesus saw people selling animals for sacrifice in the temple grounds. But it is also something that happens in other ways. Politicians on both sides of the isle use the faith of the voters to encourage them to vote for them. They are profiting from people’s religion. The Christian music industry has had the same problem. It started out being people who wanted to allow music to worship and serve God and in some places it has turned into a place where musicians can be discovered, their faith is serving their desire to be famous. They are profiting from their faith.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t allow people to make money in Christian enterprises. God put together a system in the Old Testament for the priests to be able to lead in worship without having to find other work so that they could dedicate their lives to him. But when our religion tries to combine with something else, one always ends up serving the other; be it money or politics or music or power. And unfortunately the case is that people head into the arena with the idea that power or politics or money will serve their faith and it gets turned around somehow and they end up selling out, not intentionally, not even realizing it sometimes, and their faith ends up being second to them after whatever else it is they are serving.

In his cleansing of the temple Jesus spoke very clearly against this. He made it clear that God’s house wasn’t to be a means to an end, but rather an end in itself. What is interesting is that later in the New Testament we are told that our bodies are temples to the Lord, that we are God’s house. When we realize this Jesus’ cleansing of the temple takes on a whole new meaning. By clearing out all that is turning the temple away from focusing on God, Jesus is showing what he does in each of us when we allow ourselves to be his temple. It’s a powerful image, and one we need to pay attention to; as individuals and as a church.

III. Reformation Today

You see, even though we have the Holy Spirit, for some reason the church and God’s people continue to get away from the truths that God has. In Jesus’ time it was related to money. People were using worship to make money. In Luther’s time part of the problem was also money. The church wanted to make money from their people and so came up with the horrible idea of indulgences. But money isn’t the only thing that has turned God’s people away from truth. People in power often do everything they can to hold on to it. And corruption happens.

The fact is that sin can be just as strong in and among God’s people and God’s church and we should be on guard to keep our church from getting off track. Reformation happened when Jesus tried to tell the people of his day how to worship God in truth. It happened 500 years ago when Martin Luther saw that the Catholic Church was heading the wrong direction. It happened 130 years ago when the Mission Friends saw that the Swedish Lutheran Church was only a husk of what it was supposed to be and formed their own denomination, the Covenant. And reformation happens today each and every time that God’s people stand up for truth instead of letting those in leadership over them tell them what to believe and how to worship.

Reformation has this protestant, old, sound to it. It sounds a bit stuffy, even. And we don’t always like to focus on the parts of our faith and our faith heritage that sound stuffy. But reformation is important in the church. It is the time when the church refocuses on what’s important. It is the time when the church gets back on track. It is the time when God’s people decide to be serious about following God in their worship and in their whole lives. And God’s people are in constant need of reformation. But perhaps we need to have a different term for it. Instead of calling it reformation, maybe we need to look at it as revival. Revival is when God’s people get back on track, back to the basics, back to loving God and loving others. Often when we think of revival, we think of tent meetings and we think of people becoming Christians. But that is not what revival is. Revival is when the church is revived. It is when those who are already Christians get on the right track, when they get back to what is important.

This is what Martin Luther wanted to see the church get back to in his day. This is so much what the early Mission Friends were about when they started meeting for their Bible studies. And this is what Jesus was about as he taught throughout Judea and Jerusalem and when he cleansed the temple, trying to get God’s people and their leaders back on track. This is what we are called to be about as well. And we need to look at ourselves and see if we are fulfilling the purpose that God has called us to. If we are, then that is wonderful and we need to continue on the path we are headed. But if we are not centered on loving God and loving others, then we need to have our temple cleansed, we need revival among ourselves, we need to be reformed into what God has called us to be.

Genesis 32:22-30; Luke 18:1-8a “Struggling with the Lord”

I feel like I’m being a bit bi-polar in my last three sermons. I’m moving from one extreme to the other. Two weeks ago I spent time talking about finding God in the bad times. I talked about how sometimes bad things happen to good people and this can help us to grow closer to God. And then last week we looked at the importance of being thankful for all that God has given us. And now this week I’m looking again at struggling with God as we read about Jacob as he wrestled with God and the woman who pestered the judge until she received what she wanted.

I must explain that the reason I’m going from one extreme to the other has nothing to do with me. Rather, I have been following the church lectionary and preaching on passages that are suggested to preach on each Sunday. And so, it is not necessarily my fault that we are going from extreme to extreme. And yet, it is not the lectionary that tells me what to preach out of the scripture, it just suggests what scripture to preach from. So it is partially me who is seeing such divergent things in the scriptures week to week.

But I like to believe that I am not writing my sermons by myself, but am speaking words that the Holy Spirit has given me. I believe that as the Holy Spirit convicts me and helps me to see God’s Holy Word in new light, I can share this with you.

And when I look at these diverse scriptures I see that though I am talking one week about what to do when bad things happen, the next week about thanking God for his gifts and provisions, and then the third week talking about struggling with God; in the midst of all this, God’s word does not contradict itself. Instead, we see God at work in different ways at different times. We see that God reaches out to his people in a way that they can understand and he meets them where their needs are. And so, today, let us pray that God meets us wherever we are and whatever our needs are.

Let us open in prayer

I. Fighting God

Have you ever felt that life was really a struggle? Have you felt that you were fighting an uphill battle and the world around you seemed set to keep you from succeeding?

What do you do when you find yourself in this kind of situation? Do you give up and stop struggling and let the forces around you decide your fate? Or do you fight on and attempt to overcome?

Often, when I find myself in this sort of situation; when ends aren’t meeting and everything seems to be set against me; I turn to God and ask for his help. Often it is when I am struggling against the impossible that I realize that it is God that I need to rely on, not myself.

But there are times where this is not possible. These are the times where my struggle isn’t against the world, but rather is against God himself. Now you can look at me and say that I’m a pastor so I don’t struggle against God. But this is not true. I think we all, at times, find ourselves in a struggle against God. We all, at times, find ourselves seeking our own desires and our own wants instead of truly trying to live as God has called us. We all find ourselves desiring control over our own lives instead of allowing God to be our pilot. We want Jesus sitting next to us in our car as our co-pilot, telling us where to turn, but we have the choice whether to turn where he tells us. But God doesn’t want to be our co-pilot, he wants us to hand the keys over to him so that we are allowing him to take us where he wants.

There’s something about the way we are as humans. Some might like to call it a part of human nature. I think a better description is that it is a part of our sin nature. But in the end, we like to be in charge. This gives us strength. It allows us to do things and go places that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to do if we just went with the flow. But when we are constantly trying to be in charge we forget that Christ is not only our Savior but also our Lord and King. And when we spend our whole life struggling, we will find ourselves growing weary, much like Jacob.

II. Being in Charge

Jacob, in today’s first scripture, was someone who liked to be in charge. He spent his whole life fighting with people. He spent his whole life scheming against those around him. He didn’t necessarily do this because he wanted to fight with people, though sometimes it might feel that way. No, he struggled because it was the only way he was going to make it in the world. The world is a difficult place and if you aren’t looking out for yourself, no-one will. This is what he believed and this is how he lived. He was the second born of two brothers and so the inheritance and the blessing that his father had to share was destined to go to his older twin brother, leaving him with nothing. And so he schemed and plotted and made sure that his father blessed him and his brother sold him his inheritance rights.

His father-in-law tricked him by having him marry the wrong daughter after seven years of work so that he could marry the love of his life. Jacob had to deal with the fact that his father-in-law was scheming to get the best of him and so he had to always be one step ahead of him to make sure that he wouldn’t be taken advantage of again.

Jacob’s second wife, the one he loved, schemed to steal idols from her father as Jacob and his family left to head back to his homeland, putting Jacob and his family at serious risk of dangerous retribution from her father. Life was not easy for Jacob and he had to struggle just to make it.

And so, one night, Jacob was by himself, having sent his family ahead to meet his brother from whom he had stolen his birthright. And that night was spent wrestling with God. And most people might go ahead and give up and stop wrestling. But not Jacob. He wrestled through the night and would not yield. And as daylight came, God, or an angel of God, the Bible isn’t clear, cheated in the way that only God can. He caused Jacob’s hip to be wrenched as he fought. But still Jacob fought on. He didn’t know how to do anything else. And in a way, Jacob won the fight. For God, or the angel, or whatever it was, wanted Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refused unless he received a blessing. And God blessed Jacob with a new name, Israel.

In hearing this story from the Old Testament, my first thought is to belittle Jacob for continuing to fight with God, for continuing to wrestle. Couldn’t life have been so much easier for him if he had just let God win on that night in the desert? But he is blessed and God seems to think that the struggle is worthwhile.

Is the struggle worthwhile? Is it okay to fight with God? To better understand the answer to this question we need to turn to the next scripture that we read this morning, Luke 18. This parable by Jesus tells of a woman, a widow, who kept pestering a judge who was not just that she might receive justice. And because she does not give up, because she continues the good fight, the struggle, the judge hears her and gives her what she asks. And Jesus tells us that here is an example of a corrupt judge doing what is right because she continued to struggle with him, how much more will a just God do what is right if we are persistent?

What we discover when we look at this scripture and others that tell of people struggling against God is that God actually does want us to struggle in certain instances. When what we are standing for is just and merciful, he wants us to stand up to everybody, even him. And therefore you have Moses talking God out of destroying the people of Israel, reminding God of his mercy. And here you have the widow asking for justice. Perhaps God wants us to own the issues of justice and mercy more than we do, and so he causes us to have to fight for these things in our world and in our lives.

III. Stop Struggling

But when we are struggling because we want to be in control, then the struggle is not a healthy one. When we are struggling against God because we don’t like where he is taking us or what he is calling us to do, then our struggle is a sin. When we find ourselves struggling with God for control of our lives, we need to turn away from this. This isn’t always easy to do. Sometimes you have to be somewhat creative in finding a way to do this.

A Christian singer knew how much he wanted to have control over his own life and how much he wanted to be in control. He also knew that God was calling him to turn his whole life over to him. And so he did something drastic. He was making good money as a Christian singer and he knew that if he received his paychecks, he would end up using them in an unhealthy way. But if he put himself on an allowance and had a board of trustees decide what to do with the rest of his money, where to donate it, then he wouldn’t find himself struggling with God over his finances. Instead he would be able to obey God and allow God to guide him completely. By taking the opportunity to rebel away from himself, he was able to do what he felt God was calling him to do.

This is just one example of someone making sure that they don’t spend their lives fighting God in areas where they shouldn’t. There are others. Maybe giving God control means removing temptations from your life. Maybe it means giving up things in your life that distract you from your relationship with him. Maybe it just means that you need to lay down your arms and surrender to him. Surrender is never easy. It doesn’t feel very right. When you surrender it feels like you have lost. And yet, when you surrender to God you aren’t losing at all. Instead you will discover that by surrendering to him you will win something greater than the control that you lost. You will win peace of mind and strength to get you through.

In what areas of your life are you fighting God? What parts of your life have you not let go of? Where do you need to invite God in and allow him to have control? Life is so much more work when you spend it fighting God. It is much easier once you give in and allow him control. Ask God for help. Ask him to be more than your co-pilot. Allow him to be your Lord and King. With God in charge you will discover that you don’t need to fight quite so hard. And you will discover that life without the fighting is much simpler. So give over control to him. It is well worth it.

Luke 17:11-19 “Thankful Hearts”

A new book that came out this month is threatening to be the next self-help superstar. The book is entitled Thank You Power and argues that the secret to life, the secret to success and blessing, is saying “thank you.” In the book we are told that by focusing on the things that are going well and being thankful about them, we will begin to see life as a more positive experience and by seeing the world as more positive, we will find more to enjoy and therefore be thankful for.

Now, I am usually fairly critical of the self-help craze and every scheme that someone comes up with that ensures good living. Self-help books have come and gone and this one is just going to be one in a long line of books designed to help people have more positive thinking.

But looking at the theme of the book and some of the basic things it says and realizing that I have not read it, only read about it, I find the truth here to be an important one, though it is definitely not a new one. You see, the concept of being thankful for what you have is a concept that goes way back throughout the history of the world. And it is an important part of the Christian faith.

Now you may wonder what makes being thankful an important part of being a Christian. If I asked a large group of Christians what it meant to be a Christian, I am sure that none of them would put being thankful up on the top of the list of things that show that someone is a Christian. Actually, Christians often have the stereotype of not being very thankful. But it is central to our faith and our belief that we live lives of thanksgiving. When we realize that life is a gift from God we then realize that we do truly have much to be thankful for. And even when things don’t seem to be going as well as we’d like, there is still much to be thankful for. So, today we are going to give thanks to God, for he has done marvelous things and is worthy to be praised.

Let us open in prayer

I. Healing

We all know that Jesus heals throughout the gospels. He sees people in need and he reaches out to them with his healing hands. When people ask for help, he offers it. Jesus shows us God’s love again and again throughout his ministry by touching someone’s life with healing where they need it most. I believe that this doesn’t end at the end of the gospels, but rather it continues to present day. I believe that Jesus is still in the business of healing people. But, I’m not sure that Jesus is quite as obvious about healing as he was when he walked the earth.

Actually, I need to take that back. Jesus never made a big deal about healing people. Often, as he healed people, he told them not to tell anyone what had happened to them. He tried, back when he was walking on the earth, to keep his healing quiet, and I believe that the same is true today. Though Jesus reached out in love and compassion towards people in need, he didn’t want healing to be the center of his ministry. He had something more important to bring the world. And so Jesus did heal, but he kept it quiet and he focused more on his teachings than on his healings. He actually got upset with people when they focused too much on the signs and wonders he did, he would much rather have them focus on his words. And yet he continued to do signs and wonders and he continued to heal throughout his ministry and life, and I believe, ever since.

I also believe that the healings that Jesus does today aren’t always the way that people expect to be healed. Sometimes Jesus reaches out his healing hand and heals broken relationships or brings peace to people in times of crisis. Healing doesn’t necessarily have to be physical to be healing.

The scripture we read today is one of many stories about healing. It is a story about Jesus reaching out in compassion to a group of men who were suffering from leprosy. They cried out for him to heal them and he did. Often this is where the stories of Jesus’ healings ended. Jesus healed people and then went on his way. But this time someone does something unusual. One of the men who was healed came back to Jesus. This man came back to Jesus and thanked him. We are told that when he saw that he was healed, he came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

We are also told that this man was a Samaritan, someone who the Jews of Jesus’ day did not get along with and whom they did not think much of. For a Samaritan to do something right was unusual to say the least. But this Samaritan did something right. He came to Jesus and thanked him for healing him.

II. A Thankless Society

It seems like such a minor thing, coming back to Jesus and saying “thank you.” It seems so minor that only one of the ten people Jesus healed felt the need to do it. Were the others grateful? I’m sure they were. But they didn’t think to come back and show their gratitude to Jesus. Instead they got caught up in the excitement of their newfound health and focused on that. They had just been healed, they needed to share this with friends and family; they needed to get on with the life that Leprosy had taken from them. And in the process they forgot to thank Jesus for what he had done for them.

I truly believe that this is a central part of the problem that faces our society today. We are too busy working for what we want and then enjoying it all so much that we forget to thank God for all that we have. I remember when I was ten I traveled with my parents to the South Pacific. We spent some time on the Island Kingdom of Tonga. We had the opportunity to worship with the people of Tonga and we went home with a man and visited his house. I was shocked by the house that he and his family lived in. It was a one room hut with some rolled up mats for the floor. That was everything they owned. It was everything they had. And the people of Tonga had a joy about them, a thankful, grateful spirit that I have never seen in America. Whereas here in America people continue to complain about the problems in the world and long for more than they currently have, and as they complain and grumble they miss out on the many things that God has gifted them with. The people of Tonga know that they have much to be thankful for because they rely on God to meet their daily needs and give them their daily bread. And when the daily bread was more than they expected, they would feast and celebrate. And when it was less than they needed they would pray and ask God to step in with more.

I wonder if this sounds familiar to you. This way of life is what God prescribed for the people of Israel as they wandered through the wilderness, learning to rely on God for their needs, and sometimes finding joy in the small gifts that God gave them.

But we rely not on God but on ourselves. We convince ourselves that we are the ones responsible for the good things that happen to us as well as the bad things that happen to us. And so when someone is down on their luck, we say that it is their own fault and when someone is truly blessed, we credit it to them. But the truth is that we are less masters of this world than we’d like to believe. And when we realize that by giving thanks we will break through this and begin to see that God is a good and gracious master, the King of Love, the Gifting Giver.

III. Thank You

But what does this saying “thank you” look like? How can we practice it? The author of the book, Thank You Power says that she had a notebook which she takes around with her everywhere she goes and she writes down three or four things each day that she is thankful for. This actually is a good start. But it is only a start.

Do you spend much time in your prayer life saying “thank you” or do you just get to the things that you want from God? Do you remember that life and love and relationships are a blessing from God and therefore thank him for them? I believe that one small step to healthier families, healthier relationships, healthier marriages, is remembering that they are a gift from God and thanking God for our loved ones. When you begin thanking God for those around you, you will discover that your attitude will change toward them and you will begin to see the blessing that they are instead of all the troubles they bring.

The same, I believe, can be true about our work. No job is wonderful all the time. All jobs have their ups and downs. But when we thank God for our work, and the way that he has blessed us, we remember the good things in our job and it makes the bad just that much more bearable.

With thankful hearts we discover that God is at work in the world around us. He is continuing to heal. He is continuing to make a difference. And when we focus on thanking him for these things, when we live lives of gratitude, we will find that we will enjoy life all the more. We will also find that our relationship with God will grow.

Jesus healed ten men of leprosy that day. They all had an amazing miracle in their lives that Jesus brought to them. But only one of them really connected with Jesus in relationship. And that is the one who came back to say thank you. That man, a Samaritan, was able to connect in relationship with Jesus in a wonderful way. And in the end, that is what saying “thank you” really does for us. Yes it helps adjust our attitude so we might not be as cynical and troubled about the world around us. But more importantly, it connects us to God, to Jesus in a powerful way. It deepens our relationship with God by giving us an opportunity to communicate with him. It reminds us of who it is that is responsible for all we have and all we are.

So I encourage you today to give it a try. Try remembering who it is who is responsible for the good in your life. Try going before him and saying “thank you.” You will be blessed through this and your relationship with God will grow through this.