The Most Perfect Gift

It’s Christmas, once again, and with it God comes to break into our lives bringing with him “good news” for all of us. “For unto us, you and me, a child is born, unto us, you and me his Son is given.” Little did the shepherds know what the true meaning of those words would be for them and for us.

At Christmas God wrapped himself up in swaddling cloths and placed himself into the loving arms of a teenage mother and her carpenter husband in a little town called Bethlehem.  That was over two thousand years ago and still even to this day we sing of this child’s birth.  That’s amazing.

Did you ever wish that you had been there? If the news had come to you as it came to those shepherds out in the fields that night would you have gone?  If you saw a new star rising in the sky would you have left behind all you had to follow it? Would you have brought the finest gifts you had and laid them at the feet of a child who had not yet proven himself a king?  Would you have traveled beyond Jerusalem and entered into a small seemingly unimpressionable town, such as Bethlehem? Would you have searched diligently for a baby who was not of your race, your culture, your family?

I have many Christmas memories.  Christmas has always been a very special time.  Mum would spend weeks cleaning the house.  The walls and curtain were washed, so that Santa would come. She spent many hours in the kitchen baking, but Christmas did not appear at our house until Christmas morning.  The tree did not sit in the livingroom fully decorated for a month before. No presents appeared under the tree ahead of time. Almost magically a beautiful tree with shiny lights and balls appeared on Christmas morning, in a place where it had not been the night before. The day itself became for us a gift, a beautiful gift, a gift to be remembered for years to come. Even now I can smell the apricot pie baking in the oven and see us gathered around the large kitchen table with hundreds of cut-out cookies still to be decorated. Christmas was wrapped in love and tied together with the smells and sounds of laughter.

On Christmas Eve God reached out to us in a way he had not done before.  He set aside his majesty, his power and glory to spend time with us. For nine months God chose to be imprisoned in the belly of Mary and with the rush of water to be born for us.  What a beautiful image.  What wonderful love. Christmas, the most perfect gift.

Into the dark and cold of winter God breaks in with glowing light to show forth hope, to warm up our hearts, to make merry with us.

Do we ever tire of hearing the story? We have heard it so often that many of us can almost recite it by heart: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar August that a census should be taken, and everyone went to his own town to register and be taxed.”  What that text is really saying to us is that out of one man’s greed and struggle for power, that of Caesar August the ruler of the Roman Empire, God arranged our salvation. It was because of the decree that went out that Mary now nine months pregnant and Joseph her husband traveled into Bethlehem.  Without that decree over their head they probably would have stayed put in Nazareth, but God used Caesar August so that through his greed the words of prophesy would be fulfilled. “So all went into their city to be taxed and while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.”  Mary gave birth and delivered our Deliverer.  Amazing.

He was not born surrounded by family and friends, but stable creatures of his own creation.  The smells of the stable I am sure were far different from the smells coming from my mother’s kitchen. Yet, this is the place where our God chose to be born, placing himself among the forgotten, forsaken, lowly, and humble; crying out from a feeding trough. Humbly he came to bring light to the world.  Humbly he came to show the face of God to his dying creation. Humbly he came to stand among us and with us, making good on his promise to reconcile the world to himself.  Given to us peace with God.

During the weeks or perhaps just the day before Christmas we search for the perfect gift to purchase for those we love. We give gift because God has shown us through his love for us that we should give out of love.

We go all out at Christmas, many of us go into debt, spending money we do not have to bring a smile to the face of those we love.  We do not want to disappoint them, so we do our best to bring them happiness with our gifts. I thought I had found the perfect gift this year for my nieces and nephews and sister; a coffeemaker that brews one cup at a time so that they could have their own favorite blend. Had I stuck to my plan their would have been a lot of returning of the perfect gift on Saturday, since this was the gift they gave to one another. Instead I chose to give them a new clock radio with a snooze alarm. I gave them a few extra minutes each day to sleep and to be awakened to easy listening music. Not really a perfect gift, but one that they could receive and not return.

On Christmas God gave the most perfect gift, himself to his fallen creation.  Into our dirty, filthy sinful hands God laid his innocent body, and we wrapped him up in our rags and God placed his ribbon of LOVE around us. Love in the midst of pain and strife.  Love in the midst of suffering, hatred, war and death. Amazing.

But that is not the most amazing thing about Christmas for there would come a time when we would strip the clothes from this child’s back and a time when the tree we erect in memory of his birth would become the tree on which we would nail him, a tree decorated not with tinsel and balls and surrounded by light, but decorated with his blood shed for our sins and surrounded by darkness. Amazing. Simply amazing.

Let me relate to you a story.  It is a story about a young man in his early twenties.  It was time for him to graduate from college.  He had worked hard.  He father had promised him a car on graduation.  The morning of his graduation his father called him into his office and gave to him a gift.  The young man torn open the package.  A Bible. Not what he had expected.  He slammed the Bible down on his father’s desk and walked out of the room vowing never to return.

The years passed and the young man was true to his words. Then one day word came to him that his parents had been in a terrible car accident and both were killed.  The young man returned home to clear up the estate.  There still lying on his father’s desk he found the Bible he had thrown down in anger.  He picked it up and an envelope fell out.  He opened it and found a letter written by his father years earlier on his son’s graduation day.  It told of how proud his father was of him and how much he loved him. Attached to the letter was a check for the car he had been promised upon graduation, but the son had never looked beyond his anger to find the love that the Bible held for him.

Have you set aside your anger at one another or perhaps at God, himself to behold the love of God wrapped up in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger? Will you this Christmas open the most perfect Gift of all, the Son of the Most High, Jesus Christ? Will you allow him to dwelt in your midst and make his home in your heart?  Will you allow him to make the changes needed and to restore you? Will you accept the most perfect gift?

Mark 16:1-8 (The Message)

Mark 16

The Resurrection

 ^1-3 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could embalm him. Very early on Sunday morning, as the sun rose, they went to the tomb. They worried out loud to each other, "Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?"

 ^4-5Then they looked up, saw that it had been rolled back—it was a huge stone—and walked right in. They saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed all in white. They were completely taken aback, astonished.

 ^6-7He said, "Don't be afraid. I know you're looking for Jesus the Nazarene, the One they nailed on the cross. He's been raised up; he's here no longer. You can see for yourselves that the place is empty. Now—on your way. Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You'll see him there, exactly as he said."

 ⁸They got out as fast as they could, beside themselves, their heads swimming. Stunned, they said nothing to anyone.

O Death Where is Your Sting

Mark 16:1-8

Easter 2009

How many of you like the place where the Gospel of Mark leaves us this morning; “They got out as fast as they could, beside themselves, their heads swimming.  Stunned, they said nothing to anyone.”

Like it or not that is exactly where death most often does leave us; confused, stunned, beside ourselves, trying to escape it, running as fast as we can to get away, feeling isolated and alone, not wanting to face the future without our loved one, not wanting to talk at first about it; and finding ourselves in denial of it. We find it difficult to concentrate on anything.  Our life is in an uproar.  Life has become so unsettled and we long for a sense of the normal. We wish things could go back the way they were. This is the place where we find Mary and the other women this morning as they arrive at the tomb.

The women went to the tomb expecting one thing and they got something totally unexpected. Death, however is expected, someday, but coming back to life.  Wow! Not to be expected. Consider the shock of it. The women have had a few days to come to grips with the reality of the pass days.  They had a few days to face the reality of the cruel death of one they loved.  This morning they were able to get it together enough to courageously come to the tomb as a new day was breaking forth. They came to the tomb simply to anoint the body of Jesus.  It was not until they were on their way to the tomb that in their state of confusion and in their state of loss, they realized they had not considered that a huge stone covered the way into the place were Jesus was laid.

Who would take away the stone? Who would remove the barrier so they could go in? They had not even taken into consideration that guards had been posted outside the tomb, and that the seal of the ruler was placed upon the stone forbidding anyone to remove it. It was impossible for them, but our God is the God of the impossible.  Our God is the God of endless possibilities. Only God could and did remove the stone making the way for them.   As they arrived at the tomb they discovered they did not have to be concerned about the stone for the tomb was open. God made the way.

The Gospel of Mark leaves us in a bad place, however.  The woman, in Mark’s gospel, are fleeing from the tomb and not saying a word to anyone. They are not following the angel’s instructions. What a way to end the gospel.

We say there is more to it, there has to be and you and I are correct, but there is more to it because those who read Mark’s Gospel did not like where Mark left it any more than we do, so they knowing of the other accounts of the resurrection later added their own ending creating the short and the longer version of Mark.

The original Gospel of Mark leaves us with an empty tomb. Jesus is not present, but an angel sits in Jesus place on the rightside of the death bad. He is there to remind us of all Jesus had said.  The body is gone, but hope stands in its place. 

Death leaves us with an empty feeling inside and we long for there to be more to it and there is, for death is not the end of life, but simply the beginning of a new chapter that we write as God helps us to turn the page.

We know, of course, from the other three gospels that there was more to the story, that the women got past their fear and did tell the disciples the news, even though they too refused to believe it. And we know that many of Jesus’ followers, including at least one of these women, actually saw the resurrected Jesus in the days that followed. Most of the material in the added endings in Mark is supported by the other three gospels and Acts, so we have no reason to doubt their essential accuracy, just their authorship.

But if Mark did intend verse 8 to be his conclusion, it tells us two things. The first is that it takes a considerable adjustment in one’s thinking to accept the concept of someone who was dead coming alive again.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the terror the three women felt that first Easter. They came to the tomb planning to finish the burial preparations. Jesus had died so near the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath — sundown on Friday — that there had not been enough time to anoint his body. So now, on Sunday morning, with the Sabbath finished, the three women head to the tomb to finish the sad task, which was why they were concerned about how to get the stone moved away from the tomb entrance. The stone was blocking the way to getting the required tasks done. The last thing they were expecting was that Jesus would have left the tomb, at least not under his own steam.

They were heartsick with grief, but they were at least functioning. Death wasn’t welcome, but it wasn’t some new thing. They knew what they were supposed to do, and they were beginning to adjust to the fact that Jesus was gone. Resurrection, however, was something entirely out of their realm of experience. It was an entirely new thing, and it scared the wits out of them. They were not psychologically prepared for such news.

There’s a way in which we are like them. We’ve come to expect death and disappointment; that a certain number of our dreams and goals will not materialize. We could say that they’ve died, but we usually express our disappointment with expressions like, “You can’t win them all” or “Life must go on; pick up the pieces” or “Nothing lasts forever.” We don’t welcome such defeats, but we accept that nobody’s life is free from them.

But Easter gives us another perspective on all of that. Easter is not only about one man’s escape from the grave, but also about the victory of God’s love over the death-in-life experiences of our existence.

And that comes to us through Jesus. Easter means that Jesus is not just remembered; he is experienced. We have a Jesus who is alive. That means that he comes to deal not just with our after-death circumstances, but with in-life circumstances as well. We can meet Christ in the experience of living.

That doesn’t mean all our dreams come true. It means we stand in a different relationship to them, pulled forward by hope rather than dragged down by despair.

The other (second) thing that Mark’s original ending tells us is Easter gives us a chance to decide how the story will come out.

Here is a little fable about how the sting of death has been taken away. Imagine a little boy and his father driving down a country road on a beautiful spring afternoon.

Suddenly out of nowhere a bumblebee flies through the open car window. Since the little boy is deathly allergic to bee stings, he becomes petrified.

But the father quickly reaches out, grabs the bee, squeezes it in his hand, and then releases it. But as soon as he lets it go, the young son becomes frantic again as it buzzes by him.

His father, seeing his panic-stricken face, extends his hand. Pointing to his hand, he shows his son that there, still stuck in his skin, is the stinger of the bee.

“Do you see this?” he asks. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. There’s no more sting in that bee!”

Christ does not promise to remove our wounds.  He carried the marks of his suffering.  Christ does not come to kiss them and make them better, what he promises is that he will be there with us and he reminds us that he has taken the sting and we need not fear.

Daniel 6:1-26 (The Message)

Daniel in the Lions' Den

 ^1-3 Darius reorganized his kingdom. He appointed one hundred twenty governors to administer all the parts of his realm. Over them were three vice-regents, one of whom was Daniel. The governors reported to the vice-regents, who made sure that everything was in order for the king. But Daniel, brimming with spirit and intelligence, so completely outclassed the other vice-regents and governors that the king decided to put him in charge of the whole kingdom.

 ^4-5 The vice-regents and governors got together to find some old scandal or skeleton in Daniel's life that they could use against him, but they couldn't dig up anything. He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct. So they finally gave up and said, "We're never going to find anything against this Daniel unless we can cook up something religious."

 ^6-7 The vice-regents and governors conspired together and then went to the king and said, "King Darius, live forever! We've convened your vice-regents, governors, and all your leading officials, and have agreed that the king should issue the following decree:

    For the next thirty days no one is to pray to any god or mortal except you, O king. Anyone who disobeys will be thrown into the lions' den.

 ⁸ "Issue this decree, O king, and make it unconditional, as if written in stone like all the laws of the Medes and the Persians."

 ⁹ King Darius signed the decree.

 ¹⁰ When Daniel learned that the decree had been signed and posted, he continued to pray just as he had always done. His house had windows in the upstairs that opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he knelt there in prayer, thanking and praising his God.

 ^11-12 The conspirators came and found him praying, asking God for help. They went straight to the king and reminded him of the royal decree that he had signed. "Did you not," they said, "sign a decree forbidding anyone to pray to any god or man except you for the next thirty days? And anyone caught doing it would be thrown into the lions' den?"

    "Absolutely," said the king. "Written in stone, like all the laws of the Medes and Persians."

 ¹³ Then they said, "Daniel, one of the Jewish exiles, ignores you, O king, and defies your decree. Three times a day he prays."

 ¹⁴ At this, the king was very upset and tried his best to get Daniel out of the fix he'd put him in. He worked at it the whole day long.

 ¹⁵ But then the conspirators were back: "Remember, O king, it's the law of the Medes and Persians that the king's decree can never be changed."

 ¹⁶ The king caved in and ordered Daniel brought and thrown into the lions' den. But he said to Daniel, "Your God, to whom you are so loyal, is going to get you out of this."

 ¹⁷ A stone slab was placed over the opening of the den. The king sealed the cover with his signet ring and the signet rings of all his nobles, fixing Daniel's fate.

 ¹⁸ The king then went back to his palace. He refused supper. He couldn't sleep. He spent the night fasting.

 ^19-20 At daybreak the king got up and hurried to the lions' den. As he approached the den, he called out anxiously, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve so loyally, saved you from the lions?"

 ^21-22 "O king, live forever!" said Daniel. "My God sent his angel, who closed the mouths of the lions so that they would not hurt me. I've been found innocent before God and also before you, O king. I've done nothing to harm you."

 ²³ When the king heard these words, he was happy. He ordered Daniel taken up out of the den. When he was hauled up, there wasn't a scratch on him. He had trusted his God.

 ²⁴ Then the king commanded that the conspirators who had informed on Daniel be thrown into the lions' den, along with their wives and children. Before they hit the floor, the lions had them in their jaws, tearing them to pieces.

 ^25-27 King Darius published this proclamation to every race, color, and creed on earth:

Peace to you! Abundant peace!

I decree that Daniel's God shall be worshiped and feared   in all parts of my kingdom. He is the living God, world without end. His kingdom
never falls. His rule continues eternally. He is a savior and rescuer. He performs astonishing miracles in heaven and on earth. He saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

“God Saves”

Did you catch the parallels between the story of Daniel in the Old Testament, on this Good Friday and that of Jesus, the Christ of God in the New Testament?

·        First we discover that there are those who have conspire against Daniel, because they are jealous of his popularity and achievements. Daniel is a man of honor.  He is blameless in character. King Darius we are told is thinking about making Daniel ruler over his kingdom, giving to this exile slave, this foreigner power over everything. To save themselves his enemies must do something to put a stop to it. This calls for drastic measures.

·        We know that from our reading of the gospels that there were those who conspired against Jesus, also, because they were jealous of his popularity and his achievements. Jesus was a threat to the Pharisees and other religious leaders. He called them into account for their actions. They, too, were not willing to accept Jesus authority over them, so like those in the book of Daniel they plodded to destroy this Jesus. To put an end to it; taking drastic action.

·        Secondly those who conspired against Daniel had the king sign a decree saying that all subjects must bow before him and pray only to the king. Realizing they had no grounds for removing Daniel from his position within the government, they turned to his religious belief to find a way. Foolish king, indeed, for Darius signed the decree without giving consideration to the decrees future affects. He put he stamp of approve upon it by sealing it with his ring making it the law of the land.

·        In the gospels we can see how those who wanted to destroy Jesus manipulated Herod and Pilate and finally brought Jesus before Pilate painting Jesus as a rebel, a troublemaker, one who plotted against Rome. We see Pilate trying to save Jesus, know that he was innocent of the charges, but caving in to the demands of the religious community. Wanting to protect himself from an uprising, Pilate put his stamp of approval upon their actions and washed his hands.

·        As we look closer at the story of Daniel we see that despite the decree Daniel remained faithful to his belief.  He continued to pray for God’s help in this situation. His prayer, however, did not stop those who wanted to do away with him from attacking him and placing him in a life and death situation.

·        The night before Jesus was to be crucified he, too, sought God’s help and asked for strength in this time of testing.  He went out to the garden and he prayed if it were possible for the cup that he was to bear to be removed from him, but if not then God’s will to be done. It was there in the garden, as Jesus prayed, that his accusers came to secure him.

·        Thrown into the den of the lions, Daniel faced sure death.  He would have been worn to threads if God had not shut the mouths of the lions, but God did intervene.  God saved him. Evil did not triumph on that day. Placed into the cave with the stone in front, Daniel faced death and life and lived. His accusers thought they had put an end to Daniel, but they were wrong for in the morning when Darius came to see if Daniel’s God had saved him, he heard the voice of Daniel calling out to him, “O, king live forever.”

·        They marched Jesus out to the place called “The Skull” and there they nailed him to a cross.  They believed that this was the end to Jesus, but they were wrong for in the morning three days later when the women came to the tomb the stone was rolled away and a voice from the tomb cried out, “He is Alive.”

·        Hearing the voice of Daniel coming from the cave of death, Darius issued a new decree that ever knee should bow down to Daniel’s God for he is the living God, whose dominion is over all things including life and death, and his kingdom shall never end. He and he alone has the power to save and to shut the mouth of the accuser.

The story of Daniel is one of salvation not only salvation for Daniel, but a story of the salvation that was made possible through one who was faithful to the end. Who stood before the king and the people as a witness to the mighty power of God to save, and because of his faithfulness and his witness the king and the entire nation saw salvation.

On Easter morn the stone was rolled away and a new way made possible through the faithfulness of God’s servant, Jesus. The Lamb of God who was slain God raised to new life. A door opened up. Jesus came forth from the tomb and salvation screamed from the tomb over all the land and the people cried out, “He lives.” The way is made possible through the faithfulness of God’s servant.  The door that was shut cutting the people off is now opened wide for those who hear the voice from the tomb saying, “Come, live forever.”

We have a challenge on this Good Friday to live as Daniel and Jesus did in faithfulness despite our circumstances, to remain faithful to the call of God upon us, even in the darkest of hours, trusting that God’s hand is in this and that he will see us through.  We have a commission to shout to the earth the message “Come, live forever,” and to continue to shout “He lives.”

Does God Ask Too Much?

Genesis 22:1-14

Every day we are faced with decisions; decisions that affect not only our lives, but also the lives of many more people. Life at times can be filled with uncertainty and conflict.  The answers to life’s problems are not always simple and life is not always peaceful.

Sometimes we are given so many choices in the decision making process that we find ourselves unable to make a choice.  We become paralyzed. At other times there is very little choice and we feel the final decision was not ours but that of another.

When the boss comes to you at the end of the day and says I need you to stay on the job because we need to have it completed by morning, what do you do, what do you say?  You career is on the line.  What choice do you have?  Do you stay on the job even though you are exhausted or run the possibility of being fired? Most of us run from conflict.  We seek harmony in our life.  We seek the easiest way out.

Life can throw at us some tough choices.

Genesis 22 is the horrifying tale of God's ordering Abraham to: "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love," and offer him "as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you" (22:2). Could a more difficult command be given by even the cruelest of bosses? Could a more terrifying test of faith be devised by even the most demanding of deities? Hardly! And yet,  we find that Abraham complies. He saddles his donkey, takes two young men and his son Isaac, and hits the road toward the place in the distance that God has shown him. He does not consult anyone about the decision he is making, not even the boy’s mother. He does not let Isaac know the plan.  Isaac trusts his father and he does not question, why are we not taking with us a lamb or young goat?

Imagine the struggle that Abraham is having as they make their way toward the mountain on which he will willingly sacrifice the son of his old age, the son of promise, the son of his heritance.  There is a parallel here between what God asked Abraham to do and what God himself would later do as God in the form of man climbed the mountain of Calvary and placed himself upon the cross and gave his life as a sacrifice for all. It is a foreshadowing of an event that would happen.

Over several days of travel, Abraham has time to think. Why is God always asking me to surrender all that I have, to leave behind the security I have found and the love I have found? Perhaps Abraham wandered how can I do this thing to my son?  Is God asking too much of me? Maybe you have also asked that question of yourself. Why is it that when God appears to me he is always demanding more of me?  Why can’t my encounter with God be peaceful and enjoyable, instead of challenging? How can I handle the horror I feel as I think about what is going to happen to my son? Is there any way that I can find a peaceful way out of this? How can I reconcile with my son before I ... before I ... before I ... have to kill him? Like most of us Abraham desperately wants to choose harmony over conflict. He wanted an easier way.

And yet, despite his intense inner pain, Abraham remained faithful to God. He took the wood for the burnt offering and lays it on his son Isaac, and he himself carries the fire and the knife. The two walk on together, and then Isaac turns to his father and innocently asks, "Father! ... where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" We can imagine the ache in his chest and the lump in his throat as he answers, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." Abraham is not conflicted with theological questions we might have in this situation. After all, what kind of a god would make such a request as this? Yet, for Abraham, God is God, and God is a God who will provide a "lamb for a burnt offering." As Isaace placed his trust in his father, Abraham, so Abraham placed his trust in his father God.

If God is God, it is clear that Abraham is Abraham. He is a father, and this is, as far as he knows, his only surviving son. Ishmael was gone, presumed dead, expelled into the desert with nothing but his mother, a bagel and a canteen of water. Now, Abraham has only Isaac left. The anguish is plain to see. Abraham has to make a devilishly difficult decision, a conflicted choice that looks like it will lead to certain sorrow and despair in his life. He desperately wants harmony, but does not know how in the world he can achieve it while remaining faithful to God. So he makes the choice - the tough choice , the choice that would certainly throw his life into turmoil and sacrifice his immediate peace in order to gain peace in the long haul.

Abraham binds his son Isaac, lays him on the altar, on top of the wood, and clutching the knife in his hand, reaches out to kill his son. But an angel appears with a last-minute stay of execution, and announces that Abraham has passed the LORD's test of faithfulness. Abraham looks up to see a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and he sacrifices this beast in place of his son, discovering in a new and dramatic way that the LORD will, in fact, provide.

When conflict is chosen, God supplies a ram in the thicket, and the long-range results turn out well. Short-term harmony is attractive, but it is rarely a better choice than long-term productive conflict. If we behave in a way that is faithful to God and to each other, we can opt for constructive conflict, and trust that we will grow in productivity, relationships and spiritual well-being. The Lord will provide for us, as he helps us to grow into the people he wants us to be.

What decisions are you facing in your life? Are you being tempted to choose harmony over productive conflict? To pick peace instead of painful growth? Is your conflict being found

• in an abusive relationship

• in providing tough-love with a child

• in confronting a friend with a sinful lifestyle?

God will be with you if you choose the tougher path, and will supply you with a ram in a thicket. If God is calling you to service, to obedience, or to greater faithfulness, God will challenge you - as he challenged Abraham - to trust him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You will discover that divinely sanctioned conflict does not lead to death and destruction, but rather to life and growth and new opportunity.

History shows us that it is struggles that can save us. Citing historian Arnold J. Toynbee's book A Study of History, business consultant William Bridges makes the point that the great civilizations have risen to power not because of their advantages. No, not at all. Instead, they have flourished because they treated their disadvantages as challenges, to which they discovered creative responses.

"Toynbee shows, for example, that Athens rose to dominance in the classical world after its soil was depleted. Instead of being destroyed by that major setback, the Athenians treated it as a challenge to find a new way to participate actively in the economy of their day. Their creative response was to turn to the cultivation of olives, which could draw on much deeper water than could field crops. The Athenians rebuilt their economy around the export of olive oil, which further challenged them to build a merchant marine to transport it, a mining industry to create the coin to pay for goods, and a pottery industry to build the jugs to contain the oil.

The depletion of the soil in Athens could have led to an easy peace, with the Athenians accepting the fate of poverty and powerlessness. But they chose instead the productive conflict that goes along with creating a new industry, and they became a world power.

God's command to sacrifice Isaac could have led to an easy peace, with Abraham abandoning the Lord and living a safe and unremarkable life with his little family. But he chose instead the productive conflict that goes along with faithfulness to God, and he became the father of a great nation.

The challenges of abusive relationships, tough-love and sinful lifestyles can lead to an easy peace, with people taking the path of denial and avoidance and minimal resistance. But for those who choose the productive conflict that goes along with doing God's will in love and justice, there can be life and growth and new opportunity.

When you feel God is asking too much of you remember that he will supply the means and he will bring new growth from every challenge.

Hope Beyond Hope

Genesis 21:1-21

6^th Sunday after Pentecost

Ever feel hopeless?  Ever feel hopelessly lost?  Not knowing which way to turn.  Not being able to discern what is best. Believing that you have done what was right or demanded of you and yet finding yourself in a place you never thought you would ever be. Feeling secure and suddenly the floor is pulled out from under you and you find yourself falling not knowing where you are going to land or when;  fighting just to stay alive.  Feeling that with every move you make you are sinking further into the quicksand which will eventually cover you.  Ever felt that way? Hopeless.  Surrounded in darkness. Ever felt like just giving up or giving in, not wanting to go through the pain again?

There are many people in Iowa and Kansas and all along the Mississippi River that find themselves in that place today. There are many people who have just gone through tornadoes and have lost everything they own who find themselves surrounded by the darkness of the hour.

A number of years ago I had some very serious surgery done.  It was believed that the end result would show cancer.  Cancer runs on both sides of my family.  Following the surgery I had a good report from my doctor.  No cancer had been found in the biopsies that were done.  I was free of cancer.  Good news, yet in the days to follow I slipped in to a deep depression.  There were a few complications from the surgery that set me back.  I had always been very active and thought that with the good news I would be back on my feet in no time and doing the things I wanted to do and needed to do, but that just did not happen. I was to the point where I was feeling it would be easier to die than to live and that is not a place where a minister of the Gospel wants to go, and yet that was the place where I was at in my life. I was fighting for my life not against cancer but against depression. I had to force myself to get out of bed and get moving a little more each today. I was at a place I never thought I would be.

Ever been there?

Most of us have, at least once in, our life been at a place where we were finding it hard to see the light, difficult to make ends meet, not knowing where life was going to take us or how we were going to go on.  Yet we have.  What made the difference?  What has kept you going?  What has brought you hope again, hope beyond hope?

Hagar in today’s Old Testament story had done all that was expected of her, and yet she found herself in a place she never wanted or deserved to be. Maybe you don’t remember the whole story.  Maybe you don’t remember who Hagar is.

Hagar was the slave of Sarah, the first wife of Abraham.  She was mother of Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael.  God had made a promise to Abraham that if he would leave his country a place of security and in faith go to the place God would show him, that God would make him the father of a great nation and that his descendants would be a numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand upon the beach.  In faith Abraham took God at his word and did as God had asked, but the sons God had promised did not appear even though Abraham had been faithful.

Abraham prospered in many ways. But he had no true descendants of his own who would inherit all the blessings that God had given to him. Time past and Abraham grew older and the wife of his youth also grew older and still they had no children.  Like us Abraham and Sarah grew impatient.  Things were not happening as quickly as they had hoped.  Had God forgotten his promise? Like us they looked for other ways to made God’s promises come true.

Among other woman Sarah, Abraham’s wife was looked down upon for her barrenness, so she decided that the time had come for Abraham to have a son, if not through her, through her slave girl. So she talked Abraham into taking Hagar, her slave girl so that she might give to him a son, and sure enough Hagar conceived and a son was born to Abraham.

Abraham loved Sarah and he did as Sarah had asked.  But then God did what they thought God would never do, and Sarah in her old age, thought to be barren became pregnant and she also gave Abraham a son. This was the son of promise, the rightful heir to the estate, the one God had promised, but now because of Sarah’s impatience another child stood to inherit his father’s estate as the firstborn.

Bitterness developed between the two women.  When Hagar conceived, though, a slave girl she treated her mistress “with contempt.”  That was a big mistake on her part. Did she have a right to do so, after all this was not something of her own choosing.  It was something forced upon her.  Did she not have a right to be bitter toward her mistress?

 Even though she was a slave and a subordinate wife to Abraham, her pregnancy gave her status over Sarah in her barrenness.  Sarah treated her harshly and Hagar ran away into the desert, returning only after God made a covenant with her about her son.  The anxiety level here was sky high, but women will do right by their children and that was what Hagar did.

When Isaac was finally born to Sarah, the conflict between the mothers reached a climax. Sarah wanted no competition for her  son’s rightful inheritance, and Abraham could not bring himself to disagree. This had to have caused Abraham much stress after all Ishmael was his son.  As a father he had a duty to look after the child and his mother.  What Sarah wanted him to do was wrong. Now this is the same man who picked up his family and stepped out to do what God asked and yet it seems twice now he was not able to stand up for what he believed to be best. He was not able to confront Sarah.

Though Ishmael was indeed the first born son of Abraham, the preferential order of rank was given to the firstborn son of the primary wife.  Sarah’s demand that Hagar be “cast out” is distressing to Abraham, but God reminded Abraham that this is part of the covenant plan and that God would fulfill a covenant through Ishmael as well, making “a nation of him also.”

When we think we have God all figured out, God does the unexpected thing.  Yes, through Isaac, the Abrahamic covenant would be fulfilled; but God had business with Hagar and Ishmael as well, and God keeps his promises. God would not abandon them. God would be with the boy and his mother.  He would watch over Abraham’s son as the he grew.

We cannot but feel pain for Hagar and for her son.  She is the mother carryng her son on her back or cradled in her arms fleeing from her war-torn country, clutching her frightened child. We see her as the mother fleeing from an abusive relationship seeking safety for her child and for herself.  She is the woman left alone to raise her child in poverty, homeless and destitute, lacking shelter, lacking food, thirsty. A woman pushed out, cast aside, unwanted, unloved, alone. Though we might turn our heads away from her the writer of Genesis wants us to know that our God does not.  He never forgets a mother’s love.

Hagar wandered the desert with her son, no doubt rationing the little water Abraham had given to her, giving most of it to her son.  And when it was gone she placed him in the little bit of shade she could find and she separated herself from him so that she would not hear his cry, nor watch him die. She could not stand to hear his crying when she had nothing more to give him. The last water left in her body was given in her tears of grief.

God heard the cry of the boy.  God hears the cry of the outcast.  God does not turn away. “Do not be afraid.” How many times have we heard those words in the Bible?  “ Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”  God then filled the well with water in the desert and put hope for abundance in the midst of desperate circumstances. What he did then he can do even now. Hope beyond hope.  It was not of Hagar doing that Ishmael lived, but of God doing, the God who makes the promise and keeps it.  “Be not afraid, I am with you even to the end of time.” He is the hope beyond all hope.  He is the source of all goodness. He is able to carry us over the rough places in life, to lift us out of despair.  He will part the sea before us if we will trust him and follow him.  He is hope beyond all hope.

F.A.I.T.H. Challenges

4^th Sunday after Pentecost

Larry Davies, tells a story on his website Sowing Seeds of Faith titled “If you’re going to fly … you’ve got to flap your wings!”

It is a parable about a wild goose shot down by a local hunter. Only wounded in one wing, he landed safely in a barnyard. Naturally the local turkeys and chickens were quite startled by this sudden visitor from the sky. As they became more comfortable with this stranger, however, it was only natural to ask about what they had seen but never experienced: “Tell us what it’s like to fly.”

“It’s wonderful!” said the goose, who told story after story of his flights. “It’s beautiful to soar out in the wild blue yonder! Why this barn looks only an inch high and all of you look like tiny specks from such a distance. First you fly high and then you can glide and enjoy the astonishing scenery.”

All the birds were quite impressed by the goose’s stories. Later they asked him to tell more stories about flying. Soon, it became a weekly event for the goose to entertain all the barnyard birds with his stories. They even provided a little box for him to stand on so everyone could see him better.

But the strangest thing happened, or maybe I should say … never happened. While the domestic birds very much enjoyed hearing about the glories of flight, they never tried to fly themselves. And the wild goose, even though his wing healed, continued to talk about flying but never actually flew again .…

How easy it is to talk about being a Christian without acting like one. How easy it is to stand in church and say, “Jesus is Lord,” without actually turning our lives over to his direction. How easy it is to sit in our comfortable seats and ignore a world in desperate need of our witness. How easy it is as a minister to talk about ministry without actually doing it. It’s easy to talk, but you must really flap those wings to fly.

What challenges your faith? What keeps you from flying? What keeps you from soaring, rising above the level of hearing the “Good News” to acting upon the “Good News”? What holds us back from experiencing the fullness of God and living abundant lives? Today we look at faith, our faith and we seek answers to these pressing questions.

Moses was once a prince in Egypt, but filled with anger over the beating of a slave, he reacted instead of acting and became a fugitive running for his very life.  After spending forty years as a herder of sheep God called him to go back to Egypt to meet up again with his past and to lead those in slavery out. Confronted by God and what God was now asking him to do he stuttered and stammered and made excuses.

Elijah, the prophet, defeated the prophets of Baal and three hundred were slain by the hands of their own people, and when we would think things were looking up, Elijah ran for cover and hid himself in a cave.

Jesus had been out healing and teaching all day and as evening came he said to his disciples, “let us go over to the other side.”  Half way across the lake, while Jesus tired from his labor sleep, a storm came up suddenly and threatened the boat and all within it.  Struggling to keep the vessel afloat the disciples turned to Jesus and woke him up. “Do you not care if we all perish?”

What held them back?  What kept them from soaring? What challenged their faith?  FEAR!

Faith, strong faith, the faith that is able to move mountains begins in fear, but as we move closer into God’s presence and as we give glory to God and do what is pleasing to him, fear moves to the background and faith emerges. 

Remember the first time you rode a two wheel bike, or stepped onto a roller coaster, took off the swimmies and began to swim on your own.  Remember the day you dove into fifteen feet of water, crawled onto the big yellow bus and waved to mom. Fear was very much present, but the desire to do it was greater.

“Perfect Love, the perfect and steadfast love of God, casts out all fear, not some fear, all fear. Is you faith lacking?  Is it failing you or are you failing it?  Is fear in control of your life today? Draw close to God and allow him to cast out that fear that is holding you down, keeping you from soaring.  Face the demons in your life and God will give you the strength, God will give you the wisdom to over come them.

David overcame the giant with one stone as he stepped out onto the plain and placed his trust in the One he believed to be greater. Seeing what the faith of one small boy was able to do the army of Saul attacked and conquered the enemy.

The second thing that keeps us from soaring, from rising above mediocre faith is ANXIETY.  We become anxious about so many things.  We worry about this and we worry about that. We get so wrapped up in ourselves, that we lose focus upon that which is important and allow the trivial things in this life to rule over our life and we, therefore, miss out on God’s purpose for our life. We never allow ourselves to experience the fullness of God.

The disciples got so involved with who was the greatest and who deserved to sit on Jesus right side and be his right-hand-man that they missed the important part of what he said, that he would die and be raised again to life and that all who believe in him would also rise to eternal life. They miss the big picture. They tripped and sweated over the small stuff and missing out on the big opportunity.

How many opportunities have you missed out on simply because you allowed the small stuff, the worry to keep you from acting upon the opportunity?

It is difficult to cross over the river of fear and anxiety and to enter into the land of faith. Have you noticed that fear and anxiety focus upon “me”, “I” and “us”. To enter into the land of faith and abundant living we have to let go of ourselves.  To serve God in the way that would bring us fully into his presence and into the kingdom of God we must refocus our attention, let go of our comfort zone, be willing to test our wings, to fly to the top of the hen house and flap our wings and continue to flap our wings until our wings catch the wind of God and he carries us over the fence and sets us free.

What challenges our faith?  What keeps us from soaring to glorious heights? Our independence; thinking we can do it on our own and that we do not need this God. Adam and Eve fell into this trap, the prodigal son felling into this trap, Jonah fell into this trap, Saul fell into this trap and countless others.

The prodigal son felt his freedom was being hampered by his father and the responsibilities that were place upon him as a son.  He sought his independence from his father, paying no attention to the extra burden he was placing upon his brother in leaving.  Paying no attention to how his father felt.  Off he went to do his own thing and to live the way that please himself, but after wasting his inheritance he realized how foolish he had been and wanted to be reconnected.  Maybe today you are tired of running.  Maybe today you feel the need to be reconnected but you are no sure how to do it.  The prodigal son began by stepping out upon the road that leads home, confessing his waywardness and his desire not to be treated as a son but as a servant. 

The fourth thing that seemed to challenge our faith is troubles.  I am not sure where we ever got the idea that Christians are free of troubles.  The moment Jesus came up out of the Jordan River at his baptism he was quickly ushered out into a desert place and faced days without food and water. Jesus no matter where he went was questioned and harassed and plodded against and finally hung upon a cross.  Satan does not attack his own.  After a great spiritual victory in your life expect Satan’s attack. He does not want to see God winning the battle.  

Troubles come our way and we try all kinds of ways to get around them, over them and out of them, before we try on God the sure fit. It is time to move over and allow God to take the wheel.  It is time to take our foot off the brake and allow God to give it the gas. We cannot move forward by clinging to our old ways and habits.  They did not work before what would make you think they will work now?

The last thing that challenges our faith is our health.  Job was a man of God.  He was the one God pointed out to Satan as a man of righteousness, a man seeking out the will of God in his life. Trouble stuck Job.  In one day he lost the farm, he lost his means of living, and he lost all his children.  Talk about trouble, but trouble did not defeat him. His response to the loss was, “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed is the Lord.” But when Satan attacked Job’s health Job began to listen to his friends, he began to question why God would allow all these terrible things to happen to him. Job however was not won over. His desire to be in relationship with God became stronger as he exposed his humanness to God and poured out his heart before God seeking understanding.

When fear and anxiety, your need to be on your own, trouble and health threat to do you in and your faith is weakened there is one who is far greater than you who is willing to reach out and lift you up and make you soar.  

“Clutter”

Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-31

3^rd. Sunday after Pentecost

How many of you have a junk drawer in your house or garage?  Maybe you have more than one.  Most of us do.  What is its purpose? Why do you have one? What I have found is that we tend to keep putting more and more into it, but for some reason we almost never take anything out of it.  I have a junk drawer at the parsonage.  This week I started to go through the items in that drawer, trying to rid myself of some of the junk. I was doing that because the drawer would not hold anything more.  I needed to make room for more junk.  It might surprise you what I found, then maybe it won’t.  That drawer holds my drill, and screwdriver set, a hammer, container of various screws and plugs, picture hooks, drawer lining paper, all good things, but then I found bag of tops from yogurt in support of cancer research that I never sent in, box tops for education I had saved, a toy from MacDonald’s drive-through, football cards, etc.

Clutter.  What is clutter?  What maybe clutter to you may not be clutter to me, but one thing I do know is that too much clutter can affect our ability to live.  I had a woman in one of my congregations who had a problem with throwing things away.  She saved just about everything she could get her hands on, newspapers, books, old records albums.  There were piles and piles and piles of stuff everywhere you looked.  To sit down in her livingroom you had to take what was piled on it off and then try to find a spot where you could place it. She could not eat at her table and to cook on the stove she had to remove what  she had piled upon it.  She never had friends over.  She met them at the front door.  From the outside of the house things appeared to be normal, but do not open the garage.  Her car and her daughter’s car sat out summer and winter.  The basement was full of stuff.  The health department would have condemned the property.  It was a fire and health hazard. I know this because I helped her daughter get rid of much of the clutter. For three weeks we hauled clutter in bags out to the curb to be picked up; not one or two bags, but twenty of thirty bags filling the driveway. She is not alone.

When Andy Warhol died in 1987, estate executors who went to clean out his home found an indescribable mountain of clutter. Warhol’s five-story New York house was so packed full of objects large and small, valuable and mundane objects, that the artist was down to living in just two rooms. Friends were never entertained there, so no one knew just how much stuff had accumulated. Andy couldn’t even throw away a gum wrapper. Found in his home were piles of letters, doodling, and unopened bills and even a pizza.

He was a collector of Native-American art, Man Ray photographs, art-deco furniture, fancy jewelry, cookie jars and tacky world’s fair souvenirs. So obsessed with these details was Warhol that he collected 608 boxes of odd and ordinary stuff to be saved as “time capsules” for some future purpose. Found in some of these boxes were things like a piece of Caroline Kennedy’s wedding cake, a dress that probably belonged to Jean Harlow, $14,000 in cash and even a mummified foot.

But again, one person’s trash is another’s treasure. In 2002, some 300 of these items were put on display at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in an exhibit called “Possession Obsession: Objects from Andy Warhol’s Personal Collection.” It’s a testament to all the junk left over when the king of 15 minutes of fame days were finally up.

Dr. Phil recently did a show in which a woman was so obessed with stuff that her children could no longer sleep in their beds, but slept together on the couch.  Maybe you happened to see it. She had several freezers in the house and in the garage filled with food some of it seven years old that they had not eaten nor thrown out. This woman had so much stuff that her husband went out and bought a larger house and within a few months it too was overflowing with  stuff. All these folks were and are suffering from mental and emotional health problems, but most of us are not and yet we too accumulate a lot of unneeded stuff in our lives, not just physical clutter but often time’s emotional baggage or clutter.  So what do we do with it?

Of course, your local charities might take that physical clutter off your hands.  The garbage collector will haul it away if we put it at the curb, a neighbor may even find some value in and take it home. Most of us, if we’re honest, can deal with a little clutter in our homes — that pile of newspapers on the chair or floor, a messy desk at the office, a garage with shelves of paint cans that haven’t been touched since the Reagan administration. It’s usually only at a crisis point that we finally decide to clean it all up, whether it’s because of a personal disaster, a move, company coming over or the odd smell that seems to permeate our living space. Otherwise, we’ll get completely buried in it.

Most of us won’t get a museum devoted to our refuse, so we’d best think about how we’re going to get our lives cleaned up — not only in the garage, but in the spaces of our spiritual lives. Sometimes the things that clutter our lives are like weeds in the garden that choke out the good plants.

The apostle Paul recognized that human life, without exception, is full of life-choking piles of sin-soaked stuff. “There is no one who is righteous, not even one… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

It is well known that the word for sin evokes the image of an archer aiming at a target in the distance. Shots are fired, but the arrows miss — not to the left or the right, not too high or too low, but drop harmlessly well short of the target.

We are arrow collectors. We hoard these misbegotten adventures, our shortcomings, and we pile them up, allowing them to  clutter our lives and rob our lives of the joy of life itself.

Paul offers to us a catalogued list of timeless junk that we humans tend to collect and hoard (1:18-32) — sins, misdeeds, garbage, refuse that can pile up so high that it separates us from a relationship with “the Creator, who is blessed forever” (1:25). Sin limits our free movement, confines us to the corners and margins of life, cuts us off from others and eventually begins to crush our very spirits. We can find ourselves slowly dying a spiritual death in the midst of this God-awful mess.

Paul reminds us that  there is good news for us, and that good news is the “power of God.” It’s a well-known fact that the junk in a lot of our homes will not disappear unless it’s vaporized in a thermonuclear blast. It takes similar power to achieve the end the apostle describes as “salvation.” When God’s power was applied, it was to save us.

This can be problematic today for postmoderns living in a culture that does not believe it needs to be redeemed. Yet one doesn’t have to look too closely to realize that at every level of life, there are institutions, governments, ideas, cultures, programs and practices — and people themselves, who need to be redeemed.

That is to say, people, places and things who need to be made useable, useful and whole again. God’s power has been given to this end. God power has been applied to empower you to live clutter-free in a moral and spiritual clutter-free zone. This didn’t just happen. It was messy. Someone got blood all over himself in the process. “[We] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith”.

The cost to God? The Cross — a bloody mess. The cost to us? Consider it a gift. Take God’s word for it. It’s a gift.

This realization that salvation is for those who accept it by faith was the inspiration for the reforming impulse of Luther’s work during the so-called Reformation of the early 16th century.

When he read in Romans 1:17 that the apostle, citing Habakkuk, said the just shall live by faith, Luther formulated his doctrine of justification by faith — an idea that went off like a bomb in the church, and appeared to mess things up, not clean things up.

We are justified by faith and only by faith in Jesus Christ anything else is filthy rags, garbage, clutter, junk.  Salvation comes through Christ.  Christ is the one who scrubs us clean.  We come to him covered in our sin, but by his blood we are cleansed.

We are forgiven, cleaned up, scoured, whitened and brightened when we simply put our faith in God’s ability to do the work through Christ. Our spiritual lives can be made “like new” through the power of God’s good news of grace. But while we can be given a new and more open space to live out God’s grace, it’s also important for us to continually fight the clutter that ultimately wants to creep back into our lives. Justification isn’t a license for spiritual laziness, letting all that sinful junk pile up once again until another crime scene cleanup is needed. Rather, it’s an opportunity for us to grow forward in faith — and that requires constant maintenance on our part in cooperation with Christ.

Experts on household organization say that one of the best ways to keep clutter from accumulating in your home is to go through a different room of the house each day and throw out or recycle something that’s not needed. The thinking is that if you get rid of something unnecessary, you make more room for what’s really important.

That’s great advice for our spiritual lives, too. How would your life and your relationship with God improve if you spent a little time each day intentionaly throwing away negative thoughts, attitudes, activities, temptations — all those sin-producing things which tend to pile up on us?

One way of doing this, according to household organizational expert Janet Hall, is to do a daily “brain dump” — to put on paper all the thoughts, worries, lusts, joys, concerns and even good things that occupy your mind during the day. Then, says Janet, “Circle the items on your paper that you can take action on, want to take action on, and items that you have control over. All the negativity, sadness, fears, frustrations, the things you have no control over, let them go, repeating the verse, ‘Renew a right spirit within me’ (Psalm 51:10).”

Whatever mess you’ve made, know that God is ready, willing and able to take on the job of getting rid of that junk.

Faith-based. Love-laced and Hope-faced

Ephesians 2:1-10

Some people are born "fixer-uppers." They love to buy old houses with peeling paint, leaky plumbing, tiny kitchens, too few bedrooms and no closets. They don't see any of these qualities as deterrents--only the promise of some future project that needs to be tackled. They love the challenge.  They have great imaginations.  They are creative thinkers.  They is see the value in what we might see as junk to be thrown away.  They enjoy the thrill of working to make something better.

Fixer-uppers are never happier than when their living rooms are full of sawdust and their bathrooms are full of holes. They love to wake up to the sound of protective roof tarps flapping in the wind. For these folks there is nothing more fun than eternally being "under construction." Many of them are called Methodists, always going on to perfection.  They fix up one house and then turn around and sell it.  They are always looking for a future project and a new possibility. What we might see as a real dump, they see as a place where with a little love and hard work a palace.

Do you know anyone like that, who can turn trash into treasure?

Jesus is a member of this group.  He takes that which is broken and restores it.  He takes the heart that has forgotten how to sing and sings to it until that heart joins in.

Do you know anyone like that?

But not all of us enjoy the challenge of remodeling. We don’t like messes. Not all of us are visionaries. We are not all “fixer-uppers”, by nature, but God does desire to place within each of us the heart of the “fixer-upper.”

 In Jesus time there were those who confronted Jesus in the temple and ridiculed his intention to reconstruct the destroyed temple in three days. They suffered from what church consultant Robert Dale calls "Intention Deficit Disorder." Of course, their doubt or "disorder" was based on a more well-established track record than many of our doubts and disorders--the current temple had been "under construction" for the past 46 years! Now there is a construction project to make the dedicated fixer-upper rejoice and the rest of us weep.  I have lived in an old house that has been passed down from one generation to the next generation and I know that there is always something more that needs to be done. So it is with our life.  God is constantly working out his will and way in those who belong to him. He knocks out the wall of prejudice and opens up more room for opportunity.  He fills the empty heart waiting to be filled with beauty and kindness.  He creates a staircase that leads to unheard of possibilities.

The truth is that, like the temple, all of us are continually "under construction." In the final verse of this week's epistle text, the writer insists that as men and women saved by grace, we are now called to incarnate good works. Because we are "in Christ Jesus," we can do more than build "good works." We can become a good work. We can be a good work. Turning our life into a "good work" is the ultimate fixer-upper project, the real lifelong construction project. Becoming a "good work" means reconstructing our lives into a living Jesus.

Thankfully, God is a determined and ceaseless "fixer-upper." As the epistle writer notes, God is "rich in mercy" and continues to pour out the gift of divine grace to us throughout our lives. Only this constant infusion of grace makes it possible for the construction project to continue. What is the blueprint God would have us follow? The finished project God has in mind as the goal of all our "good works"? It is the creation of the most "grace-full" structure ever conceived--the spirit-filled body of Christ, a community of disciples we call the church.  God is in the business of making us over into a people who are faith-based, love-laced and hope-faced. People just like Jesus.

The design for this most grace-full place called the church is built around three main structural supports. In order to stand strong and unwavering, the church must be a community where the trace of grace is threefold. The church as a household of faith in Jesus Christ is a place where (1) faith is based, (2) love is laced, and (3) hope is faced.

How's that for a mission statement? Only when these three foundational pillars have been erected can any safe and secure construction go forward.

So let’s ask the hard questions:

Can we find the trace of grace at work in our spiritual lives and in our community of faith?

When the doors are fully opened for the entrance of God's grace, the spirit revels in the richness of God's gift. Ever notice that those blocking the flow of grace in their lives are described with terms that denote poverty?

Those who find no joy are called "mean"-spirited. Those who allow physical weakness to define their being are in "poor" spirits. Those content to just get by have a "meager" spirit.

But for those open to God's grace, continually allowing God’s grace to perfect in them a Christ-centered spirituality that is always under construction, there are "immeasurable riches" which have become and are becoming  part of the standard interior design of their lives. Those who know they have received Grace, from them grace continuously flows.

The trace of grace in every community of faith can be followed by examining how much progress is being made in putting together a truly faith-based, love-laced, and hope-faced spiritual home. How tall is each one of these pillars standing in our church?

1. Are we Faith-based? Are we willingly seeking out God’s will in our lives and for his church? Are we willing to step out in faith even when we may never see the end results.  Are we willing as Abraham was to leave behind our security and comfort for the sake of Christ and that which God promises is better?  Without the basic pillar of faith, there can be no confidence in whatever else the community may undertake to construct. Without faith, doubt and fear can creep in like termites, nibbling away at our spiritual foundations. A genuinely faith-based spirituality is sustain even when the ground may seem to be sinking right out from underneath everything.

 Faith in the power of Christ's sacrifice and in the ultimate and eternal victory Christ won for our sake keeps all other conflicts and difficulties in perspective. Even if the roof falls in, the neighborhood changes, church attendance drops, facilities rot away, preachers disappoint or choirs squawk, faith endures. Faith is what keeps us moving.  Faith is what builds us up and holds us together.  It is the pillar of support in times of trouble.

2. Are we Love-laced? If faith is the essential pillar that holds our spiritual community up, then love is the cross-beam that reaches between and offers support by bracing one against another. Love must be "laced" throughout a Jesus spirituality, for love was the motivating force behind all Jesus did and said. Jesus offered his love to each of us because he saw in each of us a dire need for grace and mercy. Love is a lure that attracts our starving spirits to the richness of God's grace and love is what attracts others to the church of Jesus Christ and into a relationship with God.
Consider Jesus' loving response to the woman taken in adultery and the crowd poised to stone her. Instead of judging her, Jesus responds with love and compassion. He chose to love her, not condemn her.

Jesus' first instinct is to be compassionate. His heart reaches out to the woman. She is the one facing the death threats. The crowd wants Jesus to come over to their side. They want his endorsement so they can apply the letter of the law. But Jesus says "no" to legalism. His compassion compels him to stand with the woman. He is more concerned about giving the woman a fresh start and God's grace than he is about staining his own reputation by associating with her. In Jesus' mind, no one in the temple is innocent. Everyone in the story is in need of grace and mercy, and so it is with us in the church. Not one of us is so righteous that we do not need God’s grace.

Are we extending a hand slap or a handshake to others in need? Are we responding to others in love and compassion or in judgment and condescension? Are we always looking for ways to inject Christ's love for others into our community? Unlike with secular corporations, the church's "bottom line" is spiritual, not material. The church's "bottom line" can never be determined by budgetary concerns or feasibility studies. In the end, the church's "bottom line" is this trace of grace. Are we a community building a Jesus spirituality for the world? Do we ask ourselves: Is this a loving response to the pain and need we face? A love-laced church takes Christ's own sacrificial love as its template to action.

3. Are we hope-faced? Hope is the kind of pillar that would hold up one of those grand "flying buttresses" that protrude from ancient cathedrals. Hope supports, but it also propels us forward. Without hope, a Jesus spirituality has no future--and the promise of a glorified future is integral to the gift of grace God offers. The future is something we must always be preparing for, not just waiting for.

In his extensive research on "low-hope" vs. "high-hope" people, partly funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, University of Kansas psychotherapist C. R. Snyder isolates the unique "Hope to Cope" mind/body/spirit skills of high-hopers. He discovered that high-hopers:
1) Minimize the negative.  The glass is always half-filled not half-empty.  They have a sense that "This too shall pass" or "It came to pass."

2) High-hopers establish an outward, problem-solving focus. What low-hopers see as a problem they see as an opportunity. If they try one thing and it does not work they continue to try.  They may discover 10,000 ways that something does not work before they discover what does, but they do not see their work as a failure.

   
3) High-hopers call on friends more readily; they reach out for help and they establish intimacy and friendships.  They know that no man is an island unto himself.  They realize that God has made us social beings. 

4) High-hopers laugh--we all need a good sense of humor!

5) They pray--"Prayer and prayerlike mental activities provide a day-by-day renewal that is important when people return to the rigors of coping. In many ways this is equivalent to the need we have for sleep as a time to replenish ourselves after periods of wakeful exertion" .

 
6) Exercise is a part of their daily life.

7) They practice healthful behaviors.

8) They age gracefully.

Can we trace God's grace coursing through our lives? Can we feel God's grace continuing its work within and through us the entire course of our lives--expanding, remodeling, modernizing, pushing out walls, opening up skylights?

Will this church be a household of faith that is . . . Faith-based, love-laced, hope-faced!  Without these three pillars the church cannot stand the test of time.

Scripture: Luke 5:1-11

Sermon: “Rethinking Church”

The Principle of Multiplication

Sometimes the church seems institutionally heavy. Have we forgotten our tradition of pilgrimage and mobility? Not if we are members of an inflatable church!

For $35,000, you can have a luxury sedan. Or a lovely Gothic church.

Take your pick.

It’s hard to believe, but for the price of a well-equipped Infiniti G35 luxury car, you can now buy yourself a fully loaded, 47-foot-high place of worship. It’s got Gothic arches, an organ, a pulpit, an altar, space for 60 and even some stained-glass-style windows.

All for $35,000, which sounds like a deal, or even a steal.

The problem is, this building is a balloon.

The world’s first inflatable church made its debut last May in England, and its creator hopes that it will “breathe new life into Christianity.” Featured on CNN and other media outlets, the church is designed to fit in the back of a truck so that it can be hauled to village squares or open fields and set up for impromptu services.

Time was when churches were the centers of community life, but “sadly, that’s not the case anymore,” laments the innovator behind the inflatable church. “This is one way to reverse that trend, make the church more accessible and put it back where it belongs.”

Walk through the gray Gothic archway, and you find yourself in a worship space that looks like a cross between a monastery and a moon-bounce. There are brown polyvinyl pews, an inflatable organ, a pop-up pulpit and an air-filled altar. Once you get adjusted to the puffy plastic walls, you can easily imagine taking part in a service of worship there. The stained-glass windows are really quite attractive, and the inflatable pews seem to be much more comfortable than seats made from hard, polished wood.

Just be sure to leave your sharp objects at home.

Jesus was of the same mind-set when he launched his ministry beside the lake of Gennesaret. He wasn’t interested in stacking stones to build a Catholic cathedral, or laying brick to erect a Baptist church, or nailing planks to assemble a Congregational

meetinghouse. Instead, he looked for ways to take his message into the very heart of where people were living and playing and working, and he spoke from whatever platform he could find.

Would he have preached from the roof of a Hummer? Sure, if there happened to be a car dealer in Capernaum. As it turned out, Jesus saw two boats at the shore of the lake, and so he hopped into Simon’s and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat (Luke 5:1-3).
Jesus created a sanctuary at sea. A worship center on the water. He placed a pulpit in the center of the people so that the word could be heard.

So why are we stuck with a sedentary sanctuary today?

No mystery, really. We all have a natural human hunger for stability in our lives, so it makes sense that our church has a solid foundation and a set of sturdy walls, plus an unchanging number in the phone book and an address that hasn’t shifted since the cornerstone was first put in place.

The church needs to recover its tradition, however, of pilgrimage and journey. From the tabernacle in the wilderness, to the great Wesleyan revivals of the 18th century when preachers went into pit and pub with the good news, and Whitefield thundered in open-air fields, and later Billy Graham set up a tent in Los Angeles and so on. The church thrives when it is on the move.

Should we be operating out of the back of a Hummer? Or off the deck of a fishing boat? Or from a flatbed truck hauling an inflatable church? The Rev. Michael Elfred, a minister in the Church of England, reminds us that in the Old Testament, God’s people worshiped in a tent. “God is on the move,” he insists, “and tells us not to be sidetracked by our buildings.”

The Lord is on the move … always on the move. That’s the story of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. But here we sit, too often thinking of ministry as something that happens within these four walls. Are we going to find ourselves Left Behind?

Our mission is to go out, not get them to come in. We’re to meet people where they live and work and play. Jesus invites us to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” (v. 4). Do we have the heuvos to walk with God into an uncertain future, knowing that God is always ahead of us, and that God is always on the move.

Now we don’t actually have to worship each week in a big balloon in order to pass the inflatability test. After all, polyvinyl pews can pop, air-filled arches can sag, and space for 60 is not going to fill the bill for many services of worship. But there is still tremendous value in thinking about being a church that is apostolic and on the move with God, a church that refuses to be stuck in one location and sidetracked by worries about the condition of its bricks and mortar.

Our focus should be on inflatability, not stability. Multiplication, not addition. On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit rested upon all who had gathered and they went out to tell what they had seen, heard and witnessed, and to their number 3000 were added. That is really multiplication.

In the book of Genesis God called every living creature that he made to be fruitful and multiply.  In the New Testament Jesus’ parting words were to go and make disciples.  The word that should stand out here to every Christian is the word “Go.”

To be inflatable is to be incarnational — it is to be the living, breathing, walking, talking, the fully enfleshed body of Christ in the world today. To be inflatable is to be filled with the Spirit — after all, in the Hebrew Bible, there is only one single word for the concepts of wind and breath and Spirit. To be inflatable is to be easily transportable, and able to move quickly and efficiently to wherever God wants us to be. When the Lord is on the move, we don’t want to be left behind.

Inflatability is seen most clearly in our actions when we leave this building and go out into the world. After all, we’ve come to this place feeling deflated by the frustrations of the week, and maybe even punctured by sharp words and destructive, damaging actions.

As we worship God together, we find ourselves being repaired and reinflated, filled once again with the powerful and inspiring wind-breath-Spirit of God. Like the first apostles, we may toil all night by ourselves and catch nothing, but when we open our hearts to Jesus we find that our nets are filled so full that they are in danger of breaking (vv. 4-7).

The other piece of this is to remember the character of our story as the story of a pilgrim, a sojourner, one who is traveling toward an eternal destination and therefore is careful not to become entangled in complicated affairs along the way.
It’s too easy to think that this life is all there is. To forget that “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.”

When Jesus called, the future disciples “left everything and followed him” (v.11 NIV). They abandoned their rootedness in the world, and began instead a journey that would lead to their ultimate eternal destination.

So here we go, floating out into the world as a sign of God’s love for all people. “Do not be afraid,” said Jesus to his very first inflatable followers; “from now on you will be catching people” (v. 10). The best way to attract people to God is to be light and flexible and full of the Spirit, and the most effective way to draw people to Jesus is to do your best to love them as profoundly as Jesus loves them.

There was a woman in a mental hospital in Washington who was just sick and tired of hearing her chaplain tell her how much God loved her. She heard him say this again and again, and it just didn’t ring true; she didn’t believe it. Finally, she said to the chaplain, “Please, stop telling me how much God loves me. First, you love me. Then I’ll know that God loves me.”

That’s the approach of a disciple who is determined to live in the world, meet people where they live and work and play and show them the irresistible love of God.

That’s the technique of a Christ-follower who values inflatability over solidity, and flexibility over stability. It is time to risk and as John Ostberg says in our new Bible study, “Get out of the boat,” to step out of the comfortable and onto the water and walk toward Jesus as we answer his call to come. It is time to rethink church, people. It is time to grow.

Shame on You

16^th Sunday after Pentecost

1 Timothy 1:12-17

How many of you own a dog or have ever owned a dog?  Most of us at one time or another have.  Dogs are very intelligent and I suspect that a few may be even more intelligent than some of us.  We know that they are loyal, especially to the hand that feeds them.  We know that they are far more accepting of others than we many times maybe.  One other thing I have noticed about dogs is when they have done something wrong they cannot hide it.  I had a little Boston Terrier.  He was the cutest little thing.  He had only one bad habit.  He like garbage cans.  If I missed one he would find it and when he did he would help me out and empty it all over the room.  But, unlike us, he was not very good at concealing what he had done.  Every night as I came home from work he would greet me at the top of the cellar steps, except on the days when he had done the unthinkingly wrong thing that day.  On that day I would find him in the kitchen in his bed.  There were those sad eyes looking up at me and then looking away, a shameful glance. I had not even found what he had been up to while I was gone, but he knew what he had done and he was punishing himself for his mistake. He was not trying to hide from his responsibility.  He had done wrong.  He knew I would be disappointed in him, and he wanted to be back on good terms with me and this was his way of trying to right the wrong he had done.  Putting himself in bed was his way of confessing his wrong doing and hoping I would forgive his mistake and accept him back. It was his means of repentance.

Unilke Adam and Eve he did not try to hide from what he had done.  He did not try passing-the-buck onto someone else.  He owned up to the fact he had done something that would disappoint me.

When God showed up in the Garden of Eden, as he did every night and did not find Adam and Eve coming to greet him, that was a sure give-away that they knew they had done something that was unacceptable and would have been disappointing to God.  They, however, never really did own up to the fact that they had sinned against God, instead as we read the story they play the blame game.  We find them hiding out in the bushes trying to make a covering out of leaves for themselves.

God says to Adam, “What have you been up to, what have you done?  Did you eat from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?”

Was there a shameful look on Adam’s face?   Were his eyes downcast?

Adam replies, “The woman who you gave to be with me, gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”  “It’s not my fault, after all God you are the one who gave me this woman.  It’s your fault.” 

No responsibility, no shame here for his actions.  He knew where the fruit came from.  Eve did not twist Adam's arm and make him eat it.  Adam had a will of his own and he made the wrong choice, and like most of us he was not willing to own up to what he had done.  It is always easier to point our finger at another than admit we have done the unthinkable.

Now look at Eve.  She is no better.  When God questions her with what she has done, Eve turns on the serpent which God also created and lays the blame upon him. Their failure to acknowledge their sin, their unrepentant hearts, their lack of shame leads to their expulsion from the garden in which God walked, the place where God came to meet them.  Banished from God they live a separated life and a life of hardship and despair. But consider the real outcome of their unrepented sin. Every generation from that time on is created in their image.  Every generation would face death. Their son Cain murders his brother Able.  The unrepented sin multiplies.

Look at the life of David, God’s chosen one.  He had it all but he longed for more, just like Adam and Eve.  He was not satisfied with all that God had given him.  One night he rose from his bed unable to sleep and looked out over the city noticing a beautiful young woman taking a bath on the roof top below.  Did he look away?  No!  He watched for a while and then he did the unthinkable thing.  He sent one of his servants to bring the young woman to him and he slept with her that night. He thought he could get away with his sin, but he could not.  The young woman became pregnant and she sent word to David.  Like Adam and Eve David ties to cover himself. Was there any shame in David? Any sign of his acknowledging he had done wrong? 

He sends for the woman’s husband who is out in the field serving in his army.  Uriah returns home but he does not go home to his wife as David believed he would, instead he spends the night at the palace.  Uriah is an honorable man. He does the right thing, unlike David.

What was David to do?  Again David made a wrong choice.  He sends word to his commander of his troops telling him to put Uriah up in the front line and then withdraw the troops so that Uriah would be killed. Then David does what appears to be an honorable thing and he takes Uriah’s wife into his own home. He thinks he now has taken care of the problem.  He think no one will ever know what he has done, but he was wrong.  God knew and God could not overlook David’s shameful actions. The nation would suffer greater loss if God did, so God sends his prophet Nathan to David with a story about a man who stole his neighbors lamb and killed it.  David is outraged that such a thing should happen, but when Nathan says to David you are that man, David’s heart sank.  His sin came rushing back before him.  He was that man.  He had coveted his neighbor’s wife, he had raped her and then tried to cover his own sin by murdering her husband.  What a fool he had been. Filled with sorrow for what he had done David falls to his knees and confesses his sin.  He longs for his relation with God to be restored.

Unrepented sin has consequences not only for the one who committed the sin but for others. 

The Israelites crossed over the Jordan and took possession of Jericho as the walls fell to the ground, but a short time after that a much smaller part of Joshua’s army marched into Ai a small town and were defeated because one man chose to disobey and took for himself that which he was told he was not to take.  Many men lost their lives and the man, his family and all that he had were wiped from the face of the earth.

In today’s lesson found in 1 Timothy 1, we hear Paul’s confession.  Paul had been very zealous in his seeking out and capturing the early Christians.  He stood and watched as Stephen was stoned to death. But one day his life was changed when he encountered Jesus while on his way to destroy more of Jesus’ followers.  The blinders he had been wearing came off and Paul could clearly see that what he had been doing was wrong.  He of all people should have been able to see who Jesus was, after all he was a Pharisee above all Pharisees.  He knew the scriptures.  He knew the prophesies. 

As we read Paul’s letter we cannot help but notices how thankful Paul is and how utterly amazed Paul is that God would forgive his sin and that God would choose to use him in the way that God has.

Paul’s shame in this week’s text is his angish over the hurt he has caused others and his own violence and injustice.  But Paul found a sense of motivation in that “godly grief,” as shame and guilt is sometimes called.  From the day of his conversion Paul became the busiest, most zealous advocate for Jesus Christ in the struggling new church.  Paul outspokenly acknowledged his sin, his sense of shame was genuine, and his numerous confessions suggest that a certain sense of “godly grief” seemed to stay with him throughout his life.  But Paul was not overcome by this guilt.  He was not paralyzed by his shame, perhaps because he was able to speak freely about all he had done and was a shamed of.  He used his guilt as a means to move forward.  He used his guilt to remind him of what he needed to make up for.  And he used his own lowliness as a means to help him elevate Christ before others. 

If God could forgive and use him, the chief of sinners, then God would surely forgive and use anyone who comes to him seeking forgiveness and desiring to live a changed, new life.

Is there some unconfessed sin that is standing in the way of your relationship with God and with others? Is there something that just continually draws you down?  Is it interfering with your relationship with those you love and who love you? 

From the cross Jesus offered us forgiveness and way that would lead to abundant living.  Confession free us up to be used by God.