Message: Inside/Outside, from Sunday, September 2, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

There is no ‘try’, there is only ‘do’…….Yoda

Date – September 2 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – Deut. 4: 1-2, 6-9; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Other – Pentecost + 14; Communion Sunday

SERMON: ” Inside/Outside ”

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
4:1 So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.
4:2 You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.
4:6 You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!”
4:7 For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him?
4:8 And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?
4:9 But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children–

Psalm 15
15:1 O LORD, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?
15:2 Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart;
15:3 who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors;
15:4 in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the LORD; who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
15:5 who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved.

James 1:17-27
1:17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
1:18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
1:19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger;
1:20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
1:21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
1:22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
1:23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;
1:24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.
1:25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act–they will be blessed in their doing.
1:26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.
1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
7:1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,
7:2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.
7:3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;
7:4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)
7:5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
7:6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;
7:7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
7:8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
7:14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
7:15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
7:21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,
7:22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
7:23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Recently, I have had the pleasure of seeing two local plays, both of them outside – one accomplished entirely within the confines of City or MacDonald Park, the other that began at City Hall and ended at the base of the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald, our first prime minister who was at one time a member of this very congregation. There have been those who have mentioned, rather smugly perhaps, that Sir John may have had a far more active membership at the Royal Tavern across the street and that he was, therefore, not a very exemplary member here. Let it be remembered, though, that his father was a founding Elder of the congregation and that 24-year-old John Alexander also seconded the motion that began Queens Presbyterian College, now Queens University. Be that as it may, and with some justification because of Sir John’s disposition to drink, more than one person has called him a hypocrite – as a politician and as a practising Presbyterian. Be that as is it may or may not , according to our biases , I have always enjoyed seeing people act well and it has been a pleasure seeing people I know in each of these plays on our beloved streets.

Actually, one of the plays was by the theatre troupe that acted out the play about Sir John here last year. The cast has been rehearsing downstairs in Gill Hall and , this year, has been leading Walking Tours of Kingston in a revision of that play on the streets of Kingston. Those wonderful young people do a great job of capturing the truly dramatic life and times embodied in Sir John whose 200^th birthday will be celebrated in Kingston and across Canada in year 2015. Yet, without casting any aspersions on them, I could this morning call all of those wonderful actors ‘hypocrites’ and it would simply be a two thousand year old Greek word that was used back then to describe people who acted for a living. Back then, it was without any negative meaning at all!

In Athens 400 years before the birth of Christ, the orator Demosthenes belittled a rival who had been a successful actor before taking up politics. He called him a hypocrites — someone whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. Later on, the Roman culture had little use for actors, and it is likely that their disdain gave actors, those hypocrites, a bad name. It is in this sense — of hypokrisis as “play-acting” — that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative aspect. The modern word ‘hypocrite’ now speaks of someone who believes one way on the inside but acts entirely differently on the outside – living a lie, so to speak. That is the thread that draws the scriptures read together for us as we prepare to receive communion. We are admonished, both forthrightly and compassionately , to be sure that the words we say match up with the deeds we do.

All four of the scriptures read – from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, James and Mark — talk about living the laws out loud, on the streets of the cities and towns, in the schools and marketplaces, in our everyday life. There are variations on the theme of hearing the word and doing it.

The Deuteronomist says something like this: People of Israel, listen up! You are going into new territory, so bring with you the lessons that our Lord has been teaching you. Pay attention, keep the commandments of God by living them out in this place where you are about to walk. Live them out loud — make the words come alive – let the people there stand back and wonder about the God you say you know. Let them be amazed by His wisdom and discernment because they see the way you live and know by your actions that the words you believe and live have made you a great nation. But watch it! Make sure that what you do matches up with what you say. Don’t forget. Don’t be a hypocrite whose beliefs are not backed up by your everyday decisions and actions.

The Psalmist puts it something like this, in a conversation with God: Lord, how do I live in your neighbourhood? How do I deserve to be know as someone who is like you? And the Lord answers: Walk the talk. Make sure your actions are based upon right-thinking. Speak truthfully, from the inside out. Make sure you do not kill people with what you say or how you say it. If your friend is truly a friend, make sure that you build them up, rather than tear them down. Work out things among the people with whom you live, move and have your being. If someone is doing things destructive to others, be a shepherd who guards others and respect those who respect and love me. Be around people who do what they say they will do, even if it is to their detriment. Do not abuse the power you have that money and wealth gives to you. If you do these rightful things, you never have to move out of the neighbourhood where I live. My word says, ‘ those who do these things shall never be moved.’ Then and only then — my house is your house, child — my neighbourhood is yours. Just don’t be a hypocrite.

I’m not sure why the letter from James the Just has been seen as a problem, as has been the case all through the Christian era. The church fathers wondered at times whether it should be in the canon of scriptures or not – some folks even think today that it ought not. True, it barely alludes to Jesus at all; yes, there does seem to be a super-strong emphasis on practical, daily advice about life without much reference to grace. Even Martin Luther called it “ a right straw-y epistle “, probably because he was fighting the fight of the Reformers who were contending against those who thought that good works could pave the way to paradise: “ every coin that in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs “ and the like. Perhaps it is because it is such an annoying letter from a brother of Jesus who took seriously the practical implications of following the teachings of Jesus, and who ruled over the mother-church of Christianity in Jerusalem. Yet, listen to what God has to say to us through James, though, and ask yourself if you are not glad that this is part of God’s instruction manual on how to live that is called the scripture:

• let everyone be quick……to listen, slow………………….to speak, slow…………………………to anger. For your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.

• Rid yourselves: sordidness, wickedness. Welcome with meekness ( controlled strength ) the implanted word that saves souls.

• But be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves ( don’t be hypocrites – the exact original meaning ! )

• Hearing and not doing – like reflections in a mirror – here now, forgotten in a minute. Hypocrites! ( Ad in the paper for a sister-church in Kingston this weekend: “Come and sit next to another hypocrite! Wow! )

• But ….look into it AND keep looking into it — then be a doer who acts and you will be blessed in your doing.

• If anyone thinks they are religious ( religare – to tie, to bind, to reconnect ) , and do not bridle their tongue but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.

• True religion that keeps you all together, with integrity? Care for orphans, widows in distress. Keep one’s self unstained by the world-order, the world’s way of hypocrisy.

Yeah, I like James , because he gets real-real and that’s what people want today: those who walk their talk. That’s the opposite of ‘hypocrite’. That sounds like Jesus to me…….

Finally, Mark was a lot like James, in this way: short , sharp and to the point. That’s a good thing because, let’s face it: so was Jesus. Jesus did not suffer fools gladly and had a way of getting to the core of things pretty quickly. I’m a grocery guy, and a meat-cutter by trade. When I returned to my family’s business for a few years, it was quickly evident that one of the least effective profit-makers in the grocery part of the business was the meat counter. It’s notoriously difficult to make a profit on fresh meat at any time, but our situation was totally a losing proposition. I went up to George Brown College for several months to at least learn a few things about how to be a retail meat-cutter. The rationale: if we didn’t know if the people we were hiring were merchandising things in a way that would make a profit, we’ll always be weak in that area. Our instructor at George Brown College there was a guy named Arthur Buck and one of his favourite sayings was this: garbage in , garbage out. If you don’t put quality ingredients into your ground beef or pork or any other product, you’ll have a poor result. Garbage in , garbage out. I didn’t hear the term again until the 1990’s when the computer world picked it up: GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. The computer is hardware and software; it’s only as helpful as it’s operator and what she or he puts into it. GIGO….

Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, saw through the garbage that was being fed to the people by their religious leaders, mixing in human traditions with God’s Good Word – the traditions of human beings with the clear admonitions from the Lord. He tells the leaders: Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites: ‘this people honours me with their lips, but their hearts don’t match up. Their worship is of themselves, not of God.’ Garbage in , garbage out. Then, he turns that right around on the leaders ; in fact , he turns away from the leaders and their hypocrisies . For Jesus talks to the people watching and listening nearby: “ Look and listen, folks: the garbage that is the real problem is the stuff that’s inside – if you have junk inside your life, like these play-acting leaders do, if you harbour evil intentions,then then here’s what’s going to come out . “ He lists it all, everything destructive, everything against which the God of the Hebrew scriptures had warned the children of Israel through the Deuteronomist so many years before. Garbage in you? Then, garbage is going to come out of you……….

Hypocrisy comes when we display outer actions without the inner integrity: when we bow our heads to pray, but do not want to be praying; when we embrace a person we do not like because it is the expected thing. If we invest time with others in order to use them but do not really appreciate their company, we are being hypocritical because our actions are not an extension of our inner lives.

Jesus wants his hearers to know that their Jewish religion supports such inner faith for he quotes the prophet Isaiah “These people . . . honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” That is hypocrisy! Pretending to be something you are not and have no intention of being deserves the contemptual word ‘hypocrite’.

One author puts it like this : “ The Christian faith is an inside job. The apostle Paul encouraged the Christians at Philippi with these words: Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things Phil. 4:8 . Think and act on these things. When you do, your Christian life will have both the words and the music. “

The word spoken and the word acted out: these two phrases are used often to describe the spoken word and the sharing of communion together. Let these also match up in our lives this day and week as we seek as part of God’s community to be those whose lives preach the gospel by our actions……. let us pray……… 

Message : “Choose” . Sunday, August 26th, 2012. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston

 

Date – August 26 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34 : 15-22; Ephesians 6: 10-20; John 6: 56 – 69
Other – Pentecost + 13; CW and MW 40^th Anniversary today; 1^st after notice of changes @ SAPK in September 2012

SERMON: ” Choose ”

 

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
24:1 Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God.
24:2a And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors–Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor–lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods.
24:14 “Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.
24:15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
24:16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods;
24:17 for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed;
24:18 and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

Psalm 34:15-22
34:15 The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.
34:16 The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
34:17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.
34:18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.
34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD rescues them from them all.
34:20 He keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken. 
34:21 Evil brings death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
34:22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

Ephesians 6:10-20
6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.
6:11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
6:12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
6:13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
6:14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.
6:15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.
6:16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
6:17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
6:18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
6:19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
6:20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

John 6:56-69
6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.
6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”
6:59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
6:60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
6:61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you?
6:62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
6:63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
6:64 But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him.
6:65 And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
6:66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.
6:67 So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”
6:68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.
6:69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
_________________________________________________________

You may not be hearing a sermon today. It’s been one of those weeks for me, which I have had not had for a long while. It was the kind of week where every day was full of needful things to accomplish , yet at the end of each day, there was more to do than when the day began.

And there were a couple of nights, as well, that even with sound sleep,, I felt more tired than when I went to bed. It could be blamed on age and stage; the reason might be that my wife of forty years as of today is off caring for the grand-kids and healing, restful sleep is not the same as when Marie is with me.

Whatever the case, this may well be a differing kind of message this morning. For today, let us simply focus on one word: choose. When selecting that word as the title for today’s message last Monday, it had escaped my memory that the Burning Bush article of September , 2012, (which was written a while ago) focuses on the same subject: the power we have to choose, granted to us by a sovereign God who has made us in His image. We have so many commandments in the scriptures, both the Old Testament or Hebrew scripture and the New Testament also called the Christian or Newer Testament – so many especially that suggest we have choices to make – that it must be the case that we can either obey or disobey them. Otherwise, why would they be in God’s inspired scriptures for us to read and decide to either do or not do? You will understand when The Burning Bush becomes available next Sunday. My last lead-article is in that issue and it’s all about choice. There must be something either I or the Congregation – or maybe both of us – something we need to hear and to do — somehow, we have choices to make. That will be our working assumption as we listen together to the …..message….the ideas….the Big Idea… that our Lord wants us to hear today.

Joshua thought it was high time to bring together all the key leaders of the people Israel. He and they , it says, were brought together before God. Something big was ‘ up ‘ and Joshua, as a good leader among leaders said something like this: Hey! Listen up! God has something to say: look….the time is upon us to either fish or cut bait. We’ve come a long way and we’ve seen much accomplished. It’s high time that we thank God for the past, even the long past, but also to recognize that this God is our God the God of today and of the future. We revere and respect our ancestors, but even some of them followed a bunch of other lesser gods; they didn’t all make perfect decisions and we cannot worship either our ancestors or the things they thought were worthy that frankly weren’t! . Fellow leaders, let us decide: choose right here and right now – me and mine, we are making the choice – it’s up to you to make your decision. Past or future? Those Gods or our God? What we know to be true or what we think should be true but isn’t?

It was obvious to the leaders back then what needs to be clear to us now: based upon what God has done for us that has moved us forward to our futures, we need to serve the Lord that has revealed His pathway for us. Choices are difficult, for when we make them, it can often feel like a repudiation of what has happened before. Simply moving forward in dynamically differing directions than has ever been done before feels close to setting aside all things, even good things, that have been done before. It ain’t necessarily so….God’s word says….as a matter of fact, contrary to that old popular song……the words you are liable to read in the Bible are all about God doing things way differently than has ever been done before. He did not leave his people in the Garden, in Egypt, in the Holy Land, in the wilderness, in Jerusalem. No, God has always led his people to Judaea, Samaria and the farthest reaches of the earth…. and now to the universe, to the moon and Mars, to go where no one has gone before! Every step of the way involves saying yes to God — not yes to a formula — but yes to serving the Lord, to being His servants who go and do what , when and where we are told to do it! Choose……..

Paul’s closing words in his text-message to his beloved Ephesian church gives them clear choices to make, too: Be strong, put on, take up, stand and pray or ask. Paul was a counter-intuitively strong leader: Jewish yet leading non-Jewish people to follow the Hebrew Jesus; a former leader in one faith becoming a powerful advocate for another way of thinking about and following God; a man thought to be small in stature, perhaps even deformed, but who was strong enough to endure all kinds of physical challenges and life-threatening circumstances; a tentmaker who was adamant about doing his part to support the people and the ministry; someone who was far from perfect and sometimes maddeningly annoying to those around him. Yet, that admirably suited Paul to give such strong counsel as he did to the Ephesians: Paul let them know that following Jesus meant the exhilarating challenge comparable to being a warrior in this world. Though today the military language of scripture is often shunned, can there be any mistake among us Christians? Is it not obvious that there is a significant element of defense and offense to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in a hostile world-system? Sometimes, even political structures and policies gravitate against living the principled life of sincere believers in 2012, here and around the world. There is no Christian utopia yet; that’s reserved for another world-system called paradise. For now, there is the oppressive reality which requires principled decision-making based upon truth, right-thinking and living, faith, the written word and words of God, and salvation in a world which thinks all of those things are suspect and even foolish. Truth? Righteousness? Faith? The word of God? Salvation? Poppycock and piffle, is the general verdict today. Friends, Paul’s imagery is quite apt in year 2012. We have choices to make; Bob Dylan’s old song which pops up unbidden to my brain regularly says, “you can serve the Devil or you can serve the Lord, but ya gotta serve somebody. “ Dana-Lynn’s song today is entitled “I Choose Jesus” because he chose me first. Right on, in the words of my generation! Bang on, or Golden, in the words of another generation! Sweet, in the word of not so long ago! Choose then how you will live: will it be life-affirming or death-embracing? Will it be love and justice , or hate and wrong thinking and living? Choose….

I will tell you a bit more of what I would say if I had been giving a regular sermon today, rather than only observing what is in the scriptures from Joshua and Ephesians.

I would begin with the word of Jesus and the response of Simon Peter.

The Situation is they are by the shores of the sea of Galilee.

The Mood is probably that of discouragement. It’s been a long busy week, for them too, and they have had more at the end of their days than when they started and really, they haven’t slept well enough to feel rested.

The Event is that it seems the crowds has turned it’s back on Jesus, and wandered away.

Jesus says to his disciples: “Do you also wish to go away?”

Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed, and now know for ourselves, that you are God’s Holy One.”

They would not forsake Jesus; he was God’s Holy Child, and he was giving them their first real feeling of true , long-lasting significant, meaningful living — eternal life.

Now, if I was preaching a sermon I would probably ask: “Where else can we go to find the highest quality life possible?” Think about it…….

I would remind you that the “eternal life,” is primarily about quality. It is not completely helpful that many people think mainly of eternal life being a whole lot of boring forever-ness. The everlasting bit is just one facet of it, but it is not the main significance of eternal life.

Eternal life is the quality-life that his followers finally found in the presence of Jesus, where there were no barriers and no limits. It’s a bit like the married love that people who are so different experience even though it’s 40, 50, 60,70 or more years. It was the “real deal,” the wonderful life that people have wanted since time began. It is the life for which we humans have been created. It is intimate fellowship with God and meaningful care for each other, where love is real-real! It is life which is up to the sky and over the moon love. It is love which is a choice that we make each and every day, a love that lasts not just 40 years, but in a covenant that lasts …..forever……Oh , what a foretaste of glory divine!

Friends, where else can we find such quality, in this world or the next? In a sermon, I could well say that I don’t find the alternatives very attractive.

Old, yet always new, religions and philosophies? With sacred crystals, pyramids, semi-druidic rituals, or designations of good wizards and witches? Unsatisfying…….

Stuff for stuff’s sake, otherwise called consumerism? This has become the supplanting religion of our western world. Shopping escapades in the new cathedrals we call shopping-malls — eating out constantly as the chief sacrament, —- eating, drinking, making merry for tomorrow we die? Buying more things as a substitute for seeking first his kingdom??

Amusing ourselves to death, as one book put it? “Me first” ? Doing what feels good, because it does? Maxing out, extreming, faster/stronger/higher no matter if it takes illicit pharmaceuticals to do it? Empty victories and clanging tin pots on fireplace mantles?

Other world religions? These are not in the same categories already mentioned. There are many who have indeed achieved a personal equilibrium in other belief-systems. There are many people who have discovered contentment in acts of prayer and fasting as practised in their faith several times daily. I do not demean or criticize those who do so.

What I can say is that the joyful, peaceful, care-ful love of the person and work of Jesus the Christ, Jesus Son of Joseph and Mary, Jesus the Christ the Son of the living God outshines these other ways. He is the PathWay that leads in a straight line between 2 points: me and God. He is the Truth in whom all truths come to life in a way that is most accessible , far more than religious formulae and philosophical constructs. Jesus is the Life that in whom I choose the life worth living and that gives anyone who follows him a quality of life that is better than any other in this world or the next. Jesus is the life that keeps on giving and living! And whoever believes in Him has a life that lasts forever and for the better!

Where else shall we go? Choose life……..choose Jesus…..

If I was preaching a sermon, I might go on to be so bold as to say that it is not the organized church as an institution which gives this life. Nor is it enough to point to a denominational theology or practice to give us a life worth the choosing, We cannot treat Christianity as a merely satisfying philosophy for ensuring best behaviour for our children and ourselves. Nothing will be enough except to know and to have a living relationship with God through Christ Jesus.

Here is a poem I discovered that says it well:

Where is the truth, where is the light,

where is the way through this dark night?

Where is the word, where is the call,

where is the joy waiting for all?

Where is the goal, where is the gain,

where is the hope never in vain?

Where is the pearl, where is the yeast,

where is the one worthy high priest?

Where is the meek, where is the just,

where the wealth without moth or rust?

Where is the sower, where is the seed,

where is the creed incarnate in deed?

Where is the robe, where is the ring,

where is the feast fit for a king?

Where is the dance, where is the song,

where is the music where we belong?

Where is the peace, where is the grace,

where is the door into God’s space?

Look no further, seek no other,

Mary’s son is your first-born Brother.

Choose…..let us pray…..

 

Message: All Things Wise and Wonderful. Sunday, August 19th, 2012. St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, ON, CANADA

Wisdom moves toward an unbearble lightness of being, methinks! See if it’s true in Paul’s letter to the church @ Ephesus…….

 

 

 

Date – August 19 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – Proverbs 9: 1-6; Psalm 34: 9-14; Ephesians 5: 15-20; John 6: 51-58
Other – Pentecost + 12

SERMON: ” All Things Wise and Wonderful ”

 

Proverbs 9:1-6
9:1 Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.
9:2 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.
9:3 She has sent out her servant girls, she calls from the highest places in the town,
9:4 “You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says,
9:5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
9:6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Psalm 34:9-14
34:9 O fear the LORD, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.
34:10 The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
34:11 Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
34:12 Which of you desires life, and covets many days to enjoy good?
34:13 Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.
34:14 Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

Ephesians 5:15-20
5:15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise,
5:16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
5:17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
5:18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit,
5:19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.
5:20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

John 6:51-58
6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
6:54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;
6:55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
6:56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

6:58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

“If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance! “ Those are the words speaking out of a plaque on the wall in the main entry-way to our daughter’s family’s home. You know what I mean about the main entrance….not the one at the front of the house for guests, but the one at the back, off the driveway, where life really unfolds. A lot happens in that small, 12 by 12 room: the washer and dryer are there with usually a basket filled to overflowing of laundry waiting to be baptized in suds and water, and there are always piles of clean clothes on top of the dryer. There’s a big old rubbermaid container on the floor, full of dog and cat food for the pets who own the house and let their people live there. One wall is dominated by a huge long rack of coats , hats, and sundry other clothing all jumbled together some of it on its’ way in , other of it on the way out , and a shelf on top of that practical old rack filled with all kinds of cleaning supplies, pet stuff, household tools etc, etc. . Though it’s a small mud-room kind of place, it has massive windows on all sides facing west/south/east with green plants on the window sills , so it’s shot through with the light of the day or the dark of the night. The main family- computer — sitting on a small non-descript desk and a 1960’s style metal chair with a flattened-out, plastic, lime-green seat-cushion — serves as the cockpit of their family life. I put it that way because, at any given point in the day, one or other of Mom, Dad, grandson or grand-daughter will sit down to play a game, check their e-mails, make a phone call, pay a bill, craft a letter, check out Facebook friends — in other words, the family takes off into the wild blue yonder of their imagination and activity while seated at that computer, making life happen in all of its’ crazy-quilt textures. And all of it is under the watchful gaze of a woman in beautiful African garb and wrapped-around-the-head turban on a plaque containing those words: “If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance! “

Whenever we talk to our children and grandchildren while watching one another at the same time on our respective computers, that’s the room we are looking into as they look back at us. We can feel the busyness, sometimes the craziness of their lives. One or other of our closest family on earth is usually wandering into and out of range of the computer camera, doing whatever it is that young families do when grandparents call. I consider it one of the great privileges we have as grandparents, for they still consider those calls as something special as do we. We literally look in on their lives just as they really live it in that most travelled room of the whole house. We can feel with them what is going on in their real and every day worlds. “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance! “ Marie is there now and will be for the next couple of weeks. She always is there for the last two weeks of August when Dad and Mom are both back full-time to their jobs. It’s Grandma/Grandkids time in the house and that’s where my heart is right now. Not only is that our only child’s family, but my wife of forty years as of next Sunday is in the second home of our hearts with the people that we love most in this whole wide world – 3 generations all under one roof, experiencing both the joys and the challenges of real 21^st century life. Now, they are experiencing real life, make no mistake; things are not all sunshine and lollipops, but everyone of them is a child of God from Marie through to our grand-daughter India and they are all following the Lord Jesus to the best of their abilities, appropriate to their respective ages and stages. They are doing two things simultaneously: enjoying a wonderful life and dealing with a complicated set of circumstances. “If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance! “

Folks, that is what is being set before us today in the scriptures before us. From Proverbs just read , through to the Psalm which was our preparatory verse, on through Paul’s wise words to the Christians in Ephesus and on to John’s Gospel where Jesus: true wisdom and its’ benefits flow out of paying full attention to God’s way of life that brings joy even in the midst of pain.

I want us to walk through these 4 portions of scripture quickly, in order to pick up the threads of thought….then, we’ll draw some conclusions to complete by asking, so what??!! :

(Ex tempore, quick exposition of the scriptures, paying closest attention to the ‘wisdom’ sections. )

Well, so what? Here’s what I see and you have been adding your own ideas all along as we have let God’s word speak itself into our lives, in our messy well-used rooms where life happens:

Be careful how you live.” The Greek says something like “See to things very carefully.” Pay attention – know that everything is sacred and that every moment has its’ importance and significance. Be full of care about how you invest your time, with whom you speak and how you converse with them. All of life is of one piece, with each aspect of it having an effect on everything else. Rather than a cavalier, unfocused getting through the day, we are being advised to recognize the sacred in everything we are and do.

A wise life makes the most of the time….the wise life not only pays attention, it is prudent. Prudent does not mean prudish; rather, it suggests being economical in the sense of making the most of every moment , using our hours and days to good effect. Planning out the day and week so that one accomplishes the very best in the shortest amount of time OR even planning to have unbridled time, and fits of joyful spontaneity that reflect the creative God who has made us in his image. One of my old bosses would say many times and annoyingly, “plan your work then work your plan”. It’s’ the vision thing…. have a sense of who you are in God’s great economy, and then envision what He wants you to do and do it with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Make the most of time. It is a precious gift to be opened and enjoyed to best advantage.

“ Because these days are evil.” When the world seems to distract us from what is good and of God, when it would turn us aside us from the way we should go, when it seeks to dis-integrate, dis-solve and de-stroy, we must consciously choose to turn away from it. Now. In these days. We may have to determinedly use our wonderful power to choose what to do and choose to turn away from the world to pay attention to God’s will. It is not done in order to escape the world. These cosmopolitan, cool, sophisticated followers of Jesus were not being asked to become hermits, to leave Ephesus, to go out in the desert and make a life apart from the world. Rather, they were being advised to recognize that sometimes the enemy of the best is indeed the good and the better! We have the power to choose God’s very best for us, rather than those things which distract us from God’s best, to cause us to miss the center of the target.

The Ephesian letter is not a killjoy, it does not end in gloom and doom. Far from it. In fact, this part of the text-message to Paul’s beloved Ephesians focuses its attention on the final verses: “Do not get drunk with wine…but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks…at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In other word, paying close attention and keeping on doing so, of turning away from distractedness to do so — this is not woe-is-me work. The Christians in Ephesus were not to be sad, sorry people. One author draws to our memory the fact that “early Christian congregations were singing, jubilant, exulting assemblies”. There was a bent toward joyfulness, playfulness and loving care of one another and of those less fortunate. Paul is not talking only about worship or even about worship first. He is talking about life lived large. He is simply saying “Stop. Pay attention. Not to the world. Do not listen to the world. Listen to the word of the Lord: “Sing and make melody–make music–to the Lord in your hearts, always giving thanks…for everything, ,” in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Message: “What We Want and Need” , Sunday, July 29, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, ON

Date – July 29, 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – 2 Kings 4: 42-44; John 6: 1-21

Other – Pentecost + 9

SERMON: ” What We Want and Need ”

2 Kings 4:42-444:42 A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.”4:43 But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the LORD, ‘They shall eat and have some left.'”4:44 He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the LORD.

John 6:1-21 6:1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 6:2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 6:3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 6:4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 6:5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6:6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 6:7 Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 6:8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 6:9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 6:10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 6:11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 6:12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 6:13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 6:14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” 6:15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. 6:16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 6:17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 6:18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 6:19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 6:20 But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 6:21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Some of us here may still be caught in the afterglow of watching the opening ceremonies of the London Summer Olympics, according to some of the Facebook entries read in the last 24 hours! There is something wonderfully enthralling about anticipating this world-sized event every few years; perhaps we hope to capture a bit of the optimism and enthusiasm there or to be nudged a little bit closer to the ideal of peace among humankind. It could be that we live again with youthful dreams, however vicariously, by remembering that it is possible to have such a focused intent that we can still achieve great accomplishments, no matter our stage in life. Somehow, we humans always seek for greatness, wanting to see ourselves as part of a larger-than-life story , a grand narrative in which we play a significant role, whether as supporting cast-members or star of the show. The Olympic games allow us to identify both with many people as common as ourselves …… yet, as part of the few, the happy few, who have somehow been woven together in a royally grand pageant. Perhaps especially for those of us who have somehow been touched by our connectedness to this sceptr’d isle called England , this year’s Olympics remind us of our family-heritage’s grander moments, with intimations that there are great years still ahead for the United Kingdom and its’ children.

The opening ceremonies were a magical mystery tour which brought together past glories, more recent pop-culture phenomena and the possibility that, even yet, there may be a hope and a future in which dreams may come true. The reaction to the opening ceremonies in the media was fascinating, suggesting that London 2012 is for these bright, shining moments a brilliant melange of humour, hope and humanity out of which will emerge a whiff of the magic kingdom to be discovered by anyone who wants to be part of its’ hope and glory.

There is something in our inner beings which yearns to be touched and shaped by the supernatural, the extra-ordinary. We want to believe that out there, somewhere, is Someone who knows about and cares about our desire for another world, another kingdom.

Part of the appeal in the stories from the Hebrew Scriptures about Elisha and his servant’s surprising Happy Meal and about the five-loaf and two-fish picnic on a hillside with Jesus and his guys……is a tantalizing mixture of mystery and mundaneness. In 2 Kings, Elisha offhandedly says ‘give it to them and they shall eat, because the LORD said so’ and it happened; the gospel gives some more details but it never explains how the meal actually happened. Lots of theories, usually in a desperate desire to explain away the miraculous aspects, have been forwarded over the centuries, but when it comes to the bottom line, here’s what these narratives really say: the people had a want and a need, and both of those were satisfied. 12 basketsful of leftovers give empirical evidence that something far outside of the ordinary had happened, however it happened, in that place, among those people, and it gave them the sense that Someone out there loved them……..

The gospel lesson shares with us the miracle of Jesus’ feeding of five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish. It is the only one of the miracles, other than the Resurrection, contained in all four of the canonical gospels. Isn’t it interesting that there are 2 mass feedings recorded,one with 4000 and the other with an extra thousand ? Obviously , this is an important, collective recollection of the gospel-writers. It points to some essential lessons which Christians have always needed to know, to which we shall focus our attentions a little later. For now, let us simply observe that the people had a want and a need and both of those were satisfied.

But, wait, there is one more part of this gospel lesson: Jesus does something else unexpected, scary even , certainly mysterious. Right after the congregational luncheon for five thousand of his friends and followers that day, Jesus goes off among the mountains for some alone time ; His closest followers hop into a boat and start rowing for Capernaum, without him. Look how John records it : “ Jesus had not yet come to them. ” 3 or 4 miles into the trip, however, it became the proverbial ‘dark and stormy night’, a melodramatic scene to say the least. They had done something we can see ourselves possibly doing; for these men had decided to go ahead and do what they thought was the right and best thing to do. Like many people, through time immemorial, they failed to plan ahead for the unexpected. Lo and behold, about halfway to their destination, here comes both a storm and the One that they both want and need. How did they react? They were terrified. He was doing something unexpected; they had not seen this before. He identifies himself and tells them not to fear. They welcome him on board and quickly arrive at their planned destination, it says. Mysterious, scary, unknown — but wanted and needed, whether they knew it or not — just as nourishing as bread and fish, but not quite what was expected. They still ate it up, and their physical wants and their spiritual needs were satisfied. The leftovers helped make it clear — a hero of some sort was among them and he had a name. Jesus had shown up in ways unplanned, with actions new and different, with radically new results – and it’s exactly what they wanted and needed. The kingdom had come, and God’s will was being done on earth as it is in heaven! Holy be His name!

All through the gospel of John, record is given of the signs of this new, different kingdom, signposts to a better way of living , of being and doing. People had been seeking a Messiah for hundreds, thousands of years. They wanted to be freed from their slavery to others, emancipated from a history of both high and low expectations. They had been disappointed so many times – in themselves, their political leaders, their spiritual leaders, their military leaders.

Does this sound at all familiar to you and me today? Are we looking for guideposts toward life filled to overflowing? My concern is that we are looking for mere miracles, perhaps some kind of magic wand to be waved. People want to fill our wants and many are paying scant attention to God’s sure signposts to His kingdom, to those values and life-practices that will give us what we truly need. Those are found in knowing the One whose presence afforded us by the incoming of His Spirit is available in our particular boat.

What both Elisha and Jesus are making clear is this: we need the presence of the Lord and we need a clear word about how to live as if eternal life has already begun – here and now. We need to care far more about what we need, which is the presence of the Lord God to be with us, living inside of us by His Holy Spirit; then, and only then, will we begin to be filled full as human beings. Significance, meaning, purpose, life filled to overflowing…. that is what we both want and need.

Part of the reason first followers of Jesus responded to Jesus so viscerally is that they had noticed, for themselves, the power of the gospel to satisfy spiritual hunger and to meet physical needs. Let us ask the question: are we in such a time again as was the case in the first-century AD – a time of human sea-change so great that only an Olympian hero who is no less than both divine and human can meet both our wants and our needs?

Recently, there have been less than stable stock-markets , questionable banking practices, dropping real estate values and frightening forecasts for future employment, especially for the young. Many of us consciously and constantly are aware that we live in a multicultural/ethnic/faith society. We run into people all the time who who experience the world quite differently than is our experience. All of us know, whether we admit it or not, that things can never again be the same way they were during most of our lives.

Look at the expansion of media available to all of us! Many are tethered to the internet and communication devices, living on ‘the grid’ all day and for some, well into the night. Facebook, voicemails, tweets and, lo and behold, actual face-to-face conversations keep us wired, literally and figuratively, all the time! Whether we are into all this or not, we live in a world that we already know is defined by a larger volume and velocity of information,. We know, in our heart of hearts, that this does not necessarily lead to better wisdom and deeper relationships. +

Some of the changes scare us; others, frankly, give us joy and fulfillment. Whether “positive” or “negative,” the exponential shifts are happening and the ground beneath us seems to move constantly. An old Reader’s Digest line puts it like this: You’ve heard the phrase about ‘terra firma’ ( firm ground ) ? In my life, the ‘firma’ things are, the less ‘terra’ I feel! We are also trying to handle more personal changes, it seems, than every before: sickness, family upsets, constant changes at work or school, the limits brought upon us with age, and other unavoidably necessary shifts brought on by the ticking of the clock.

One author notes the play, The Death of a Salesman. The older, world-weary salesman, Willy Loman, who has lived more in his illusions than in the real world, finds the weight of reality crumbling his self-delusions:  He admits to his uncle: “Well, Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to talk with him, and I still feel–kind of temporary about myself.”

Friends and family, life is temporary. The fact is that more things change than stay the same……. and that can overwhelm us. When that happens, we need another to-the-core-of-our-being change: we need , and probably want, the life-changing , surprising and unexpected Lord to walk out into our situation and tell us not to fear, to affirm that He is with us. We need the friend that sticks closer than…..anyone!

We all live through times which seem to ask more than we believe we can deliver. Work or school carries on, but our energy is sometimes used up. Possibilities grow exponentially, but we can only multi-task so much before our tasks multiply exponentially beyond our scope to cope.

I know, from listening my own heart and mind and hearing others’ hearts and minds, that there are many who wonder about how much longer we can handle it all.

Thankfully, we don’t have a small, distant, unconcerned god watching us from a distance. He is not one who stays by Himself in the mountains, or who waits on the far seashore wondering how we are doing Nor is He one who leaves us hungry on the hillside. The real God, revealed to us in the Hebrew scriptures we call the Old Testament , the One who provides what we want and need in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is always with us and that is the best of all. That’s the main point of these scripture lessons. The Provider provides exactly what is needed in ways we could not expect. His grace truly is sufficient — not always what we want, but sometimes, it is also what we want.

Jesus loves doing things that no one expects. These stories tell us about a Messiah in the Gospels who shows up in unexpected places, in unexpected ways, doing unexpected things that give us what we want and need most.

Today and this week, what are the essential lessons you and I need most? :

• Sometimes, our wants and our needs are one and the same. The people wanted to eat, they needed to eat and they were physically fed. At the same time, they were being spiritually fed by being the presence of One who knew them well and who knew how to fill them full in ways that surprised….everyone!

• As well, we can expect change – another way to say that we can expect the unexpected. Life requires change; the only time nothing changes is when we are dead…..and even then, the process of change is still taking place. Often , change is exactly what we need and we can choose to embrace and welcome it, or live lives of quiet desperation.

• We can decide to either co-operate with the kinds of change that is put into place by God, or we can oppose change at all costs. The great conservative political thinker , the late William Buckley, said that ‘ a conservative is one who stands athwart history and yells, ‘stop!’ Though that may be a pithy and humorous way to define political conservatism, it is not an option for people who are involved in a dynamic kingdom of the sort introduced by that radical revolutionary called Jesus the Christ , the Son of the living God. We are to be doing what God is doing, and God always…..always….always moves His people forward from where they are to where they need to be in order to put into effect his new kingdom’s principles. We do not see a narrative in either the Hebrew scriptures or the newer Testament that suggests God is the god of the way things have always been. To put it in the impertinent manner of the last few years: Lead , follow or get out of the way….. a cheekier way of stating it, but one we are well advised to heed.

• If you are going to be a vital part of life – at work, in school, in your family, in society – in heroic and Olympian-level world-changing activities – know that life is always going to be an adventure! It has been my personal experience that to be a follower of Jesus is one of the most compelling and fulfilling choices a person can make. But, hang on tight……we’re going for a ride!

• If Jesus has not YET come to where you are experiencing your great difficulty in life…..you can expect that He will show up, whether in your timing or His…..and you will welcome Him on board. Look, I’m no longer naive about this life. We are no longer on land , where the signposts are sure and fixed and never moving; we’re on the high seas when all we have is the North Star to guide our navigations. That North Star, where there are no roads and there are many times rough waters and unsettling quiet times, is the fixed point in the universe. His name is Jesus and he will get you where you need to go….. let us pray. 

Message: “Shepherd is a Verb” Sunday, July 22, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario, CANADA

Action and reflection……working and ceasing………riding herd on…..

 

 

Date – July 22 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Psalm 23; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Other – Pentecost + 8

SERMON: ” Shepherd is a Verb ”

Jeremiah 23:1-6
23:1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD.

23:2 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.

23:3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.

23:4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD.

23:5 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

23:6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

Psalm 23
23:1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

23:2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;

23:3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

23:4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff– they comfort me.

23:5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

6:31 He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

6:32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

6:33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.

6:34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

6:53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat.

6:54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him,

6:55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.

6:56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Recently, 3 visions have come across my pathway, to be redirected to the intersection in your lives. All of them relate to where this building sits and where we sit this morning……. and the pastures right outside our doors. First in line – our lawn was recently filled with children and young people the first 2 days of the Buskers Festival especially. People of all ages/stages and walks in life were being amused by a round of street entertainers and our doors were wide open as they were there on the outside looking in. It was ‘cool’ to see this wonderful event happen, yet I could not help but think about this upcoming message today, about sheep and shepherds and compassion. The background of the word ‘busker’ comes from the Romance languages, with the meaning of procuring, of gaining something, or looking for something. Of course, it’s the entertainers primarily that are looking to gain something, but then, so are the crowds….so are the crowds. I wonder what that pasture full of people were really seeking, gaining and procuring when they poured into the streets of downtown Kingston and sitting just outside these doors? It was wonderful to see them all enjoying our lawn ….. and also, to observe that our doors were thrown wide open for all to come in, with a sign saying “Free Tours”. That sign is out there every day from Tuesday through Saturday as two of our brightest and best welcome folks to take a look at not only our building but at who we are. Maybe we need a sign for Sunday , too, and for everyday of the week – a sign saying, “ and the tours are round trips. We all come in one needy and we all go out ready to meet the needs of our neighbours ! “

The second vision that has burst across mind and heart is one shared through my wife Marie: she was dropping off some material at Queens University about St. Andrew’s Presbyterian – a beautiful pamphlet and other info. It was prepared and is being handed out by Kalista and Dana-Lynn during those free tours each day. That information is now available for students from around the world over at Queens University International Student Centre, as well as during the week here. Long story shorter, to tell you more about the vision: Marie ended up at the desk of the assistant director there. That person lives at the corner of Bagot Street and Raglan Road. She walks by this church twice every workday and sees mothers and young children sitting under the trees in our shady green pastures – oops, I meant to say, on our lawn. She sees other folks from the street or who have stopped by Tim Horton’s or The Works Gourmet Burger Place or Geneva Crepe Cafe or MacDonalds or,or, or…… They are sitting on the steps or resting on the grass, enjoying the only green-space in what I call the real downtown of Kingston. This lovely person said to Marie something like this: ‘this is what the church should be….. a place for everybody’. My mind’s eye and pastor’s heart tells me that this woman’s sense of who we are hones in on an essential reality for congregations everywhere….. but this one especially. Her street-sense plus her knowing the pulse of what people from around the world need suggest to her that the church should be a safe place for all who enter here, for anyone who encounters followers of Jesus on the street. The old song ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ came to mind when Marie shared this story with me and here are some of the words. Though they were originally penned in German and were for an earthly prince, one can readily hear the spiritual overtones as well:

“Sheep may safely graze on pasture
When the shepherd guards them well.
Where rulers govern well,
we may feel peace and rest
and what makes countries happy. “

I’ll tell you something – it is thrilling to think that someone who lives downtown, who works at Queens and is in touch with students and other people in our community all the time has a very positive view of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Kingston. After all, we were the founding congregation of what has become one of the best universities in Canada and the world. Let us continue to be a people who provide a safe place both here and in our circles of relationships wherever we live, move and have our being in the marketplaces of our daily schedules.

The third vision came from a guy named Ted, eldest son of his mother/ my stepmother. Ted is up visiting his mom/ my stepmom from Atlanta, Georgia and drove by this church a couple of days ago. Strangely enough, Marie and I had, on a whim, run out to Verona to see Ted, and he happened to be in Kingston with some kids, simultaneously, over at the splashpad which I learned is free on Friday evenings for a couple of hours. Now, it helps to know that Ted is very involved in his home-church in downtown Atlanta, a congregation reaching out in significant ways to meet the needs of others in that powerful Southern urban area. Ted is a fountain of ideas, visions and plans and a force of nature in his own right; He says something like this in our conversation : “ has St. Andrew’s ever thought of putting up some kind of enclosure in the summertime , having a place where people could just gather, maybe provide some wine and cheese and coffee, and just have it be a place where people could go and be together? “ I was pleased to be able to report to my energetic, visionary step-brother that this congregation does reach out and will be doing it more so as Fall, 2012, gears up: special meals, Kingston Street Mission, Social Planning Council, Bottle Tree Productions now doing summer daycamp along with Galalujah and their regular offerings of performance arts. As well, I believe it could indeed do something of the sort that Ted suggested. Frankly, it had come across my mind a while ago now — to be an intentional gathering place right where it matters, in the heart of the city – the middle way on the middle street in the middle of downtown Kingston – a place for people to come together, to experience peace and safety and wholeness and healing, to be fed and nourished in more ways than one, to be in the presence of those who have had the privilege of the peace of Christ in the middle of their lives, even though we are far from perfect sheep and shepherds. We are those who have been given the privilege of knowing what it means to find green pastures and still waters; we know what it feels like to have our souls restored and to be shown how to think and be and live in paths that lead us safely forward, even through the darkest valleys that are, by definition, dangerous. We know what it is like to both guided and corrected by One whose leadership makes us safe. We know what it means to be healed and made whole by someone who laughs in the face of earthly danger. We have understood by experience that , though the world is a dangerous place, we are led by a shepherd who is fiercely protective and deeply compassionate. He is One who has suffered as we have suffered and knows whereof He speaks. We know what it means to dwell in the house of the Lord forever…forever…..forever……

In Mark’s gospel, when Jesus and his followers arrive on the shore, they find a crowd who wants to hear what Jesus had to say. It’s part of the human experience to look for , to busk for, to procure and gain that which we find missing in our lives. They, like us today, want an assuring word. They want to be made well and the message has spread that Jesus has what they most need.

Mark records that “Jesus had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” Though he is probably tired and hungry on his own, he gives the crowd what is most needed. He sees people whose lives are frantic as they try to support their families. He knows there are those confused by the changes in the world about them. He realizes people fearful of others not just like them. He sees people who just lost their way in the craziness of living. He looks out on people hungry for reassurance, those who long for words of hope. He has compassion on them and teaches them.

In a section not read this morning, Jesus is reminded that people need to head home to supper. He suggests that the disciples feed them. “Excuse me, Jesus, we cannot afford to feed this crowd.” Jesus asks them his follower/disciples to find out what is available: five loaves and two fish. Jesus takes , blesses , breaks and gives it all to his disciples to distribute. Everyone eats their fill and, lo and behold, there is more than enough for just one meal! Jesus feeds their famished spirits and their needy bodies, knowing that each nourishment feeds the other.

In a world where “religion” has become suspect — a word which means ‘reconnect’ , by the way – it is easy to question about how many people identify the church as a place to meet their needs, a community in which to find healing, nurture and wholeness. Being in a downtown church, I easily affirm that people do seek assistance for physical needs; as well, they also have the capacity to respond to a deeper hunger, that of the sincere spiritual seeker. God is driving this congregation, I believe, toward a new understanding of reconnectedness and genuine spiritual vitality. Genuine faith-communities of the 21^st century now provide people the support and encouragement needed to move toward wholeness by caring for both bodies and souls. All of life is of one piece and the congregation that provides both physical and spiritual and relational nurture is the congregation that will do more than survive; it will thrive in seeing people come alive to the possibilities of God’s grace. I am glad to see St. Andrew’s building itself more and more toward a future in which these twinned needs are striving to be met. We neglect doing both at our peril.

We, as a a people, are also called to come together to seek places of rest where we can be still and know that God is, and that He seeks to teach, heal and nurture us. The word ‘sabbath’ means ‘ cease ‘. It means to stop doing even good things, like God did at the end of a busy week. We are invited to become the under-shepherds of that Great Shepherd of the sheep, the One who has lain down his life for us. We are the ones who are to bond ourselves with others in discovering the wonders of God’s grace. There is a reshaping of the world happening in which there is a growing need for an emerging and vital spiritual community , one that is concerned with self-care, the care of others and with the care of this place that we call home in Kingston, Ontario, Canada — or wherever you live….. and even caring much better for planet Earth.

If we want to be part of this, we are compelled to embrace our living faith intentionally and vigourously. We are to reach out in loving compassion to care for the least among us. We are obligated to set aside any unworthy differences and to seek for peace among people who, like us, need to know and learn from the One who has compassion for us. We are to choose to seek and serve one another in God’s name. We are to shepherd ourselves, one another and those who are needing guidance in an astonishingly confusing world.

Here are some things that shepherds do:

• take care , guide, lead, teach

• carry and carry on, oversee, manage and supervise

• trail-blaze, plan, envision, focus

• point in a direction, push, redirect, correct, and ride herd on!

• Motivate, regulate, animate, stimulate and relocate!

• Chase, replace, set the pace!

Shepherding has often, in the past and even today, had the overlay of sweet, calm, idyllic settings where everything is going just as it should with the universe unfolding inn orderly way. To the contrary: shepherding is,most often, in the context of profound everyday hard work, sorting order out of chaos and even thriving on chaos. That is so , whether it is an individual’s life or the context of a family of uniquely diverse human beings. It is true in business, in your job or in your education, in your households, homes and buildings. To be a human being who follows Jesus is to shepherd one’s self, others and the larger community. And shepherd is a verb………..

 

Message — A Prophet Among Them:Sent. Sunday, July 8, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, ON, CANADA

Without honour…….deal with it…..

 

 

 

 

Date – July 15 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scripture – Ezekiel 2: 1- 4; Mark 6: 1-13
Other – Pentecost + 6

SERMON: ” A Prophet Among Them: Sent ”

Ezekiel 2:1-5
2:1 He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.
2:2 And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me.
2:3 He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day.
2:4 The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD.”
2:5 Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.

Mark 6:1-13
6:1 He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.
6:2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!
6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
6:4 Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
6:5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.
6:6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.
6:7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.
6:8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts;
6:9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.
6:10 He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.
6:11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
6:12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.6:13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Did you ever wonder what it feels like to stand @ the front of a sanctuary every Sunday, to believe that what one has to say will be the word of God for the people in that moment? It has been said that the fear of public speaking is greater than any other fear, even more than of one’s own death; imagine then what it must be like to do that week after week in a setting as aesthetically beautiful as this and on behalf of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of the world. It seems, at times, to be the height of arrogance; let me tell you, it makes one deeply aware of one’s own shortcomings; for the word is, as the old saying goes, preached to the preacher before it ever is preached to the congregation. The word of God is alive, powerful and cuts through to the essentials in one’s own life. One feels danger not unlike that of handling potentially dangerous substances or firearms. Both they and words, particularly God’s words, are capable of either great good or of irreparable harm, depending upon how they are used or abused.

If you have difficulty imagining such a thing, then let me make it closer to the bone for you as to how it feels : it feels like a combination of two dreams common to us human beings – the dream in which you go to school one day and realize that you are not prepared for a major exam that you have forgotten …..and the dream in which, during your workday, you realize that you have no clothes on! Such is the feeling of being someone called to serve God in the capacity of a Christian minister for whom an essential part of the work is to preach. To publicly speak in a place either like this one, or in a humble building is, at the same time, both terrifying and exhilarating. It is a high privilege and a profound responsibility.

The main thing which helps in your understanding of how one keeps equilibrium is to know that it is a word which is given, words already revealed. It is THE word revealed, the word uncovered before discovered, the word discovered which is then recovered into the context of that present moment’s needs. When a vocal artist sings songs written or performed by someone else, it’s called a ‘cover’ . That is what those who preach are – musicians that sing Another’s song, yet interpreting His lyrics in a way which makes sense and has beauty and meaning for today. We are but pipelines through which God makes himself and his principles, precepts and narratives available to us each and all. The preached word is, as the old saying goes, not so much fore-telling as forth-telling – a prophet , as we think of it in the Hebrew scriptures and even as we consider one who preaches today, is one who speaks God’s truth in God’s way at all times into our present-day context. When necessary, he or she uses words, as Francis of Assisi is credited with saying. We speak words derived from God’s word and initiated in a conversation that God has begun long ago.

That is made clear in both of the lessons today and has application for all of us, whether we use actions or words to preach. You know what I know, though; namely, there is a real sense that how we live out the principles of following Jesus speaks much louder than our words. Each of us is forth-telling the principles of God’s differing kingdom by the way we live, move and have our being. We are disciples being made into apostles – followers who are being sent to become leaders. This is whether we think of ourselves as such or not! There is no such thing as being a Christian without also being a minister, a prophet and a preacher…no such thing as being a follower of Jesus without also being a leader for Him. Let us look briefly at each of these stories from Ezekiel and from Mark to see what we might learn the implications of being someone who is a prophet among them:

• for Ezekiel , it meant that he was called just as he was – a mortal human being – real, everyday, and worthy of being addressed by His Creator.

• It meant that he was involved in the call: stand up on your feet and I will talk with you. We are to hear from God, who speaks to us through His written words, His Spirit, through rational thought, through others, through signals of His own design and making. God speaks to us when we engage with the conversation that He has begun. In the words of an old movie title, we are to ‘stand and deliver’ what we hear from Him, to bear witness to what we have seen and heard in our own lives.

• Ezekiel was being sent to people he knew, not to some foreign land. Now, it was during the time of exile when stubborn people had been conquered and sent over to what we now call Iraq. Ezekiel was going to be talking in his own context to a people whose language and culture he knew, understood and could use. Sometimes, we fear what God might ask us to do, when what He wants us to do is to bloom where we are planted, as an old poster said that my wife had on her wall during our undergrad years. Our primary call is to live our lives right where we are, in our own context first. Maybe he will send us to unknown situations in the future, but for now …. we are to forthtell to people right around us.

• When we live out and speak out on behalf of our Lord, then they will know that there is a prophet among them. We do not have to flaunt it. Any acknowledgement or glory is reflected glory, derivative glory; we do not have to draw attention to ourselves but to mirror Another. We are meant to be no more than mirrors of his nature and character. Love, joy, peace…patience, kindness , goodness…. faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…. these are the fruit of the Spirit, not the results of our own self-generated goodness. It does not matter if we get blowback from others’ rebelliousness and stubbornness; we are sent only to forth-tell God’s glory. We are only derivative of Him.

There’s a second hard reality which has, paradoxically, to be understood when we are sent to live out the principles of our Lord. Forth-telling who God is and what are his ways of acting is not easy! We see that in the narrative from the Marcan gospel :

• Familiarity breeds contempt. That’s the sad truth that even Jesus experienced. He went to his hometown after having done truly miraculous and wonderful deeds, after having been acclaimed by the masses…..and his own old neighbours damned him with faint praise , as the old saying goes. “Hey, who does he think he is? We know him and his family. We remember the scandal that surrounded his birth. He thinks he’s better than we are. We remember that he’s only a carpenter…..he must have picked these tricks and high-and-mighty ways up from someone else. He may be a big-shot in other places; but he’s livin’ beyond his raisin’ here! “

• It’s not always the case, but often, it is true: our Lord may well be able to use us in astounding ways among people not our own and places not familiar. We might well be being prepared where we are to do something which would never be possible at home but is highly regarded in places and among people to whom our Lord leads us elsewhere. Our task is to move toward what is ahead, for the Lord has some wondrous surprises in store for us.

• Sometimes, we who have so much to give need to learn the grace of small things, of being made low and lowly. It has been said that ‘politics is the art of doing the possible’ ; so it is with being a sent one for the Lord. There are times when living our lives in less obtrusive ways, like Jesus did after he was rebuffed in his hometown, is a way that God moves mysteriously through us to others. God’s economy is not our economy; His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways. Our task is to forth-tell what our Lord has sent us to do and to say and He has a way of exponentially expanding our seemingly small, sometimes insignificant words and actions. Brighten the corner where you are – that’s the name of an old children’s song which says it well.

• Another principle: live light. “ ‘Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free, ’tis a gift to be brought down where we ought to be….” the old Shaker song says. Living light is a lesson that Jesus was teaching his first sent ones, his apprentice-apostles. We get all burdened down with what it means to be a spokesperson for God, with the heavy weight of living Christianly; as well we can let the stuff of living in our present-day world smother our abilities to reflect the glory of the Lord. The principle of living light for the road is a good one for us to remember today, in our era of increasing convoluted complexities. ‘Simplify, simplify’ said Henry David Thoreau…..so true, so true. Let us remember that God’s people are pilgrims, that we are on the road and moving forward. Let us not be burdened with so much stuff that it becomes nonsense.

• Like those first apprentices on their first step to doing the right thing: they went out as those sent by another, they proclaimed what they had seen and heard, they helped people get rid of demons and they were agents of healing grace. Not a bad template for us….as long as we remember that all that we say and all that we are is derived.

Only one life, ’twill soon be past…. only what’s done for Christ will last. That’s what the disciples being turned into sent ones were learning as they became apostles; that’s what we learn as we grow up and grow outward toward others to mirror what we know to be true about God through Christ by the power we derive from His Holy Spirit in us.

Let us pray. 

Message : Dominion — Balance in All Things. Sunday, July 1 ( Canada Day ) , 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

 

 

 

Whose most in need of the healing touch?

Date – July 1 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scriptures – Lamentations 3: 22-33; 2 Corinthians 8: 7-15; Mark 5: 21-43
Other – Pentecost + 5

SERMON: ” Dominion: Balance in All Things”

Lamentations 3:22-33
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth,
to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it,
to put one’s mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope),
to give one’s cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults.
For the Lord will not reject forever.
Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.

2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Now as you excel in everything–in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you–so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.
I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others.
For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something–
now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means.
For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has–not according to what one does not have.
I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between
your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.
As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

Mark 5:21-43
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea.
Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet
and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”
So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.
Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.
She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.
She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak,
for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?'”
He looked all around to see who had done it.
But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”
But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”
He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.
When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.
He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”
And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement.
He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

She was and is quite a girl….I shall have to become used to thinking of her as a woman, this daughter of mine. But I am thankful that I can think of her at all – that is the whole point. For there was a time when she was dead ; but now, she is gloriously alive. With her coming back to life, so has my faith. The words of Rabbi Y’shua still echo in my mind and I give them to you to remember at the time of your darkest hour: Do not fear, only believe. Let me tell you a story more real than anything, real because true and I bear witness to it — without fear and with my belief intact

I had heard about this man, a teacher and healer of many, but it truly made no difference in my life……until my little girl died. It seemed all fairy tales and nonsense to that point. At synagogue, of course, he had been a point of heated theological discussion as with so many of the pretentious fakers and quacks wandering around these days. I was then and still am now respected at synagogue; we had a certain view of people that took unfair advantage of the gullible and who dragged the Name of him who cannot be named into their disreputable lies. We assumed this Y’shua was more of that kind …… than what I learned he was , on the worst day of my life.

When Talitha, the apple of my eye, my hope and future, fell so ill, I was willing to do anything to bring her back to herself. There she was , a young girl on the cusp of becoming a beautiful woman in every way and she was dying. We had done everything we could within the family, had even brought in those skilled in the healing arts and sciences, such as they were. Nothing more could have been done. So, I had heard he was about to come across the sea again to our side and decided, immediately, to speak with him man to man, compelling him to come and heal my daughter. ‘Desperate’ is the word I would use, in retrospect; ‘ arrogant ‘ is the second word. I am rightfully ashamed that I would treat another human being, no matter who, with such an attitude of disrespect. But now……he not only healed my Talitha that day, but he healed me – heart, soul and mind — as well. My little girl is raised up from her illness and death; I am made whole again by being brought low, by learning true humility, by understanding that God is the one who has power and authority of the kind that matters in one’s life.

I get ahead of where the story is: let me take you back to that day:

“There he is……there he is… it is hard to pick him out of the crowd by his appearance. Of course, though, all eyes are fixed on him as he gets out of the boat and wades to shore,……so that helps. Sir, stand aside…..madam, excuse me, I’m from the synagogue and have a matter of life-and-death importance to bring to Y’shua. My name is Jairus, you know….that’s right, I’m that Jairus…..well, I’ve been very fortunate, that’s true. God has blessed me with the ability to do well in life, so the synagogue benefits….to God’s glory. But, it doesn’t matter now…. my little girl’s dying and I have to see him, right now!

Y’shua, Y’shua, Teacher, Healer……. Sir, please, a minute of your time, sir, just a second…..oh, you must hear me out…..sir, sir, good sir………my girl is dying, she’s dying, oh Y’shua, Y’shua…..please, sir, please come, I know if you lay your hands on her, she will be healed. “

Amazingly, right then he stopped what he was doing, though he’d only arrived from his boat trip. Later, I did hear that he had stilled a storm and threw some demons out of an insane man not that long before; so this was his second boat trip across that same sea, just for my 12 year old daughter and for another woman who had a medical problem – ironically for the same amount of time as my daughter been in this world! It makes one wonder: does this Y’shua believe that women are equal in status to any man, whether they are young or old, powerless or powerful, sick or well? My mind and heart have been pondering that ever since That Day, that Glorious Day…..I wonder what it means about what God is doing through this Y’shua man….his name means that ‘God saves’, after all. Could the One whose name we cannot name be doing something through saving and salving the whole world, through new and surprising means? Ah, well, back to the day itself…..Let’s see, it’s hard to remember all that happened and how I reacted, but I will give it a try:

“ When Y’shua tries to leave the shoreline to come with me, there are all these people bothering us, as if they have the same rights to his attention as I do. They must not have heard back there when I made clear that my daughter was dying and that, plus my status, should make them leave us alone. Ah well, the rabble will always be the rabble, and if he cannot stop them from following us and crowding us, I cannot either! I suppose it’s all about him and them and their petty concerns ; but, really, it is my little girl, the daughter of an important person, whose life is threatened. I just wish they would disappear so that we could be together on our own….ah well, there it is! “

Such was my state of mind and heart that day. As I have deeply reflected upon the events leading up to that day and its’ aftermath, it seems so obvious now: he was teaching me that there is meant to be a balance in all things. He seemed, looking back, to be a point of order in a sea of chaos. He was not harried and hurried; there was no sense of urgency in him. It was as if he felt that my inner imbalance was the real sickness unto death that needed his healing touch. He was a true Rabbi to me, teaching by example as well as by his simple, powerful words the meaning of faith in God’s good and perfect timing. I had always thought and had always been taught that Lordship or Dominion was a top-down imposing of power and authority; yet, for Rabbi Y’shua, it was Lordship by walking around, power and authority by living out the principles that God’s Written Word had been trying to teach us, His people, for thousands of years. It was Dominion established by the authority of His presence which brings proper perspective to everything else. My reasoned assumption now is that he was also teaching that great mass of people pressing in on him similar kinds of lessons about waiting for the One whose name cannot be named to move in his own good timing for the sake of his greater kingdom. For Rabbi Y’shua, the One whose Name cannot be named was to be made real in Himself – God saves, God heals, God makes whole, God makes holy…..Let me get back to the day and you can draw your own conclusions, as well……

“ Wait a minute ! What are Y’shua’s men saying about people bumping into Jesus? Of course, we ALL are, it’s difficult not to do so. Who is this woman bothering Jesus now?? Ah…seems she has a woman’s disease Well, just great, that makes him ritually unclean… now, he won’t be able to lay hands on my Talitha. That foolish…..person! I wish she were …….de—!…………………… What ? She’s been healed, just by touching his clothes intentionally? Thanks be to God – if that’s what can happen for her, just think what it means…….But, still, she’s slowing us down…..Oh, get up off the ground, woman, quit talking and talking, we’ve got someone else to see and some place else to be right now! …….He’s saying to her….”daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and may you be healed of your disease. Humph! Well…..wonderful for her, but if we don’t hurry……”.

That lovely, unfortunate woman seemed to me such a pain and a bother back then; but to Y’shua, he treated her as if she was one of his sisters, one of his own daughters; he even called her ‘daughter’ though she could have been the same age as him. It was hard to tell, given that she had this disease for so long. I was stunned then by her unexpected timidity and shyness; I have been sobered since then by my own thoughtlessness and shocking sense of entitlement to privileges. Please, forgive me! Oh, yes, that’s right, it seems that I have been forgiven, though it is hard to forget how foolish I was then. The shalom of the One whose name we cannot name was right there with me and with the woman and with the crowd and I could not see what was as plain as the nose on my face: Rabbi Y’shua was and who has exactly the character and nature of the One whose name we cannot name. It was almost like he embodied Him. In fact, I have begun to wonder ……Well, just as he was saying that to the one whom he had called Daughter, I heard the news that no loving parent ever wants to hear….let me take you into my heart and mind at the instant I knew:

“Ah…there are my servants. That’s either very good or very bad news……. My daughter, my Talitha , is dead? She’s dead? That cannot be so… she was still alive just a couple of hours ago…….that….woman……these…..people, if only they hadn’t delayed Y’shua, we would have been home in time! Hah! Y’shua, what are you saying? Do not fear, only believe….only believe….only believe? That’s exactly what you said to the one you called Daughter….’your faith has made you well’ . What am I supposed to believe? She’s dead! She’s gone! She was 12 years old and now, she is no more. She was my daughter! Only believe? What to believe? That you can make my Talitha dance in our gardens and flit down the street in front of us again? That she could be soon married and be having children for us in our old age? That woman only had a disease and she killed my daughter by making us wait for her healing! How long did you say she had it? Is that what she was telling you all about when it seemed she told you everything? 12 years, the same age as my daughter? You mean she couldn’t have children all during those 12 years? That’s ironic, that her healing means my daughter’s dead with no hope of having children at all! Where’s the love and justice in that, Y’shua? “

To my shame, that’s what I said to him or, at least, that’s what I was thinking…..It seemed so wrong that a little girl with her whole life ahead of her was sacrificed for the sake of another who was so much older. It was as if I was being mocked by the One….well you know who I mean, the One whose name we cannot name. Patience, waiting, not fearing, only believing seemed to me a foolish set of ideas – but they are the lessons that were profoundly needed in my soul. Not incidentally, as the light began slowly to be turned up in my darkened being, things took a wondrous turn toward the better from that point on in the day…..

“ Lo and behold, Y’shua finally thinned out the crowds, plus the crowd had now already begun to disperse after their big miracle of the woman on the way or should I say ‘in’ the way?! He chose his 3 best students – Peter and the 2 brothers, James and John – and the five of us swiftly made our way to my domain, my dominion, my home, my castle where now my little girl lay dead. The mourners were already there, as we could hear them from a distance, as they had joined my wife and family members in their grief. Even I had to be supported along by the Rabbi’s men, the closer we got to my Talitha. Upon entering, he said the most astounding thing: Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping. It was such a callous thing to say, so I thought – but it was a hard wisdom he was applying to the situation, as so often leaders have to do when all around them are people made foolish by the surrounding circumstances. He insists all the rest of them leave, except my wife and me, and his men, 7 being the perfect number, which seems good in looking back. We all go in and there she was, stone cold dead.

Friends, I’m telling you, it is as if she were just being beckoned awake, like a loving older brother would do. He called her by her nickname I had long ago given her when she was truly a tiny, little girl — when I would tease her by saying that I , her father, was her first boyfriend. It was my own term of endearment that Rabbi Y’Shua called out : Talitha, coum. ‘Little girl, get up!’ ………

Friends, I am telling you that I will never forget it: she gets up off the shelf where she has been placed in that cool room, walks over to us with eyes wide open and that wrinkled-forehead expression to our waiting arms and, for the second time that day, I, leader of synagogue fall to the ground unable to control my emotions. My little girl died and lived in that one day…. and so did I…. and so did I. “

Y’shua was there both times when it happened; both times, he took charge. The first time, he left everything and everyone he was doing and came with me because I asked him to do so. This second time, he told us to be quiet about this AND to get my daughter something to eat. You see, he applied two kinds of wisdom, which we leaders have to do when we work with people: the first is what I call ‘soft wisdom’, the kind in which compassion and understanding need to be foremost because people are people; so, their immediate , personal concerns require the utmost respect and attentiveness so one accommodates those immediately. Then, there is ‘hard wisdom’ , the kind in which calling things what they truly are no matter how difficult and giving people what they actually need to move them forward to their next stage is what is required. That’s what Jesus was doing with me that day. He responded to me as a pained family member, meeting me where I hurt the most. But along the way, he started applying hard wisdom – teaching me in the process all about patience, caring for others less fortunate, about valuing people not because of their social, political or gender status, but because they are the creations of the One who we cannot name, as His creatures who are made in his image, his likeness. He was teaching me about faith without fear… Most of all , I believe Rabbi Y’shua was teaching me that the character and nature of the One who cannot be named may be very much like this teacher, healer and rabbi Y’shua.

True dominion, true power, true authority brings balance in all things and balance to all who follow Him , even as I am doing right now………. 

Message — “Out of the Whirlwind: With” — Sunday, June 24, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario

 

 

 

 

 

Who do think you are? Who do you think I AM?

 

 

 

Date – June 24 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scriptures – Job 38 : 1-11 ; Mark 4 : 35 – 41
Other – Pentecost + 4

 

SERMON: ” Out of the Whirlwind: With”

Job 38:1-11
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements–surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?–
when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

 

 

Mark 4:35-41
4:35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”
4:36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.
4:37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
4:38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
4:39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
4:40 He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
4:41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

 

 

 

Who among us has not felt at times that God has left us on our own? It’s one of the great human fears: that of being unloved so much that no one, including God, cares anymore. It has been my growing recognition over decades of formal ministry, namely, that each generation becomes less convinced that God is here or , worse yet, that if He does exist , God no longer cares to be involved in the affairs of humankind generally and of needful individuals specifically.

For some, the cause for this anxious terror has been understandable. There is a profound disappointment with God and the church; for others, there have been abuse or abuses perpetrated against them by powerful other human beings who were thought to care. Many have experienced genuine terrible traumas in their childhood and youth, even the deaths by natural means or by the hands of the those that that they have known and loved – murders or suicides. For countless numbers, the atrocities committed by human beings against one another on a world-scale have been so heinous, so frequent that there is no question for them: God doesn’t exist or is, at best, a weak, powerless entity who has nothing to say, to say little of no will to do the right thing.

It gets really close to the bone for others: a tragedy has taken place in one’s life; we feel that God is guilty, therefore, He is the one who should be accused of the atrocities. Life has once again served notice that it is not fair, that there is no reasonable measure of justness or rightness in the world. God is God, so God is the one to blame because He is the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of things as they are. Somehow, you and I have been sold a bill of goods, we may believe– there is a balance between love and justice, but some event has taken place in which your and my understanding of what’s right and fair has seemingly been proven wrong. We are angry, and we want someone to be held responsible for what’s happened. God or the church or religion are held up as guilty, He is / they are accused, sentenced and sentence has been executed, even literally. God is at least on life-support, if not virtually dead. and the organization that purports to uphold God’s standards has been shown to have clay feet; so, forget about God, and justice, and fairness —

“ To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. “ Macbeth

Into the face of such self-pitying, self-centred self-absorption fly these two portions of scriptures, from Job and Mark, in which we are reminded that the best thing of all is that God is with us. There is a true shalom-peace which prevails, no matter the starkness of events that happen in which you and I come out seemingly at the losing end. Even that which does affect us negatively, which seems at the moment to be a tragicomic series of errors contains , at its’ core, a strange and wonderful truth: God is with us and that is the best of all. An old kid’s song says, ‘with Christ in the vessel, we can smile at the storm, as we go sailing home. ‘ That is completely overstated, even naive and foolish; yet, it can be said that we can at least bear with the storm as we go forward on the unsure, threatening and violent waves which bear us forward to our future destinations.

I’ve heard true life-stories in the past few weeks which could well seem, at their face, to be an example of the silence of God in the face of human suffering. Frankly, even these light and momentary troubles pale in comparison to the scope of human tragedy which is visited upon people about which we heart all through the 24-hour news cycle around the world; nonetheless, for you and me, for us here in what’s called the first-world , with our trifling first-world misfortunes , as well as for those in what is condescendingly called the developing world– — these are and there are deep, unrelenting pains and sufferings. so we must somehow deal with them as they are. It may not be all about us at all – it may be about others who are watching us and seeing how God works in our lives, and how we respond to our crises as we go along over the long haul.

The Book of Job , from which we read earlier, is thought by some to be one of the most ancient of stories that, through oral traditions from across cultures and religious teaching, has finally come to us Judaeo-Christians in the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Older Testament. Theodicy, the theology of human suffering, is an ancient, deeply human dilemma: how could the gods or the One God we know as Yahweh allow evil to happen to anyone at all? How do you and I grapple with its’ existence? The enemy of souls, the satanos, advertises his badness so much that it seems at times there is no goodness at all. We are not the first ones to agonize nor to lose our naive spiritualities over this problem. There is , in Job 38, the beginnings of God’s answer to Job’s and our huge self-centred questions; namely, who do you think you are — He says lovingly yet firmly? Were you around when all of this was created? Are you God or am I? God is not being a petty or terrifying bully, but is simply stating the fact : we are not the centre of the known universe. God is, His creation is, His way of living, moving and existing is. God, simply, is. I am who I am. You are who you are. Get over yourselves, children.Know that I am with you and things will work out. They may not work out the way you expected, often not the way you wanted; but we are all in this together. I am in the boat with you no matter what’s going on in your life. Let’s look also at Mark’s gospel, at a story which almost seems to explain itself.

 

It has become darker toward evening; now, Jesus is in the boat with his followers, or is it that his disciples are in the boat with him?!. They are heading across the Sea when a significant storm comes up. The boat is driven by unstoppable forces of nature; as in a bad dream like one I have experienced recently, waves are filling this particular vessel with water. It is ready to sink. Meanwhile, Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat, oblivious to the storm, unconscious of their danger, unaffected by their fear. Their words are like ours would be : “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

When we consider personal unfairnesses that people face , all the way up to the global terrors that enter our world, we may reasonably wonder if God is asleep on the job. A four year old accidentally shoots a three year old with a loaded gun; a stroke leaves a father paralyzed; a child is diagnosed with a brain tumor; a coach abuses boys and young men for decades and all around him are complicit; a woman, after many beatings, flees an abusive husband and finds respite in a family shelter, but with blackened eyes and dashed dreams of love. These are the kinds of things that pommel our hopes and dreams, threatening to overswamp our lives. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

In the face of this, our reasonable, vital Christian faith says right out loud that God does care for each one of us, whether we live in the first, second or third worlds. The Creator of the heavens and the earth knows us by name and loves us. Folks, we must remember that we are a part of God’s created world – we are His creations, His creatures. When we consider all that we know about the universe and our seemingly tiny place in it, it is an astounding claim to believe that God knows our needs and provides for us, as would a loving father or mother as was celebrated last Sunday. One author says that “ understanding we are not the center of all things helps us gain perspective about our lives. We are material beings: a part of a larger world in which we are subject to physical laws and vulnerable to injury, illness, decay and death”. This level of awareness leads to humility, as we consider the wonders of the universe, and the great Otherness of our Creator.

We are God’s created human beings and we are also spiritual beings. When challenged by his Creator, Job, in spite of everything that has happened, grasps the greatness, the mystery, the goodness of God. In the middle of it all and that our destiny is one with the reality of God who carries us and holds us close. Job declares in the face of unspeakable personal tragedies to an absurd level, these words: “I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth…then from my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25)

Trusting in God’s loving care enables us to experience God in the midst of suffering ( agonidzo, suffering, fighting ). This is what the disciples are facing in the boat. They feel abandoned by one in whom they have put their trust, though he has cast his lot with theirs and has come into the boat with them. The story is told to reassure us that Jesus is with us in our suffering even when we cannot immediately see him or recognize him. 

There is a story of an 87-year-old woman who wrote about one of those moments in which we see Jesus. She was going through exhausting medical tests in preparation for surgery. One time, she had a type of vision: “I went out along the Galilee hills and came to a crowd gathered around a man, and I stood on the outskirts intending to listen. But he looked over the crowd at me and then said, ‘What do you want?’ And I said, ‘Could you send someone to come with me and help me stand up after the tests because I can’t manage alone?’ Jesus thought for a moment and then said, ‘How would it be if I came alongside you?'”

That’s a good question. That is exactly what God has done in Jesus His Son and our Saviour-Lord. God has come our direction in our suffering and pain, our struggle to be human, our fear and anxiety, our doubt and uncertainty. Jesus laid aside what we might call the rights of His Godness and put on burden of our us-ness. He became one of us–one with us–one for us.

We are also and ultimately relational beings, created to be as such by God who revels in relationships. Even when it seems like we are in a living hell, even there, God is with us. When fearful disciples call out to Jesus, he answers by making quiet the wind and still the sea. They do not yet ‘get it’ , that the one who loves them is Lord, not only of their lives, but of the wind and the waves, the overwhelming facts of nature and life. Jesus will , in time , be teaching them how to live and die in their faith, by example. He does not refuse the cross, but accepts it. He knows everything there is to know about being human: about betrayal, about disappointment, about grief, about unfairness, about torture, even about death. Nonetheless, he commits his life to His Father and finds God’s perfect shalom-peace even suspended on a cross between heaven and earth: into your hands I commend my spirit. Sisters and brothers, the resurrection is the supreme, clear sign we have……. that everything Jesus said and did is true.

Jesus cares for His created, spiritual and relational human beings, but it does not mean we will not go through times of danger, suffering, or even death; yet, out of the whirlwind, he is with……..He is with…….Jesus is with……..

“Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat. “

George Herbert, “Love (III)

Throughout any of our tragedies, large or small, real or only foolishly imagined, we are held together by the love of One whom even the wind and the waves obey. Let us pray. 

Who do you think you are? Who do you know I AM?

Message: What is God Doing? Inside or Outside: Sunday, June 10, 2012, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, ON

Inside or outside: disturbing or disturbed?

 

 

 

 

Date – June 10 , 2012 Place – SAPK

Scriptures –1 Samuel 8: 4-11; 16 – 20. 2 Corinthians 4: 13 – 5: 1; Mark 3: 20-35
Other – Pentecost + 2

 

SERMON: ” What is God Doing? Inside or Outside”

 

1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
8:4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah,
8:5 and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”
8:6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the LORD,
8:7 and the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
8:8 Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.
8:9 Now then, listen to their voice; only–you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
8:10 So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king.
8:11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots;
8:16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work.
8:17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
8:18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
8:19 But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said “No! but we are determined to have a king over us,
8:20 so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

4:13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture–“I believed, and so I spoke” –we also believe, and so we speak,
4:14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.
4:15 Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
4:16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
4:17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,
4:18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

 

 

 

Mark 3:20-35
3:20….. and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.
3:21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”
3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”
3:23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan?
3:24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
3:25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
3:26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.
3:27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
3:28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;
3:29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”–
3:30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”
3:33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

 

How would you like to start out your young career battling similar serious headwinds from your family, your religious organization and, at times, from the crazies that you run up against in simply walking around every day? In this gospel, we have a clear picture of Jesus as someone who causes controversy everywhere he goes. By chapter 3, he is already in the deep end of the pool — family members, the student-disciples following him around and, most concerning, politicians and the religious establishment.. Is it any surprise? This youngblood goes against tradition, jabs at authority, and does things to bring unwelcome, negative attention to his family. So, now Mark shares something that looks like a classic tragedy about to happen. Chaos is about to ensue.

Now, remember: this gospel is broadly acknowledged as the earliest we have; Mark doesn’t have any other script to follow or precedent to give him a template in order to record Peter’s remembrances of Jesus. The gospel looks a lot like Peter who never did quite fit into the mold of model-student. Mark here puts the question, “Who has true authority?” Does it come from religious tradition, or does it come directly from God? Mark is here positing the thought that God, in Jesus Christ, literally Lords himself over the authority of the establishment. So, the scribes confront Jesus— and try to take the wind out of Jesus’ sails by accusing him of being whacky, of being possessed by demons – a pretty effective strategy that sounds like today’s politicians when they accuse one another of being liars and fools and tacit enemies of the state. Jesus takes them up cleverly, even wisely by saying that even Satan wouldn’t be so foolish as to tear down his own evil empire. No, it’s not evil destroying evil; good is the displacer and destroyer of evil instead. Mark then records a confusing line from Jesus, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first binding the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (v. 27).

Some believe this means that Jesus had presently put Satan out of commission for now, that the enemy of souls was effectively neutered while Jesus was physically present. Some believe Jesus is giving the religious leadership a heads-up — namely, Jesus is saying he will bind the establishment and bring in a whole new wave of religious thinking and acting. A third way of looking at it has some possible merit, especially in our day of a “house divided” within Christianity. Maybe it’s not a threat; instead, could it be that Jesus is offering a word of caution—if our strong man, our faith, is “tied up” in endless and useless debate, procedural convolutions , never-ending discussions , less-than-productive planning rather than doing, self-serving political power plays , organizational preservation, and self-centred maneuvers, then anyone with destructive or confusing purposes can sneak in and plunder the house, rather like that insurance commercial where the chaotic villain is acting as if he’s the dog who has been placated by being given a bone while thieves are throwing stuff into duffel bags and skedaddling with the loot! Sisters and brothers, all kinds of diverting and ridiculous alternatives to real living faith can attract our attention and keep us from being fully attentive to what is essential.

Invest a few moments in any book store or online @ Chapters or Amazon. Scan titles in the sections on “religion,” “spirituality,” or “new age.” What do you see? You will quickly see the picture. There are countless options, from ridiculous to sublime, all aimed those who say they are “spiritual, but not religious.” Our own strong man of organized religion may be obliviously tied to our own sense of institutional preservation, at the same time as less-than-helpful options for thinking and living plunder those who are spiritually seeking a solid relationship with their Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer

.

Folks, let’s admit it: we may be sometimes bound by our institutional frameworks , but we’re not gagged . Part of our problem is that we seem often to be involved in endless disagreements about who is right in everything and wrong about anything, who is as good as God and who is bad by nature, in defining who is righteous at their core and others who are hopelessly sinful. Sometimes, we too glibly adopt the surrounding culture’s enthrallment with competition and winning at all costs. Grace and forgiveness, love and mercy, patience and tolerance, and justice and generosity — all are seen as worthy ideals but only for a few who are especially religious and set apart. We often transform religion from life-lifting, joy-making, affirming blessing for everyone into mere moralizing and tsk-tsking. It seems to be the case, at times, that no one has to break in and bind us—we do it ourselves without help from others.

Jesus says clearly in Mark that any sin can be forgiven except one—blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Contempt for God, damning him with faint praise and scant attention, treating God’s word as merely quaint and not really to be heeded is the core-meaning of blasphemy. Further, judging other Christians is a main way to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. To treat other followers of Jesus as less than real Christians is to believe that the Holy Spirit cannot talk in other languages and other ways to them with quite the same quality and propriety as he does to ourselves. Any time one points the finger at another, devaluing the work of the Holy Spirit in the other’s faith-life, it is an unforgivable sin. We like to attach labels on people with whom we disagree — fundamentalist, conservative, liberal, progressive, evangelical, mainline, Pentecostal, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, emerging, liturgical, — pouring contempt on their ways of knowing God in Christ as a way to puff up our own superior grasp of the divine. The time is upon us to unbind the strong man that is keeping people from knowing the life-giving , vibrant and vitalizing Christ who calls all people to himself and his adventurous kingdom.

Religion, as seen by many if not most, has come upon hard times. Once seen as a badge of honour, today few people wants to be seen as religious. So what can be done? The answer is simple, but won’t be easy. The time has come to focus on what we share in common. Jesus says in Mark, “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first binding the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Let’s begin here. Now, we know that we believe different things and value different things and seek different things, but at our core we are all one family, we are the children of God, we are brothers and sisters of the Christ. It won’t change anything overnight, but one thing is certain. If we’re all on the same side, there won’t be any of “those people” left to dislike.

I look forward to the day when we listen to what Jesus did at the end of today’s lesson. After all the chaos in his life, people questioning his motives, family wondering about his sanity, religion accusing him of being part of the enemy of souls, listen to what Jesus said:

[A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”
3:33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” ]

The question is this: am I inside or outside of doing God’s will? Am I outside the house accusing him and others of being wrong, or am I inside the house where he looks around at you and me and declares us to be his chosen family – not religion, not the world’s version of what it means to be successful, not those who like to live in the drama of accusing others of things for which they themselves bear the guilt ?

Here’s a handy way of knowing God’s will , of ensuring that we are inside the house of the family to which Jesus welcomes us. I’ve used it for years and again share it, as some of you have heard me share it before. It comes from the Alpha Course, and each point begins with two letters : C S, like CS Lewis:

• Commanding Scriptures

• Compelling Spirit

• Common Sense

• Counsel of the Saints

• Circumstantial Signs

I’d rather be on the inside — of what God is doing — looking out, than on the outside — of Jesus’ family — looking in. I’d rather we portray the nature and character of Jesus which is winsome and will win some, rather than to be all entangled in the things that have no eternal significance in reminding ourselves and the watching world that there is a better way to live than the way this world often sees as preferable – without God and without an eternal purpose which he has planted into the hearts of humankind generally and each of us specifically. I’d rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today…… let us pray.

Date – June 3, 2012 Place – SAPK

 

Other — Trinity Sunday, Communion

 

 

SERMON: Three Persons and Four Waves

The concern here is that we become practising Trinitarians. What, you might ask , is that?? That , or more properly , those are Christians who recognize and live in the reality that God the Father, Son and Spirit are all worthy of our devoted love. We sometimes seem to only focus on Jesus and ignore the Father, AND are fearful of the Holy Spirit. God wants us to be whole and holy , and we can only do that if we believe that He is holy — whole within Himself. If we pay attention to the complete God — Father, Son and Spirit — we will become more and more like Him, more complete, more whole, more….dare we say it?….. holy! . So ………………………….

Have you caught the Third Wave? An issue of National Geographic’s cover story was entitled “Jaws: Maui’s Monster Wave”. It was about a reef formation off Maui, one of the Hawaiian Islands, which produces huge, barely surfable waves. About 12 of these monsters show up per year. The article says, ‘Jaws isn’t just a location, it’s a theoretical wave that manifests itself in real life. It’s almost a spiritual entity, a sleeping giant that sometimes awakens, and beckons surfers. ‘

The waves about which we need to be aware these days, if we are going to be alert as to what our Lord is doing, are spiritual renewal movements that have taken place in the last one hundred years. In 1910, the first wave came into full, crashing view. The Pentecostal movement crystallized into a surfable wave of the Holy Spirit’s activity, on Azusa Street (A to Z in the USA) in Los Angeles, California. That wave was an outgrowth of a deep spiritual hunger for more of the holiness of God, that began to pick up speed in the late 1800’s A man named Charles Parham is the one most associated with what turned out to be the wave which has enlarged into a world-wide phenomenon in the intervening 99 years.

The second wave of renewal was the charismatic renewal in the 1960’s , coming to full height in the Jesus-people movement which had an effect on us baby-boomers, and then by virtue of their massive numbers, on the church that was ripe for change. Whole portions of the Christian tradition were changed by the people called charismatics. They believe in the practice of the spiritual gifts, making real their position that the events of the early church are to be sought and experienced almost 2000 years later. That was the second tsunami, the second monster wave of spiritual renewal in the Christian tradition in the 1900’s.

The third wave was the emphasis on signs and wonders, and later renewal in the Church , even outside the organized church…….. now called the Emerging Church. This has had a profound effect on the larger Body of Christ, its’ music, and the expectations of a generation who knows there’s something out there, more than meets the eye of the mind. It is partially, as in each of these waves of spiritual renewal, a sociological manifestation, but is also genuinely of the Spirit of God. That third wave is carrying us well into the new century and millennium.

That may sound like overstatement , an exaggeration; however, I believe people in our culture need to see that God is more powerful than the lifestyles they are serving. Recently, in our churches we have found that God is ‘cleaning house’, calling his people to holiness and righteous living. God wants to unleash a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit of an unprecedented magnitude. In preparation for this, He is looking for individuals who will be ‘dread champions’, true new Olympians for Jesus, for His cause. He wants people who will commit to a lifestyle of purity and “holiness unto the Lord.” That’s strong, powerful and challenging language to us, who are part of the Body of Christ.

The fourth wave is already happening, that building, cresting and breaking on the Westernized church now: the shift ( for what I call ‘typical North American Christians ) from being teachers to being learners, to world-sized Christians that used to be the focus of our attention in classic missions work. Live for awhile in a large cosmopolitan setting, be part of the Body of Christ there, begin to see that peoples of other nationalities and cultures already have built in to their world-view those things that the church in North America has been losing over a period of decades. You will begin to sense that maybe God is shifting focus from our ways of doing things to others’ ways of doing and being. If we are humble, we will realize and embrace the fact: we have much to learn from Christians of other nationalities, other people-groups, other cultures. Thankfully, God’s economy is larger, more comprehensive and much better than our ways of doing things. There will always be a place for collaboration and cooperation in the Body of Christ, as we love the same Lord and Saviour , even Jesus; but , we need to recognize that God’s fourth wave is upon us, and we better be prepared to do some serious surfing!

Whatever wave comes rolling in, the house in which we live, — the house of God called St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Kingston — must be built on solid rocks, firm foundations, strong pillars, immovable structural shapes. One such shape is the triangle, in this case the Father , Son and Holy Spirit — what has been called the Trinity for centuries now. So let us see Him as the One-in-Three upon whom we as Christians need to depend, as we celebrate Trinity Sunday, remembering that we are part of a great cloud of witnesses that stretch from Old Testament Days to the very moment in which we live, move and have our being in 2012!!!

1) The Father – The first pillar upon which we build is that of worship. That is, we believe that our primary activity, as followers of Christ, is to so honour God that we center our spiritual life around him. We worship him, we recognize his worth, as individuals each and every day. We are in conversation with him, we listen to what he says to us, through his words written , spoken and understood. In Bible studies, Alpha groups, youth groups, Bible Study groups— we hold him up as the center of our reason for being. In our relationships with others, God is our focus. We seek to hold him in the center of our vision, of what we are and do. We even set aside one day a week, a day different from all others, to signify by words, actions and time apart from regular activities that he is more important to us than anyone else. That is , we are a priesthood of believers in God. The simple, wonderful ingathering each week to this place proclaims to ourselves and to this community that he is Lord. If we did not have this upon which we built, then ministry would have no purpose, no meaning. Primarily, we are a people who worship God the Father, through Jesus the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Whether we are pastors or just real people (!?!) , we are those set apart for God’s purposes; SO, we seek to glorify God by the exercise of the gifts and graces which he has given us. He who has created us and recreated us is worthy of our worship. The gifts are not the ministry — they are the means to the end, the goal of glorifying God. The Father is the first pillar and gifts are given to help us glorify Him, to worship Him.

2) The Son – The second pillar is that of work or fellowship. The Body of Christ #2, sometimes called the church, is called to work together, to be in true fellowship with God and one another. ‘Fellowship’ is the old English word used to translate, often, the Greek word ‘koinonia’, from which we also get a more familiar English word: ‘community.’ And this work, this fellowship, this community is simply us, working together as servants of Christ, the second pillar of ministry. If there is a working-together, if there is an understanding that we are servant-colleagues, then it becomes more apparent that the gifts of the Spirit are given to serve and strengthen the body of Christ. To work without this understanding leads to a sense of grim determination to simply carry on our duties, no matter what. It could lead to joylessness, as we all go ahead on our personal parallel tracks, heading the same direction, never interacting with one another!! We are working together, not only with each other, but with Jesus, the Son, and with the gifts, we work together as servants in the courts with our King leading the way. . The gifts are given so that we can work together, to build up the Body of Christ. Think of it — body builders for Christ!

Our first pillar is the Father and worship.

The second pillar is the Son and work.

The third pillar is….

3) The Spirit – and witness. The good news is that we are inhabited by the Spirit of Jesus himself, who chooses to take up residence in each of us, in the Body of Christ walking around today. What does it mean to witness? It means this: to give voice to what you know about Christ, and to live life as if you believed it to be true! My grandfather said that we are to act like Christians. That’s it — we are to live as if we believe it’s all true. The good news? It is all true. It means to live in as Christ-like manner as if it were Him that people were seeing — to give yourself away, to die little deaths in order to say a good word for Jesus. The concept of witness in the New Testament, comes from the word ‘marturia’ — ‘martyr’ is our English word. There are those who believe that the New Testament infers that even martyrdom is a gift. Certainly , in the early church there was that sense —- so much so that there had to be a corrective to people who were inappropriately seeking martyrdom. But doesn’t ‘witness’ mean a martyrdom of sorts today? We choose to set some things aside, to let other things die, in our lives to order to live the best way possible — Christ’s way that he showed us, and which he makes possible for us through his person and work. We choose to do the difficult thing to make real the Christ that is in us for the sake of others. We choose to be saints, we choose to be witnesses, martyrs for the Lord Jesus !

How can we do this? It is that we are receivers of gifts, from the Holy Spirit. To witness, to minister in the area of giftedness which God the Holy Spirit has given, is simply to return the gift of ourselves to him. We give back only what we have received. And the gifts only serve to advance the kingdom of God in society,building into our world the principles of kingdom-living that people are longing for, whether they know it or not. People need the Lord, as the song says, and they can only have that need fulfilled as we worship the Father, work with the Son and witness by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, ask yourself: are the gifts of the Spirit built on 3 strong pillars? Do they help us to glorify God in all things? Do they strengthen the church? Do they advance the kingdom of God? And if they do, brothers and sisters, we better polish up our surfboards and get to where the big waves are. Or if we have never caught a wave yet nor have any interest in doing so, perhaps we can ask the question , why? For the work of the Lord can go on and we can be a part of it, or we can just let that wave go by. The Spirit and the gifts are ours.

There’s a wonderful hymn, which reads as follows:

Come, all Christians, be committed to the service of the Lord.

Make your lives with him more fitted, tune your hearts with one accord.

Come into his courts with gladness,each his sacred vows renew.

Turn away from sin and sadness, be transformed with life anew.

Of your time and talents give ye, they are gifts from God above,

To be used by Christians freely to proclaim his wondrous love.

Come again to serve the Saviour, tithes and offerings with you bring.

In your work with him find favour and with joy his praises sing.

Let this be a time of reflection for us , as we seek to know how God wants to renew us: in our worship, work and witness! Listen and pray.

 

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: 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.”
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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.

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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.