Lack of Updates?

If you're wondering whether I've stopped preaching, I haven't. It's just that my sermon writing style has progressed a bit, and I'm not putting them down on paper in sentence by sentence form anymore, rather I'm writing the sermons as outlines. They are never preached word for word anyways, and this also allows me to move around and away from the pulpit as I don't find myself focusing on saying something in a specific way.

Therefore, I'm not posting sermons here for the time being. If I end up writing a manuscript for a sermon in the future, it will end up here.

Exodus 3:1-15 "A Burning Bush"

This last week all eyes were upon Denver as the Democratic party nominated Barack Obama as their candidate for President. This coming week eyes will turn to Saint Paul as the Republican party does the same for John McCain.

When we look at the leadership that these two candidate offer this country and we look at Moses who we read about this morning and who was the greatest leader in Israel’s history, we see that there is much that is very different than the leadership they promise and the leadership he offered.

Where Obama is known for his wordcraft and ability to speak eloquently about many topics, Moses didn’t want the leadership job precisely because he didn’t feel that he spoke well at all, and he feared that he could not connect with his people. Where McCain has spent years in service to this country, both in the military and then in the senate, Moses spent his life disconnected from the people he would lead, growing up as a part of the Egyptian ruling family that subjugated his people to slavery and without any leadership experience at all.

But there are also things that both candidates have in common with Moses. Moses, like McCain, entered into his leadership at a late age, Moses was 80 when God came to him in the burning bush. And Moses, like Obama, had someone with him who made up for the areas where he seemed inexperienced. Obama has Biden, Moses had his brother Aaron.

These are interesting comparisons and contrasts to make, but we aren’t going to spend our time today looking at present day politics and seeing what Moses has to tell us about them. Rather, we’re going to look at our own lives, our own journeys with God, and see what Moses has to tell us about following God’s guiding in our lives.

I. From Shepherd to Leader

Chapter 3 of Exodus begins with Moses as a shepherd. It is amazing to me how God continues to go to shepherds and give them such important roles in his story. We have Moses, we have David and of course, we have the shepherds who were the first to see baby Jesus. So Moses is a shepherd, and not a young one. He is 80 years old. He had spent the first 40 years of his life growing up as an Egyptian prince. He was adopted by a daughter of the Pharaoh and lived the life of royalty. But then he struck out at an Egyptian who was mistreating an Israelite slave. And he killed this Egyptian. The Israelites feared him and the Egyptians were after him. He ran away to the Sinai Peninsula. In Sinai he married and became a shepherd and spent the next forty years of his life. And now, after having lived two full and very different lives, Moses was probably ready to sit down and retire. He was probably ready to enjoy the last years of his life in peace and quiet. But as he is caring for his sheep he sees something that amazes him. A bush that seems to be on fire, but that doesn’t burn up. And Moses is curious so he goes to check it out. This is where things begin to get weird for him. For he hears a voice call to him from within the bush, and the voice calls him by name, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses responds, “Here I am.” This is the first thing to notice about Moses’ call, it is a call given directly to him. It is a message for him alone. God calls out to him by name. When we are called to serve God it isn’t always as clear as it was for Moses. I don’t think I know one person in any sort of ministry who has seen a burning bush that called to them by name. But putting that aside, it is worth knowing that God does call us specifically. God doesn’t have a bunch of things he wants done in this world and just pick names out of a hat and assign them. It may sometimes feel like that, after all, we often find ourselves doing this sort of calling at church. We need this many Sunday School teachers and so we are just going to ask people until we get enough people to say yes. But this is not the way that God works. No, God prepares us for ministry and prepares our ministries for us. Everything that Moses had done up to that point was preparing him for leading Israel out of bondage. Moses had gone through much and it was all designed very intentionally to make him ready for what would come. The same is true for us. The joys we’ve had, the struggles we’ve faced, all these are there to prepare us for what is to come in our lives. We can think, like Moses, that we’ve already done everything that is important. Instead we need to be prepared to allow God to send us. And we need to be ready to hear God’s call when it comes, and not ignore it but allow it to speak to us, to call us by name. When you get that call from the Christian Education committee or from the Nominating committee, listen to see if God is speaking to you through them. Is God calling you by name? Is God pushing you to continue a ministry you are involved in or move into a new kind of ministry in your life? How are you going to respond to the call?

Moses responds to God’s calling him by name by saying “here I am”. It is a simple response. It is a safe response. He acknowledges that he is there, in God’s presence, but he hasn’t committed to anything yet. Smart.

II. Holy Ground

But then God asks him to do something unusual and strange, something that doesn’t make sense to us: he asks him to take off his shoes because he is standing on holy ground. God doesn’t start right away with asking Moses to do anything crazy, lead the people out of slavery or anything, not God begins by asking Moses to take off his shoes. “Um, okay God, if you say so.”

But there is an important question here, what is it that makes this ground holy? Is it just holy because of where it is? Are there places in this world that by their very nature are holy? Or is there something more to it. Perhaps it is holy because of the bush that is burning on it. Or perhaps it is because it is a place where God is speaking.

Other people have crossed over that spot of earth since Moses. We can be sure of this. And no bush burned and no voice spoke to them. The place wasn’t holy when they passed over that space in the same way it was holy when God spoke to Moses there. I think what made the place holy is that it was a place where a person met with their God and where God gave that person a mission. God gave Moses a purpose. God gave Moses direction. And I believe that this is what made this into a holy place. A holy act was about to happen, and so God created a holy place for it.

We gather in this sanctuary and worship God here. We like to think of this as a holy place. We treat it different than other places we inhabit. No, we don’t take off our shoes as we enter this place, but there are certain unwritten rules that we follow in the sanctuary. They’re different for each of us. For some of us, we show it’s holiness by the way we dress. For others, we act different in church, more subdued. There are certain things that we would never think of doing in this place. The college I went to had originally been owned by the Catholic Church and was a school for Nuns. The chapel in the college was beautiful. When the nuns were ready to sell it there were two interested parties: our college and a police academy. The police academy wanted to take the chapel and turn it into a shooting range. Even though our college offered less money, the nuns sold it to us because we would continue to treat their chapel as a holy place. What is it that makes this place holy to us? Is it holy to us because it was holy to our parents and grandparents before us? Is it holy to us because we are told that it is holy? Or is it holy to us because it is also a place where we meet our God and where we find our mission?

III. God’s Mission and Moses’ Arguments

And now we come to the part in scripture where we see God give Moses his mission, his call. God doesn’t just tell Moses to go do this. He explains the need to Moses and gives Moses the chance to get behind it. He tells Moses about the suffering of the people of Israel and how he has heard this suffering and is going to act on their behalf. When God calls us he prepares us for this by making the need known to us. He gets us excited about making a difference. He fills us with a passion for that which he sends us to. If he is calling us to mission work, he fills us with a passion for the lost. If he is calling us to ministries of compassion and justice, he fills us with a passion for the poor and the weak. If he is calling us to work with children, he fills us with a passion for the young.

Last spring we watched the movie Amazing Grace on a couple Wednesday nights here at church. The movie is about William Wilberforce and his crusade in 18^th century Britain to end the slave trade. William felt that God called him to this mission and he worked at it year after year of failure and frustration. He almost died because the mission he was on made him so sick. And many of those who he worked with including a black former slave minister, Equiano, died before the mission was realized. It makes me wonder, does God call you to something that he won’t equip you for? I don’t believe so. I believe that God does equip us with every good gift we need to fulfill the mission he has called us to. Sometimes we might not see the results of what he is working through us, but at the same time, God doesn’t send us out there on our own just to watch us fail. God gave Moses the things he needed to lead the people of Israel. He gave William Wilberforce what he needed to put an end to the slave trade in Britain. He will give you what you need to do what he asks of you.

But we, like Moses, can argue with him about this. We can make excuses. We’re too old, we’re too young, we don’t know what we’re doing, nobody will take us seriously, we’ve already got too much going on in our lives with work and family, we cannot commit to something else, anyway that’s that pastor’s job, isn’t it? The list of excuses can go on and on. But if God is really calling us to a ministry, the excuses will not last. I have to say that in seminary I talked to a number of second career pastors who talked about having the call to ministry on their lives long before they accepted that call. They again and again talked about fighting that call in their lives. And they again and again talked about how God eventually wore them down and here they were in training for ministry. And their stories were always told as “don’t let this happen to you” stories. There is no pride in their struggle with God. It is not something that they are happy they did. They all wish they had given in to God’s will sooner. They wish they hadn’t spent so much time arguing with God.

Don’t let the fact that they all ended up going to seminary fool you though, for sometimes that is the place that God calls us, and other times God calls us to other ministry opportunities that are quite different. We are all called to ministry within our church; within our community; within our families. This ministry looks different for each of us. What is God calling for you to do? Don’t believe for a second that God is done with you. He still has a use for each of us. And don’t believe that he only calls some of his children to ministry. We are all called to lives of ministry in all we do. So what is God calling you to? How does he want you to serve him? How are you able to serve? Open yourself up to God’s call. Listen to see where he might send you. And when he calls, follow. Moses discovered that he had no option but to go where God led. He discovered that as God called him to ministry, God provided his resources for him in ministry. God will do the same for you. Perhaps God is calling you to full time ministry. If so, answer this call. But more likely, he is calling you to some other ministry in this church, in this community. Are you going to listen? Are you going to answer his call?

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 "Asking Too Much"

People have been asking about our mission trip and how things went. In the coming weeks you will get the opportunity to hear from those who went on the trip about what it was like and how it affected us. It was a powerful experience for all who went and we all have stories to tell about the trip. There were times of elation and there were times of disappointment. There were times where we realized that we were making a difference. There were times where we wondered whether we were helping at all.

As a group, we were working with each other and with two other church groups and with YouthWorks to do ministry in the community. Some of us worked with a kids club, playing with kids, showing them love that they don’t always experience in their homes, teaching them about Jesus, building relationships. Laurie, for example, had a little girl, Jaz, who would not leave her side each day we were with the kids. Others of us had the opportunity to go and help paint and clean up around some neighborhood houses. On Monday, they finished the second coat on a house that the group had worked on the previous week. Then, on Tuesday and Wednesday they moved on to another house. Unfortunately, rain hit on Wednesday. This kept them from being able to finish the work that they were doing, and the house will be completed next week by another group. The rain also affected the kids club. We were going to have a water day outside and enjoy playing in the water, but instead we had to come up with other plans. Not only that, but instead of the 30 plus kids we’d had the previous two days, only 11 showed up.

So, in the midst of the excitement, in the midst of the ministry that we were all doing, we found ourselves a bit disappointed. We weren’t able to do as much as we’d like. We weren’t able to finish up, and the rain kept kids away from us.

One of the things we’d learned is that there are definite joys in ministry, but there are also struggles and difficulties and at times we find ourselves up against a wall. It is interesting to look at Jesus’ ministry from this perspective. When did he find himself frustrated by the work he was doing? When did he feel overwhelmed? When did it seem like too much? And what did he do when this happened?

I. Difficulties in Ministry

We don’t always like to think about the frustrations that Jesus faced in his time in ministry. He was the Son of God! He had a direct communication with the Father that many of us would dream of. He could do amazing miracles and speak with an authority that we truly cannot understand. And yet he still found himself, at times, butting up against difficulty in ministry. Ministry in Jesus’ day was not easy, and he had an almost impossible task, to help God’s people to see where they’d fallen away and redirect them into right relationship with God; to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God; to prepare his followers for his own death and resurrection.

Now Jesus didn’t have some of the problems that many of us have. Last week we talked about how sometimes God’s followers find themselves reading God and his word wrong and head off in a wrong direction. I talked about how we need to be sure that when we are speaking for God that we are actually speaking God’s word and God’s truth and not our own thoughts. Jesus didn’t need to worry about this. He spoke God’s word and God’s truth each and every day. He was God’s Word. No, for Jesus the problem wasn’t communicating with God. It was communicating with humans.

I mentioned it last week and it is still true. Humans are not always terribly good listeners. God communicates with us, often quite clearly, and we somehow find ourselves getting what he is saying mixed up, confused and backwards. But that isn’t the only problem, either. Sometimes we ask too much of God. Sometimes we set up hurdles that we want God to jump over, tests that we want God to pass. This is what Jesus found himself butting against in today’s scripture.

II. Dancing to the Flute/Mourning to the Dirge

“This generation is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’”

You see, the people of Israel, the people that Jesus was trying to reach, would not be happy with what God was giving them. When God reached out to them one way, they complained that he didn’t do something else. So God did something else and they complained that he didn’t do the first. The people were putting God in a box and telling God how they wanted him to connect with them. And when he didn’t meet them the way they wanted, they dismissed him altogether.

They were saying, “we want to play the tune that you will dance to, we want you to meet us where we are at this moment.” They changed the rules so they didn’t have to listen to the messengers of God and could instead do what they wanted.

Jesus goes on to explain what this is about. You see, John the Baptist spent his life of ministry living the life of a hermit out in the desert. He wore clothes made of camels’ hair, he ate locusts and honey. He protested in the way he lived and what he ate against the self-indulgence of the world around him. And he called for people to repent, to turn from their selfish and sinful ways and turn back to God. He had an important message, one that prepared the world for the message of Jesus. And many were convinced by his message. But many others dismissed him and his message. “Look at that wild man living in the desert. He doesn’t eat or drink, he’s crazy, he’s got demons. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s crazy.”

And then there was Jesus and his ministry. He didn’t go off to the desert as radically as John the Baptist did, though he did spend some time in the desert. And he ate food and drank wine. Instead of separating himself from the self-indulgent and sinful, Jesus went to them and ate with them and visited with them and encouraged them to change their ways. And, in the same way as John, many were convinced by Jesus’ message, but others dismissed him, “He’s a glutton, he spends too much time hanging out with sinners, he likes sinners and their sins a bit too much, by spending so much time with tax collectors and prostitutes he is saying that their actions are okay. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s a glutton.”

And Jesus points out the absurdity of this reasoning. You can’t have it both ways. Stop with the character assassinations and listen to the message that both Jesus and John the Baptist are spreading.

Do you see that Jesus and John the Baptist had the same message? They both called people to repent and turn from their selfish and sinful ways. And yet they had radically different ways of sharing that message. John stood aside from the world and stood up as an example. He distanced himself from the sins so that people could experience the example that he set. Whereas Jesus entered into the dark and dirty world where people lived and met them where they were so that he could call them out. John called to them from a distance, asking them to repent. John stayed stationary and people came to him to hear his words of truth. Jesus traveled among the people and into their towns, to their dinner tables.

III. Ministry / Rest

After making this point, after venting some of his frustrations about the fickle nature of his people, Jesus then proceeded to call woe down upon the cities and towns he was visiting. We didn’t read these woes. We skipped over them. But they’re there, and they’re real. Jesus was frustrated. He and John had both been working to bring God’s truth to these people, and they were staying self-righteous and keeping with their older understanding of truth. They were allowing their own understanding to preempt God’s messengers and Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus prays about this with his Father. He takes his frustration to the Father in an interesting way. He praises God for those wise people who don’t get it, who have had God’s truth hidden from them. He praises God because though the truth is hidden from the wise, it is revealed to children. He celebrates the message that he has, knowing it is from God the Father, knowing that those who follow him will learn God’s truth. And then, in the midst of this discussion about God’s truth being hidden from the wise and revealed to the children, in the midst of this discussion about how God’s truth is only revealed to those for whom Jesus chooses to reveal it, in the midst of this problem that Jesus has with people not taking the message that he has seriously, Jesus speaks some of his most powerful words of comfort and peace: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I will give you rest. I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Knowing how ministry sometimes is, I understand this need. I wonder if Jesus himself was reminding himself that God would bring him rest for his soul and then he felt the need to share that rest with his followers. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus says. “This ministry thing, that is so difficult, that can be so complex and hard, that can at times be so frightening and frustrating, take that yoke upon you.”

On the mission trip we realized the need for rest. We were exhausted each day with not enough time to relax or recoup. And yet, as we served, even as we found ourselves frustrated, we realized that Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. For there is joy in serving God. There is peace in doing his work. There is power in being intentional about seeking God’s will. I encourage you to talk with those who were on the mission trip. Hear their stories, find inspiration in their journeys, and find ways to take Jesus’ yoke in your own life. You may find it frustrating at times, you may find it difficult. But Jesus does promise that he will give rest and there will be joy and peace. Amen.

Exodus 13:17-22 "Leading Me"

In college I had a girlfriend break up with me at a point where I wasn’t ready for the relationship to be over. She said that God had given her peace about breaking up with me. I felt that God wanted me to pursue the relationship even more, and thus I started a dangerous descent towards becoming a stalker.

You can turn on the TV to Trinity Broadcasting Network and see men and women with too many jewels on their fingers and too much makeup on their faces claiming that God has called them to share the good news that God wants to give you your every want, if you just give them the money you don’t have. I remember watching TBN once in Chicago, during one of their fund drives, where they had a guest preacher come on who only comes on when they’re asking for money. And he said that God had told him that whoever pledged $1000 to the TV station would find themselves completely out of debt within the next month. He told them to pledge $1000 and send in $100 of it right away. And he said that God would erase their debts completely. And then he had the gall to say, “if it doesn’t work, do it again!”

In May of this year, a bishop in the Episcopal church decided to bless a friend’s gay union. When asked about it, he said that it was what he felt God calling him to do. If that wasn’t bad enough, this same bishop, who theologically disagrees with much of the church, has received death threats from Christians who believe that God is calling them to kill him.

The point of this is that a lot of people “hear” God telling them to do things that I’m pretty sure God is actually not telling them to do. Realizing this sometimes can lead you to a difficult place. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night that would lead us and guide us so we would know where God was leading? Unfortunately, even this didn’t work for the Israelites when they were in the desert, as they headed off in their own direction even when God was so very clear to them.

I. Easier Said than Done

We believe that God leads us, that he guides us, that he points the way forward for us. This is a part of what we are about as Christians. It is a part of our belief. If we didn’t believe that God guided us, there wouldn’t be much point in following him. During my internship, there were three of us who regularly preached. Pastor Wilson regularly preached messages around the theme that we should obey God. Pastor Nelson regularly preached messages that reminded us to follow God. And I regularly preached messages reminding us to trust God. All of us were talking about letting God guide you and lead you and following his will for your life. And most Christians I know truly want to do this. And yet it is often something that is easier said than done.

Oh, there are certain rules and laws that we can follow to try to make sure that we are obeying God, but even these can be difficult to deal with at times. Jesus himself was attacked by the religious leaders in his day because he didn’t follow the commandments the way that they wanted him to and they thought he was ignoring God’s commands. Matthew 12 gives us a good example of this as we see Jesus breaking the Sabbath laws that the religious leaders followed. He heals on the Sabbath, he eats grain that he himself has picked on the Sabbath. He seems to be ignoring the laws and the commandments. And throughout the history of the church this has been an ongoing thing. Some Christians have done one thing and others have done something else and they both claimed that God was leading and guiding them and they both cannot be right. During the Reformation there were actually groups of Christians killing each other because of the way they baptized.

There are a couple dangers that arise when we realize this. First, some just ignore history altogether. They go ahead and figure that they’ve got it right and the Christians that disagree with them have it wrong and that’s it. This leads to a dogmatism that ignores God’s leading and ignores the Truth of scripture and instead relies on yourself to find truth. This really doesn’t seem like much of a danger until we look at the religious leaders in Jesus’ day and we realize that this is exactly what they were doing. They were putting their own understanding of who God was and what he wanted in place of truly seeking him. And Jesus came along and told them that seeking after God’s kingdom is more than just following a bunch of man-made rules. And trying to follow God’s rules doesn’t always work right either when you let your own understanding get in the way.

Unfortunately, the mantra: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it!” isn’t quite good enough. If it were we’d be following a whole different set of rules than we are today. But the other extreme is no better.

You see, the other danger is to see the confusion that the Bible sometimes brings and find yourself depressed and hopeless. If Christians throughout history cannot get it right, why should I expect that I am going to get it right? This leads to a pluralism that allows everyone to have equal claim to truth and can lead to not really believing in anything. This is something that can be seen in the New Age movement. It leads to a wishy-washy approach to theology that never stands for anything and allows anyone to believe whatever they want. And it is just as dangerous as the first danger of being too rigid.

II. The Middle Way

So, what do we do? How do we respond to God’s guidance when we have to worry about whether it is actually God that we’re hearing? I remember a professor at college drawing a picture up on the board of a road with a ditch on either side of it. He explained that to be theologically sound, we need to walk the straight and narrow path. But the problem is that there is a deep ditch on either side of the path and it becomes easier and easier to fall into one ditch or the other. Worse, when you are being careful not to fall into one ditch, you find yourself walking closer and closer to the other one. Let’s go back to one of the examples I mentioned in our opening.

Most people here would agree that the Episcopal Bishop who decided to bless a marriage of a gay couple has fallen away from the truth. He has fallen into a ditch on the left side of the path. And many, in response to this have edged more to the right side of the path, trying to stay true to the life that they believe God is calling them, trying to stay true to an orthodox and historic reading of scripture. But some, as they have moved to the right side of the path have fallen into another ditch. Perhaps this ditch is one that accepts that killing homosexuals is okay. Or perhaps it is a theology that many Christians accept that says that homosexuality is a worse sin than other sins, and one that carries a special punishment with it. These beliefs are just as much off of the truth of human sinfulness and God’s love as the blessing of a gay marriage is.

But this straight and narrow path, this middle way, isn’t about compromising. It isn’t about trying to work something out so everybody is happy. It isn’t about denying the truth so that people feel better. No, it is about staying true to God and his kingdom. It is about pursuing Christ in all you do and pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world around you. It is about asking the Holy Spirit to guide you in your study of scripture. It is about coming to the Bible with questions and allowing the Bible to answer them for you instead of trying to fit your answer into the Bible. This is hard to do. It takes humility and it takes practice.

III. Pillars to Guide Us

Today’s scripture tells of the people of Israel fleeing Egypt and preparing to travel through the desert and come to the Promised Land. And God knew that he was going to lead them in a difficult path, and they would have a hard time following him. So God gave them obvious pillars in the day and at night to lead them and guide them. The cloud by day and the fire at night told them that they were following God. The cloud by day and the fire at night told them that it was God who was guiding them, not just humans and definitely not their own desires. The cloud by day and the fire at night reminded them whose will it was that they were to follow and who it was that they should obey and who it was that they could trust.

Sometimes, when I am reading scripture, when I am trying to understand how God would work in today’s world, how God wants me to work in today’s world, I wish that I had a cloud by day and fire at night to guide me. I wish it could be that clear to me what God wanted of me. And yet, when we look at the people of Israel, with God guiding them so clearly, they still seemed to stray. They still went off on their own way. They still messed it up again and again. And I realize that the problem isn’t that God is a bad communicator. He has made it very clear to us what he wants from us. The problem is that we are bad listeners. We let too much get in our way so that we can’t hear God’s word, so that we don’t go where he is sending us, so that we find ourselves heading off on dangerous tracks instead of staying on that middle path.

And so, my prayer today for each of us is that God will give us wisdom to see where he is leading us, that he will give us humility before his scriptures so that we won’t try to read our desires into his truth, and that he will give us strength of conviction to stand true and go where he is sending us. Perhaps he is sending you to an Indian reservation in South Dakota, or perhaps he is sending you next door to a neighbor in need. Wherever he is leading you, trust his guiding voice and go where he calls. Amen.

Matthew 9:35-10:10 "Lord of the Harvest"

There is a story from the 9^th century about a group of Irish monks found floating in a boat off the shore of England. They are brought to the king, King Alfred, a pretty devout Christian, and asked to explain who they are and where they are going. The monks respond with a powerful statement of faith and trust in God: “We stole away because we wanted for the love of God to be on pilgrimage, we cared not where.”

And so these monks snuck away from their monastery, got in a boat, threw away the oars, and allowed the currents to guide them wherever they led. They wanted to follow God’s call on their lives, and they realized that they couldn’t necessarily do it cloistered amongst a group of Christians; they had to get out into the world. But they didn’t want to allow their own reasoning and reasons to get in the way of where they were going so they left their destination up to God, and trusted that he would send them to a place where they were needed.

These monks were sent out by God to make a difference in the world, and they truly relied totally and completely on him to not only show them the way, but to meet their needs upon the way. These monks lived with a ruthless trust in their heavenly Father: trusting that he would guide them, trusting that he would meet their needs, trusting that he would use them.

This doesn’t seem to be a ministry model that is pushed terribly much in today’s world. In today’s world we do surveys to see where our gifts are, we research communities to see where their needs are. Church plants go through a long and complicated process to make sure that the community the church is being planted in has the means to support the church. Church planters go through a rigorous assessment process as they determine whether they are truly called to do what God is calling them to do. And the earthly resources are hoarded and counted so that we know that we can succeed at the work we are doing.

And somehow, in the midst of this process, the Holy Spirit is ignored, the movement of God is pushed aside, ruthless trust in God is scoffed at.

I. Equipped to Share

Last week we looked at what it means to be God’s ambassadors. We looked at the fact that the people of God (in the Old Testament, the Israelites, in the New Testament and beyond, the church) are called to pursue Christ and to pursue Christ’s priorities. We looked at the fact that we are called to spread Jesus’ love and truth to the world around us, and when we refrain from doing this we are lost and without purpose. We heard the call to return to the purpose that God has placed in our lives, to share the good news with those around us. Here, in today’s scripture, we see Jesus call and equip his twelve disciples to go out and share the good news with the world around them. We see that he calls them to share the good news and we see that he then seems to send them off on their own.

This could be a scary thing for the disciples. It isn’t exactly what they signed up for. After all, they had signed on board to being Jesus’ followers. They had agreed to follow and listen to Jesus, to learn from him. And now, instead of being the followers they hoped to be, they were having the rug pulled out from under them as they were sent off on their own to preach the good news. Jesus sent them away with instructions and he sent them away with the knowledge that they could do what he was asking of them. He told them that their message was specifically for the people of Israel, the lost sheep. He focuses their mission. Jesus knew that his mission and their future mission would include the gentiles and the Samaritans, but he knew that it couldn’t all be done at once, so even though Jesus wanted to see the message of the Kingdom of God get to the whole world, he limited where he was sending the disciples. He told the disciples what their message was to be: “The kingdom of heaven is near.” And then he gave them what they needed to share that message, he told them that they would be able to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy and drive out demons.

II. Freely Give

How would they be able to do this? Because they had received these blessings from God and were told to share them with others. “Freely you have received, freely give,” Jesus says. Know that everything you do is not in your own power but is a gift from God. Know that I have blessed you greatly and now it is time for you to share that blessing with those around you. It isn’t right to hold onto the blessings of God without sharing them. It isn’t right to use the blessings of God just for yourself. Throughout the Bible, whenever anyone is blessed by God, there is the expectation that they will use the blessings to make a difference for others. Freely you have received, freely give.

And then, like the monks in the story I started with this morning, the disciples weren’t to take what they needed with them. They weren’t to plan ahead. They weren’t to even bring extra clothing. Rather they were to head out on the mission that God had given them and rely on God to meet their needs fully as they traveled from town to town. Scary. In today’s world this might mean going on a mission trip before you have raised enough money to do so. Or it might mean that a church should spend more energy and time and money (all of which are precious) to reach out to their community and meet the needs around them instead of focusing on themselves. As individuals it might mean that when you feel that God is calling you in a certain direction, moving you to a certain action, you not allow yourself to second-guess it, but rather begin to head in that direction and allow God to work.

The concept of going around in a boat with no oars is a scary one. Relying on God to point your rudder is much less comfortable than having your own hand on the rudder, guiding you where you need to go. And yet when Jesus calls us to follow him, to go where he sends us, he wants us to allow him to be in control. He promises to provide for us and he reminds us that we shouldn’t rely on ourselves and our own strengths.

III. A Few Workers

But I also want to look a bit at the scripture right before where Jesus sends his disciples out. You see, I believe that in sending his disciples off at this point, Jesus was preparing them for what they would deal with after his death and resurrection. But I also believe that he sent them off because he looked at the world around him and truly saw a world that needed help and he knew that twelve people spreading the good news of the Kingdom of God was better than just one person.

Jesus used a great farming metaphor. “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” He looked around and saw that work needed to be done, and he saw that it was more than he could do on his own. It’s like that small window of opportunity that you have to plant, or to harvest. If you don’t get the corn in the ground by a certain time, then even though you are using the same seed, even though you have the same soil, you will lose bushels because you were late getting it in. There is a timing involved in farming, a timing that is important, a timing that sometimes makes it a bit stressful to be a farmer. And Jesus was looking around at the people around him, people in need, people who needed to hear the good news of the kingdom, people who needed to be healed from a world that caused them pain. And Jesus saw their need, he saw that they were ready to hear that good news if only he had enough workers to share it. The time was short and the message needed to get out there. And so he took the disciples, who didn’t feel like they were ready, and he sent them out to share that good news.

I believe that the same is true for us today. God is taking us because once again the people around us are in need, they are needing to hear about the good news of the kingdom of God, they are needing to be healed from a world that causes them pain. And he is ready to send us out to preach the good news, to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is near. And he wants us to stop relying on ourselves, and worrying about how we’re going to do it. Rather, he wants us to rely on his power, on his guidance, and allow him to work through us. Jesus sent out his disciples because he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He knew there was too much work for just one person to accomplish it all. The same is true today. We cannot rely on the pastor to do it all, we cannot say that the church board is going to do all the work at the church and all we have to do is come. No God is calling all of us to move forward in our faith, to reach out to the world around us, to share the good news of the kingdom of heaven. We might feel overwhelmed; we might feel that we aren’t capable of doing it all. But the disciples felt the same thing, and they relied on God to give them the tools they needed. God will do the same for us if we just go where he is calling us to go. Amen.

Genesis 12:1-9; Hosea 5:15-6:6 "Return to your Purpose"

In his latest blockbuster adventure, the archeologist, Indiana Jones, finds himself searching for a crystal skull so that he can return it to its resting place. As he fights communists and braves the elements, he fulfills a mission over five hundred years in the making. You see, the crystal skull had been taken from its resting place by Spanish Conquistadors and it needed to be returned. And Indiana Jones and his group of friends and companions took it upon themselves to return it.

It is interesting that a blockbuster about an archeologist who is known more as a grave robber than anything else, as a collector of antiquities, has him trying not to get something but to return something. It is also interesting that the word return shows up so prominently in the movie. Of course the movie is about the return of an action hero who hasn’t been on the screen for 18 years. But Indy’s mission to return something to its proper place is a new kind of mission for him, and an important mission for each of us.

You see, we all have in us a need to return to a place we don’t really know. We all are called to return to right relationship with God, though we have never known that right relationship. And yet we were created to be in that right relationship. We were created to be God’s people, and even though we might have strayed away from that call on our lives, God is calling for us to return to that right relationship. So, that’s right, we’ve got the same call on our lives that Indiana Jones had in his blockbuster movie, “Return”. But instead of returning a nick-knack to its place of origin, we are called to return our very lives to the God who created us.

I. God’s Ambassadors

Throughout the Old Testament, there is a constant call for the people of Israel to return to God, to return to his plan for them, to return to his purpose for their lives. We see that call illustrated in today’s second scripture, found in Hosea. “Come, let us return to the Lord,” it calls! “He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. He will restore us, that we may live in his presence.”

To understand this scripture, to understand what God is calling his people to, we need to understand the pattern that the people of Israel seemed to fall into. Looking back at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 12, we are told of God’s covenant with Abraham. We are told that God will make Abraham into a great nation. And we are told that God will bless Abraham and his descendants. But we are also told that Abraham and his descendants are called to be a blessing to those around them. This is the center of the people of Israel’s identity. It is who they are. They are a people blessed by God so that they can be a blessing to the nations around them. As you look at the first 12 chapters of Genesis, you see that God had created the world, created a good world, and it had been corrupted by sin. Because of the corruption, God was calling for the people of the world to return to right relationship with him, but instead the people were moving farther and farther away from God, falling more and more into their own depravity. Then God tried destroying the world in a flood and starting over, but this didn’t work. And so God decided to infect the world with his goodness in a different way. He decided to take Abraham and make him into a great nation. He decided to take this nation of his followers and use them to bring blessings to the world around them. They would be God’s ambassadors to a world that didn’t know him. “I will make your name great, I will bless you and you will be a blessing.”

And yet the ambassadors for God weren’t interested in being a blessing to the world around them. They were too interested in their own lives and what they could get from God. And if they thought that God wasn’t going to give them what they wanted in this world, then they’d turn wherever they could to get it. And so we see a continuing struggle throughout the Old Testament where God is trying to get his people into right relationship with him so they can begin to share that relationship with those around them.

II. Israel’s Purpose

You see, it’s not just that God wanted a relationship with Israel. It’s that God had a purpose for his people. He had a plan and he was relying on them to carry it out. But they spent most of their lives focused on themselves and not interested in God’s plan at all. Sure they wanted to be blessed, but they had no desire to be a blessing. Sure they wanted God’s favor, but they didn’t feel that they should share that favor with their neighbors. The big struggle that God had with the people of Israel was that he wanted them to fulfill a purpose for him and they just wanted him to bless them and nothing else. The people of Israel had a mentality of “what’s in it for me” and when they thought that God wasn’t delivering for them the way they wanted, they turned away from him and looked for other things that might deliver better. Sometimes these other things were other false gods and idols. At other times these other things were foreign kings who they felt they could rely on for protection. And still other times they would rely on themselves instead of anybody else, because they were all they had.

But in Hosea, and throughout the Old Testament, God is calling for them to return to him. He is calling for them to return to their relationship with him. He is calling for them to return to their purpose. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” God wants them to acknowledge him, but more than that he wants them to live lives of mercy, to be about the purpose that he has planned for them.

III. Our Purpose

You see, I believe the same is true about us. I think that when we look at the people of Israel in the Old Testament, we will notice that we sometimes find ourselves in the same predicament that they were in. And we find ourselves struggling with the same things they were struggling with. Oh, we might not be worshipping at Asherah Poles or the false god, Baal, but we are allowing ourselves to get away from the purpose that God has for us.

God sent his son, Jesus, to save us. He sent him to bring us into right relationship with God because we are unable to do this ourselves. God sent Jesus to bless us with eternal and abundant life. But many of us seem to think that this is the fullness of the gospel. Many of us seem to think that once we’ve accepted Jesus’ salvation, our job is done. And yet we understand that our purpose is the same purpose that God made known to Abraham so many years ago. We are blessed by God so that we can be a blessing to those around us. We are called to be God’s ambassadors to a world that so desperately needs him.

Our purpose isn’t just to get to heaven. Our purpose isn’t just to survive this world and celebrate eternally in the next. These are things that we get to do, but they aren’t our purpose. God has a purpose for us and we are called to live in it. This means that when we are just focusing on ourselves we are not being about what God has called us to be. This means that when we are caught up in our own world, we are missing out on the plans that God has for us.

I believe that God is saying the same thing to the Church today that Hosea said to the people of Israel in his day. God is calling for the Church today to “return.” God wants us to be about more than just ourselves. God wants us to be about mercy. God wants us to move past just worshiping and sacrificing and instead he wants us to be his ambassadors to the world around us, sharing his truth and his love with those around us. God has blessed his Church. He has given us much. But he doesn’t want the story to end there. He is calling us to be a blessing. He is calling for us to return to our purpose. Amen.

Genesis 1:1-2, 26-28; 2 Corinthians 13:11-14 "Encircle Me"

Each night, as I put Bronte down to sleep, I take Bronte and cradle her in my arms and pray a blessing over her. It started out somewhat generic, but has become a blessing that rhymes and asks for the Holy Trinity to watch over her. It goes as follows:

May the Holy Trinity encircle you through the night. May your Heavenly Father enfold you in his arms. May Christ Jesus save you from all harms. May the Holy Spirit guide you through the night. That you may wake up fresh in the morning light.

This is an encircling prayer. It is a prayer or blessing designed to remind us of the Trinity and the fact that each part of the Trinity has a role in our lives. We often focus on just the Father or just the Son. Some churches focus on just the Spirit, but that is not a problem we often find in ourselves. And this prayer, this blessing is designed to remind us that we have a relationship with the whole Trinity.

God the Father is our father. Jesus reminds us that we are to call him our father and treat him as our father. And as I stand there, enfolding Bronte in my arms I imagine our heavenly Father doing the same for us.

Jesus, the Son of God, sometimes referred to as the Son of Man, was sent to save us. Usually we think in terms of Jesus saving us from our sins, and Jesus does this; but there are other things in this world and in our lives that we need to be saved from, and Jesus is able to save us from those as well.

The Holy Spirit is sometimes hard to grasp on to and to understand, but the Spirit is our comforter and our guide. The Spirit shows us the way and speaks to us when we need direction.

The Holy Trinity is active and real in our lives. God is not a distant god, God is a god of relationship, within the Godhead and with God’s people. And we are called to be a part of that relationship ourselves.

I. A Confusing Trinity

The church I grew up in until Junior High was Trinity Lutheran Church. I don’t remember many sermons preached there as I grew up, but I do remember the pastor commenting in one of his sermons that it was Trinity Sunday and he felt that because the church was Trinity Lutheran he should probably speak about the Trinity. I also remember him saying that this wasn’t always the easiest thing to do, as talking about the Trinity usually meant you were getting a little to theological in your sermon and not practical enough, and further that the concept of the Trinity is a hard one to wrap our minds around.

As I prepared for this morning’s sermon I realized that much of what my pastor growing up said was true. And yet, here I am preaching about the Trinity today. Hopefully I won’t get too theological at the expense of the practical, and hopefully what I have to share will make sense.

Today is Trinity Sunday. It is the day in the church year where we acknowledge that God is a god of relationship. God is so much a god of relationship that it is not enough that God have relationship with humans, God actually has relationship within the Godhead. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are interconnected, they are one, but at the same time they are three. This is a central part of our belief as Christians, and yet when you look at the Bible, it sometimes can be hard to see the Trinity laid out so very clearly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s in there, but it isn’t laid out as clearly as a textbook or a systematic theology would put it. We see monotheism pushed throughout the Old and New Testament, but there are hints that we see that the monotheism isn’t as clear cut as we’d like to believe. When we look at Genesis we see God hovering above the waters, above the chaos, and we know that this God is one. And yet when God creates humans he decides to create humans in “our own image”. Not “my own image” but “our own image”. And then in the Gospel of John we are told that God was not alone at the creation of the world after all. Rather, the Word was with him and the Word was the way that God went about creating the world. And we are let in on a little secret, that Word that was with God at the beginning of creation, that Word that the Old Testament referred to as Wisdom, comes down to us as Jesus, the Messiah. And we realize that though God is one, there is a complexity there that we just cannot understand.

And the Trinity is most explicitly shown in the Bible in the last line of 2 Corinthians, which we read this morning: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

II. Different Roles

This, like the blessing that I say to Bronte each and every night, is a Trinitarian blessing that acknowledges the fact that in the Trinity, God fulfills different roles. The Father loves us, the Son offers us grace and the Spirit brings us fellowship. Now we need to remember that God isn’t totally divided up. We don’t only receive love from the Father, and Jesus isn’t the only one offering grace, but at the same time, there are roles that each part of the Trinity fulfill.

When we usually think of the Father we think of him as the creator, the sustainer of this world. This is fair. This is how God the Father is originally introduced to us. And it is a part of his role that we ought to celebrate and rejoice in. But I fear that we often tend to think of the Father as distant, as set apart, as removed from our day to day lives. I believe we’ve had this conditioned into us in a number of ways. First, when we think of the creator of the universe, we think that God is probably a bit busy running the universe to deal with individual people and their individual problems. Or, perhaps it is that we have the watch-maker vision of the Father, a God who built the clock, set everything in motion, and then wound it up and let it run. But just because God created the world doesn’t mean that God is distant. Jesus shows this to us when he teaches us to pray, when he encourages us to call God “dad.” And Paul, in his Trinitarian blessing does not focus on the creative part of God the Father’s role, rather he focuses on his love. May the Love of God be with you, he says.

Jesus is our Savior. He is the one who offers us grace. He is the one who sacrificed himself for our sake. He lived out the love of the Father in the most powerful way. He died for our sins and offers us salvation. But it isn’t only salvation or grace that Jesus offers. We have other things mentioned throughout the Bible which he brings to us, like peace. That’s right, Jesus is the Prince of Peace and often Paul particularly offers the blessing asking for people to take the peace of Christ with them.

The Holy Spirit is the most confusing part of the Trinity. Not much is explicitly said about him, but we are told that he is our counselor, that he will stand up for us when we need someone to do so. We are told that he is our guide and our teacher, greater at leading us on the right path than our conscience could ever be. And we are told that the Spirit offers fruits and gifts to God’s people, so that we can live in union, in community, with each other and with God. The Spirit of God offers us fellowship with God and with each other, as we are made into the beings that God designed us to be.

III. Relationships

When we look at the Holy Trinity, when we look at what God is about being three and yet one, we realize that God is at his center a God of relationships. There is a reason that God decides that humans shouldn’t be alone, because, though God is one God, God is not alone either. God is a God of relationship and we see this in the way that the different parts of the Trinity work together. We see this in Jesus and his life on this earth as he talked about the Spirit of God being upon him and as he talked about God being his father.

In Genesis, God says that humans are going to be made in the image of God. Some people have taken this to mean that God has two eyes, two arms and a mouth. Many have realized that this is not what God meant when he said that humans would be in his image. Others have argued that being in God’s image means that we have a spiritual life, that we have a soul. And they would argue that this is what separates us from the rest of the world around us. And this has often been the Christian answer as to what it means to be in God’s image. But there is another possibility, as well. What if being in God’s image means that just like God we are beings of relationship as well. What if just like God we have a desire to create, to sustain, to offer grace to those around us, to live in fellowship. This is an amazing and powerful idea, because it means that we even have more reason to work out our relationships in Christ. It means that we have a divine imperative to work with each other, to come together, to find unity and strength in each other.

God has a special relationship going on within the Trinity, within the godhead. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are working together and loving together and sharing together. And then they invite us to be a part of that. They say that they want relationship with us, that they want to welcome us in, that we are allowed and able to join in with them in their work in this world. And so, how are we caring for the creation? How are we sharing God’s love with those around us? How are we offering the grace of Christ and the peace of Christ to those who have not experienced it? And how are we offering fellowship to each other? When we begin to do these things, then we find that we too are acting as we were made, in the image of God. And this is a wonderful place to be. Amen.

John 8:31-36 "Set You Free"

As I have mentioned many times before, I grew up Lutheran. Leaving the Lutheran church to go to a Covenant Seminary and join the ministerium of the Covenant Church was not an easy decision, nor was it one I took lightly. People have asked me why I left the Lutheran church and I have had to explain that it was not a repudiation of Lutheran theology. I believe much the same as I did when I was Lutheran. It was not a repudiation of Lutheran worship, either, at least mostly.

My deep dark secret is that I love Lutheran liturgy. When you listen to what is being said through the worship, the praise of God, the confession of sins, the statement of belief; there is power there. I love the fact that on a weekly basis, in the Lutheran liturgy, we are asked to confess our sins in a group and we are reminded of God’s love and forgiveness, and we are encouraged to turn from those sins. This is something that I feel is lacking in much contemporary worship, and in many non-liturgical settings.

And yet I always felt that people were rattling off the words of the liturgy and saying what it said without allowing the words to truly mean anything to them and inhabit them. This is not a problem that is only found in liturgical settings, though. It is just as possible and just as much a problem in contemporary worship; that we have great worship songs with powerful meaning and powerful words, and the people never allow themselves to connect with what they are saying.

No, the real reason I left the Lutheran church and joined the Covenant was that in Covenant theology and in Covenant practice I found a more real connection to the Lutheran theology and practice that I loved, and I found a separation from some of the dangers that I saw inherent in Lutheran theology and practice.

One of the dangers that I saw in Lutheran practice is a danger that is found in many faiths. It is the danger of believing that you can inherit your Christian faith; that it can be handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. But we believe that faith is something that you need to have for yourself. It is a personal, not private but personal, relationship with God through his Son, Jesus. Lutheran theology says the same thing, and yet growing up I found people believing that their faith was something they inherited from their parents, something that was more a part of their culture than a part of them. And I found this sad and difficult.

I. Preaching to the Jews

A couple weeks ago I talked about how the gospel message had to be spoken in the language of the people hearing it. I shared the story of Paul preaching in Athens and using the very idols that he despised to bring the people of Athens to a place where they could hear about the God who created the whole world. Paul spoke in the language of the people to bring them to an understanding of the gospel. When Paul shared the gospel with the Greeks he needed to use things that mattered to them and talk a language that made sense to them. He couldn’t start with where he wanted them to be, he needed to start with where they were and allow them to be moved to where they needed to go.

Preaching to the Greeks can be difficult, and yet it can sometimes even be more difficult to preach to the Jews. You see, sometimes we need to preach to the religious. Sometimes we need to tell the people that are going through the motions that they need something more. Sometimes we need to remind each other that going to church is not enough, that faith isn’t something that you’ve inherited but rather something that needs to grab you and hold you and change you. Sometimes we need to reach out to the church-goers and tell them that there is something more.

This is the message that Jesus found himself having to share again and again. You see, Paul reached out to the heathens to tell them of the gospel, but Jesus was reaching out to the faithful, and Jesus often found that this was even more difficult. Jesus discovered that the sinners and the outcast found it easier to repent because they were better able to see their own sins. But the religious people, the ones who did their best to follow the commandments thought they were going the right way. And in today’s scripture we see Jesus bluntly challenge them on this. He goes farther after where we quit reading. He actually refers to them as children of the devil, though they believe that they are children of Abraham.

II. Children of Abraham

The religious people that Jesus is talking to believe that their ancestry gives them what they need. They believe that the faith of their fathers and mothers and great grandfathers and great great grandmothers will earn them salvation. They believe that because they are descended from Abraham, because of what their forefathers, the patriarchs, did, they are freed from sins. This is not a Biblical understanding of the world that they have. It does not fit with reality. Throughout the Old Testament God is always, again and again, calling his people back to him and hoping that they will learn to follow him on their own instead of relying on the faith that has gone before. And yet the people seemed to never truly get this message.

And here, in today’s scripture, Jesus tells us that we are called not just to be descendants of the faithful or children of Abraham, but his disciples. And Jesus tells us how to be his disciples as well, and it isn’t necessarily what we’d expect. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

If we hold to Jesus’ teachings, if we follow what it is that he calls us to do, how it is that he calls us to live, then we will know the truth and be his disciples. And if we know the truth we will be set free.

It is interesting what the response to this is by the faithful. Their response was that they were children of Abraham. They were already free. They hadn’t ever been slaves and they didn’t need to be set free. This, to me, epitomizes the false security held by many who are religious, who are comfortable, who have accepted their faith without question from their parents and grandparents. I am a Christian; I am the child of a Christian; I grew up going to church; I don’t need to be saved from anything.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not putting this on Lutherans. I know people of every stripe and every faith who allow their faith to be cultural, allow it to seep down to them from their parents, who never make their faith their own. One thing that shocked me was when I discovered that this wasn’t only true of Christians, but of other religions as well.

We have heard so much about militant Muslims in the last years that we don’t always realize that there are also cultural Muslims. When I lived in Chicago and worked with developmentally disabled adults, we had a large group of men and women from Nigeria who worked for us. Many of them were Muslim. And yet they did not follow their faith terribly well. I heard about their parties, and I know they ignored the command to avoid alcohol that the Muslim faith requires. And I remember talking with one lady who had just completed Hajj, her trip to Mecca that is required of every Muslim at least once in their life, if at all possible. I was asking her what the experience was like and it didn’t seem to be much of a religious experience for her, rather a social and cultural one. I asked her how serious about her faith she was and she said she was pretty committed to it, “but if I found a good Christian man, I’d convert to Christianity so that I could marry him.” She was just one example of a whole group who were Muslim because that was what they were raised to be and not because that was what they necessarily believed. And I realized that there are many of all faiths and religions that go to church and go through the motions not because they believe, but because it is what is culturally expected of them, because it is what is easiest. They believe that because of what their parents and grandparents believed, they need to believe the same thing in the same way and thus they are saved.

III. Set Free

But Jesus has a different message: a message that tells us that being the children of Christians is not enough; a message that tells us that we cannot inherit salvation. Jesus tells us that we are all slaves. Unfortunately, this is what we have inherited from Adam and Eve. And we cannot blame this only on inheritance, either, for we each have sinned and therefore are slaves to sin. But we don’t need to live as slaves. If we follow Jesus’ teachings we will be his disciples and we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.

I find it kind of ironic that I am preaching about this today on Mothers’ Day. Mothers’ Day is the day we remember the mothers who have gone before us, and for many of us it is our mothers who so aptly and strongly encouraged us in the faith. And here I am, saying that this is not enough. Here I am saying that relying on our mother’s faith is not going to get us anywhere, that we need our own faith.

But I think that what I am saying this morning, what Jesus says in today’s scripture, actually does honor our mothers and the faith that they have brought us. You see, those who have gone before us don’t want us to just follow their faith blindly. They don’t want us to inherit a faith that is not our own. Rather they want us to make the faith that they brought us up in our own. They want to give us the chance to own it for ourselves, to accept it and believe it and live it in our lives. When we do this, when we allow the faith to inhabit our lives completely, then we discover that we too are Jesus’ disciples and we are living the life he called us to. And as the truth has set our mothers free it can set us free as well. Amen.

Acts 17:16-34 "Destroying/Using Idols"

I. Christendom Ends

How do we interact with a world around us that doesn’t believe the same things we do? Unfortunately, this is a question that we are going to have to ask ourselves more and more often in the coming years. The world is becoming less and less Christian and moving into a post-Christian time. Don’t get me wrong. Jesus and his message still matter, our faith still has something powerful to say to the world around it, but Christians may not be the ones in charge in the world as much anymore.

This isn’t all bad. Christianity is at its best when it is persecuted. Christians who have to fight for their very lives, Christians who have to daily pick up their cross to follow Christ and face the possibility of prison or death, often have a much deeper faith than Christians who are born into a faith that doesn’t mean terribly much to them. And when you look through the New Testament, through the teachings of Jesus particularly and even the teachings of Paul and the apostles, you will discover that there is very little about how to rule and much more about how to survive in a world that is turned against you.

And unfortunately, this is the direction that we are facing as a society. This is where Europe is already and if things don’t change, it is where America is headed as well. And yet there is hope for us as well. First, we will see that people who are involved in church, who are alive in their faith, are there because of what Jesus has done for them and not because it is expected of them. And second, now, as Christians, we have something that is different to offer those around us. We can stand up and show how living as a Christian is different than not living as a Christian. We can show how there is something special about following Christ. We stand out in our faith and our actions, and we can make a difference in the world around us. And, in truth, we can interact with the world around us in much the same way that the first Christians interacted with the world around them.

II. Preaching to the Greeks

When you look at the book of Acts, you see that Paul and the early apostles used different techniques to reach different groups of people with the good news of the Gospel. Paul tells us that he tried to be all things to all people. This means that he would reach out to people where they were instead of expecting them to become more like him before he talked with them. The first Christians shared their message with the Jews. They were preaching the good news of new life in Christ to people who had grown up believing in God, who were religious. They were preaching to the churchgoers who didn’t yet have a personal relationship with Christ. This in some ways is easy, and in some ways it is difficult. It is easy in that you are speaking the same language as the person you are sharing the Gospel with. The terminology makes sense to them, the message is there.

But then we see other instances where the Gospel needs to be explained from scratch. This is the situation that Paul finds himself in in Athens in today’s scripture. He is sharing the Gospel with people who do not have the same starting point as he does. They don’t believe in Yahweh. Instead, they surround themselves with idols and false gods. And Paul finds himself uncomfortable with this.

The story of Paul in Athens begins by sharing some of Paul’s frustrations. He has come to Athens and he looks around and he sees the idols around him. He is frustrated because he realizes that these idols will pull people away from Christ. He is frustrated because he knows that idol worship is wrong, a sin, and it cannot be tolerated. He is frustrated because he realizes that as he speaks the Word of God, he is going to be drowned out by all the voices speaking up for other religions and other gods.

So, Paul is frustrated, but he doesn’t let this stop him. He sees the idols around him, but he doesn’t allow them to silence him. Instead he begins to reason with Jews and God fearing gentiles in Athens. And he catches the ears of the Greek philosophers. I love the way they are described in this passage, I hope you catch the disdain here, “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.”

These are academics of the worst kind. They are people who like to hear new ideas for the sake of hearing them. These are people who are more interested in hearing that something is new than hearing that it is true. When I was in college, more so than when I was in seminary, when we had to write papers for Bible classes, we were told that we had to use journal articles in our research that were less than two years old. The idea was that we had to see what the most recent thoughts were on the topic we were studying. And the underlying conceit was that the more recent scholarship, being more fresh, being newer, somehow had something more to offer than writings that were older.

I remember complaining about this to a couple professors, and being told that despite my complaints, I still had to use new research for my papers. Oh well.

I have often admired N.T. Wright, a Bishop in England and a very wise Bible scholar, whose new books usually find themselves on my to-read list. He spoke at a convention at North Park Seminary while I was there, and I found much wisdom in what he said. But I also discovered something else about him. He could talk the language of the Biblical skeptics. He could use the lingo that the Jesus Seminar people, who try to disprove Jesus’ divinity, would use. And he would use it to support a Biblical understanding of Jesus and his work in this world. I remember watching a special on TV around Easter one year and there were people speaking up against the resurrection and then N.T. Wright spoke up, and happened to receive the last word. He argued that when you look at the disciples, the way their lives were changed, the way they went from timid fishermen to evangelists, you have to realize that something miraculous happened in their lives, and in his mind, the only explanation for this is the resurrection. It is an argument that has stayed with me ever since, because it talked in the language of the skeptics, but it brought Biblical truth.

III. Speaking their Own Language

Paul finds himself in a similar situation in today’s scripture. Paul cannot share the Gospel in his own words, in his own language, because the people would not hear it. He couldn’t just come out and tell them that idol worship was evil and they should stop it because they had no reason to listen to what he had to say. Instead, Paul found a creative and unusual way to speak the truth to the people of Athens while at the same time honoring them and their quest for knowledge, their quest for truth.

Paul knew that he had to lead the people of Athens from their idol worship and their relativity in what they believed to a Biblical understanding of Jesus and his Gospel. Paul knew that he had to begin where they were and move them towards the truth. He ends up with a call for them to repent of their idol worship. But this isn’t where he began. He began by acknowledging their idols and even using one of them as an illustration point to point them towards God. Basically, he began by speaking their own language and speaking to them where they were.

I think we can learn much from Paul’s approach here. I think we can learn to be observant like Paul was, and even when we see sins around us, we don’t need to come out first and foremost in speaking against those sins, but rather use them as a place of contact with the lost. Of course, just as Paul does, we do need to point people towards God and his love as well as his commands for our lives, but this isn’t necessarily the place to start. Instead we can reach out and figure out where people think their needs are.

We know that those around us need Jesus. But they don’t often realize this themselves. But instead of shouting at them and telling them how much they need Jesus, we can reach out with the things they think they need, and use that as an opportunity to share Jesus with them.

A few weeks ago our church board had a retreat where we talked about how to reach out to our community. And we talked about needs in the community around us and how we can reach them. And we realized that there are many needs of those around us that just aren’t getting met. And we decided that we want to start meeting some of those needs. So we decided to find ways to be a resource to those around us. Sharing with them areas where they need help, offering resources to people who don’t have them. We decided that we want to meet people where they are instead of where we want them to be. And we believe that God can use us through this to bring them to where he wants them to be. You see, if we speak their language, the language of their needs, then soon they will begin to speak our language and the Holy Spirit will begin to work in them and through them and they will become new creations. This is what we are about as God’s church. Let us enter into this with excitement and joy as we reach out to those around us who need Jesus. Amen.

Mark 14:32-41 "Not My Will But Yours"

I recently realized that it has been quite some time since I have mentioned my love for comic books in one of my sermons. I’m sure this is something that you all have been quite thankful for, but it is something that I’m going to change this morning. You see, I want to talk a bit about Batman today.

Batman was created as a character in 1939. That means that next year he will be seventy years old. And in the last seventy years he has gone through a number of changes, some of them good some of them bad. My first experience of Batman was reruns of the ‘60s television series that was campy and silly, and as a child I took it very seriously. But later on, in high school, I began to read the comics that told of Batman and discovered a darker, more complex person.

Batman suffered a great tragedy as a child. His parents were killed in a random shooting, in front of his eyes. And Batman is affected by this and decides that he is going to do what he can to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Some have said that Batman is about vengeance, trying to get even with evil. But this is just not true. Vengeance can only get you so far, and Batman has a code that the follows that shows that he isn’t just about vengeance. What Batman is about is justice. He is about justice and self-sacrifice.

But recently, in the comic books that tell the stories of Batman, the authors have lost this. They have decided that Batman dressing up and trying to make the world a better place is not a normal thing, that perhaps Batman is a little deranged. And so, they end up treating him in a more negative way.

But I want to say that justice and self-sacrifice is heroic. Deciding to give up your own happiness so that you can help others is not something that someone who is deranged will necessarily do. Putting the happiness and welfare of those around you, even strangers around you, before your own, is actually something that is worthwhile. We can learn something from Batman when we realize this.

I. Doing what Feels Good

The whole discussion I just had about Batman was there to make a point that I think we sometimes miss. The culture that we live in has changed and headed in a direction that many of us aren’t comfortable with. Now it is easy to point out one issue or topic that seems to prove this point and rail on some specific sin that we see the world around us being permissive of, but I actually believe that the problem is more insidious than just one issue or sin. I believe that there has been a radical shift in our values as a culture, and it is a shift that could lead us to a dangerous place.

The shift is this: what used to be valued was self-sacrifice. Our culture and our society used to value someone who laid down their wants or desires for the sake of others; someone who gave up on their dreams so that they could help people around them. It used to be honorable to sacrifice for those around you, your family, your children, your neighbors, your country. But this value has shifted. And now in our culture, if you sacrifice your wants or your desires for those around you, you aren’t being true to yourself. Nowadays, what is valued is doing what feels good for yourself. We don’t put it in such strong language, but basically, what our society is telling us is that your happiness is the ultimate good. We might say it in different ways: be true to yourself, follow your heart, but it basically means that we are supposed to be selfish.

This might not seem like much, but it pervades our culture and our world, and is quite dangerous. It means that we are told that we should be focused on ourselves first. It means that our first goal in life is to find happiness, and happiness sought after is always outside of our reach. And when we do this, when we focus on this we end up making decisions that hurt those around us. When we focus too much on trying to make sure that we are happy, we end up walking into sin and broken relationship. People walk away from their families because they don’t feel happy in them anymore. People enter lives of sin because it feels good, and let me tell you that many sins feel good.

Now, it might seem like the right response to this is to encourage people to seek after their own happiness as long as it doesn’t hurt the happiness of those around them. This is the compromise that many make. But this is still buying into the value that our culture around us is pushing, that happiness is the ultimate good.

II. Jesus’ Prayer

But Jesus gives us an example in today’s scripture that is quite different. It is the example of a servant; it is the example of someone who puts God’s will before their own happiness. And when we contrast it to the disciples, who are more interested in sleeping than supporting their Lord, or our own lives where we are more interested in our own happiness than anything else, we see how radical and powerful Jesus’ self-sacrifice was.

Jesus was facing a difficult time. He knew what was coming for him, and he knew how horribly difficult it would be for him. If he had bought into our belief that you’ve got to do what feels good, you’ve got to chase after your own happiness; he’d never be where he was. But he knew that there was something more important than his own happiness at stake, and so he prayed.

Jesus’ prayer here is powerful. It is powerful because it helps us to see what it is like to face difficult times. It helps us see what our priorities should be. Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross. He didn’t want to face such a horrible death. He hoped and longed for another way. He asked God to deliver him from what it was he was about to face. But he didn’t leave it there. He wanted to be delivered from it, but he put his will in God’s will. “Not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus let his requests be known to God. He told God what it was that he desired; what it was that he hoped for. But then he made it clear that he would follow God’s path for him, wherever that may lead. Jesus’ priority was not his own will. His priority, rather was to follow where God was leading him.

III. Our Purpose

Happiness was not the ultimate end that Jesus was seeking, neither his nor others. What was the ultimate end for him was following God’s will. Do we find ourselves following Jesus’ example. When we face a question, when we face a problem, when we are tempted by sin, what is it that we ask ourselves? Is this going to make me happy? Or what is God’s will?

Our society has decided that the second question is not the right question to ask. There are even churches that have as their message the idea that God’s will can be simply stated in that he wants us to be happy. And therefore you don’t need to choose between the two. But this is not what the Bible says. Sometimes seeking after your own well being, sometimes seeking after your own happiness, will send you down the wrong path. It will find you turned in on yourself and serving yourself. But if we choose to seek God’s will for our lives. If we choose to follow Jesus’ example in the garden, to tell God that it isn’t our will that counts, but his, then we will find our purpose.

That is a deep truth that Christians and the church need to be sharing with the world around us, and it is not a popular one. The truth is that our purpose in life, our goal in life, shouldn’t just be to be happy. If we seek after only happiness we will discover that we have harmed those around us and even ourselves trying to find it. And the happiness that we do find will be fleeting and never be enough for us. But if we instead seek after God’s will, we will find ourselves in places where we don’t necessarily feel happy, but we will find joy and we will find peace.

Now, it’s hard to say that Jesus found joy in what he faced in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he did find peace. When he gave his will over to his Father, he found peace and strength to go on, to face the unfaceable. And his death and resurrection did bring joy not only for him but for all who trust in him, for the whole world.

This is a difficult message to share because it doesn’t come across terribly well. “Don’t seek after happiness.” It truly goes against what our culture tells us we should seek after. But when we explain that seeking after happiness only brings fleeting happiness and seeking after God’s will brings heavenly joy, when we explain that the quest for happiness is a false quest that will send us in the wrong direction, then perhaps we realize what is truly important in this world, and in doing so we realize what it is that we are called to do. Jesus gives us the example in Gethsemane. Seek after God’s will, not our own. It may not be easy, but it is what God calls us to. Amen.