Facebook, Twitter and WordPress…Oh My!

"Follow the yellow brick road!?

Actually, Skype could have been added to the list,  for it is another way of connecting people and ideas. Talking and seeing one another through computers was only fictional way last century. As a boy, I looked at grandfather’s  old Popular Mechanics magazines way back in the last century (” I can do it all with my Wen-All Saw! “) and, along with building better birdhouses, there were articles about fantabulous  gizmos  that we might see in the 21st century and beyond. Here we are in 21-C, 3rd Millennium, Star Trek  world and these media are now literally at our fingertips. For those that love the beauty of language, pictures and thousands of words together handily and powerfully communicate to our network of relationships. Further, people we have never known and may never meet face-to-face could well ‘friend’ us across cyberspace.

It is a yellow brick road which is followed as we embark on this new adventure. One can either embrace and celebrate it  or can set it aside as just so much narcissistic blather from ‘people that don’t have enough to do with their time.’

I can’t help but ask the speculative question: how would Yeshua ben Yahweh have viewed and used these means of communication? Now, there’s Someone who painted world-changing ideas into the minds and hearts of not only his contemporaries but of artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, theologians and all of humanity . One could make the case that Jesus’ parables were the clearest communications he could have made because of pictures being worth  a thousand words. Images filling words full to overflowing were his stock-in-trade as he went about doing good and teaching well and healing spectacularly.

Jesus’ and His Disciples’  Excellent Adventure makes a lot more sense to me, frankly, now than it did  then when, along with Popular Mechanics , I was struggling with the  archaic Shakespearean language of  the King James Bible. I am grateful for the many ensuing paraphrases and translations that have,  in language  both pedantic and poetic, made the truths of God’s Word ever so much more accessible. Back then, I was content with Hurlbut’s Stories of the Bible which gave artistic vent to the stories of faith’s heroes; now, however, Powerpoint sermons and presentations and Veggie Tales and great movie-making literally illuminate the truths of God’s story in ways that far supersede. I thank God for Helen Reynolds’ flannelgraph stories of childhood Sundays and for the warmth of her personal gifts that made God a living reality  ; however, now, now….well, our grandchildren have access to His great truths in ways  far more powerful and compelling. All of that is amazing to us who have watched technology bloom into its present maturity and rejoice in One who has given his creative beings such capabilities as to produce technologies to make ‘the truth that sets us free’ so imaginative and wonderfully presented.

Given the principles behind Jesus’ use of picture-stories, a reasonable conclusion is that He would  ( and does ) gladly make use of present technologies without fear; as well, though, he would blend in the love, the joy, the fervour  of Helen and Bertha and Jay and Dorothy and Muriel and Myrtle and Mary and other like teachers of children to make the truths (enhanced by the  technology )  sing in the hearts of children who may well live into the next century — just as I have lived into this. They, too, will be just as in love with Jesus as this old child is right now.That’s my prayer and hope — that along with beeps and boops of tech world there are teachers of children whose fruits of the Spirit mirror exactly the character and nature of Christ, as did my loving teachers ‘way last century.

We’re off to see our Jesus…. our wonderful Jesus, the Christ….because of the wonderful things He’s done and continues doing by His Spirit.

What a difference a day(cision) makes!

It is a terrible and wonderful freedom we have — to choose. Over the years, it has puzzled me to see  difficulties  we humans have over the balance between our ability to make choices and our Creator God’s sovereignty. If we accept that we are made in God’s image, then recognize that power and authority are His main attributes — is it really a  stretch to believe that we have been given  wonderful, terrible freedom to choose as part of that ‘image’? The ‘imago Dei’ has far more to do with God’s primary nature and character than it does of some anthropomorphic idea of physical deity; rather, it speaks to the core of who we are in our inner beings, in our natures and characters. Why the fantastically creative God would leave out  of us humans that same kind of power and authority  to choose Him and His ways  defies logic and theologic.

Time and again, in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, there are clear evidences of human choice unrestricted by inclusive or exclusive divine decree. It is clear that we humans are untrammeled by the God who loves to have people love Him freely. It takes   semantic convolutions to come to the conclusion that He has left real power to choose out of our DNA, physically or spiritually. Words like ‘all’ and ‘whoever’ are liberally attached to unmistakable human choice in the scriptures; by definition , in their plain and clear meanings,  these are words that show God’s delight in people’s ability to choose.

One does well to ask: what is the overarching nature and character of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living/Loving God? It is that of the Father and the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control — this fruit (singular) against which there is no law, especially that of exclusion. If Jesus is, as the old hymn says out loud,  ‘God in the flesh below’ , then God the Father  and Spirit is shouting at us human beings — “See my boy? That’s who I am — that’s what I am like! We decided together, the 3 of us, that all you folks need to see what I’m  like in human terms!” God  drew a circle and drew us in , if we want to be part of the family. He respects the image He has created into us so much so that He gives us the terrible, wonderful freedom to choose Him, just as He chose us. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him chooses eternally living and not already dying and dead. It is no diminishing of God’s love to understand that He loves even those who choose not to love Him back. One could argue that hell is simply God saying to those of us who consistently choose to ignore Him, ” I love and respect your choices so much that you are free to live without Me forever.  “

Over the centuries between the presence in this world of  “the Word made flesh”  named Jesus/Yeshua and now, admirable but  primarily legal minds and recently converted souls have shaped  clear, plain truths about God’s love and choice into  unnatural molds. Heroes of Christian history have, in spite of our admiration for their work, been responsible for making God less loving and just than we flawed human beings are! Terrible strictures have been forced onto depictions of our loving Lord’s nature and character by those legal minds , so much so that God has been made Someone we would quickly cross the street to avoid, let alone ever think about inviting Him into our hearts and homes and families. What God is this who would exclude billions of people for the sake of the few who, through no personal merit, just happened to be on the right team?

God’s ability to choose and His wish for intimate relationship with each human being make two aspects of His character come into creative tension: love and justice. They are, thankfully,  perfectly balanced in Jesus whose person and work intersect on a cruel executioner’s cross. We see in Christ Jesus the difference that God’s decision made for us — He has decided to love us to death so that He can love us back to life. Then, we decide: do we believe in the One who throws open His arms on that cross — telling us in effect that ‘He loves us this  much’ — or do we reject the concept as just so much  foolishness?

What a difference His decision makes! Today is the day of our salvation.

I love you this much..... Jesus

First Century Christians, Part Two

Pondering about ‘the state of the Church’ seems to be a mesmerizing albeit worthy concern among followers of Jesus. Just the fact that the phrase ‘followers of Jesus’ categorizes me as one  more comfortable  with that title rather than that of ‘Christian’ is but one small indicator of the anxieties that beset thoughtful believers (woops, another euphemism) when the present state of the Body of Christ #2 ( Aldrich’s term ) is being considered.

Subtleties and nuances mean much, in our thought-meanders and blog-ramblings. It is as if there is a felt need to parse our ideas in minute word-bites to get at the real meanings of our disquiet. It appears that the Church is in a time of re-reformation, repetitively redundantly again,  as has been the case since the whole thing began to take shape out of the primeval stuff  of the first-century C.E. ( uh-oh, the slippery slope toward liberalism evident here )  — I mean, A.D.  We are the first-century church again,  at the beginning of this thousand-year stretch — I mean, unless the Lord Jesus comes again ( whew, this guy IS an evangelical after all — whatever that means! )

I would contend that one of the benefits of  this foment of theoretical and practical theology evident in cyberspace and in hard-copy is that the New Testament scriptures have gained a certain sense of immediacy. That which is old hard-copy has become newer life-blog as this first century of the new millennium comes into decadal being. We see a growing need now to have a reason for the hope that is within us — reason, based upon knowing not only what we believe but why we believe it. We need again to contend for the faith as  kingdom called Christendom has died, even the term Christianity being cast now into shadowy suspicion.

It can no longer be assumed that the truths of the scriptures are broadly believed; indeed, there is even in the Church a growing biblical illiteracy as well as in the wider world. Even the cadences of scripture and the biblical allusions with which we ( ahem ) seasoned believers grew up are not part of the parlance of everyday conversation.

So, is this cause for despair or is it, instead, a signal of a hope and a future? I vote for the latter option, for it was in just such a time that Jesus showed up as a real live boy whose lineage was both human and otherworldly. It was in just such a century that real people from the streets of Israel were radicalized to give themselves wildly to an adventure which is still excellent today. It was in just such an era where ideas as radical as the ones we know about among media and throughout philosophies and religions were the stuff of everyday conversation. That era is when the kingdom that Christ began in earnest took shape and it is still  a kingdom yet to come in its’ fullness.

I think it’s a great time to know Jesus and let others know that He is our Lord and Saviour and Brother and Counselor and Peace-Maker and Mighty God. I’m all for first-century Christian living, moving and being  — first century of 21-C, Millennium 3, C.E, Anno Domini — whatever we choose to call our time. It is at  just such a time as this for which we were made. Everything old is new again!

To FB or not to FB…?

Chris and Marie on webcam

The recent decision of a respected colleague and friend to drop Facebook  because of the time and focus it requires has made me think about use of various networks and tools to develop them. Another friend has used the term ‘techno-lust’ to describe  enthrallment with the next new hardware, a term which one could generalize to fascination with  software applications and social networking apps. Any thoughtful person will   take stock of personal use of such because time is still a gift given once.

Recently, the author of a new book,  Hamlet’s Blackberry , was opining in a PBS interview about the need for regular ‘technology sabbaths’. The book is the result of  research into other times in human history when  availability of new inventions fundamentally changed use of time and energy,  such as  the eras of Seneca,  Aristotle and Gutenberg. (Note to self: be sure to go online and order Hamlet’s Blackberry, purchasing through Paypal, after which you must go to online banking and top up your PayPal account— after you update your database and check out your tweets, postings and that slow old e-mail.) Somewhere online recently, I read the annual list  of things  professors need to know about  incoming collegians’  lives since most were born in 1992. It included  the tidbit that the Apple II computer they played with as toddlers is now a museum piece as well as that they don’t use wristwatches because time-awareness is linked in with constant use of smartphones.Cursive writing? Most don’t know it or care to use it!

In the year Twenty Ten, FB is only one of many ways we keep connected. We’re now ‘Skype-worthy’ (Skype name christopher.walker72).  I can  without cost talk with (and see)    my kids, grandkids and wife –  all of whom are in New York State while I’m here at home in Ottawa, Ontario.

Each of us will decide where  saw-off points are. My friends and colleagues have done so with wisdom and discernment. For us, we have a small extended family plus a wide circle of friends gained over lives lived  and ministries served in various cities. It has been an amazing grace that technology has come along at this time  to keep us connected to people with whom we may well have lost touch.

Within the last month, here’s what’s happened that may not have if it were not for technology: two connects through FB messaging with two friends from childhood and from college days, resulting in getting together in their respective homes; visual connection with my closest family, for free,   through Skype though we are seven hours distant from one another by car ; talking with my sister in Kentucky and when they were on a trip in the Maritimes through Skype, for free; connection with church leaders in the Atlantic District and in NY State through Skype; an ongoing awareness of what’s happening in people’s lives through FB that keeps us connected with one another; beginning a new blog at religare72.wordpress.com which gives me opportunity to connect with people from around the world, including longstanding friends; the ongoing wonder of e-mail that I still find fascinating, though it’s considered way too slow by those collegians born in 1992; I’ve been in e-mail touch with folks that might be able to help us get to our next stage in life; Marie and I  now each have cellphones  and have dropped our landline  phone for the first time in our lives. It’s neat being ‘wireless’ in that regard and gives one the sensation of being at home , no matter where we are.

So does the other stuff…..as long as the other ‘stuff’ doesn’t become nonsense. “Ay, there’s the rub”, as brother Hamlet might stylus-write  on his tables — the new technology of the day — his Blackberry , so to speak. Let us use these wondrous ways of keeping connected as means to the end of keeping truly in literal touch with one another. Let them become pathways to enhance communications  rather than substitutes for interaction, discourse and face-to-faces. We need to be with one another, whether far away or close up. There’s a lot of ‘one anothering’ mandated in the scriptures and it’s not meant to be at arm’s length or through our digital tools. Ask yourself   ‘do I need to connect this way or is it better / best to actually go to physically see and talk to my friend, my brother, my sister? ‘

The question is not ‘to FB or  not to FB’; rather, it is ‘WWJD” through me — me directly and not just love at a distance?  John, at the end of his long and loving life, is reported to have said nothing but these words, over and over: “Little children, love  one another…. little children, love one another….little children, love one another”. For him and his contemporaries , that was meant to be close up and practical and even tactile.  I read those words  of John in that old technology, the pages of God’s love letter to us, the One whose whole letter is all about relationship with Him and one another.

Ties that bind our hearts

Religion: from ligare “bind, connect”, probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or “to reconnect,” which was made prominent by Augustine

This is an excerpt from Wiki on the origins of the word “religion”. Said word has fallen into disfavour over a few decades, used often as a pejorative to suggest that religion is to be set aside by any reasonable person, whether a believer in the Divine or not. “Oh, I’m a spiritual person [substitute 'Christian' or any other recognized group-name], but I’m not religious”, as if to suggest that the former is desirable , the latter to be abandoned.  Others dribble  the word from  lips as if  something distasteful, unworthy of civil conversation: ” Religion is the cause of all the world’s problems; it would be better if it could be taken out of the equation altogether!” Neither approach captures the essence of religion as it can be — namely, a tie that binds our hearts , cohering our inner selves into makers of meaning.

If the word is Googled, one sees a wide range of possibilities as to the origin of the word and its’ significance historically. The ideas  of tying ,  binding or connecting are most salient among those options.  In this era of widespread chaotic conditions, it would be good to reconstitute ‘religion’ to a positive use, one which highlights the better angels of its’ nature and promise. Religion can be, at its’ best, that which connects us with the Divine,  if you are (like me) a believer in One who connects all of creation with Himself. Or, if you have chosen otherwise, you might agree that it is  best  to at least  be inwardly whole ,  integrated as a human being, believing and practising that  all of life is of one piece. To choose to be integrated, to seek integrity would go a long way to restoring a sense of human dignity and order in public discourse. The option is to  continue down the present path of destructive antipathy toward others, whether in the field of faith-groups, intellectual pursuits or political debates on a national and world scale. Mutually Assured Destruction here should be as abhorrent as the more nuclear sort in the Cold War era.

My  informed bias has borne up over the long haul; namely, there is a great deal of benefit in knowing and following One who entered into a fractious world a couple of millennia ago, at a time not unlike that of today. He came from a highly functional  family who intentionally sent Him into hostile territory. The purpose was to bring understanding that, no matter how disintegrative life can be, there is a Way of integrity to be  followed, even through the awfulness of one’s own potential annihilation. On a cross-hatch of dead wood, it is recorded that He breathed one last word: “Finished!” — as in complete, whole, perfect. Thereby, he forwarded the real human possibility of living a life,  in this world, of  integrity, wholeness, holiness, healing, salving, saving. He offers, in His own exemplary integrity, the possibility to reconnect us with Himself, our  inner selves and our fellow human beings.Simply follow.

True religion reconnects  us with ” ties that bind our hearts…..the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above”, as the old song suggests.

If you can’t buy into that, right now, consider this: am I pursuing aspects of life that dis-integrate me and others with whom I have to do, or am I deeply committed to those things which make me and those around me more and more whole? Can I be spiritual and religious, simultaneously? I’m just asking……

Meandering: The Different Drum — Community Making and Peace

A few years ago, the above-noted book by M. Scott Peck came into my life. Its’ ideas have shaped my thinking about   people-groups going through ‘changes and challenges’ — euphemistic words meaning ‘ problems ‘.  Not really problems even — more like opportunities for creative thinking — that’s the target for Peck’s thinking.

Four word-phrases describe what happens in the process he calls “community-making” — pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness and true community. The continuum is obvious, ratified by what your experience and mine tell us, i.e., that it is no easy process at all to get to the ideal, let alone to maintain by constantly working at true community. By  means of our experiential database, we have learned that we human beings simply go along to get along with others, achieving a sometimes uneasy tolerance of others within groups to which we belong. There is a low common denominator for which we settle; as long as everyone in the group can put up with each other, then that will be enough, that will do….that’s pseudocommunity.

What often happens, though, is some unexpected, unplanned event happens. The   cosmetic approach to one another in the group is revealed for what it is — a tissue-thin delicate net that cannot sustain pressures from within or from outside. The thing falls apart — the ties that bind  are proven to be silk whereas baling twine would have been better! Hence, chaos follows, which feels like destruction of all good things. 

The third stage is emptiness — a feeling that the group can not move forward, that there is no pathway to achieving the fullness of community. There may well be a desire to never have been engaged in what is required to go through the process of  achieving the connectedness of community. 

Finally, however, decision are made — based upon that ‘tabula rasa’, that empty slate , to develop true community with others, achieved in new and better ways which have built into them the components for ongoing growth in being a community. 

You can see why someone like me , who loves the Body of Christ called the church, appreciates the applications that can be made to congregations. Pseudo, chaos, emptiness, true community — that rings true because it accords with the boots-on-the-ground reality of living with real human beings in the organization and the organism called the Church. 

If you want to be radicalized , read Peck’s book. Let the principles of his ideas embed themselves in you. By the way, another of his books (The People of the Lie) is a good companion volume; one book illuminates the other, mutually. 

I’m just sayin’……… 

Perambulation: Walking the Walk

Perambulation: “Walking the Walk”, Thoughts based upon the Sunday Message

This past Lord’s Day was Mission Awareness Sunday across the Presbyterian Church Canada; so, we were part of that event and used the excellent materials provided by the denomination. There was participation by several from the congregation and, in a rare event, I used the message material also provided, under the rubric “Walk the Walk”.

There was a focus on Francis of Assisi’s pithy saying: “ Preach the gospel always; when necessary , use words. “ It was a saying that, for years, was sitting in my study challenging me to do the right thing rather than only talk about it. Part of what I talked about ( that wasn’t in the provided material ) was that , in Hebrew thought, faith is more about doing than being. James, Jesus’ oldest brother, ( next to Himself, of course!) wrote a letter known by his name in the scriptures. It’s all about the ‘doing’ aspect of faith. “Faith without works is dead” is James’ acerbic declaration – which he restates through his practical examples in the Book of James. Tame your tongue, he says. Don’t favour the rich over the poor, he thunders. Care for orphans and widows, he implores. Weep and wail, rich people. Friendship with the world = enemy of God!, he opines. James had no patience with people who pietistically proclaimed their faith in God but who would not put up with Him being a disturber of their religious practices. All for naught, James would say – “faith without works is dead. “ End of story.

Mission-awareness can be developed by each person. Highly ‘successful’ people – successful in being overtly human and kind and other-centered – are those whose mission in life is part of the fabric of their being and doing. They are highly-principled persons whose being and doing are all of one piece. This is what Jesus was and it is that to which he calls us. His last will and testament was a giving over of his mission to his followers – those that had been developed over their time with Jesus to become principled practitioners of their faith . It became as natural to them as breathing, as necessary to them as walking. Forward….. that’s the motto of those who walk the walk …..forward to a life of faithing , in the name of Jesus whose nature, character, teaching and doing were all of one piece.

Perambulation: Rock-Solid to Choppy Waters

‘Perambulate’  means to walk around an area for which one is responsible to see how everything is doing.  Usually, it refers to neighbourhood boundaries or , in the old days, parish precincts. There was a time when those who belonged to a religious community within reasonable distance of a particular church-building would be considered as part of the parish. So, one could easily perambulate the parish boundaries when neighbourhood  was defined by a walkable distance.

Now, however, in the days of social media, our ‘parish’ truly is the world, to echo a long-ago clergyman’s declarative statement that ” the world is my parish ” ( John Wesley, Church of England,  founder of what became known as ‘methodism’ ).  Parish boundaries even extend into cyberspace, the final frontier where more  are going with ever-greater boldness. That’s a good thing — a needful extension of mission/vision,  for in that final frontier, perambulation knows no bounds. In the same way that ocean depths need to be explored as aggressively as has been outer space though there has been a blindness to that undiscovered planet beneath the waves, so the intimidating possibilities of zeroes and ones that comprise the inner world of computer-discovery.

It will be those generations for whom computer-life is as natural as TV-world was for a previous generation ( thought unknown to their parents and grandparents ) .Follow the North Star named Jesus and He will guide us just as surely as He commissioned His original followers to make disciples in their historical context. Our navigations from the solid sureness of stepping stone through the uncharted waters where compasses are our best guide will go OK. Jesus is our Navigator, by the way.      Let there be no fear, but only courage as the Holy Spirit accompanies us into  Microsoft, Google…..and the uttermost parts of the  internet.

Perambulation: Pantomime, Interpretive Dance, and Worship in the Marketplace

Dance, then, wherever you may be... I am the Lord of the Dance, said He.....

Our children and young people recently led us in Sunday morning worship @ the church where it is my profound privilege to serve. It’s a Congregation celebrating its’ 195^th year since beginning ; I wonder what the church fathers and mothers would have thought, in 1817, of the scriptures simply being read, pantomimed and interpretively danced before the Lord and the people. Would they have experienced the depth of emotions and the growing wonderment that was felt this past Sunday as deeply as we did? With their firm grip on the significance of scriptural centrality that has always been a hallmark of the Presbyterian tradition, it is possible that they would have profoundly admired this differing way of illuminating the truth that is God’s revealed heart and mind.

I was moved to tears ( as were others, I later discovered ) by the beauty of our lovely sisters and brothers playing through the sweep of Christ’s life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension, as we heard the powerful words of scripture arcing out over us in the beautiful dome of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian. The music sung , played and performed lent a scintillating counterpoint to truths spoken, each enhancing the other.

There is a beauty in the Body of Christ – a beauty which needs our full attention when events, people and the word of God converge in a way so powerful that it transcends mere words. It is our actions when we flesh out the truths in the marketplaces where we live, move and have our being. The truth of the gospel is as much ‘caught as taught’ as one of my old pastors used to say. When we act out, when we translate into our lives the character and nature of Jesus – it’s like an interpretive dance that spills out into the streets…….. of Jerusalem, Judaea and the uttermost parts of the earth. 

Message: “That You May Believe” , Sunday, April 15th, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

Written that you may believe.......

 

 

 

Date – April 15, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – John 20: 19-31 Occasion – 2nd of Easter

Other Info– Acts 4: 32-35; Ps. 133; 1 John 1:1 – 2:2

Sermon: ” Of One Heart and Soul : That You May Believe”

 

 

 

 

 

There are 10 this first Easter Sunday evening – only ten, as Judas and Thomas are missing for varying reasons. There are also the 2 that had a mind and heart-lifting experience with Jesus on the road to Emmaus only a few hours before. Stories have been growing all day about Jesus seen, alive again — empty tombs, God-smacked soldiers, Mary who heard Him say her name, other faithful women who went this morning to anoint a corpse to be instead confronted by shining messengers reminding them of Jesus’ own words about being risen. Even Peter and John are falling all over themselves in an empty tomb. There are crazy rumours of a plan to spread a lie that Jesus’ body had been stolen in order to fake His resurrection; naturally, this story is being spread for political purposes — to help political leaders to save face…. to say nothing about covering over the troubling truth about Jesus.

For His friends and followers, it is the unknowness of it. How are they to know if their best-case scenario is merely a hopeful imagining that He could truly be alive? What if it is the worst-case scenario — His awful death a terrifying signal about their future peril? They had only a few days before been in the upper room; there, Jesus Himself had poured a Passover drink, had broken unleavened bread as though He Himself were likewise to be broken and poured out. He had said ‘remember me’ …….

Suddenly, among all of them, the words, “Peace be with you”…..’ shalom ‘ silked their ways into their ears, combining in their minds with last words said on a terrible cross: “ it is finished “ followed by the death rattle of Jesus’ dying breath. Other words are still jumbling in their memories: “My God, why have you forsaken me….today you will be with me in paradise…….I am thirsty…… dear woman, here is your son, here is your mother ……Father, into your hands I commit my spirit…. ….it is over with, it is complete, it is finished.” But in the fierce and needful urgency of now, they hear: “Shalom – peace be with you” . He holds out his hands, reveals His wounded body. Their joy is overwhelming. Into that tumult, He again speaks , “Shalom “ — peace be with you. “ God is with us….., Emmanuel is here. “Shalom…peace be with you.”

Then, an unexpected, undeserved commission is given as a grace-gift. The gift turns them from mere followers/disciples into leaders/ apostles…: “ As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. How can this be? They aren’t worthy of comparison to Jesus, let alone receiving the selfsame mission His Father gave to Him! Some in that room had denied knowing Him, others had slipped silently from the sight of the cross….. like thieves into darkness that awful Good Friday. Many had abandoned hope of a better future, a new kingdom. How could they, as faithless followers, be even partially compared to their wounded, healing Rabbi Jesus? What kind of prodigal recklessness could lead Rabbi Jesus to think of sending them anywhere? They are stunned into silence….. shocked, awed by the barrage of His love, compassion and care, now His startling commitment of the task…. to them!

Into that pregnant silence, He breathes ………….re-creation. He infuses into them the same breath that created the first of humankind, created everything out of nothing….. the Son now breathing new life into learning-arced souls, re-creating His everything out of the dust of their nothing. In creation, God the Father/Son/Spirit breathed life into humans for the very first time. Now, in this fresh wind of the Spirit, Jesus breathes mission into His re-created men and women.

Undoubtedly, they have somehow died on that awful weekend. Gone are their naïve hopes of personal glory. Vanished, their ideas of political change. Disappeared now…. their childish ideas of self-sufficiency. It is finished…. for them…. and now , they are ready to receive the Holy Spirit. “ Receive the Holy Spirit”……. “ . On this first Easter evening, they are re-created out of death into life, baptized by this breath of Jesus into them, sent forth from that moment as new creatures in Christ, sent by the Son who had been sent first by the Father. Paul will years later write about that kind of revival: “ that power was like the working of his mighty strength that he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” That’s the kind of breath that Jesus breathes into those fearful, gathered followers that first Lord’s Day evening. Then, Jesus radically, shockingly……blows them away with his next words.

“If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you refuse to forgive them, they are unforgiven.” Jesus, we’re the ones who need forgiving, we’re the ones who deserted You! How can we be forgivers of anyone else? Jesus thinks outside their boxes. This radical Rabbi Jesus has cracked the frames around their ideas about God. He graces them with a wholly different kind of kingdom. Jesus breath is creating the beginnings of a new Body of Christ. It is right here being conceived, immaculately, perfectly. In a few weeks, the gestation period will be over, the Body of Christ #2 will be born into the streets of Jerusalem Judaea, Samaria, and will grow up and out into the history of the entire world for the rest of human history.

Jesus is beginning to completely entrust His mission to this changeling-child called the church. He’s giving these favoured few, this happy band, His Spirit and His mission. He , who alone can forgive, starts to throw the torch of His message of forgiveness….. to those who have just themselves been forgiven! Be theirs to hold it high…..

Jesus is jumping theologically-correct fences for their sake, and now He asks them to do the same, to do the unexpected, the wondrous thing. He authorizes them to do the unthinkable: Confront and confound the world with the message of undeserved forgiveness in the name of Jesus. Help others to know that Jesus has broken through death, has liberated the people . Help them to see Jesus.

Be My sent ones, He is saying. If not, how will they know?

And now, there’s more to the story:

There’s someone missing this night: Thomas, the younger of twins, in many ways double-minded. Thomas has , along along, been to-the-core loyal, though somewhat resigned to what he sees as a losing cause. Now, he is so disheartened by the recent run of events that he doesn’t even show up that first Easter evening. Doesn’t get to feel Jesus’ hot breath on him, along with the others. But, in the week between then and now, he reluctantly connects with his brothers and sisters , hears the others’ fables of Jesus rise, doesn’t really buy into it…..sorry, been there, did that…. Friends, just show me, let Jesus show up for me. Let me see him, too. Let me see the places where He was wounded. Let me touch them, let me decide based on real evidences! . Let me see Jesus eat a piece of fish, like you’re telling me He did with you. Unless that happens, I’m telling you, I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT! Enough already…leave me alone……leave me ….alone………

So, the lonely days pass, and Thomas hopes against hope….yet stays in touch to at least experience the others’ faith. He reluctantly joins them at the place all the others were just eight days ago. This is the second Lord’s Day after the others said that they’d seen Him! The doors are locked again, for whatever reason, maybe just to be sure the scene was exactly the same as before… for Thomas? . Suddenly, surprisingly…..compassionately, Jesus shows up just for Thomas, to break through Thomas’s barriers to build bridges of trust. He even uses Thomas’s own sad comments from earlier in the week when they were sharing their sagas with him: “Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. “ He uses Thomas’s own words, not against Thomas, but lovingly for him, in order that his honest and courageous doubts become stepping-stones to a reasoned faith – like so many of us who will choose to follow Thomas’s pilgrimage-pathway. Then, Jesus gently, firmly chides Thomas, and many sincere seekers after truth who will follow Thomas’s example : “ Stop becoming unbelievers! Start becoming believers!” Unbelief is dynamic, too, as is belief. They both grow, one like cancerous cells, the other as stem cells. Jesus, however, wants Thomas to move forward from where he was to where he could be. He wants to motivate Thomas to mission again, along with the others. Jesus knows this Thomas-Twin friend, knows him well, loves him anyway, cherishes him obviously.

Jesus breathes new life into Thomas as He did a week earlier by breathing on the others….. just assurely through His words, His gentle prodding , His coming into Thomas’s reasoned world of the mind . Thomas immediately shoots from the bottom to the top of the class, because when Thomas gets it, he really gets it! Probably didn’t even have to touch Jesus’ wounds. “My Lord, my God!” The death of Jesus leads dramatically to the life of Thomas as light bulbs come on for himThen Jesus turns, looking us full in the face , and says: “Blessed are those who haven’t seen me and believe anyway”. That’s us, now included among those who are being confronted with the living Jesus a week after Easter. Do we stop becoming unbelievers and start becoming believers? It’s up to us to decide.

John, the author of this biography of Jesus, goes on to say, in verses 30 and 31, “In his disciples’ presence, Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these have been written in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.” We , too, in these words breathed by the Spirit of God through John , are offered the possibility of belief in Jesus, of God showing up outside our boxes, breathing renewed life and mission into us. Jesus always motivates us forward, always gives us a vision not for the past but for the future, always directs Himself out of the confining tomb toward others and He invites us to come along for the adventure. We are given the privilege of starting to believe that Jesus is God showing up and we now can continue on the learning curve which leads to truly living. In Christ Jesus, God ……shows……… UP!

What are the take-aways from this vision glorious ? What can we know today to take away with us for both thought and action? Here are some outside of the box thoughts:

• Jesus will always blow apart any boxes we put around Him. He is the unexpected surprise of God, who will challenge us to move forward to His future all of our lives. Expect the unexpected with Jesus in your life.

• Jesus comes to where we are, pursuing us though we don’t deserve it. The whole of the Bible is God’s story of his Sacred Romance with us, as one author has called it. Adventure yourselves with Christ!

• He will always bring His peace with Him, especially into the middle of our fear. Shalom is the word which will always be used, even after something as terrible as a cross and a tomb, whether in His life or ours.

• He always commissions us to move out into our real world, just as the Father sent Him. C.S. Lewis writes that, in Christ, God has landed on enemy territory. We, too, are to be out there in what often seems like alien land. However……..,

• We go with the breath of Jesus in us, and we carry with us the message of forgiveness that comes from Him. We are forgiven forgivers, reconciled reconcilers.We can always speak the good word of forgiveness in Jesus’ name. Forgiveness was Jesus’ first commission, and is our blessed privilege and responsibility.

• Jesus sends whole groups of people…..and he sends each one of us. We are the Body of Christ, and each of us has a part in it. Cells of the body, by definition, are alive, living and doing their work together. We are many, we are one.

• Jesus knows us, warts and all, loves us anyway, and sends us undeserving brothers and sisters out to do His work in His way with His resources, not our own.

• We can stop becoming unbelievers and we can start becoming believers. He shows up and breathes life into us to enable just that to happen……that we MAY …… believe.

Let us pray.

Message : Named and Called — Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario, CANADA

"Mary....."

Date – April 8, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Acts 10: 34-43; John 20: 1-18 Occasion– Easter Sunday

Other Info–Isaiah 25: 6-9; Psalm 118: 1-2, 22-24, 28-29

Homily: “Named and Called ”

Acts 10:34-43 The Gentiles Hear the Good News  34 Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. 35 In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right. 36 This is the message of Good News for the people of Israel—that there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37 You know what happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee, after John began preaching his message of baptism. 38 And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  39 “And we apostles are witnesses of all he did throughout Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a cross,[a]40 but God raised him to life on the third day. Then God allowed him to appear, 41 not to the general public,[b] but to us whom God had chosen in advance to be his witnesses. We were those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he ordered us to preach everywhere and to testify that Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all—the living and the dead. 43 He is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name.”

John 20:1-18 The Resurrection  1 Early on Sunday morning,[a] while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 2 She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”  3 Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. 4 They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. 6 Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, 7 while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. 8 Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed—9 for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. 10 Then they went home. Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene  11 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. 12 She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her.    “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”  14 She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. 15 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?”    She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”  16 “Mary!” Jesus said.    She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).  17 “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”  18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

What a wonderful, terrible week it has been! A triumphant day of celebration, Jesus’ washing of dirty feet as if this was to be the future for his followers, time together in a room somewhere with disturbing talk about the world hating him and them, tiring prayers in a garden, breaches of legal procedures by Roman and religious leaders, a whirlwind of activities which end up with their rabbi lying dead in a borrowed tomb. It has been a bad Friday, a dark horror of a Saturday with the kind of terrors from which one wants to awakened ……

Mary of Magdala has known what it is like to experience terrors terrors galore, for Jesus had banished seven demons out of her. However, this present nightmare is real-life, not only to her but to others of Jesus’ friends and family. She saw it all happen, was there on that stark knob of a hill. She watched her friend and messiah die, enshrouded by Joseph of Arimathea who placed Jesus in his own tomb. With the help of friends, several pounds of a variety of spices were prepared by the women who had cared for him in life as they now were to do in death. In the dark hours, she walks toward a closed tomb. Except for this wretched turn of events, Mary could always see Jesus clearly, with eyes, heart and mind. But now, here she is, trudging through cold darkness to a place of death’s reminder that life isn’t fair.

But, look, a light breaks out of that ominous hole in the side of the hill ! She runs…….toward the light, frantically wondering what had happened. She runs away to find Peter, to inform John – she runs to the only ones that she can trust: “They’ve taken Him, we don’t know where!” Younger John and older Peter run from their own dark places to look into that unexpectedly open tomb. John bends himself in to see, Peter runs straight in to look around. They stand together, seeing it all with differing eyes, hearts and minds. It is difficult enough to believe he’d died… now what? They too are buried in the hillside with the stone rolled to let in just enough light to see what was as plain as day. Jesus isn’t here, but there is evidence as to what happened: linen cloths lying there loosely vacant for Peter to stare at helplessly. For John, Jesus’ headcloth cleanly rolled up like a dinner napkin at a Passover meal like they had just experienced a few days ago. They stand there looking at the puzzling absence. Finally, John sees and believes…. something. It is that Jesus, his loving friend, is up to something amazing, whatever it might be. John would never stop talking, writing , or telling others about it for the rest of his life. Peter, on the other hand, knows that this is either very bad news or very good news. So, John and Peter do what many men do when they don’t know what else to do…… go home. They go home to hide themselves in a known, secure place until things start to make sense again…..

Mary, too, is stuck. This wondrous man has become so much more to her as to so many others. He’s her healer, friend, mentor, hero, Messiah, her Lord, but now, he’s gone. From here, where?To whom? Why? She’s become the strong woman she’s always hoped to be. Yet, she is so distressed about Jesus dying that she can neither see, think or understand clearly. Even angel-words spoken to her can’t help much in the midst of grief – the dark night of her soul when nothing makes sense, when facts seem as fiction, when God seems to have left the world. Even then, she names Jesus as “ my Lord”. Even when Jesus doesn’t seem to be there any more, he is still her Lord. Though it is fearful to say it out loud, she tells these unknown beings she doesn’t know where THEY have put him. That’s so like us….. where is this Jesus anyway?

Mary turns turns toward Someone she doesn’t recognize. She still doesn’t know where Jesus is, but she is quite willing to find him, if someone will tell her where to look. “I will go and get him”, Mary says. “I will go and get …..Him……Tell me where you have put……. Him….. If you took…. Him… away…sir”

MARY……

She turns toward Him , saying in Hebrew….Rabboni! My great Master! She sees with the eyes of her heart, understands that Jesus is pointing to her hope. She feels that He is calling her and the other followers to a future filled with warm, intimate relationship. Mary, He calls her. Mybrothers, He calls them. TheirFather, He calls His Father. Their God, He calls my God.

The reason for Christmas is Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. God became like us so that we can become more and more like Him. In a real way, the love of God underscores the truth: WE are the reason for the season!

Christ is risen; He is risen indeed, yet, take note: the light that dawns upon each of us about Jesus comes in differing ways.

For Peter, it takes time for him to understand. That’s the way it always was with Peter. He barged right into the empty tomb, stood there seeing the facts but not getting it. Peter is for those of us who need to see things over the long haul and in many ways before we are able to fully believe. Peter is an encouragement to us, because he does stick with it until he understands enough to believe it all.

For John, he simply bent down to look in. Upon seeing the rolled-up headcloth, he saw and believed. John knew how to interpret evidence correctly. He knew his Messiah friend well by this time, he knew his mind and his heart. John believed because this is exactly the way Jesus would do things. John is for those of us with a more orderly, reasoning mind. We need facts, and only facts; then, when evidences are enough, we will commit our whole hearts to him completely.

As for Mary, she’d learned over the long haul what a friend she had in Jesus. Mary knew the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated society. She knew that Jesus began to redefine everything, including relationships among people. She knew that Jesus was fully aware of everything she’d ever done but loved her anyway.She had been elevated to new status in God’s new kingdom. Mary is for those of us whose histories have been difficult, by our own choices or by circumstances beyond our control. Mary is there for those who need reorientation and acceptance in the midst of a world which neither understands nor values us.

That’s how much God loves us: He gives to us His Son in ways that all can understand and that each will experience in a way perfectly fitted to who we are. He names us and calls us in a way suited to our uniqueness.

Are we are open to the possibility of the unexpected? Jesus does the unexpected , the thing that will change us forever and he doesn’t want us to cling to preconceived ideas about Him. Today, let us hear the question: do I hear my name and will I accept my call from Him?

Let us pray….

Message: Victory — A Good Friday Message, April 6, 2012

Laurel wreath (Gk. 'stephanos' ), the symbol of victory....

VICTORY

John 19: 28-30; Psalm 22: 1-2, 30-31

John 19:28-30

 28 Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I am thirsty.

    29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.

    30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, It is finished. With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

There is a glory which surrounds this word of Jesus from the cross — finished. It is a single word and in its’ simplicity, there is even an aura of satisfaction for the work which was his to accomplish. It has now been brought to completion in this final act of grace on the cross. Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, may have intentionally breathed it upward to the Father and downward to those who were gathered nearby, as John who was there when they crucified his Lord records it in his gospel.

What is there in this one word? The words which He earlier quoted from the opening of Psalm 22 (my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) must have jarred, even appalled those who have wondered at their seeming hopelessness. The Jerusalem Bible translates it: “my God, my God, why have you deserted me?”. The terrifying sense of His Father being absent at Jesus’ time of greatest anguish must have been overwhelming. Was it said partially for our sake? It makes Jesus ever so close to us, for who has not, at varying times, felt the absence of God?! Praying seems at times of our dark nights to go nowhere but into thin air, when all of the joy of life has vanished, when God seems a distant mythical being, when the good news of God-with-us/ Emmanuel changes into the feeling of us without God and without hope. On the cross then, Jesus cries out of his God-forsakenness, quoting a portion of scripture which many within his hearing would have known by heart. Jesus was a teacher, a rabbi, to His followers. Pastors are called by various titles: padres, priests, fathers, chaplain, preachers, reverends — to which many of us have learned to respond without flinching. As a rabbi, He had a following, the closest of whom are called disciples. Other followed him to get a glimpe of his mind and heart, much as we might follow a good speaker/ teacher. We listen because he or she listens to God. People heard Jesus and took what He had to say seriously, because He listened to His Father. When Jesus after long hours of silence on the cross spoke out of a heart, and mind, and body filled with anguish, He identified with his followers. He powerfully spoke from his humanness. He identified with our experiences in which God seems at times to shut his ears. This Jesus, this God-man, knows the reality of being without God in the world in that moment of his most profound human experience which we will all face – the realization that we will disappear into death. He who knew no sin, became sin for us, and God turned His back, putting His hands over His ears.

These words of lostness coming from our Saviour and Lord are only tempered by remembering that Jesus was, until the end of His life on the cross, a rabbi. Even there, He chose to teach us. Any good rabbi, when He quoted a portion of the scripture would know that his pupils, his disciples, would automatically think of the whole of that portion of scripture. Psalm 22 is a terrible and wonderful lesson about the crucible of human experience. From abandonment, to hope, to despair, to disdain, to affirmation of God’s presence ever since we were conceived, to depression, to recognition of the only one who can save, to final words of faith, as recorded at the end of Psalm 22: “From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him — may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him — those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn — for he has done it. ” For he has done it. Teacher Jesus in quoting Psalm 22: 1 was reminding those who were listening that His earthly work was completed, finished, over and done, made perfect. Further, God had everything to do with that accomplishment. The suffering of Jesus in life and ministry and on the cross was finally over; however, the work which He had come to do had also come to completion on the Cross. There is a time when the race has been run, the victory has been won, the champion is lifted up onto the shoulders of his teammates , he is carried before the King who gives him the salute of victory, the acknowledgment of a tough, worthy win. That’s where Jesus was when the words ‘it is finished’ passed across his lips. He was being carried on the shoulders of the Father, lifted up by the hosts of heaven who were lost in wonder, love and praise.

For us, we are still waiting to go to the victory banquet when the laurel wreath will be placed on our heads. Jesus will then be wearing the crown of the king. We will be wearing the symbols of victory won by winning the race. We will have the scars of our life completely healed from those times when God seems to be far away; yet we know that, ultimately, the victory will be ours, through Christ Jesus’ person and work. We too will proclaim victory, in proclaiming His righteousness to a people yet unborn, for he has done it through Christus Victor – the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Let us pray…… 

Service/Message: ” Who are the Fools? “, April 1st, Palm Sunday, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

What? Washing my feet? I don’t THINK so…….

For those reading on the website: This week, the message was embedded in the worship-service event. There was a brief meditation re John 13′s foot-washing scene; however, both the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the actual washing of feet – especially as carried out by the Young People – became ‘ the message’ ! Accordingly, I am posting the service -order to give you a ‘flavour’ of what it was like…….. The Rev. Chris Walker

____________________________________

April 1^st, 2012, Palm Sunday

April Fools’ Day: Who Are the Fools?

_______________________________________________________

The Gathering

 

Notices and Offering

 

Welcome – Now, for Something Completely Different

 

• CF: The Youth of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kingston welcome you all to this Completely Different kind of service. Holy Week starts in the streets of Jerusalem with a parade in honour of One who was thought to be the long-awaited Messiah – continues through Thursday evening in an Upper Room with foot-washing and a shared Passover Seder which began what is now called The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper – begins to fall apart the following day as the hero of this Holy Week dies on a cross – and completes in a silent, lonely place where Jesus was buried.
• CW: We follow that pathway from hurrahs of celebration to shocked mourning and the pained loss of hope experienced by His followers. You are invited to follow this pilgrimage in which there is an intersection between the human predicament of willful rebellion and the unstoppable love of God. Those who are our guests this morning, please know that this is a different kind of service for us, too; this is not the way things usually happen for Worship at St. Andrew’s. It is, however, a different kind of day and week and season of the Year.
• CF : Please understand – the reason for Christmas IS Easter. The reason for Jesus is us, God’s creations, who are of infinite, eternal value to Him. Human beings are made in the image of God and, as Augustine wrote so long ago, “ our hearts are restless until they find their rest in [God]. “ God has come to be with us by sending His One and Only Son – the One who identified fully with us humans, even to the point of experiencing what it means to face and experience our physical death.

 

Let us hear now the opening words from a letter….

 

A Letter from a Young Woman Reading #1

 

First Reading: Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem

Mark 11:1-10

 

Mark 11

 1-3When they were nearing Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany on Mount Olives, he sent off two of the disciples with instructions: “Go to the village across from you. As soon as you enter, you’ll find a colt tethered, one that has never yet been ridden. Untie it and bring it. If anyone asks, ‘What are you doing?’ say, ‘The Master needs him, and will return him right away.’”

 4-7They went and found a colt tied to a door at the street corner and untied it. Some of those standing there said, “What are you doing untying that colt?” The disciples replied exactly as Jesus had instructed them, and the people let them alone. They brought the colt to Jesus, spread their coats on it, and he mounted.

 8-10The people gave him a wonderful welcome, some throwing their coats on the street, others spreading out rushes they had cut in the fields. Running ahead and following after, they were calling out, 

Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in God’s name!  ALL
Blessed the coming kingdom of our father David!
Hosanna in highest heaven!

 

Hymn : “ Hosanna, Loud Hosanna! “ # 157

 

Call to Worship: Insert

 

Prayers:

• Adoration

Living God, you are the God above all gods. You created all living things. You breathed life into humanity and created us in Your image. Because You love us, we have such great worth. We adore You, O Lord, for You gave us Christ to become our Saviour and King. He has wept for us and sacrificed himself for us. We praise You, God, for the grace you offer us daily and for being there for us at all times of life.

• Confession

Hear us as we make our confessions to You. Although we say we love You, our actions towards others often contradict our words. We do not always extend a helping hand when we see a need. We become lazy in our prayer life. Forgive our leisurely approach to Your sacrifice for us and help us to act in ways which testify to our faith. We pray these things in the name of Christ our Lord.

 

• Pardon

Friends hear and believe the words of Paul

who said that for our sins Jesus

“…humbled himself and became obedient unto death,

even death on a cross.”

As we confess Jesus Christ as Saviour,

God is just and forgives our sin.

Thanks be to God for his pardon and mercy.

 

Letter Reading #2

 

Second Reading: Sharing a Meal Together

Mark 14: 12-16, 22-25

 

12On the first of the Days of Unleavened Bread, the day they prepare the Passover sacrifice, his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations so you can eat the Passover meal?”

 13-15He directed two of his disciples, “Go into the city. A man carrying a water jug will meet you. Follow him. Ask the owner of whichever house he enters, ‘The Teacher wants to know, Where is my guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with my disciples?’ He will show you a spacious second-story room, swept and ready. Prepare for us there.”

 16The disciples left, came to the city, found everything just as he had told them, and prepared the Passover meal.

22In the course of their meal, having taken and blessed the bread, he broke it and gave it to them. Then he said, 
   Take, this is my body.

 23-24Taking the chalice, he gave it to them, thanking God, and they all drank from it. He said,
This is my blood,
God’s new covenant,
Poured out for many people.

 25“I’ll not be drinking wine again until the new day when I drink it in the kingdom of God.”

Having the Communion Service in a different way, with YOSAP serving!

 

 

CONGREGATION SINGING “JESUS, REMEMBER ME” WHILE ELEMENTS ARE BEING RECEIVED, BEFORE PARTAKING OF THE BREAD/CUP

Third Reading: Jesus Washes the Feet of the Disciples

John 13: 12- 17

 

1-2 Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end. It was suppertime. The Devil by now had Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, firmly in his grip, all set for the betrayal.

 3-6Jesus knew that the Father had put him in complete charge of everything, that he came from God and was on his way back to God. So he got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron.

When he got to Simon Peter, Peter said, “Master, you wash my feet?”

 7Jesus answered, “You don’t understand now what I’m doing, but it will be clear enough to you later.”

 8Peter persisted, “You’re not going to wash my feet—ever!”

   Jesus said, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.”

 9“Master!” said Peter. “Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!”

 10-12Jesus said, “If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene. So now you’re clean. But not every one of you.” (He knew who was betraying him. That’s why he said, “Not every one of you.”) After he had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table.

 12-17Then he said, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so. That is what I am. So if I, the Master and Teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet. I’ve laid down a pattern for you. What I’ve done, you do. I’m only pointing out the obvious. A servant is not ranked above his master; an employee doesn’t give orders to the employer. If you understand what I’m telling you, act like it—and live a blessed life.

Actually washing one another’s feet!

 

Meditation: “Who are the Fools?”

 

Hymn:   The Servant Song ( Brother Let me Be your Servant)

 

Letter Reading #3

 

Fourth Reading: Prayer in a Garden

Mark 14: 32-42

 

32-34 He took Peter, James, and John with him. He plunged into a sinkhole of dreadful agony. He told them, “I feel bad enough right now to die. Stay here and keep vigil with me.”

 35-36Going a little ahead, he fell to the ground and prayed for a way out: “Papa, Father, you can—can’t you?—get me out of this. Take this cup away from me. But please, not what I want—what do you want?”

 37-38He came back and found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, “Simon, you went to sleep on me? Can’t you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert, be in prayer, so you don’t enter the danger zone without even knowing it. Don’t be naive. Part of you is eager, ready for anything in God; but another part is as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.”

 39-40He then went back and prayed the same prayer. Returning, he again found them sound asleep. They simply couldn’t keep their eyes open, and they didn’t have a plausible excuse.

 41-42He came back a third time and said, “Are you going to sleep all night? No—you’ve slept long enough. Time’s up. The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up. Let’s get going. My betrayer has arrived.”

Solo: For He Shall Feed His Flock

 

Prayer for the World and One Another

 

CW: God of love and unlimited mercy :

we bow down before you in praise and thanksgiving.

 

We are filled to overflowing with thanksgiving when we see the beauty of your earth. Springtime reminds us of the new life you offer all of your children. We are inspired and refreshed each new morning. We feel your pleasure in the new beginnings made possible in this season of the year.

 

We thank you that through some simple, deliberate actions Christ showed us the length, breadth, and depth of his love for us. By mounting a donkey colt he announced that he was our King. Weeping over a city, he demonstrated his deep compassion for sinful humanity. We thank you, O God, that you cared enough to come into our world and even into our lives to show us the way in Christ.

 

God of grace, we are remembering this day and week how Jesus struggled with difficult choices. Help us also to remember how he gave himself at great cost to try to right the wrongs , to re-establish balance and fairness in an unjust world. Help us now as we remember others’ needs here and around the world.

 

We remember others in our world and community who have to face choice, challenge and change every day. We pray for the world, caught up in violence and war, hatred and persecution.

 

We pray for those in our governments who make choices about issues of justice and equality for all. We pray that our world leaders exercise justice and rule fairly.

 

We remember those who have reason to celebrate,

 

We remember those without enough to eat,

 

We remember those who serve us in the community,

 

We remember those who feel rejected and forgotten,

 

We remember those who are sick,

 

We remember those who are grieving.

 

You know the private pain of all your people. You know our loneliness and fear; you know when we cry out for healing, and you know when we are experiencing the darkness of doubt. You have promised that whatever we bring to you in prayer you will hear and answer.

 

Lord, please grant that we will trust that promise and live lives which testify to the gracious mercy and love you offer us every day. We pray these things in the name of Christ our Lord and friend. Amen.

 

Fifth  and Sixth Readings:  Denial and Acceptance

Mark 14: 66-72

 

66-67While all this was going on, Peter was down in the courtyard. One of the Chief Priest’s servant girls came in and, seeing Peter warming himself there, looked hard at him and said, “You were with the Nazarene, Jesus.”

 68He denied it: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He went out on the porch. A rooster crowed.

 69-70The girl spotted him and began telling the people standing around, “He’s one of them.” He denied it again.

   After a little while, the bystanders brought it up again. “You’ve got to be one of them. You’ve got ‘Galilean’ written all over you.”

 71-72Now Peter got really nervous and swore, “I never laid eyes on this man you’re talking about.” Just then the rooster crowed a second time. Peter remembered how Jesus had said, “Before a rooster crows twice, you’ll deny me three times.” He collapsed in tears.

Mark 15: 16-32

 

16-20The soldiers took Jesus into the palace (called Praetorium) and called together the entire brigade. They dressed him up in purple and put a crown plaited from a thornbush on his head. Then they began their mockery: “Bravo, King of the Jews!” They banged on his head with a club, spit on him, and knelt down in mock worship. After they had had their fun, they took off the purple cape and put his own clothes back on him. Then they marched out to nail him to the cross.

 21There was a man walking by, coming from work, Simon from Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. They made him carry Jesus’ cross.

 22-24The soldiers brought Jesus to Golgotha, meaning “Skull Hill.” They offered him a mild painkiller (wine mixed with myrrh), but he wouldn’t take it. And they nailed him to the cross. They divided up his clothes and threw dice to see who would get them.

 25-30They nailed him up at nine o’clock in the morning. The charge against him—the king of the jews—was printed on a poster. Along with him, they crucified two criminals, one to his right, the other to his left. People passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament: “You bragged that you could tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days—so show us your stuff! Save yourself! If you’re really God’s Son, come down from that cross!”

 31-32The high priests, along with the religion scholars, were right there mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time poking fun at him: “He saved others—but he can’t save himself! Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him climb down from that cross. We’ll all become believers then!” Even the men crucified alongside him joined in the mockery.

 

Hymn: My Song is Love Unknown

 

Seventh Reading: Death and Destruction

Mark 15: 33-41

 

33-34At noon the sky became extremely dark. The darkness lasted three hours. At three o’clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

 35-36Some of the bystanders who heard him said, “Listen, he’s calling for Elijah.” Someone ran off, soaked a sponge in sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.”

 37-39But Jesus, with a loud cry, gave his last breath. At that moment the Temple curtain ripped right down the middle. When the Roman captain standing guard in front of him saw that he had quit breathing, he said, “This has to be the Son of God!”

 40-41There were women watching from a distance, among them Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and Joses, and Salome. When Jesus was in Galilee, these women followed and served him, and had come up with him to Jerusalem.

Letter Reading #4

Hymn: And Can it Be? #173

 

Dismissal: Charge to the People– A Responsive Reading

 

Y = YOSAP

C = CONGREGATION

 

Y: As the drama of this week unfolds, are you prepared to come to the table and share a meal with Christ whose life is poured out for you?

C; By the grace of God we are.

Y: Are you prepared to serve one another as Christ has served you?

C: By the grace of God we are.

Y: Are you prepared this week to watch with Christ and pray in the moments of quiet and contemplation?

C: By the grace of God, we are.

Y: Are you prepared to follow Jesus into the dark night of betrayal, chaos and death?

C: By the grace of God we are.

Y: Are you prepared to seek new life and the resurrection?

C: By the grace of God…. WE WILL!

 

YOSAP: “to be continued…….”

 

All leave in silence…

 

Improvisation on Crimond Thimen

Message: ” Heart-Knowledge “, March 25th, 5th Sunday of Lent, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church

It's a both/and, rather than an either/or....

 

Date – March 25, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Jeremiah 31: 31-34

Other Info–5th Sunday in Lent; Psalm 51: 1-12; John 12: 20-33

Sermon: “ Heart-Knowledge ”

Jeremiah 31:31-34
31:31 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
31:32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt–a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD.
31:33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
31:34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John 12:20-33

12:20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.
12:21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
12:22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
12:23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
12:24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
12:25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
12:26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
12:27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say–’ Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.
12:28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
12:29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
12:30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.
12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
12:32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
12:33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

The principle of heart-knowledge changing people better than head-knowledge is the lesson we are being given in today’s scriptures. Jeremiah was a prophet who witnessed tremendous political and spiritual upheaval among the Jewish people. Other surrounding nations had controlling interest in Israel and Judah, a tragically divided kingdom. During Jeremiah’s lifetime, God’s people were both brought back to true worship by a righteous King Josiah; but, they then later turned again to other gods. Jerusalem itself was finally captured and the people were exiled to Babylon and other nations. No wonder Jeremiah has been called the weeping prophet – their own , their native land, given to them by God, had been taken from God’s covenant-people mostly by their own persistent disobedience, far more than by a warring enemy. The people had broken God’s covenants again and again. The laws of God had been violated over and over. And now, they wanted to know what rules they should live by. They needed to rediscover their identity as a people, as a nation.

Jeremiah’s answer is both frustrating and hopeful. He tells them of a new promise, different from anything God had given before. The covenant with all of creation through Noah signified by a rainbow, the covenant with Abraham signalled by circumcision, the covenant certified on stone with Moses and the people – all of these words will, from now on, be embedded on their inmost beings, it will be committed to their memory, it will be written on their hearts. Through Jeremiah, their law- giving Lord whose covenants they had broken countless times, though they were a people who couldn’t seem to follow through on what they knew to be true – this God was going to teach them what He knew to be true all the time, committing it to their inner being in brand new ways. They were going to become a people into God wrote his nature and character by the infusion of the Spirit of His Son Jesus to their innermost sense of self.

Jeremiah 31: 34 puts it like this: “None of them will have to teach a neighbour to know the Lord, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins, and I will no longer remember their wrongs.” God commits to their forgiveness and to His own forgetfulness! Has God somehow gone soft, has he decided, ‘ the children won’t obey me anyway, so I might as change the rules’ ?! No, He actually fills the covenant fuller, by becoming not only the lawgiver and judge, but our Father and our mentor, intimately involved with who we are as a people. He not only writes the rules of how to live in right relationships with Him and with other people; now, He’s going to move in with us, to change us from the inside out.

Folks, in the past 2 days, I have had an unusual experience – one that happens to pastors every once in a while. It has left me breathless, wondering, praising God and grateful for the privilege of being minister presently serving [Tell the story of 'Grant and Alsion' ( pseudonymns ).] G & A, they will be intimately involved with one another in the wondrous bonds of marriage. They will be changed forever by the intimacy and wonderment of that relationship, changed from the inside out.

Yes, God is the one who sets the standards, who has written the laws; but, He is also the one who recognizes the necessity of loving relationships as the context of living out those laws.

The covenants given by God to the people of Israel have also been given to all of humankind, so that the relationships enjoyed by the Father, Son and Spirit, would be the context of knowing God, for all of us. Head-knowledge, about God and his ways, would become heart-knowledge. This new covenant would help all of humankind to know one thing by heart: that God wanted to turn their hearts toward home and family. The words would become the Word, the Word would become flesh, and the laws would be part of their being. ( Movie: Shakespeare in Love )

In the gospel lesson this morning, 2 Greeks, 2 non-Jewish people came to Philip and Andrew in Jerusalem (by the way, the two most Greek-sounding names of Jesus’ followers), and wanted to see Jesus. Somehow, that event triggered in Jesus the realization that the end-game was in sight, that the trip upwards to the cross was on. He says in John 12:32, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me’. It’s been said that the longest distance in the world is that between our heads and our hearts. The covenant-sign of the cross bridges that distance more powerfully than could ever be done by words on paper. We don’t know if those 2 strangers in Jerusalem actually saw Jesus – my guess is ‘yes.’ We can know that God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba/Father. And we can enter God’s family because our oldest and best brother has introduced us to our forever-family. And His Spirit has been sent into our hearts to bring us there.

As we are near the end of the Lenten Season, here are some lessons we are to take from Jeremiah and Jesus:

 Stop and observe: our Lord is far more interested in us having a loving and living relationship with him than he is that we learn the rules. When he lives in our inmost being, the laws are fulfilled to overflowing.

 Understand that what his voice is saying is for your sake and mine, not for his sake. If his still, small voice is shouting something out loud, He’s wanting to get your attention, He’s wanting to write something on your heart.

 Walk the path of the cross, and give up the security of rules. Know that when we walk with Jesus, suffering is inevitable. We hear a lot this time of the year about the Passion of Christ. The word passion, means ‘suffering’ – it is the primary definition of passion. In order to have the laws of God written upon our hearts, surgery is required, the pain of rehab is part of healing, and moving beyond rules requires the presence of the Holy Spirit changing and shaping us from within.

We need to feel the full weight of the season. One of the most controversial aspects of Jesus Christ Superstar is back on Broadway. One of the controversies of that impertinent work is that it doesn’t end at the empty tomb, but at the cross. Frankly, that’s one thing that attracted me to the play and movie way back when it first came out: it reminds us that there’s a whole world of hurt before the resurrection. Cowardice, treachery, misunderstanding, abandonment, disappointment – all of these are part of the human condition, and ring true to our real-life experience in this real world. Don’t hurry too quickly to the empty tomb. The way of the cross leads home, as the old song goes, but let us understand: there is no detour around it.

 Know that when the good news does come, it is delivered personally by God Himself. When Jesus breathes out his last words on the cross: it is finished — we need to understand that it is God that has done it all. And the covenant-sign that has been cut in Jesus, His one and only and therefore beloved Child, is the only way we can find true healing and wholeness from the inside out.

 Let us pray…..

Message: ” Guardrails ” , Sunday, March 11, 2012, 3rd in Lent, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kingston, ON

Date – March 11, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Exodus 20: 1-17; 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25; John 2: 13-22

Occasion – Third Sunday in Lent

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Doing?”

Sermon Title: “Guardrails”

Exodus 20:1-17
20:1 Then God spoke all these words:
20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
20:3 you shall have no other gods before me.
20:4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
20:5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
20:6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
20:7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
20:8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.
20:9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
20:10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work–you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.
20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
20:12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
20:13 You shall not murder.
20:14 You shall not commit adultery.
20:15 You shall not steal.
20:16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
20:17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25
1:18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1:19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
1:20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
1:22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,
1:23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1:25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

John 2:13-22
2:13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2:14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.
2:15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
2:16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
2:17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
2:18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
2:19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
2:20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?”
2:21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body.
2:22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

In a failed country, where there was yet no new government, reporters rushed around, looking for someone who could speak English. One woman summed it all up: “We have freedom, but we don’t know what to do with it.“

Patrick, a young man in northern England rebelled against the faith of his parents. He was captured, then enslaved in Ireland when he was around 16 years old. He escaped, returning to England and embraced the faith. Padraic entered a monastery and was called by God back to Ireland. His enslavement to what he thought was freedom was exchanged for true freedom to become all that God wanted him to be. Yesterday, I represented St. Andrew’s at the Celtic Cross Commemoration which included the laying of wreaths and an interdenominational blessing in McBurney Park before a parade in Padraic’s honour. It is his death that we celebrate this coming Saturday. It took an enslavement to bring him to the true freedom of following Jesus.

The Book of Exodus is a witness to two realities of freedom: freedom as a blessing which sets us free to all the possibilities of God’s great world OR freedom as a curse, a terrible freedom ending in new , unwelcome servitudes. What we want to learn today is how it is possible to live in the blessings of God’s gift of true freedom to be all that we can be and all that He wants us to be. It is the purpose of God to teach us how to live freely in relationships with Him and others forever and ever – life lived between guard-rails which keep us from careening headlong into danger and self-chosen destructions. Only that freedom is truly free which guides us on safe pathways to our futures.

The book in which the commandments are introduced is called Exodus, meaning literally ‘a pathway out’. Those so-called 10 Commandments are about the way out — out of bondage, out ofslavery into the promise of freedom that God chooses. God wanted this people , which had fallen deeply into slaery, to find a way out. He desired for them that true freedom of right relationships with God and other people for their new forever-future. These words became the guard-rails to lead them on the highway to true freedom; however, they became bondaged to many more laws which showed up legality as just one more way to be ensnared!

The danger in these commandments is in seeing them as a formula for life. “ If I only do these things well, then I’ll know everything there is to know about God and will want to follow these to the letter. God will love me and so will everyone else. “ We need to beware of such cause/effect thinking; remember what happened to the people while Moses was on the mountain and all during the remainder of the years of wandering. As we learn through the whole object-lesson called the Older Covenant, the Older Testament — we are incapable of finding our way to God through our own efforts, no matter how much of a moral standard they set before us . They were then and are now only guard-rails to keep us on the pathway to God, a pathway that we will find completed at the foot of a cross and the empty door of an empty tomb. Freedom ain’t free, as has been said.

The scriptures are made up of the Older and the Newer Covenants (Testaments). A full understanding of the scriptural concept of covenant is essential to appreciating the necessity of knowing Jesus as Saviour and Lord. We cannot fully know God without knowing Jesus; similarly, we cannot fully know the Newer Testament (Covenant) without understanding the Older Covenant. Let us look at what God was and is up to in these 10 words ( Decalogue ). The wilderness wanderings back then were all about exploring what it means to be truly free, but also exploring what it means to worship God and to love others, to be a whole, wholesome and holy people living out these freeing inner principles when the laws are written into our everyday way of being.

1. “Worship no God but me.” Worship God by choosing Him alone. If He’s the one who’s freed us, do we need anyone else? That’s what one would assume the children of Israel would think! But , in Moses’ day, the world was full of other deities, as was seen in the land of their slavery. So is our world, though the deities may be more subtle.

What is God up to in making this the first of ten guard-rails? He is fully aware of the human tendency to become enthralled to ourselves, other people and things. It is because we have a tendency to put ourselves first, to be what my mother used to call ‘little tin gods’ who put ourselves at the centre of all else. We make God in our own image and look for ways to control our destinies. We need to become completely detached from the narcissistic pull to worship ourselves in order to pay attention to the Other One who made all things. Worship no God but me… not you, not someone or something else….then, you will be reshaped in a healthy way to care an Other and others outside of ourselves.

2. “ Do not make for yourselves images of anything…”. Worship God by focusing on Him, not insignificant stuff. The problem we have is that we think that stuff is worthy of our worship. Things themselves are not evil, but they can begin, ever so subtly, to displace our relationship with God. Witness the frenzy over the newest technology! Wasn’t there a problem in a garden long ago, with another fruit, maybe an Apple ( I-Pad 3) ? Lust for stuff and nonsense displaces others and God!

3. What is God doing here? He is weaning His people back then , as well as us now , away from our frustrating pursuit of happiness and is reshaping us toward the joy that happens when we care more for those virtues and qualitative goals which will make us complete persons: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This fruit of the Spirit ( singular, like an aggregate fruit ) far surpasses being tantalized by the newest shiniest apple-thing that will bind us to the tangibles of this world. Do not make yourself images of anything!

4. “ Do not use my name for evil purposes.” Worship and love God by not trivializing Him. An ever-present danger is that of God-abuse, treating Him as if He either doesn’t matter or as a means to our own happiness. The problem entails far more than using His name as a swear-word. It’s using God as a formula for achieving the good life rather than loving Him for his intrinsic value as God. His desire is that we should love Him so much that we want to be where He is , to be doing what He wants us to do. He wants to be central to our lives, to be at the heart of our self-identity. It’s not because He needs us; it’s because He knows we need Him. When we place God at the center, we become all that He knows we can be. Worship God by not trivializing Him.

5. What is God up to in setting up this guard-rail? It is to help us understand respect for One who is Wholly Other than ourselves. Further, this guard-rail also moves us toward not using other people’s names and reputations and honour cavalierly, as if they did not matter. There has been a gradual coarsening of life in the last half-century that I have noticed which has led to a lack of civility generally and a bullying, braying denigration of other people specifically in the public sphere and, unfortunately, in families, on schoolyards, on the streets and in political discourse. By not using God’s name for evil purposes, we are also being taught the treatment of other people as God’s lovely creations . Recently, when our young people gathered, I have been struck with their wondrous creativity and uniqueness. The same is seen in all of you – God has made you each and all beautiful in your winsome varieties. We need to treat one another with respect and civility and joy, not only here but out in the world where people crave to be respected and heard.

6. “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Do we need a regular reminder that we’re not as indispensable as our pride suggests? Maybe God’s not really up to the job, so , if we did just a little more…we think. Building this kind of rest and re-creation into our lives, frankly, is a 7-days-a-week proposition – far more than a one-day nod to God. Our faith in His call upon our lives, our trust that He knows what He’s doing with us , our belief that He has ordered our world — all of these are tested in how we live our lives. Try this on : we need the Lord’s Day to cure us of a sickness that surrounds and inhabits us, the obsession of time-manipulation that insists we are at the center of it all. Joyful spontaneity can be found again when our lives are kept from careening over the guard-rails of overpacking our schedules, leaving out God and others. We need the rebalancing of The Lord’s Day to address our obsession with regular schedules. Sabbath is built into how we are made to be at our best. As well, each day is sacred with our best efforts given to finding a balance between action and reflection so that we become well-balanced human beings in this chaotic world.

7. “ Respect your father and mother…..We need to understand who our parents and childhood family are in God’s economy, in our Lord’s shaping of our lives. It’s instructive that this commandment doesn’t say that we’re to live exactly at they lived, at least after we’ve become ‘adults’. The whole ‘leaving and cleaving’ idea that our Father/Creator established and Jesus ratified is God’s way of starting every generation freshly again. Think of what happens when we grow up and are are established as adults : a whole new Eden of possibilities, especially if childhood experiences were not all that positive; yet, not respecting and valuing our parents’ and family’s influence equals not respecting God, who has known us from before we were ever born. So… we are to get over ourselves and remember….God uses imperfect even imperfect humans for his purposes,including us with our children!. Respect your parents, understand their part in shaping you.

8. What is God doing here? He is reminding us that we are the products not only of nature but of nurture. We are who we are because of people that have been given to us when we have had no say in the matter. We are derived from the means of grace that God has given to us, called our family and our heritage. So much of who we are was determined without our permission. Even our families, wonderful or not, are gifts of God to shape and mold us – as tough as that may be to understand or appreciate.

9. “ Do not commit murder or adultery; do not steal or accuse unfalsely or desire other people’s life. “ The previous commandment about parents was the pivot point between loving God and loving your neighbour. At some point, our parents become our neighbours, and we are called to love our neighbour. Now, how do we love our neighbour? How do we live in God’s promise with those around us, and therefore, live rightly with Him and …… them? I’ve been so bold as to wrap up the rest together, because they belong to one another. Simply, choose life, choose purity, choose respect for others’ boundaries, choose truth: in so doing, you are choosing peace — right relationships with people leading us to right relationships with God.

These words are the pathway to true freedom, the signposts and guardrails on the way. The liberating Lord had brought the people out of slavery, but they had to learn what to do with their freedom. Their problem then is our problem now: they wanted everything contained in the promises, but without the relationship with Him. God was too scary, He wanted too much. God was like parents who wanted to move in with the kids — too close, far too much knowledge. Little did they understand how freeing God is, how delighted the Father is with us as we live in his whole new world in his whole new way!

The laws are summed up by Jesus in the New Covenant: Love God, love your neighbour as yourself. But , as we see in the Gospel story that John records in John 2 and the whole life of Jesus is that God wants us to move beyond the rules.

We’re meant to live beyond the rules, to be principled people. We let God’s principles live out through us. As the wilderness-wanderers found out, as we discover — it’s not easy to live by rules, let alone to choose principles that reshape one’s whole self-identity. Yet, that is what is happening when ‘the law is written on our hearts’ – we are choosing to become different, better and more whole persons by paying attention to the way we are made, the One who made us and our own freedom to choose how we should then live!

How do we become principled people, living out God’s vision for the world that we see in this covenant called the 10 Commandments? We can let Him live in us and change our worldview.

In this season of the year when Jesus and his followers are walking toward the cross: let us all to reflect deeply, this week, on what tables are in our lives that Jesus would choose to overthrow if he walked in right now.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all record this overthrowing story nearer the end of their gospels — John puts it right at the beginning. Why is that? John wants his readers to know that Jesus is going to use the torn-apart temple of his own body to begin a whole new way of thinking and being, to move us toward becoming principled people in his new kingdom.

So, what would Jesus overthrow in me, in you, to allow us the joy of becoming principled people, in whose God’s laws reside?

Ask God to let the very Spirit of Jesus in you overthrow it and follow the highway with Jesus to His new kingdom. Let’s pray……

Message : “Faithing”, Sunday, March 4, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, ON

From toes wet to jumping into the deep end:a step at a time

Date – March 4, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Romans 4:13-25 Occasion – Communion

Other Info – 2nd Sunday in Lent; Psalm 22: 23-31; Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Mark 8: 31-38

Sermon: “ Faithing ”

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.
17:2 And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”
17:3 Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,
17:4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
17:5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
17:6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.
17:7 I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
17:15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
17:16 I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Psalm 22:23-31
22:23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
22:24 For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.
22:25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
22:26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!
22:27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
22:28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
22:29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
22:30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
22:31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

Romans 4:13-25
4:13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
4:14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
4:15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
4:16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us,
4:17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) –in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
4:18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.”
4:19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.
4:20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
4:21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
4:22 Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
4:23 Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone,
4:24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
4:25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Mark 8:31-38
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
8:32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
8:33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
8:34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
8:35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
8:36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
8:37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
8:38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
______________________________________________________________________

Do you remember learning to swim when you were a kid? There you were, with a bunch of others huddled at the edge of a lake or a pool, your parents or siblings assuring you that you were going to be all right. You started out by getting your feet wet, then sat with legs dangling in the water, then , you jumped in no more than waist-high . So far, so good ; then arm over arm while still standing up with feet firmly planted. No problem, but then getting your face wet, — now it was serious. Feet up, launching forward, still shallow enough that you could always touch down. Sooner or later, though, it was time for the deep water, deep enough that you couldn’t touch down or see bottom. You knew you were in the deep end of the pool or the other side of the line out in the lake. You were literally beyond your depth and it was scary.

 

There is a lot for in life for which we are not prepared, however long we have lived. We always are in deep water, whether by choice or because we’re thrown in and have to sink or swim.

 

That’s what Jesus’ friends are experiencing in the gospel – deep-end faithing, hearing this guy who seemed to start out as a compelling rabbi-messiah but now he’s talking about crosses and denial and dying and even calling one of them Satan. That’s the deal being offered – time to be adults, boys, time to take seriously what believing in God implies. Seems like a whole lot more now than simply wandering up and down from north to south, far more than the romance of miracle healings and endless bread and fish, and imagined glories; this Jesus isn’t only interested in becoming a movement to create followers who merely imitate his outward actions. Rather, he’s calling us to grow up and to launch out into frontiers where no one has ever gone. No more faith as memorization of 613 religious laws which if scrupulously followed will guarantee a happy God up there; rather, this kind of faithing requires an all-in, flat-out , life commitment to be God-smacked and dangerous in the real world. It’s also a call to be as fulfilled a human being as one can possibly be . That’s right, being a spiritual person is not enough; it’s a call to live dangerously for the rest of one’s life out there in the real world.

 

It certainly was wild ride for Abram and Sarai, later known as Abraham and Sarah. They even had been given different names AND preposterous futures when God showed up. God rocked their world when he promised them an old age with diapers for their children/grandchildren to the max. You can see their story starting at Genesis 12. Their life was one crazy creative unknown and ended up being the start of 3 major world religious groups, and more importantly, multi-generations of God-intoxicated people.

‘Faithing’ begins with these two old people! They named their one son Isaac, Yithzak, ‘he laughs’ and what a hoot it must have been for them as they launched out into their excellent adventure. What was God thinking when He came up with this idea of circumcision as a sign of the covenant with Abraham and the people? God obviously takes covenants seriously, for at the very center of humans’ creative sexuality is the sign of the covenant. Think about it: God has made us for relationships, with Himself and with one another. It all began long ago, when Abraham, (‘father of multitudes’) and Sarah (‘princess’ / mother of nations) were 100 years and 90 years of age, respectively. They lived expectantly, laughingly in the reality of God’s promise, when common sense and reason said that they couldn’t have children, they shouldn’t be moving the household every few years, they mustn’t expect much more to happen. The Roman letter puts it this way: “Abraham believed and hoped, even when there was no reason for hoping, and so became ‘the father of many nations’…..he was then almost one hundred years old; but his faith did not weaken when he thought of his body, who was already practically dead, or of the fact that Sarah could not have children.“ God uses people, in variety and complexity, people exactly like us to do things thought impossible, laughable, in order to teach us the challenge and the joy of faithing in him. He launches us into water beyond our depth so that the only way we can be supported is by the buoyancy of His Spirit in us each and around us all.

Faithing is more than spouting mere propositional truths, far beyond giving intellectual assent to them. Rather, faithing is to live life in the deep end, by choice – God’s choice and ours. It’s walking around, moving forward, living out loud. A covenant is not a business contract which begins and ends; it’s a lifelong commitment to us becoming whole and holy people. It’s a gift from One who loves Abraham and all of humankind, a gift to be unwrapped on the road to wherever He’s taking us.

All God does is to give himself a new name (El Shaddai/God Almighty) and then he says “ obey me and always do what is right “. The word ‘obey’ means ‘to walk, to live your life, to do the right thing.” Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. That’s the essence of faithing , in biblical thinking – to trust AND obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

That was what got Jesus so riled up at Peter in Mark 8. Jesus had begun teaching his followers that things were going to change, that a new world was ahead: suffering, death, new life. Peter’s worldview didn’t allow for that; so, he straightened Jesus out as to what the real Messiah was supposed to do. Peter had it all figured out, you see; the real Messiah didn’t – couldn’t — talk like this. Peter knew these things, just like the teachers of the law did. Peter’s universe had roads stone-paved to victory, not torturous climbs to crosses. Peter’s human nature was to figure things out and inform others, including Jesus. Jesus’ nature was to call Peter to come follow him and gain true living, the only information that would ever matter.

No babies, to babies….loss to gain…hopelessness to hope…impossibility to ability…mere obedience to sheer faithing, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen — that’s the call upon us pilgrims, us all. Abraham lost his old life to gain land, children, a posterity. Jesus lost his heavenly and earthly life to regain them both, and to gain ours forever. It’s the principle that’s built into God’s promise for all people, and signified by strange signs — circumcision in the Older Testament, baptism and a life always in deep water, many times in hot water in the Newer Testament. So, what does it mean to live the faithing-life each day?

• It is to do two things at the same time: to abide and to activate. The reality is that we live here, now. We have homes and households and church buildings and communities for which we are properly thankful, and that give us a literal home-base. Even Abraham and Sarah had a place to be who they were, to abide for a while. But we’re not to be smugly satisfied with just building temples to personal sureness and individual security. We’re called to BE temples walking around. God is in the midst of our meandering pilgrimage, always giving people a future that’s just around the corner. Today, this week: if your life has become so crazy-hectic that you can’t even think straight, then rest awhile …live Lent lentement, slowly. Be quiet before the Lord. Stop, think, listen, pray. Then move ahead to the whatevers. Always hold two things in creative tension: abiding and activating.

• Living the faithing life each day means to seek the deeper water with Jesus. Don’t get yourself into a situation like Peter, where he turns around, looks at you wonderingly, as if you might be his enemy. Go where he wants you to go, do what he’s asking you to do. Lose your life and find it again. Take up the thing that he’s asking you to do and follow him. He’s been to the future and has come back to take us there – a future where there aren’t any roads, but there are signs of His promise. Choose to make a decision, make the connections you need to make with another person, take the steps that you’ve been reluctant to take. Adventuring yourself with Christ is always the best thing you could ever do, the surest way to regain your life.

• Faithing means to align radically with the Body of Christ, your new family. I’ve said it in this congregation before and it’s dangerous: Blood- family is not more important than your brothers and sisters in Christ, the church. Following Jesus into the deep water of baptism and His call upon your life means recognizing that you may well have to leave your kinship group to do what He’s asking you to do, temporarily or even for a long time! Jesus was introducing a whole new way of being and doing. The life worth living was , for Him, the life on the road with his followers. The community that Jesus began to fashion today is a community called the Body of Christ that’s meant to be lived in a faithing relationship with other pilgrim-brothers and pilgrim-sisters. The ties that bind hearts in Christian love are sometimes even much stronger than blood-ties , kinship ties. We are meant to be no less close to those in the Christian family than to those to whom we are related by blood. Today/this week: get in touch with a sister or brother in the Body of Christ that you know needs your support. Leave your kinship group, if necessary, to do so. Sacrifice whatever is required, including your pride or your guilt, to make that connection. Do the right thing. Confess your allegiance to Christ and his church. Align yourself radically with the Body of Christ.

• Living in the deep water of the faithing life means agenda -change. What would God have done if Abraham had said no? What would Jesus have done if his disciples had all said no? What would the Father have done if Jesus said no in the Garden the night before the cross? What would have happened to the world if those 120 gathered to pray in Jerusalem had said no to the Holy Spirit moving them out into the streets of Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and the rest of the world? Agenda-change is at the heart of who we are. Today/ this week: stop saying ‘no’ to change. Change something in yourself, deal with something in your family, fly in the face of convention in your group… rethink this congregation’s future, that will change things to “so, what’s next?!”

Be prepared to shake your head in amazement and to laugh out loud at the absurd but perfect destinations to which he will lead you. Live the faithing life,right out loud. Let’s pray. 

Message: ReThinking and ReActing: The Privilege of Repentance, Feb 26, 2012 Lent 1

ReThink/ ReAct: Pondering and Planning to Change

 

 

Date – February 26, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Genesis 9: 8-17; 1 Peter 3: 18-22; Mark 1: 9-15

Occasion – First Sunday in Lent

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “ReThinking and ReActing”

Genesis 9:8-17
9:8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
9:9 “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,
9:10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
9:11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
9:12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
9:13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
9:14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,
9:15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
9:16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
9:17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Psalm 25:1-10
25:1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
25:2 O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.
25:3 Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.
25:4 Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.
25:5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
25:6 Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.
25:7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!
25:8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
25:9 He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.
25:10 All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

1 Peter 3:18-22
3:18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,
3:19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison
3:20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.
3:21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you–not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

3:22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Mark 1:9-15
1:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
1:10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
1:11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
1:12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
1:13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,
1:15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

One of the privileges and responsibilities we all have is that of pondering. Sitting for a while and thinking about things is a wondrous gift which I would suggest is what sets apart humans from the rest of the created world. ‘Sober second thought’ is the phrase that comes to mind, one usually assigned to governance in which Senates are the’ chamber of sober second thought’ through which laws enter into second and third readings along with the peoples’ reps in Houses of Commons or Representatives. This ensures, ideally at least, that the best legislation results, leading on to peace, order and good government.

It’s a need we have in other parts of our human circumstances. Something as simple as a parent having a child sit on a chair by him or her self to think about things does wonders in soothing the savage beast – a practice I remember from my early childhood! Even we adult children can benefit from going away for awhile in order to get better perspective on what savageries may have been visited upon us in life. Spiritual retreats are specialized times when going into a place apart helps one to ponder anew what the Almighty is doing in our lives.

You know how it is: life gets crazy, going so fast you can’t think straight. The fever-pitch of popular culture is contributing to a malady peculiar to this time: the admiration of those who multitask to the point where there’s no respect at all for those who believe that life is meant to live at a measured, balanced pace. I just posted in Facebook something remembered from long ago, a nonsense saying which makes all kinds of sense when you think about it: the hurrider I go, the behinder I get!

That’s why we need the Season of Lent : a forty-day slowdown for sober second thought in every area of daily life. You and I need Lent. Again on Facebook, I posted thoughts that came into my heart and mind this past week as we turned the corner from Epiphany: ‘live Lent lentement’……slowly. Ponder the meaning of what it really means to live life at the pace of the Different Drummer whose beat we seek to follow.

In many parts of the Christian world, it’s a season for sober self-reflection. After Mardi Gras and Carnivale festivities are over, there is at least a time of recovery , for even non-believers, when sorrows and regrets about the past often emerge. This past Wednesday, we gathered in Barclay Chapel to hear the word of the Lord, and to receive the sign of our mortality. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return” – these words spoken and an ashen sign of the cross on our foreheads became reminders of the short time we are privileged to live on this earth. We, as others throughout the world, were reminded of ultimate concerns, primary issues like life and death, suffering and pain. Around the world , withered palm leaves from Palm Sunday last year had been ground up and burned, to make up the ashes. Palm Sunday’s palms turn into Ash Wednesday’s ashes – pointedly showing the fickleness of human adulation, quick turnarounds from triumphs to violent tragedies that can take place.

The beginning of the Lenten season, ashes and dust, wretched stories in the media about murder-suicides, wars and nature’s catastrophes – all of these converge, calling to mind that the unexpected can quickly engulf people. Things can change in an instant, with possibility giving way to hopelessness. All of it, no matter how we attempt to make sense out of nonsense, feels like a conspiracy of powers beyond our control.

There is an inescapable truth here : life can change our usually ordered worlds . In the First Lesson we see that God chooses to destroy the world by flood, though there were many opportunities over a century of time for people to change their ways and avoid all that; He does so because of the sins of the people. People, through the terrible freedom that God had given them to choose otherwise, drown in the sea of consequences of their own actions. Some things happen because of our foolishness, what has been called the stupidity of our sins. Sometimes, bad things happen because it’s a natural world with what seems to be unnatural tragedies waiting to happen. Thus it is written, thus it shall be done, said the Pharaoh in the exodus from Egypt story.

We need to take a look at Noah’s story as the beginning of God’s unceasing desire to renew His relationship with people who constantly run away from Him. Prior to this vivid drama, there are others: the story of the Fall and eviction from the garden as a result. Now, in this flood-epic, an event recorded in other ancient religions, we see the ongoing consequences of the Fall — hell on earth, the hell of other people as one philosopher has called it, hell that is self-created by human choices to run away as far from the Garden and from the intimacy that God desires. What our loving Lord deeply wants is for us to be in an intimate and humanizing relationship – relationship with Him and with one another – that makes us more ourselves than we could ever be without Him and other people.

An argument can be made that the whole of the scriptural record, from Genesis through the Revelation, is about God’s pursuit of us, His running after us or more correctly, His running towards us, so that we can have that sustaining love-relationship. He is, however, not only the God of love as we most often think of Him in our devotional and personal pilgrimages; rather, He is also the God of justice or righteousness. Rightness, right-thinking, right-being, right-choosing, right-living, right-acting – God is both the God who loves and the God who is right, just. He creates us his people to be both loving and just, both compassionate and right-living. Love and justice are two sides of the same coin. However, to have a nature truly loving, one needs also seek a high standard of rightness; to be truly just or righteous, love is the only context which allows right-thinking and living to prevail in the real world. Somehow, (Psalm 85) “love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will embrace”. There’s a path to understanding the importance of renewed relationship between the righteous, loving God and us, His creatures. It’s a path that’s known as ‘covenant’.

In today’s readings, we see God’s covenant with all of creation. It’s something like a treaty, however, treaties are usually made between two equal, independent parties. Covenants are struck between two unequal parties, with the more powerful One initiating the action and the lesser party being the beneficiary of it. That’s what we see in this case in Genesis 9. God, the more powerful one, comes to Noah and says “I am now making my covenant with you and your descendants and with all living beings.” Here, we have God initiating this promise, this covenant. He both gives it away and retains it, he sets the details of it. As well, God extends the terms of His promise to every living being. There are no exclusions here, there is a commonness among created beings for we are all recipients of to His gift. He gives it freely, of His own free will, to every living thing. And he makes a sign of His promise , in this case the coloured bow in the sky. Yes, there is always a way to remember the covenant, both for God and for the other party.

In both 1 Peter and the Gospel according to Mark, the sign of the promise, which the rainbow prefigures as Peter puts it, is that of baptism. Baptism is a sign of the covenant that was struck between God and all living human beings. Jesus , the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, was the greatest of all the signs and of all the covenants that were struck between God and His creations. We have baptism, in which he participated, as one of the 2 sacraments that we observe in which we are reminded of our resurrection from the old life to the new. We are reminded that there is a call that comes from that baptismal sign, a call to serve the Lord and one another.

What do we learn about God, as we begin this part of the pilgirmage to Easter Sunday that we call Lent? What do we see about the God who ends up on a cross?

• We see that God talks to individuals and to families. Genesis 6 through 9 focuses upon Noah and his family. Noah lived in fellowship with God. John Huston, the great movie producer/director, also acted out Noah in his movie called The Bible. Huston captures the intimacy of the relationship between this man and his God. At the end of the story, though the promise is made to all of creation, it is through these 8 individuals. God chooses to communicate with those who choose to be in fellowship with Him. This is known as the common grace of God which communicates freely to all of humankind. Some just happen to be listening and talking back to Him.

So…… we can learn herein that our God is a loving Lord who chooses to be in conversation with those who want to listen to him. He loves relationships with individuals, couples, families and households who seek to listen to and talk with Him. We, too, are to seek the warmth and intimacy of human relationships as a sign of God’s promise to all creation. Let us, in this Lenten Season seek to make a new friend with one other person or another family to be reminded: we are baptized into a living community of people. Make friends, as well, with someone who needs friendship. I am concerned about the many who have not even a single friend in their lives. Find someone who needs a friend and make that happen.

• We see that God is different from other gods. For starters, He was and is one. That was so much different than other surrounding belief-systems. Many belief systems relied then as now, upon a whole universe of gods and goddesses. This God was singular, unique – and the creator of an ordered universe, who set history onto a pathway which moved from the past to the future, not only around in endless cycles. He was different from other gods, in that He was and is one.

Therein , we can see both that He is available to the simplest believer who wants to order her or his life around a singular principled worldview and that God is also the One who moves whole people-groups e forward with a hope and a future, never backward to a past that cannot be regained or changed. God is the One who acts in history to change our story . Let us be different from other people, then; , we are people who love those who are not loved. We are people who choose to be with no only our friends but with our enemies. We are those who seek not to find fault with others but who choose to reconcile with even our enemies. We are different from other people for God is different from other gods, seeking out both individuals, families and disenfranchised people-groups to love them into his better kingdom.

• We see in Genesis 6 through 9 that God explains Himself. He is the self-revealing God who talks with Noah, and explains his actions. Conversation takes place both before and after the flood, interaction and participation happens. He’s not the one who simply sits up in heaven, looking down with amusement and exasperation. He, instead, interacts with those who choose Him as a friend.

Again, we are taught that God wants to be known, does not hide himself. He reveals Himself in His library of books known as the Bible, in the word become flesh in His Son Jesus and by means of blowing His Spirit into and through The Body of Christ # 2, the church.

Let us be people who initiate conversations with others. There are many who truly do not know what Christians are truly like. They look upon Christians with the same suspicions and biases as we might look upon those that live a lifestyle which is not like our own. They think we’re weird , odd or cultic. They need to see us as open, transparent, loving, accepting and embracing of them as a person, as people, as a culture, as a way of thinking that is valid and accepted by God.

God is both just and loving, both righteous and compassionate. His right-acting is balanced by his compassion upon his people, and a new promise to never again destroy all living beings. He re-orders the world after the chaos of the flood. He moves the world forward, being both just and loving, as he embarks upon a new relationship with his creation from this time on.

• God commits to relationship, no matter what the circumstances. He chooses relationship with us, as was his original plan in the garden. He chooses to be with us, whether obedience happens or not. This is the beginning of God’s pursuit, God’s promise to be with His whole creation no matter what. The whole of the scriptural record gives witness to the love of the Father who comes after His children to bring them back home. We are those who commit to relationship no matter what the circumstances. Loyalty to one another, loyalty to those whom we befriend, loyalty to our commitments in life – commitment to those things which make us connected to one another for the long haul – that’s what people are craving and wanting…..and needing.

• We remember because God remembers. Apparently, in ancient times, when wars were fought face-to-face, the end of battle was signalled by hanging up the leaders’ bows. War no more….. the hanging of the bow – it makes perfect sense, for instruments of battle have to be taken in hand in order for them to be effective against enemies. God, in this story, hangs up his bow, letting it reach from sky to earth. His sign of the covenant-promise connects Him with us, heaven with earth, His family with our families, His love which over-arches every aspect of our lives with our love for Him and for others in our lives.

Let us hang up our instruments of war against one another: bitter unforgiving thoughts, using information we have as an instrument of war and dissension. What weapon do you and I need to hang up, so that we study war no more? Is it gossip? Is it nursing grudges so that we can hold one another hostage? Is it keeping some secret over someone else, intimidating another person with threats of disclosure? Is it an old unresolved problem that only serves to kill others and our selves with inwardly-turned knives?

How do we live differently because of God’s promises to us? It is in Christ that we see the extent to which God the Father will go to bring us back home where we belong. His new covenant, His new testament sign will be His own son hung upon a cross, between earth and sky, signalling that the war is over , the battle has been won. Let us pray…. C.

Message: “Unselfing” : Thin Places Between Here and There, Sunday, February 19, 2012 Transfiguration

A thin place between what was and what will be.....

 

 

 

 

Date – February 19, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – 2 Kings 2: 1-12; 2 Corinthians 4: 3-6; Mark 9: 2-9;

Psalm 50: 1-6

Occasion – Last Sunday after the Epiphany; Transfiguration

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “Unselfing”

2 Kings 2:1-12
2:1 Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.
2:2 Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.
2:3 The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.”
2:4 Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they came to Jericho.
2:5 The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he answered, “Yes, I know; be silent.”
2:6 Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on.
2:7 Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan.
2:8 Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
2:9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.”
2:10 He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”
2:11 As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
2:12 Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

Psalm 50:1-6
50:1 The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
50:2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
50:3 Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
50:4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
50:5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
50:6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Selah

2 Corinthians 4:3-6
4:3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
4:4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
4:5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.
4:6 For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Mark 9:2-9
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

_______________________________________________________

We are standing on the edge of another in-between, a thin place at which this world and the next touch. It is a week in which there will be a strange admixture of the sacred and profane, so-called; this Tuesday is Mardi Gras, Fat/Shrove/Pancake Tuesday. It was called Fat based upon a custom of eating up all of the richer, fatty foods on the day before the fasting period of Lent began – hence, Pancake Tuesday in which the fats in the house were used up to cook up a simple dish. ‘Shrove’ is from the word ‘shrive’, meaning ‘to write out a penance’, referring to the practice of confession in preparation for the upcoming season.

For us as a congregation, this is a special Tuesday for another reason: it is a time of publicly announcing a renewed partnership between Kingston Street Truck Mission and our Special Meals Ministry which have both been in ministry for over 20 years right next to one another. For a long time, there has been a commercial van-type of truck parked in front of the entrance to Barclay Chapel. Every evening from mid-autumn to end-April, the Truck has been open to assist people whose lives have been referenced on the streets of Kingston. A warm place to sit, socks, sweaters, gloves and overnight bedding, simple hot liquids, soups or noodles that can be prepared from boiling water – all of these have been served up in the name of Christ and for the sake of human dignity and respect which accrue to any of God’s living creations. There has been a metaphoric thin-place right on our doorsteps with the Kingston Street Truck Mission and through the commendable efforts of this congregation in a Sunday-meal ministry carried out in Gill Hall accessed from the parking lot outside. Well, as of March 1^st, their Mission is dropping the word ‘Truck’ from their name because our partnership involves them coming indoors. It’s mutually beneficial, for their excellent volunteer organization is also assisting us in ramping up again with Special Meals. You’ll hear more about it when you come on Tuesday for our Pancake Supper, 5 to 7 PM right in Gill Hall. The truck will be parked for the day in our parking lot so you can take a tour through it to get a sense of what it’s been about. Ted Hsu, our local MP, will be present – we’ll hear stories about how KSTM, now KSM, has had an impact on folks, — there will be appropriate band music and there might even be beads – and, of course, pancakes will be available. Hundreds of invitations have been sent out electronically and on paper because we want people to know that KSM and SAPK are thin-places where the love of God shines through! We believe its’ a win/win/win/win – KSM has a more permanent and safer place through which to carry out their Matthew 25 sense of mission; SAPK emphasizes, in an even more profound way, that we reach out to people. We care for this community which has been our congregational home for 194 years. The larger business and civic community has another great opportunity to care for it’s citizenry and city — and the principles of God’s better kingdom are carried out in communal caring for our sisters and brothers . In the words of the old song…” and Christ’s great kingdom shall come to earth, the kingdom of love and light. “

Yes, that’s right – there is a subversive, even radical alternate kingdom which exists right here in our shire called Kingston, originally called ‘King’s Town’. Our congregation is sitting in a conspicuous thin-place at the corner of Princess/Clergy in downtown old Kingston. We are only one example of signs of the kingdom which are being planted. It’s a kingdom that Jesus knew about, as did his cousin John the Baptizer. Both of those radicals told people they were to repent, to change their hearts , minds and decisions – they were to repent because the kingdom of God was near. That ‘thin place’ had a name – Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God. The One who became known as Jesus the Christ kept on sharing his life and ideas with other radicals (his disciples) who went on to start a movement called the Church. A book of Rules for Radicals had been coming together for awhile — and those disciples and their students began adding to that book’s chapters. The library called The Bible has been disturbing individuals, families, peoples and nations ever since, upsetting the way things have always been in revolutionary ways for the intervening centuries.

Now, we’re all in the millennial generation, aren’t we? We’re two thousand years down the road from the time when 12-year-old Jesus astonished and upset his family, surprised and amazed the teachers and leaders of the Temple by explaining to those learned men with his superior grasp of Godness what the scriptures really meant! That upstart named Jesus has not stopped being a fomenter of rebellion and revolution ever since his Bar Mitzvah – it just shows you what can happen when Someone is so changed by God — about whose business we are all about in the temples and in the streets where we live — that they can’t shut up. They can’t help but rattle the chains and disturb the equilibrium of society. That’s what happens when we live on the very edge of in-between times – God gets through to us and says, “this is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to Him!” Like Peter, James and John – those 3 closest followers of Jesus — we hear those words which must go like an arrow into our hearts. They were being unselfed of themselves, more and more, as the cross drew ever closer for Jesus, as a thin place showed up for them on a mountain before they went down into the valley of everyday, tough, real living.

So, on this Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the beginning of a week of Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday which heralds the beginning of Lent – let us take a look at what God’s unsettling book says. The title of the message is ‘Unselfing’, a term that’s been rattling around in my heart and mind for years now. A very specific philosophical conversation about this concept has been underway in the upper echelons of those thinking deep thoughts; but, for me, it’s an inner dialogue about what it means to ‘deny one’s self’, a phrase which been used and abused for centuries. I believe that ‘unselfing’ gets at the meaning best: it is not to deny one’s personality, to deny things as an ascetic or to withdraw from the world. It is rather a turning away from narcissistic self-idolatry, away from childish self-centredness, away from seemingly natural human attempts to constantly orient life by the tyrannies of mere self- interest.More positively, unselfing is a turning toward a developing other-centredness which becomes a conscious default action and reaction toward others because of their intrinsic worth as creations of God, as we are. It is a choice we make and a reaction we take.

That came into clearer focus for me in preparing for today, from the wild stories we have heard from the Older and Newer Testaments, as well as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, a self-idolizing bunch if ever there was one! Let us briefly observe what’s happening in each case:

• In 2 Kings, Elisha the apprentice is about to experience the absence of his father-mentor Elijah, a fact which he is resisting for it means the loss of someone essential to his own sense of who he is. Each time Elisha is reminded that God is about to take away Elijah, he tells them to be silent. Even when Elijah tells him not to come where he is going, Elisha insists ( both out of great love and respect and because of his denial that things are going to change profoundly) – he insists that he’s coming along, no matter what. Essentially, these 2 men were going on a tour around places sacred to Elijah’s prophetic career; it was a farewell tour and everywhere they went , there was a cadre of Elijah’s contemporaries, some who had been called in the aura of Elijah’s own call. Times were about to change, to a time when the community was going to be essential to their people’s sense of God’s presence. Elisha asked for a double portion of the spirit which had inhabited Elijah’s life and that was granted; but it was granted only when there was a great separation between past and future. Elisha was being unselfed of himself and reoriented to the community, to others and to ultimately to the Spirit of God directed him to a future different than what he had experienced.

• Then, in the gospel, we have another transition time in the lives of other followers of a great leader. This time, Jesus, Moses and Elijah showed up on a mountain-top. It helps to know that Peter assumed this was a sign of the end of the age, as had been expected. His response, strange to our ears, would have been appropriate – if that had been the end of the world. It truly was the end of that particular time in Jesus’ life and ministry and for them, as well; from then, nothing was ever the same again. From the mountain-top to the valley, from the exalted experience of being in the presence of 3 men , all of whose lives and home-goings were unusual, down to the valley to the hard realities of a cross and a new commission to go and make disciples — these 3 men were being unselfed of themselves. Their self-centred world, their inadequate views of God’s kingdom being established on earth as in heaven, their belief that Jesus would be with them forever and ever – were about to be replaced by a denying, a taking up and a following.

• Finally, even in the Corinthian letter, Paul writes in clear, unequivocal declarations: “ For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. “ To the early Christians and to us, it is made clear: the kingdom is not about us, it is about others. First, the One who is Wholly and Completely Other than we are is the Lord of you and me; second, we are the slaves, the servants of others in the name of that wholly other. To be unselfed is to recognize that we are to live the others-centred life.

How do we go about doing so this week, in year 2012? How can we be about our Father’s business just like Jesus was when he was twelve years old?

• If you are being asked to change in either simple or profound ways – in your attitudes or actions, in your relationships, in your sense of call, in your work – then, change. Learn to be unselfed of your myopic view of what’s supposed to happen and listen to the One who is speaking to you. Jesus is God’s Beloved, His Son. Listen to him and ask God to help you to change.

• If there is something threatening your sense of equilibrium, if you are being challenged by something that doesn’t seem right to you, consider the possibility that God is trying to get your attention. You May Be Wrong! As the old saying goes, if you are sincerely sure that you are right, you may be sincerely wrong. Truly wrong. Unself your self and get God’s perspective on that perplexing situation. Ask for advice from others and test your thinking out on them. Tell them you want to know what you need to know, no matter what.

• Simplify, simplify, said Henry David Thoreau. Those are words that we Christians need to hear. See if there’s any truth in this simple declarative statement: We have too much stuff in our lives. ( Say it out loud.) Get rid of things. Unself yourself of all but the most essential: things, activities, technologies, clothes, activities, …oh, right, I’m repeating myself. Too many notes, steps too far – these are both phrases that show up in conversation between Marie and me. Sure, part of that is just the fact that life speeds up the older you get, and you have to travel light! But, at every stage, we have too much stuff…..and nonsense. Divest yourself of old grudges, ancient biases, unnecessary barriers between you and others in your life. Simplify, unself, get ready for the next new adventure, simplify.

• Pay attention , this Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and Lenten Season. God may be asking you to do something you’ve never done before, to see things you’ve never seen before, to do things he has never asked you to do before. Get ready……set……..go!

Let’s pray. 

Message : “In Such a Way”: the Particularity of How We Should Then Live, Sunday, February 12, 2012

Date – February 12, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – 2 Kings 5: 8-14; 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27; Mark 1: 40-45

Occasion – 6^th Sunday after Epiphany

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “ In Such A Way ”

2 Kings 5 : 8-14

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” 
5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 
5:10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” 
5:11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! 
5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. 
5:13 But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 
5:14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27
9:24 Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.
9:25 Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.
9:26 So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air;
9:27 but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

Mark 1:40-45
1:40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”
1:41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”
1:42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
1:43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once,
1:44 saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
1:45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

I have heard it said that caring about and watching political campaigns ( especially the long, drawn-out type that happens to our neighbours south of the border) is like participating in an Olympics………for nerds! If so, then count me in with that crowd for , though our ultimate and better citizenship is in another kingdom as Christians, we are still citizens of this world. Accordingly, we need to pay attention to take great pains taken to ensure that just the right person gets through the grueling endurance test to become the party in power here in Canada or to attain to the presidency of the United States. The kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is being built within the context of this world’s political boundaries. Those political realities have been deemed important enough by our Lord that He sent His Son into this world so that the world through Him might be saved. God came to a particular family, at a specific time in human history, in a real place which still exists, politics and all. The church has been set up in this world, with real people in real places that are boundaried about by politics. We who believe in God and his kingdom-principles are called to care about this real world and the people in it. So, we are to pay full attention to and to participate in what’s going on around us – in Kingston, Canada, the whole world   —   for we are citizens of the world as well as of the next.

I was talking with Robert Reid this week about the present generation of young people – a generation for whom jumping on a plane and traveling off to see the world is as simple as my generation would have thought of going from Kingston to Toronto. Rob and I marveled at the ease with which our respective children and young relatives have even moved to live far from home, though we ourselves have chosen to live near to our roots. We agreed together that they saw themselves as world-citizens as easily as they felt their Canadian citizenship. Frankly, I am thrilled at this generation’s ability to live with the awareness that the world is their home. Along with that comes a fuller sense of what it means to be good caretakers and stewards of the world as a whole entity.

As well, all of us will experience again the Summer Olympics, in this year 2012, to be held in London. For those of us who are descended from the UK, there will be an especial draw to the Games. It is the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen’s reign,as well, a signal event whether one is a monarchist or not. Something about the kind of rigours attached to the Olympic athlete’s world as well as our present reigning monarch’s tenacity comes together which reminds us of the truths that we find in the letter from Paul to the Corinthian church. There are mundane, tedious requirements to being a head of state, to being an athlete, to being a Christian, – even to being a fully autonomous and principled human being – and Paul reminds us of some rules of the game, those needful guidelines which ensure that the game is played well and with joy. Let’s briefly observe them, starting out with an obvious requirement for a race, a game, a political campaign…. or a life lived on behalf of Christ and his church :

Run in such a way that you may win it. The Olympians who have been training with utter seriousness for years are primarily in it to win it. Surely, there are those whose goal is just to get to the Olympics and whose record has qualified them to do so; however, those who have lived in the uppermost echelons of their sport have had as their goal the anticipation of a gold medal and the center podium in London this summer. It seems obvious , yet it needs to be restated from time to time, even for us who are long-time believers: there is such a way to live the Christian life as to win it. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and requires a very long view of what it means to win. Winning in the Christian life is to follow the rules , which glorify God and live your life with your face lifted upwards toward him with joy. At Bruce MacDonald’s memorial this past Thursday, I remembered out loud that scene in the movie, Chariots of Fire, a real-life story of Eric Liddell, Scottish athlete in the 1924 Olympics. In the movie, whenever Liddell was running a race, it was when he threw his head back with face to the sky that his friends knew that he was going to win that race. It was a signal of what he believed, in these words: “When I run, I can feel God’s pleasure.” Participating in politics, in athletic events, in living successfully, in any human activity and especially in living Christianly is to be a way of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. That is how we win the race now,  as Christians,  as we keep on running it and it is how cross the finish line as victors. The race called the Marathon is based upon the story of a long-ago runner named Phaedippides. The soldiers defending Athens moved toward their enemy 26 miles and 385 yards away from Athen, in order to catch the advancing enemy by surprise and they won that battle in Marathon. Phaedippides was chosen as the runner who, after carrying the news of a battle that had been won back to the city of Athens, collapsed after gasping out one word ( nike=Victory ) and dying on the spot, thereby saving Athens. That’s running in such a way as to win. Now, how do we get there? How do we get to those finish-lines all through life to glorify God and to enjoy him forever and, especially, how do we get to cry out, “Victory” at this life’s completion?

Exercise self-control in all things.

The idea behind the words is that of pain: “Take pains in controlling yourself”. ‘Agonize’ is derived from the word ‘agonidzo’ – a similar concept written in Paul’s letter to Timothy near the end of Paul’s life, where he says ‘Fight the good fight’, literally, agonize a good agony. Many of us remember the signal line from ABC’s Wide World of Sports where the opening lines were intoned: ‘the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat’. Any great athlete knows how much pain or even agony is part of preparing one’s self for one event and how defeats are especially humiliating. In these words about exercising self-control, Paul is saying that there are pains to be taken in all things in the Christian life. As people say,  when explaining why particularly difficult goals are hard to reach, “ If it had been easy, it would already have been done! “ Defeats AND victories can both be agonizing. If one is victorious, it’s all worth it – it’s a ‘good’ agony, a good fight. That’s what we are being told by Paul: Self-control is to be exercised, by our own choice but we have Someone who assists us: the power of the Spirit himself in us. The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace/ patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and …….self-control . It is part of the fruit of the Spirit, the product of the Spirit in us; however, we still have to choose to eat the fruit! And it’s not for only one event…..it’s in all things. There is no easy believism in the Christian life. ‘Letting go and letting God’ is only a partially true bumper-sticker; God has given us  a mind, a will,  as well as his Spirit within and we are to painfully choose to control our selves in all things. It doesn’t necessarily mean abstinence, but it does mean what it says: self-control, taking healthy desires and ensuring that they remain healthy rather than subverting those desires for our own inner gratifications. The Christian life is a marathon and requires controlling one’s self for differing things all the way through life. This is for both young and old; the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life – as Paul elsewhere writes – are not only temptations for the young. Desires of other kinds must be controlled as well: desires to be left alone so that we not be bothered, desires to retire from our lifelong call to be servants of the Lord, desires to give in to despair and a feeling of worthlessness. Run in such a way as to win; exercise self-control in all things……

Do not run aimlessly, nor box as though beating the air.

Simply, we run this race, we fight this fight because we have eternally significant goals. We have lives that have a direction – forward – and a purpose which gives us energy. We’re not running as if there were no finish-line nor are we shadow-boxing an imaginary opponent. We fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the beginner and completer, the author and the finisher of our faith who for the goal set before him endured the cross, scorning its’ shame and now sits at the right hand of the throne of God – the place of authority, honour and advocacy on our behalf. An old Peace Corps slogan went like this: “if you’re not doing something with your life, it doesn’t matter how long it is.” Our lives are referenced in eternity and eternal life begins now in Christ Jesus. Run with a purpose, battle against the true enemy of souls, live life as if it really matters — and….it….does…… matter! Run to win, exercise self-control, have a purpose and fight your real enemy….Finally…

Punish your body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others, you are not disqualified.

This is a large command usually translated with the word ‘discipline’ or ‘submit, as in an athlete super-preparing to be tough enough for the big contest ; however, the original text does carry with it the sense used in the NRSV: that there will be bruises upon us, we will not go through our Christian pilgrimage untouched and pretty. But , we can emerge at the completion better and more beautiful because of those battle-wounds , those scars. Some of the loveliest people we know are those who have endured great tragedies, great pains. At Bruce MacDonald’s memorial service, I quoted someone’s humourous, self-deprecating line that I’d heard long ago, “I may not be good-lookin’ , but I’m faithful!” It stuck in my head, obviously, but not so obvious is that I’ve taken it to heart and mind and life. I’ve also heard it said that we are to be FAT Christians….. not in the way you may be thinking, rather, like this: faithful, available, teachable… FAT. Life has no problem serving up its’ hard lessons. The question is : will we be faithful through to its’ completion? Will our Lord be able to teach us anything all the way along the way? Are we available to serve him with enthusiasm, vim, vigour and vitality?

Running to win, exercising self-control, having a purpose and fighting our true enemy, keeping our qualifications current through to life’s completion: that’s what God is up to in your life and mine…….

[I made a decision to leave the following closing out of the spoken message, but include it here for your interest, in point form].

What Do We Need to Discipline , In Such a Way?
1. We need to discipline our minds: Think
2. ……… our bodies: Exercise
3. ….our character. Choose that which leads to integration, not disintegration.
4. ……our appetites: Moderation in all things
5. …. our speech: Keep a curb on our tongues.
6……. our priorities: Right-tasking rather than multi-tasking.

Message: “What is God Up To? : Give it Up, Let it Go”, Sunday, January 22, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, Kingston, ON

Uhhhhh......so, what did I do that went so WRONG?

Date – January 22, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20

Occasion Third Sunday after Epiphany; Big Event

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “Give it Up , Let it Go”

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
3:1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,
3:2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”
3:3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.
3:4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
3:5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Psalm 62:5-12
62:5 For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.
62:6 He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
62:7 On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.
62:8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah
62:9 Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.
62:10 Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.
62:11 Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,
62:12 and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord. For you repay to all according to their work.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31
7:29 I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none,
7:30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions,
7:31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Mark 1:14-20
1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,
1:15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
1:16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen.
1:17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
1:18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
1:19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.
1:20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

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Words of Omartian’s ‘Give it Up’

“Heavy traffic, there’s no leeway on the freeway of your days

The rush hour signal – looks like danger….

You’ve got to change your busy ways.

Refrain:

You’ve got to give it up, lay it down, let him turn your life around. Give it up, you will see, peace lies ( thrives )

in simplicity. Give it up, let it go, anything that’s stoppin’ up the flow.

Set your mind free from distraction. Too much action frays the soul. Save some time for God’s communion. Let that union be your goal.

Too much movement, constant motion – let devotion take its’ place.

All who enter come up needy , speeding in the human race.

Refrain: ………”

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There is a red thread that pulls all of these scriptures together, from Jonah to the Corinthians to the first disciples of Jesus; further, that thread pulls all the way up into our lives today. We would make a mistake if we thought that if we just did what they were asked to do, then, we would be good to go with God! Jonah: preaching in the streets….the Corinthians: reordering their personal relationships because of Jesus’ soon-to-be bodily return, which didn’t happen in the way that was expected…..in Mark, the disciples dropping their jobs and leaving everything to follow Jesus. No…..what is being asked of each of these sets of folks is to get on God’s program…..to reorient their whole life around the principles of God’s kingdom that had been radically introduced to the world by Jesus!

You see, Jonah was doing what he was supposed to be doing this time around. We all know the story, how Jonah was trying to avoid all along what God had asked him to do. He had to be in essence the peace-offering, literally thrown overboard to stop the storm from killing everyone on the ship. He was all up into God’s business now, after having lived for awhile in a big fish – he’d had an attitude-adjustment enough to do what God had told him to do. He’d learned his lesson, frankly – God had given him a second chance to do what he had been asked to do before. Now, pay attention here: it seems he wasn’t all that happy about the second chance; but he went ahead and followed through like an adult anyway. Nineveh was a tough old town and area. The people there tended to live life to the fullest. If some character came along suggesting that it might be a good idea to change their ways, they tended to pay no attention at the least and to put that guy in mortal danger at the most. They were a violent, war-like people and didn’t take kindly to strangers in them thar parts! This time around, however, change was what Jonah had experienced in his personal life and calling, and a sea-change, so to speak, was what the people of Nineveh were ready to accept. Jonah only got a third of the way into the city , sounding forth only seven words again and again ( in the original language ) and the people believed that it was God’s ideas they were hearing….. this time. Everyone and every living animal got dressed in sackcloth – some of the roughest, scratchiest, nastiest material you could imagine – and the people changed their minds, their wills and their lifestyles. They got on God’s program – so much so that God changed his mind ( it says ) and did not bring upon them the calamity that he had said he would bring. They gave up and let go, and so did Jonah. Now…. mind you,,, Jonah still had problems because he still hoped that God would punish Nineveh – that’s how bad the city’s reputation was. But the point is : the people gave up and let go of the way they used to be and entered into a whole new way of being, with a whole new identity and life ahead of them. Whether we want to or not, when God is ready to do a new thing, we can either give it up and let it go, or we can ask Him what He’s doing and do it along with him.

Then, there are the Corinthians. Now Corinth is part of the Grecian ethos. The Corinthians were not violent and despised by all the nations around them as Nineveh had been in Jonah’s time. Actually, their besetting characteristic was one of hedonism – eating, drinking, making merry. As well, they were renowned for their cultural and philosophical sophistication. Even the Christians to whom Paul was writing were not immune to the pleasures of high society, indeed were affected by them. So much was this so that Paul wrote to correct some of their excessive living and how it was having a negative impact on their worship, work and witness. We need to understand the context of Paul’s words which say: the appointed time has grown short. In early Christian circles, it was fully expected that Jesus was going to return very soon. Accordingly, Paul was needing these young Christians to get their priorities in order – essentially saying to them the same thing: Wake up! Straighten up! Get your life in order ! The kingdom which matters ,God’s kingdom, is already here and our Lord is returning soon; so, change your minds, change your lives, change your way of thinking, being and doing. Well, of course, all during the first century of Christianity, the leaders had to grapple with the facts: Jesus was NOT bodily returning soon – at least, not in the way they expected. Yes, he had returned @ Pentecost as he said he would by the Holy Spirit ; he had returned as the church , the people , the Body of Christ as Paul’s language began to say. But he had not returned physically as had been the expectation. Nonetheless, there is a real sense that for each of us today that these words of Paul to the Corinthians still have an immediacy and relevance when he writes: “The present form of this world is passing away. The appointed time has grown short”. Friends and neighbours, sisters and brothers, friends and family : no matter what your chronological age or your present stage in life – these words are true for you ( and me ) this very day. Some of us will feel it differently according to our age and stage; but we are all hemmed in by time, at least the kind of time about which Paul is writing here. There are basically two kinds of time discussed in scripture: chronos and kairos. Chronos-time is the kind we measure on our smartphones, computers, watches and clocks; kairos-time is of an entirely different order. It is the God-appointed time, specific time, time shot through with meaning. It is the kind of time shot through with significance, when you and I know that we are experiencing something new, different and powerful in its importance. This can happen in each of us as individuals or among whole groups of people.

I believe that we here at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian are in a kairos-time of God – a point in history when God is putting to us the question: are you going to step up to the plate and do what I am doing? Are you going to do your part to make a difference in the life of this congregation? Are you going to observe, to pay attention to the signs of the times for St. Andrew’s and respond accordingly? Are you going to do it whether it involves changes small and/or large? This is a God-appointed time in the history of St. Andrew’s and I do not doubt whatsoever that decisions are upon us as a congregation. Now….we can either see that as threatening and intimidating …. or as exhilarating and energizing. It is my prayer that the people here will give it up and let it go, anything that’s stopping up the flow of what God wants to do with this historical and history-making congregation. He’s calling us to a different future than that which we might have thought; but he is calling us, unmistakeably and irrevocably. This is a God-appointed time for positive change in us and among us @ SAPK! Hooray!

Then, in the Gospel, we are reminded as much as taught, that time is filled full, fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Decisions are upon people. Two whole family systems, through 2 sets of brothers, had their worlds changed forever and, as a result of a vision that they were catching along with the fish in their nets, they reoriented who they were fundamentally and what they did vocationally. The lesson for us is that , like these working men who turned in a new direction, we also are to turn our lives in the same direction as God’s life. Does that mean we all drop our computers and teaching plans and patient lists and educational pursuits and everything that we are and do? It might, but more importantly, it may be to doing those things in a new way , for new reasons. It’s important , as one author has put it, “ that our wills spill into the will of God.” Then, guess what? For you and me and we that are willing to do that, the God-appointed time has become increasingly short, time has been fulfilled immediately, a word that Mark likes to use a lot (euthus : immediately/suddenly) and the kingdom of God is at hand in powerful, life-changing ways!

This is a decision made not only in one moment, though there must come that fork-in-the-road moment; rather, it is a life-long commitment to walking with Jesus, following Him, journeying alongside Him, confronting Him in conversation, doing what He does but in ways that only we can do it. Give it up, you will see – peace thrives in simplicity.

Message : Up Into Your Business , St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kingston, Sunday, January 15, 2012

Can you hear me now?

 

 

Date – January 15, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – 1 Samuel 3: 1-10; Ps. 139; 1 Cor. 6: 12-20; John 1: 43-51

Occasion 2^nd Sunday after Epiphany; Next Week Big Event

Other Info – Theme: “What is God Up To?”

Sermon Title: “Up Into Your Business”

1 Samuel 3:1-10
3:1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
3:2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room;
3:3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.
3:4 Then the LORD called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!”
3:5 and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down.
3:6 The LORD called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”
3:7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
3:8 The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy.
3:9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
3:10 Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
139:1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
139:2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
139:3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
139:4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
139:13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
139:16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
139:17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
139:18 I try to count them — they are more than the sand; I come to the end — I am still with you.

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
6:12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
6:13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
6:14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.

6:15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
6:16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.”
6:17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
6:18 Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.
6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?
6:20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

John 1:43-51
1:43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”
1:44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
1:45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
1:46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
1:47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
1:48 Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
1:49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
1:50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.”
1:51 And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Sometimes, on awaking Way Too Early during the weekdays, I flip on a TV show of that same name: “Way Too Early with Willie Geist.” It is a fast overview of things that are happening south of here, witty reparteé and kicks my brain into motion while making coffee in prep for more important things. One segment of it is called Up In Your Business – a quick analysis of some things that are happening in business. That segment-title comes from a street-phrase; being ‘up into my business’ means someone is insisting on being part of someone else’s life. “Whatta you doin’, all up in my bizness?”

The refrain on my mind this year is ‘what is God up to?’ here @ St. Andrew’s Downtown Kingston. On observing the scriptures, my life and the lives of others, I am quite sure that we can fully expect that God’s going to be all up into our busyness here, just as much as he has been in year 2011. That’s who God is, it’s what he does. Simply observing events of the past twelve months makes it crystal: God is up to something amazing with us each and among us all.

So, our question is “What’s he up to in the changes that are going on? What’s he wanting us to do? How do we respond?” The answers to those kinds of questions will show up over the course of the next weeks and months as we pray and work together. The motto of my undergraduate alma mater is ‘ora et labora’ — prayer and work, a proper balance between two actions that we do in response to what God is up to. Today, we see in the scriptures that God is up into our business, as human beings, and I want to simply observe with you how that is so. In what ways is he up in our business? Then, I want us to interpretand apply what that means for you and me. This is how I, and countless other ministers/preachers/pastor, prepare for Sunday’s messages. Observation, interpretation and application are the way to get up into God’s business, to ask him needful questions as he simultaneously gets up into your business and mine. My article for the next Burning Bush will talk more about my love of preaching and why it is important to the life of this or any congregation. While I am here, you will start to see differing ways of sharing the message; but all of them will ask the question: how does God want to get up into our busyness? What is He up to in this congregation? How does the written word, interpreted and applied by the Holy Spirit, speak to our circumstances as individuals, household, families and as this particular congregation? And what are we to do about it? Let’s go!

• Ah, Samuel, in the Hebrew Scriptures – he was a boy, apprenticed to God under direction from Eli. It says the word of the LORD was rare in those days, not many visions happening. Eli was lying down in his room with failing eyesight; Samuel was lying down in the temple,near the ark of the covenant where relics from the visionary past were stored. That’s instructive; Samuel was in the right spot for something new happening! He heard a voice in the middle of the night and rushed to Eli, 3x. He was mistaken; no, actually, he just didn’t know the LORD and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to Him yet it says. He was intuitively obedient to Eli, ironically named with one of God’s names, ‘eloi’. Finally , Eli’s vision began to clear: ah, this must be the real God Elohim/ Yahweh, up into Samuel’s business. Eli instructs him: Go, lie down again, and if he calls, your response is, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’ That’s exactly what happened: the LORD not only spoke, but stood there the fourth time, and Samuel responded as instructed. The remainder of the story we did not read includes the information that the LORD’s words were an indictment of Eli and his family and of the people Israel – tough beginnings for this young prophet. So what? Here’s what for us in year 2012: God wants to talk with people who are willing to not only hear with the outer but to listen with the whole of their inner being. God chooses to talk with those whose eyes and ears and minds are open to new things, even when they live in days when visions are rare! God can use both those who eyesight is failing and who lie in their rooms and feel that their useful life is over AND those who lie in perceived holy places eager to be near the things that God is doing – He uses both those who are have more days in front of them and those who have more days behind them. God comes and stands where we are and speaks to us in our real-life circumstances; all we have to do is to pay attention to what He is up to! Sometimes, the word of the LORD is tough to heed, just like they were for Eli and his family. Those are the lessons from Samuel for you and me today; God is up into our business, too!

• The Psalm for today is one of my favourites, perhaps one of yours, too. I have read it in hospital rooms where someone has recently been born and where someone has died. I have read it in the middle of life’s tough personal circumstances when it seemed God was far away. Psalm 139 tells us that God is up in to our business even before we are aware of life itself. He’s there when I’m lying down, when I’m sitting, when I’m walking, when I’m far from home and when I’m at home. He’s with me on the far side of the sea and we know that there’s more water than there is land-mass on this globe! He’s with us when we are made in the secret place, his eyes have seen our unformed bodies. The Psalmist was profoundly aware that God was up in his busyness, from beginning through end of human life, and beyond even that. ‘ In the end , I am still with you ‘. Friends, sisters and brothers: I am aware of many concerns which are among us, as households, families and as this part of the Body of Christ; however, today, God’s word is a strength when it tells us that God is up into our business and wants to be with us. Both Old Testament portions this morning tell us: God is standing right there calling our names and all we have to do is to pay attention, to say ‘speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’

• Paul, in writing to those who acted as if being a follower of Jesus didn’t have any implications for how they should live, makes it clear that God is up into their busyness in very practical ways. ‘ I can do anything I want ‘ — yes, but not everything is in your best interest; actually, doing anything you want sometimes takes over your life. ‘Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food’ ; yes, true, but these things too shall literally and eternally disappear, and they too can take over your life.Actually, sexual appetites or any appetites that are good in their place and in proportion can destroy you. Any good thing taken out of its proper context and taken to excess can kill you from within. The body is meant to be used in all ways for the Lord’s purposes. It’s not about you, it’s about him and his way of doing things, his kingdom. He is meant to be at the center of who you are, even your sexual self, so intimate does he want to be up into your busyness. Ladies and gentleman, I have no interest in being graphic for its’ own sake; but let me simply share with you what was shared in a worship service as public as this one by an Old Testament professor who was as modest as can possibly be: the reason our sexual organs are in the center of our body and that the ridiculous sign of the covenant called circumcision was so important is this: God chooses to be at the very center of our sexual lives, our sexual selves. The reason sex outside of marriage is wrong is because it makes light of the most important relationship we can have : profound intimacy with God. That’s the point Paul is making here. God wants to be up into your business in ways that you’ve never even considered as part of God’s business. God is up to making us whole persons, healed persons, healthy persons, holy persons. Be whole, for I am whole; be holy, for I am holy . Now…..THAT’s what I would call up into your busyness.

• Finally, the Gospel lesson: Phil and Nat….. it says that Jesus found Philip, Philip found Nathanael, and Philip says that they had found Jesus. Philip was from the town where Peter and Andrew had been found. All in all, it seems clear that Jesus was doing the finding, and that these guys were the foundling children who began to follow Jesus, what do you think?! When Nat asks Phil about this Jesus that Phil had ‘found’ , Phil says Jesus came from Nazareth. “ Nat curls his lip and says, ‘can any good thing come from Nazareth?’,'Come and see’…..They get near Jesus, Jesus lays a huge compliment and makes fun of Nat at the same time: “Ah, an Israelite in whom is there is no deceit! ( I heard you say that, Nat, but I still have found you ).” ‘Where did you get to know me?’ “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you”. And on that note, Nathanael, ( God is given ) says, essentially, ‘Speak LORD, your servant is listening’ and begins to follow Jesus.

Folks, I’m simply making the point that the scriptures make: God is up into the business of your life and mine, your household and mine, your world and mine, your congregation and mine. He is up into the busyness of the church-at-large and the church on the corner of Princess and Clergy called St. Andrew’s Presbyterian. We are being encouraged this day to embrace the changes that are upon us, to pray and to work together to ensure that they are driven by God’s Spirit in us and among us, that they are changes that have integrity, that are integrated with the will of God. Knowing God’s will comes from assimilating the principles of His word, listening to His Spirit, using common sense, talking and listening amongst ourselves and to trusted others…..and paying attention when things begin to converge in ways that only He could have done it. Let us pray…… 

Message: “To What is God Calling Us?”, Sunday, January 8th, 2012

John and Jesus in the Jordan

Date – January 8, 2012 Place – SAPK

Text – Genesis 1: 1-5; Galatians 4: 4-7; Mark 1: 1–11;

Occasion 1^st Sunday after Epiphany

Other Info – Psalm 29; Baptism of our Lord.

Sermon Title: “To What is God Calling Us? “

Genesis 1:1-5
1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
1:2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
1:4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
1:5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Galatians 4: 4-7

4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Mark 1: 1-11

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

2As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.7He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

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On Friday, a new season began, — Epiphany, a ‘revealing’ or ‘manifestation’. An epiphany is an intuitive grasp of one thing through something else. At this time in the Christian year, we intuitively grasp the idea that God loves us by showing up as a human child. In this gospel reading this morning, we have intimations of the surprising nature of Jesus’ mission, His calling.

At the beginning of this new season, we look at Jesus as one who shows up and becomes the expected but surprising Messiah. The astronomers/astrologers came seeking the Baby and, in their discovery, they reveal a bit more who Jesus is to very surprised parents. At Epiphany, we also remember that Jesus, as a 12-year-old boy, is shown up as the Son of Father God. He amazes people yet exasperates his parents who discover him teaching teachers in the temple. On this First Sunday after Epiphany called the Baptism of the Lord, we have heard the story of Jesus showing up again, revealing Himself through the act of baptism, around 30 years after he made the move from Bethlehem to Nazareth. We begin to see who we are meant to be, what we are supposed to be doing. Epiphany also reveals who we are to be and in what way we are to become real, significant and called in our world.

Let us be attentive to what we see about us,too. We are those who follow him into the water. This story of the only direct event we know between Jesus and his cousin John teaches us that the context of God’s plan is relationships. We remember from the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth that these men had been babies together first. J the B was jumping around inside his mother at the time of Mary’s pregnant visit with her also-pregnant relative, Elizabeth. We can reasonably expect that there were other visits, in which the relationship between John and Jesus grew. They may have played together as kids in the olive groves, went fishing together. They certainly would have at least known about each other as family members. Jesus was set into the context of a family, and was revealed over those intervening years as part of a web of relationships.

Imagine, then, what it must have meant for John the Baptizer to stand in the river as cousin Yeshua came down toward him in the water. All four gospels point out this change in their relationship, one way or another. He calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He tells people that he’s not good enough to even untie the shoes of the one who is coming, the one who is greater than John himself. He tells people that this coming one will baptize with the Holy Spirit rather than only water. In the Gospel of another guy named John, the Baptizer says I tell you that He is the Son of God.This Son of God came up from among the people as well as from that other world. It was a special grace of humility that allowed John to proclaim his cousin as the Lamb of God.

So, as with Jesus, we too are called in the context of relationship – relationship with one another in the Body of Christ, relationships within our own blood families, and in relationship to the world to which God has called us.

We see in this story that Jesus identified with real people. It was real people coming to John the Baptizer. People came as individuals, confessed their sins and were baptized by John. This was called by John a baptism of repentance. Jesus too was baptized, primarily to fully identify with the world to which He was being called. Jesus radically identified with the people of the whole world so that he could know the cost of taking away the sins of the whole world.

So, too, we are called to identify that we ourselves are part of this sinful world, that the call is for all of us to repent, to be changed from within so that there can be a change without. There is a call to each of us to recognize that I have sinned, even I, and that Christ died for me, even me.

We see in baptism that Jesus gave his seal of approval to John’s particular ministry. Jesus came to his cousin to be baptized. What a gracious gift to John from his cousin . He waited until after all the others were baptized, then he too stepped into the water and placed his seal of approval on John’s ministry, even though John protested his own unworthiness. Later, Jesus first preached message was the same as that of his cousin “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand, is near.”

So, too, we are called in our respective ministries to validate the value of others’ work, of others’ place in
God’s economy. We are to work together to accomplish God’s purposes, whether we understand why or not.

It’s good to note that the Baptizer did see the dove, as is recorded in John’s gospel, and knew in that sign that his cousin Jesus was indeed the son of God. John knew in that moment that he himself was part of God’s plan, God’s epiphany, His revealing of Himself.

We each need to understand that who we are and what we are called to do. It is powerful, meaningful, and of eternal significance. God calls us each to be someone, to do something which has exponentially greater power than we will ever know.

Why do I keep on saying that we are called to be and to do just like John, just like Jesus? What right do I have to do that?

It’s because of baptism. Baptism is a powerful symbol, one of the two acts that much of the Protestant Christian church names as sacraments. This Sunday called The Baptism of the Lord is a reminder of our own call. Here, we have one of the two bookends of Jesus life and ministry. He is baptized at the beginning of his public life, and in the Great Commission, he calls his followers to teach and to baptize, the second of the two bookends named baptism.

Baptism is the ordination that each oneof us receives to be ministers in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ . It’s a welcome into the Body of Christ. It’s an outward and visible sign of the inward, invisible grace of God who has made us right in Christ Jesus. But it is also a call to minister in His name. We are ordained to be part of the royal priesthood of God through knowing Jesus and pointing others to Him. He was baptized, we have been baptized. He was called to God’s specific purpose, we are called to the same. Jesus was set in the context of home and family, we too are called in the context to minister the grace of familial relationships. Jesus identified with the needs of the whole world, we are to identify with the needs of our worlds in which we live every day.

God says to us, ‘ you are my own dear Child, I am pleased with you. ‘ And He leads us into the privilege and responsibility of being just like His own dear Son.

So, the question: what is your epiphany at the beginning of this new year? Who is God calling you to be? What is he calling you to do?

For some of us, it will be to do the unexpected, to change our whole way of living to do something we least expected.

For some of us, it will be to focus on our families this year, knowing that they are the little church within the larger church ( ecclesiola in ecclesia ).

For some, it will be to begin to see our everyday lives as a place of ministry to others.

For some, it will be to see that the past has to move to the future, that God only gives us a vision for the future and never for the past. We’ll have to give it up and let it go, anything that’s stopping up the flow of God’s Spirit in our lives.

For some, it will be to study, to prepare, to be the very best learner we can be in order to ready ourselves for a future. For others of us, it will be to recognize that we are always freshman in the school of life and that God is not finished teaching us yet.

For some, we will recognize that God is up to something that we do not fully understand, but that whatever we’re doing in the moment, we’ll do to the best of our abilities, because He sees the big picture even when we don’t.

For some, it will have to be enough to know that God has called us to be His dear child and that He is pleased with us.

Let’s pray……..

Message: “With My Own Eyes”, Sunday, January 1, 2012.

Date – January 1, 2012 Place — SAPK

Text –Galatians 4: 4-7; Luke 2: 22-40 Occasion – Christmas 1; Year B

Other Info – Covenant Renewal as part of Service, BCW

Message: With My Own Eyes

Luke 2:22-40

 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.’

 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.’

 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.

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There is an art in danger of disappearing as we begin the new year. Over humankind’s history, there have arisen differing ways of representing ideas, thoughts , beauty and wonder. Examples? Music, painting, sculputure, phtotography, architecture, dance, poetry, prose and less-obvious arts like mathematics, science, economics, psychology, sociology. In this present day of ever-increasing means of communication, there is one art about which we can rightfullyu express concern as to its’ diminishment.

It is the art of attentiveness, paying attention. Attentiveness can be described as” withdrawal from some things in order to focus on one thing.”. Literally it means to stretch forward ( think ‘tendons’), carrying with it the sense of craning your neck to get closer to an object of interest to the exclusion of all else. We have become enthralled with the thrill of multitasking. We think that more of everything is better than… anything.

Today, we are going to pay attention to what’s going on in this simple, beautiful story which often becomes lost in the after-Christmas rush to the new calendar year. We are going to be attentive to Dr. Luke who has taken care to faithfully record what happened shortly after the birth of this Child to Mary and Joseph. In stretching our necks toward Jesus very early in the new calendar year, we have a reminder of God who pays rapt attention to us, His created children, first. Let us remember, in this season of looking both back and ahead, that our Lord gave us His Son for a purpose. That purpose begins to clarify in his first public appearance.

Let us observe about Jesus and those who were there. Let us learn what we can about the context of Jesus’ life. This will help us to appreciate the artistry of God’s plan in sending His only-begotten Son. Let us recover, for today, the art of being attentive.

• We see that Jesus is part of a devout Jewish family. We see the usual rituals being followed, for the mother and the child – laws long established were being observed by Mary and Joseph and the baby. This reminds us that our whole family is important to God, that He seeks to embrace us as households. He wants us to present ourselves to Him in the holy places of life. He wants us to show up in public in observance of the rhythm of life He established long ago. Paying attention to God in the middle of life’s complexities brings about a cohesion that cannot otherwise happen. We are to be attentive to life’s rituals that give order, significance and eternal meaning to human existence. We are to present ourselves and our families to God.

• We observe that Jesus is the first-born Son, especially sacred to God, as noted in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old or Older Testament. This event observed by Mary and Joseph was known as ‘the Redemption of the First-born’. It may well have meant a donation to the Temple, in essence giving Jesus as the First-Born to God. It was done also to recognize that Jesus was a gift from God to be cherished, as indeed all children were known to be, as they still are. Children, first-born or ever-born, are meant to be given back to the One whose they are in the first place!

• We observe that He is set into the context of a poor family, signaled by the less-expensive sacrifice. Joseph and Mary knew what it meant to be part of households that had to struggle to make ends meet. They understood the challenges of real life. This makes it clear : Jesus is avaiable and accessible to all of us. It helps us, as we observe His later ministry life, to understand why He paid special attention to the poor, the street person, the humble, the sick, the disenfranchised. He saw, with clear-eyed insight due to his humble family, the use and abuse of power and authority by religious systems and political powers. It helps us to identify with God who knows our struggles because He grew up in an ordinary home, just as ordinary as our own.

There are others that make their way into the story – Simeon and Anna. These folks were representative of a group that were known as The Quiet in the Land. We might call them the silent majority. They had waited expectantly for Messiah to come, but did not necessarily buy into the idea that He would be a charismatic political or military leader or a religious zealot, as so many others did. No, they simply went about their lives, doing the usual things people of faith do, but with the eyes of their hearts fully open to the possibilities that God could bring into fruition. Let’s see what we can learn from them, in their own quiet way.

• Simeon, not necessarily a priestly person, was still nothing less than God-intoxicated. He was intimately connected to God’s wireless network all the time, 24/7/365. Simeon reminds us of our need to see God’s dialogue with us as unceasing. We, like him, are to recognize that God is in the air that we breathe, the songs that we sing, the words that we speak, the good news that we live out.

• Simeon lived in Jerusalem; the Temple was the Northstar of his life. His habit of being @ Temple reminds us: worship of God is to be at the very center of who we are and what we do. We are to take seriously the Westminster Confession that the chief end of human beings is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Simeon would have made a good Presbyterian, indeed may have been one of the very first!

• He listened, and believed, what God spoke into his life. His example reminds us: God has a specific word for each of us to hear, words real and practical. We can practice the presence of God in our lives and feel His pleasure in our company with Him.

• We notice that Simeon paid attention to ordinary people, made extraordinary by God’s timing. His example challenges us to see that our lives are shot through with ordinaries, made extraordinary. Even what we call mundane is sacred. I would say that everything is shot through with possibilities when we see them through God’s eyes and our own.

• Simeon was probably old. With age, he was unafraid to do the unexpected. Some of us can identify with this better than others – it comes from a recognition that we have a whole lot of now available to us and not  much later! We are to live with joyful spontaneity, doing what God seems to be placing before us to do.

• Simeon had his priorities right, signaled in this story by his thanking God for this particular child. Thankfulness divests us of the foolish notion that we are owners when we are only temporary stewards. Thankfulness is to be our default response to …..well…everything! Our lives are totally derived from God and from other people. We are the receivers of gifts every day of the year.

• Simeon’s prayer acknowledges that God keeps His promises over the long haul. Sometimes, we even get to see those prayers fulfilled as we had hoped. With my own eyes, with your own eyes – we can see that God answers prayer. Sometimes, the answer is no. Sometimes, He says ‘slow’. Sometimes, He says ‘first, grow’ . On occasion, He enthusiastically says ‘go’!  ( Schuller! ) Sometimes, God answers our prayers with silence, because He’s already told us and we have not wanted to hear….. or we have not been attentive to what He is shouting at us in several ways.

• In this story, we see that Jesus is the One who reveals all of God to all people everywhere for all time and in all places. God is available in the language that everybody can understand: the person of Jesus. A picture is worth thousands of words. This ‘picture’ is worth a thousand million billion words. 

• We observe that even those closest to us can be amazed at what God is doing through us. This is highlighted by Mary and Joseph’s astonishment at how people respond to their Baby. Expect the unexpected, in your self, and in those closest to you – they may be a means of grace, angels unawares.

• We learn that Jesus presents us with a time to choose about God: we can either surrender to the truth that is in Him OR we can declare lifelong war against Him.

Finally, there’s Anna, about whom we know nothing except what is in this story. We learn about ourselves, though, in being attentive to her:

• She was old, counterculture, widowed….. yet she had not become embittered by her life, though it was probably difficult. She is the only one in the New Testament named a prophet. God signaled something new going on , in Anna and among women. This old, perhaps feisty, certainly vital woman spoke about the Child to all who were waiting for God to set Jerusalem free. Friends, look at Anna and think to yourself: I’m new every morning. God continues to use me for His purposes in His own good timing. I wonder what God is up to in my life and in the lives of others around me today????!!!!

• Anna was paying attention to God every minute of her life. For her, there was no distinction between the holy and the everyday. Her example reminds us to tell people the good news that is Jesus. Better yet, she says for God,—– live the gospel so clearly that people can read Him in our everyday living.

Attentiveness….focus upon God in everything…. narrowing in upon the essential thing in life – that’s what we see writ large in Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna. This section of scripture completes with the family doing simple things: returning to their hometown, living life normally, setting up a household, creating the context for Jesus’ upbringing in the real world of His day  – an awesome gig for any human being, don’t you think?

That’s what we are to do: simply, powerfully – keep God at the center of all that we are and all that we do. That is the context for Jesus growing up and becoming strong in you and you and me, in yours and yours and mine. Christ in you…. the hope of glory…. Let us pray…..

Message : “Sarx”, from Sunday, December 25, 2011, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

Sarx: The Word Became Flesh

 

 

Date – December 25, 2011 Place- SAPK

Text – Hebrews 1: 1-4; Psalm 98; John 1: 1-14

Occasion – Sunday, Christmas Day, A Brief Service

Message: ” Sarx “

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Hebrews 1:1-4

1:1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets,

1:2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.

1:3 He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

1:4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

John 1:1-14
1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

1:2 He was in the beginning with God.

1:3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being

1:4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

1:7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

1:8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

1:9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

1:10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

1:11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

1:12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,

1:13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

_____________________________________________________Be

2 days ago, December 23^rd, 2011 @ 1:46 PM, Hudson James Kinnard was born into the world to Josh and Kristin Kinnard. To remind you who they are, Josh has been our drummer recently and Kristin and they have been expecting this little one for a while now, which occasioned their move from Hawaii to near Kingston to live with Kristin’s folks. Josh and Kristin –and I guess you could say Hudson – began attending St. Andrew’s in mid-summer where some of us got to know and befriend them, welcoming them to consider St. A’s as a church family. The first name, Hudson, was one that God gave to Kristin and Josh. The second name, James, was ‘in the Buckley family’ from which Kristin sprang. The Kinnard surname is “ Gaelic, from Kinnaird, a place in Perthshire, Scotland, so called from Ceann, the head, the end, and aerd, a height or promontory, from its high situation.” This baby has the strong names of an explorer, and interestingly, from a ground-breaking missionary: James Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, now called OMF International.

It’s a wonderful time of the year to have a baby, because babies are certainly the focus of our attentions! I’m not sure my parents thought so 61 years ago when I was born, for it was, as always, a busy time in the family business — a grocery and general store. You know, everything rather stops when a baby is born. They seem to be unable to discern the importance of schedules and plans and agendas that people have at such a busy time of the year! So it is with the historic and significant Hudson James Kinnard who decided to show up right in the middle of the Christmas muddle of the Buckley/ Kinnard family. Hudson decided to shake things up a bit this year; but , let me tell you, Josh and Kristin are thrilled and so are we all who rejoice with them.

There is a vast difference between a baby in the abstract and a real live crying baby. Seeing the baby in the hospital, I could not help but remember how naive we were as new parents 35.5 years ago. Little did we known that a Baby-in-the-Flesh is Someone who will change our lives by just showing up.

Just like God.

I unashamedly quote from my first message to you this calendar year these words, based upon the same gospel lesson. I consider John 1 the center of the scriptural message, to which all of the Hebrew Scriptures/ Old Testament points and out of which all of the rest of the New Testament and Christian history proceeds…. to this very day. Sarx is the Greek word translated into the English word ‘flesh’, as in John 1: 14 ‘ The Word Became Flesh’. The words pertain on this last Sunday of year 2011 as they did on the first, and as they will in time yet to come.

“ In the words from John’s Gospel Chapter 1, especially vv. 12 – 13 , John moves from the intimacy of God with us that we see in the baby Jesus to the intimacy of usbecoming children of God. How does this happen? On this First Day of Christmas and only 12 Days away from Epiphany on January 6^th, we consider Jesus, the medium who is the clearest message about God. Verse 12 says that it is a matter of receiving Him, of believing in Jesus’ name. Receiving, in Hebrew thought, equals believing in His name and vice versa. In other words, we completely, unreservedly buy into the idea that He is what His name says He is: the God who saves, Yeshua ben Yahweh, Jesus the Son of God, even God Himself who takes away the sins of the world. We take that fully into our thoughts and actions, and are changed from within because of that decision. Our actions are changed, also, on the outside as we move forward in the name of Jesus, upward to God, outward to others.

Simply put, do you and I believe that Jesus is ‘God in the flesh below’, as an old hymn puts it?

God in the flesh below,
For us He reigns above:
Let all the nations know
Our Jesu’s conquering love!
Join all on earth, rejoice and sing;
Glory ascribe to glory’s King.

If so, I have to receive Him, to take Him into my being, my sense of self. I have to accept Him, not only at face value, but at the deepest level of who He is, as the One who changes me at the deepest level of who I am. Intimacy is what God wants, the intimacy of us becoming His children. God, through Jesus, actually makes it possible for us to be adopted into God’s family. We’re like street-kids who are brought home by our new friend brother Jesus, to meet the Father. We are then surprisingly welcomed by God as fully accepted brothers and sisters of Jesus. We share Jesus’ DNA by virtue of Christ Himself being in us, in intimate relationship with us, so that we can be in intimate relationship with God.

Listen clearly to what I am saying based upon the words of this reading: just because we are human doesn’t make us God’s children. John takes that away from us : he writes that it’s not by blood, not by sexual desire nor by a choice that is made by a man that we are God’s kids. No, it’s fully God’s choice, God’s good idea. I love howEugene Peterson interprets this section of John in his version of the Bible called The Message…. “ Whoever did want him , who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten – not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish. “

God moved into the neighbourhood when Jesus was born long ago. When we get to know this neighbour called Jesus, and think we can buy into who he is, and what His name says He is – God who saves – then we start becoming children of God. Then, we start to hang out with the God who started hanging out with us in Jesus!!! In the Old Testament, we see the image of the children of the Israel wandering in the wilderness with Yahweh’s presence showing up mainly in a movable tent, a place where only the high priest could come into the Presence in that tent of meeting.

In Hebrew thought, this glorious Presence of the Lord sounds something like the Hebrew word that is sometimes familiar to church folks: Shekinah. In John 1: 14, the idea of the Word becoming flesh, (SARX, from which we get the word sarcophagus), of moving into the neighbourhood. which suggests the idea of a tent. In fact, the Greek word carries with it the idea of a tent, skaynay. it has much the same sound as the Hebrew word shekinah – ‘ he lived for a while among us ‘ — he tented with us, he hung out with us, he dwelt for a while among us. And in that tent, our friend/brother becomes our Lord/Saviour.

A man named William Barclay writes: “To believe in the name of Jesus is to believe that God is like Him; and it is only when we believe that that we can become His children. Otherwise, we would never have dared to think that we could become God’s children. It is what Jesus is that opens to us the possibility of becoming the children of God. “ The stuff of which we are made is the stuff of which Jesus Himself was begotten: sarx, flesh, humanness. “

I want you to speak out, right now, the names of children in your life ( Make this happen.)

And of course, we have been kids ourselves, no matter how long ago.

Do you and I each want to become children of God? Do we, together, want to have an older, bigger brother who will guard and guide us? This child of God named Jesus is the means, the medium who is God’s clearest message to us about how we can be adopted into his family. Let me read Peterson’s verse 18 of John 1: “No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made Him plain as day.”

Sisters and brothers of St. Andrew’s, we continue to celebrate that God has come to be with us in the flesh. We continue to rejoice that He loves us so much that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him has the opportunity of enjoying life which lasts forever.

Let us pray…..  

Message: ” A Rising Sun” , Christmas Eve, Saturday December 24, 2011 @ St. A’s

Winter Solstice: What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

Date – December 24, 2011 Place – SAPK

 OT- Malachi 4: 1-2 NT – Luke 1: 67-79

 Other Scriptures – Psalm 85, Revelation 22

 Other – Saturday Evg, Family Candlelight Service

SERMON: “A RISING SUN”

My wife, Marie, and I live in an old brick house here in downtown Kingston. Marie’s aesthetic sensibilities make it a thing of beauty to us. We both loved it almost immediately, when we first walked through. It’s old, our apartment is tiny-perfect and suits us perfectly as a place in so many ways.

There are 2 skylights which let in lots of light. But the windows out of which we look most often are in the back and on the side. We can see lovely old houses with varying types of chimneys, and there trees deciduous and evergreen. Squirrels perch upon our stone window-sill, looking in at us to see just how soft a touch we are for free food!

It’s where we get the most light, because it faces the lake to the south and west. We’ve watched the sun get lower and lower, at the approach of winter solstice on December 22 this year. Now, it’s getting longer, but we don’t feel it yet. Since late June, daylight has become less. Even now, the daylight hours are increasing. The sun is moving to a higher orbit each day. The windows of our homes will soon be a framework for new life, and growth, and possibility, because more and more light is shining its’ way in.

One could say that the light has been reborn. Yes, winter is still ahead; indeed, winter just began this past week. Cold will probably increase. Utility bills will follow suit. But somehow, the principle of the return of life has been asserted. “If winter is here”, we say, “can spring be far behind?” In many parts of the Mediterranean world into which Jesus was born, a fertility celebration at the time of winter solstice was traditional. The reason is obvious: life was so closly tied to the agricultural year, that the return of the sun was like life out of the midst of death. The celebration of Jesus’ birth at this time of the year is our replacement for pagan festivals having to do with this birth of light. We rejoice, not over the birth or rebirth of light in the sky, but rather , at the birth of the Son of God, the light of the whole world. Christmas reminds us of God’s breaking through into our lives, our homes, with an ever-increasing glory, through Jesus, His Anointed One, the King of the Universe. Jesus (Yeshua, son of God) Christ (the Anointed One of God) is the Lord (Yahweh come to be with us. )

Malachi, the last of the OT books, written about 400 years before Jesus’ birth, contains these words (4: 2): “But for you who revere my name, the sun (S-U-N) of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.” What a wonderful image of what has happened in the coming of Jesus. If you’ve grown up on a farm, you know what it’s like to see animals, young and old, run and jump when let out of the barn, at any time of the year. The prophet here is talking about the day of the Lord, a future in which there will be a cleansing, purifying, freeing action taken by Yahweh. Those who revere his name, who live with Him as their context for everything, will be made whole, will be made complete, they will be fulfilled (filled full), they will be healed. It will be the land of beginning again, of starting over, of returning light, of flourishing growth. That sounds like the kind of land in which all of us would choose to live, this land of returning, healing light.

Brothers and sisters, there has been an increasing desire in my heart and soul to see this kind of therapy in the hearts and homes of all of us. Christmas is always a season of focusing on families, and homes, and households, and thankfully so. My concern is that we and our households be compelled by the vision of the God who profoundly, yet practically, wants to be the very center of our living, — in our households, every day, in every decision we make, every attitude displayed, every action taken. God set Himself down into the context of living, breathing families at one of the most politically, spiritually and relationally complex times and places of history. He made himself to be just like us, in order that we might become just like Him, and He did so not only for individuals but also for whole groups of people — differing cultures, differing philosophical stances, widely varied nations, as well as differing cities, varied family groups and so on.

Malachi was certainly written to address a whole people, the nation of Israel and its’ leaders, at a time of change and transition. They had been exiled, and had now returned and rebuilt wall and temple. But things had somehow changed. Now, God addresses them through his prophet. He is tough on them, brutal. Read it: you will hear familiar language, especially if you have heard Handel’s Messiah recently. Right at the end of the book, he writes: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. ” The next time we hear about is about 400+ years later, when the one we call John the Baptist was born to real people who were less than perfect, especially his father. Luke 1 tells the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and even refers to the baby about to be born to them as one who would have the spirit of Elijah, — the same Elijah to whom Malachi points 400 years earlier. Read Malachi, a really short book at the end of the OT, then read Luke 1. You’ll get the picture.

There we see that God wants to claim whole families, whole households, whole people-groups, whole congregations — and he wants to make them (us) holy!! Yes, individuals obviously have to choose and ultimately, it is up to each of us to decide about God; nonetheless,we live, not in splendid isolation, but in relationship with one another. My prayer-gift to you all this season: that God would bring you and your whole family into right relationship with him, and with one another. There is no other way for each of us to be healed, or made whole, or to be complete; we must be reconciled to God and to one another, in nuclear families and in the family of the Body of Christ. Comparatively, nothing else matters. Nothing. If these things are right, then all else will fall into place, or will fall away. That’s not simplistic — it is simply the effect of the sun of righteousness rising with healing in its wings. And then, you go out and leap, like calves released from the stall. New life, growth, possibility.

John the Baptist’s Dad, Zechariah, was a priest who didn’t quite believe what the angel had told him — that he and Elizabeth were going to be Mom and Dad when they were old. You’d think he’d know better, wouldn’t you? So Gabriel shut him up, which is pretty tough for a priest. When John was born, and Zechariah named him as John, several months worth of sermon were bottled up and issued forth in a hymn of praise that theologians call the Benedictus. It is a wonderful recalling of what God had promised, and was now about to fulfill. It is reminiscent of Malachi’s prophecy, for it talks about Zechariah’s son, later known as John the Baptizer, being a prophet of the Most High, going on before the Lord to prepare the way for him. Later on, in vv. 78-9, Z refers to the coming Messiah, by calling him “the rising sun” (S-U-N), again echoing Malachi. The word is “anatole”, which like so many in the original languages, has many layers of meaning: a shoot of a plant, a rising star, a branch, something that grows, and finally, Messiah, God’s anointed one. God who created light, all things living, life itself, was going to break through the window frame of history with an ever-increasing and glorious light — light to heal, light to grow, light to replace darkness. With apologies to Shakespeare — ‘Soft! What light through yonder window breaks? ‘Tis the east and Jesus is the sun.’ Zechariah,in a torrent of good words, gives praise to God for both his own child and for the one yet to come, the light of the world.

When the sun rises, what difference does it make? When Jesus comes, what difference does he make? It is as profound as the difference between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice . Zechariah says that the God of Israel has raised up a horn of salvation for us. ‘Horn’ is another symbol for Messiah. When Jesus comes, each and all of us can expect the following (Luke 1: 71-79) — these are gifts that Jesus brings us to celebrate His birth:

- salvation from enemies, all who hate us

Jesus brings us the gift of healing of hurts, wounds inflicted by those who wish we no longer existed

-the gift of fearless service in his kingdom

– Jesus brings us the gift of freedom from oppression, from old ties that choke us spiritually, from unworthy attachments to even good things and good people

- the gift of wholeness and right-living

- the joy of living as whole, complete and right-thinking, right-acting persons and households is a gift of immeasurable value. Jesus brings that gift to us, when He comes into our worlds and changes us.

- the gift of giving others the good news

– brothers and sisters, we have like John the Baptizer been given the gift of pointing others toward Jesus, or at the very least of preparing the way for him. We can tell others that forgiveness of sins is possible.

- the gift of God’s tender mercy

- in these harsh times, we have been given the gift of pointing to the tender mercy of God, which will be news, very good news, to many who are only too aware of the wretchedness of their own rebelliousness and its’ effects in their lives and others.

- the gift of the rising sun who comes to us

– when I was a kid, I had one of those little Golden Books, entitled “The Puppy Who Barked the Sun Up”, about a foolish little dog who was sure that his barking forced the sun out of hiding every morning. We’re like that puppy, in that we act as if we believe that if we only do this or that, something wonderful will happen. Jesus gives us puppies the gift of coming to us.

- the gift of deliverance from the dark closets of our own making, our own stupidity and our own wilful ignorance and sins

- Jesus releases us from the foolish fiction of thinking we can do it all without referring to Him or caring about others.The old saying is ‘there is none so blind, as those who will not (choose not to) see’. If there is something you know needs to be done, and you know the right way to do it, then do it, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of others close to you, and for your own sake. Then life will arise out of death, light out of darkness, knowing out of unknowing, possibility out of hopelessness.

- the gift of practical, tough, loving guidance

– knowing the One who created light and love is better than asking Him what His will is. Guidance arises out of relationship. Jesus gives us the gift of intimate relationship with God, out of which arises the practical answers to life’s complex questions. That brings then, shalom, the knowledge that God walks with us into the unknown new year.

There is an old song written in the 1600′s and written into Bach’s Christmas Oratorio of 1734: “Break forth, o beauteous heavenly light, and usher in the morning; ye shepherds, shrink not with affright, but hear the angel’s warning. This child, now born in infancy, our confidence and joy shall be, the power of Satan breaking, our peace eternal making. “

I am praying these days for households to be invaded by God, whether it is a party of one, or of two, or of five or ten. I am praying for the whole Body of Christ in Kingston, and for the church in Canada and for the kingdom to be established in this old world. And I am praying for each of us to be so moved by the reality of Jesus – the word become flesh – that we will have a holy dissatifaction with everything, and everyone, else until we are in right relationship with Him. Because when we each have Him, or more correctly, when He has each of us completely, then his healing wings will make us and our households whole, and complete and salved and saved and, yes, holy. And that will be the best Christmas pageant ever. Let us pray.