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.