12-23-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

 

CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS LOVE

  In the summer of 1997, my sister’s 18-month old baby died.  I flew down to Phoenix, Arizona to conduct the funeral.  Seeing the devastation in the eyes of my sister – not to mention my mother and my father – made it one of the most trying experiences of my life.  In any case, while I was there, I discovered that my sister’s husband’s sister – my brother-in-law’s sister and her husband – had also endured the trauma of losing a baby.  After the funeral was over, my brother-in-law’s sister’s husband came up to me to thank me for doing the funeral.  Then he talked about his own experience of losing a baby.  I remember him specifically saying, “We’ve got to be so good now.”  I said, “What do you mean, you’ve got to be so good now?”  He said, “We’ve got to be so good now…or we’ll never see our baby again.” 

  Therein lies another false narrative about God.  It assumes that we’ve got to be good in order to earn God’s favor.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t be good.  The false narrative here lies in the assumption that God only loves us when we are good.  Does God only love us when we’re good?  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

  Several weeks ago, we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything within us.  Change happens when something else is modified.  What is it that needs to be modified?  What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is.  We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is, if we’re ever going to change who and what we are, because everything about us stems from our own internal narrative.

  As Jesus is God incarnate, we determined to let Jesus establish our new internal narrative.  We noted how many people tend to see God as an angry judge.  Citing a passage from the gospel of John, Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned – this man or his parents – that he was born blind?”  In their minds, it had to be one or the other.  Blindness was believed to be punishment from an angry God.  Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them.  He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.  He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  In other words, “God is good; God wills the good…and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.”  Then Jesus healed the man born blind.  The point is that God wills what’s best for us.  The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture.  Yet the narrative Jesus clearly sets out to establish here…is that God is good.

  We considered how much of our experience might lead us to believe that God cannot be trusted.  Why, even Jesus was not spared the agony of the cross when he begged God to do so.  Thus, what we did was embark upon the process of conducting a spiritual inventory.  In other words, we took the time to count our blessings.  What we discovered is that while our troubles are indeed very real, they are really quite small compared to God’s widespread mercy.  The more we are able to comprehend how many blessings we really have – freely given and freely received – the more we come to realize that God truly does will what’s best for us.  And when that moment of revelation occurs, we can’t help but discover that God is indeed trustworthy.

  Then we explored what we called a performance-based narrative.  A performance-based narrative dictates that the good are rewarded with good, while the bad are rewarded with bad.  The problem with a performance-based narrative is that it completely neglects the concept of grace.  Thus, while looking at the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, we encountered a landowner who gave not on the basis of what the laborers earned, but rather, on the basis of his abundant generosity.  Jesus’ intent, of course, was to equate the landowner with God.  We discovered that, while the way of the world may be survival of the fittest, the way of God is generosity to a fault.

  I spoke earlier about a man who lost a baby.  He was convinced that he and his wife had to be incredibly good if they were ever going to see their baby again.  Where’s the grace of God in that?  Can you imagine the pressure that must have put upon them?  Can you imagine the guilt they would occasionally feel?  Ladies and gentlemen, that, too, is a performance-based narrative.  Last week we considered the story of a man for whom things went sour, and he was absolutely convinced that God must be punishing him for something he did wrong.  That was part and parcel to a performance-based narrative…yet so is today’s story.  A man and his wife were convinced that God would only reward them if they were good.  A performance-based narrative about God insists that the good are rewarded with good, while the bad are rewarded with bad.  There is no grace in that.  Thus, today we want to attempt to replace that narrative with the narrative that God is love.

  In order to do that, I want to examine the parable of the prodigal son.  Yet before we get to the parable of the prodigal son, it is absolutely imperative that we understand its context.  As you know, Jesus called a number of individuals to be his disciples.  One of those individuals was a man by the name of Matthew.  Now Matthew was a tax collector, and tax collectors were despised in Jesus’ day.  They were ordinary Hebrew citizens who had contracted with the Roman government to collect taxes.  They were notorious for overcharging the Jewish citizenry, and for keeping any excess for themselves.  Thus, they were seen as traitors, and were widely perceived to be unscrupulous.  No one liked tax collectors in Jesus’ day, yet Jesus called one of them to be a disciple.  What’s more, on occasion, he even dined with tax collectors.

  This was more than the scribes and Pharisees could stand.  Then one day Jesus was speaking to a large crowd of people.  As it says in Luke 15:1, “And all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to hear him.”  The scribes and Pharisees began to grumble amongst themselves, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!”  In other words, “Jesus is obviously unaware of the character of the people with whom he associates.  How could he possibly be the Messiah?” 

  Jesus was apparently aware of their grumbling.  He tells them a brief parable about the joy of finding a lost sheep, and another brief parable about the joy of finding a lost coin.  Then he gets to the parable of the prodigal son.  Now there are actually three primary players in this drama      – and each has a vital role – as we shall soon see.

  There once was a man who had two sons.  The younger of the two came to his father and said, “Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.”  In other words, “You’re going to die some day and I’m going to get half of all you own.  Let’s dispense with the formalities.  Just give it to me now.”  How would you react if one of your children did that to you?

  This father actually gave his son half of all he owned.  Then the young man went out and – as Luke so tactfully puts it – “squandered his inheritance on dissolute living.”  Luke is being kind.  He’s sparing us all of the gory details.  Well, the young man eventually ran out of money.  He ended up taking a job feeding pigs, yet even the pigs ate better than he did.  The young man came to his senses and decided to return to his father – not as a son – but as a hired hand.  He would confess his sin and throw himself upon the mercy of his father.

  Unbeknownst to the young man, his father longed for his return.  He probably got up every morning, had his breakfast, and – while sipping his morning coffee – looked out the window and scanned the horizon in search of his son.  His heart would likely rise every time he saw someone, then fall when he realized it was not his son.  But then one day, it was his son.

  The father raced to his son.  His son tried to make his confession, but the father would hear none of it – so overjoyed was he at the return of his son.  He laid a robe over his shoulders, he placed a ring upon his finger, he killed the fatted calf, and he threw the biggest party that region had seen in years.  When the older brother caught wind of it – the son who had remained faithful to his father for lo, these many years – he was none too pleased.  We’ll come back to the older brother later.

  I think what Jesus intends in this parable is for us to see the father as God, and the prodigal son as the world of lost sinners.  As the father in the parable gave his son half of all he owned, God gives us the gift of free will.  He will not force us to be faithful to him.  He wants us to choose to be faithful to him.  Thus, he allows us to go out in the world and experience life as we choose.  Some come to realize that life in the father’s house is better.  Some come to that realization sooner than others, and some never come to it at all.  Yet all the while, God scans the horizon, hoping for our return.  You see, there’s a difference between hating the sin and hating the sinner.  That, my friends, is because God the Father loves us unconditionally.  Whether we are good or whether we are bad, God loves us unconditionally. 

  I got a fascinating glimpse into what unconditional love really is a few days ago while I was working out at the Y.M.C.A.  I was running on an elliptical machine, and a friend of mine was running next to me.  He is 74 years old, and he tragically lost a son in an automobile accident a number of years ago.  He was telling me about his grandchildren.  His eyes lit up as he described them to me.  I said, “And the best part is – at the end of the day – you can send them home!”  He laughed, but I don’t think he felt that way at all.  He said, “I never knew what unconditional love was…until I had grandkids.” 

  I got to thinking about that.  As parents, we think we know what unconditional love is, but maybe we really don’t.  I thought of a couple of classic Bill Cosby routines.  His father used to say to him, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out.  I can make another one…look just like ya!”  His mother used to say to him, “I hope you’ve got clean underwear on!”  Young Bill would reply, “Yes, I’ve got clean underwear on!”  His mother would say, “You’d better have clean underwear on.  What if you got into an accident and had to go to the hospital?  If they had to take your pants off, what would people think of me if you didn’t have on clean underwear?  What would people think of me?”  Bill replied, “But Mom…I’m the one in the hospital!” 

  As parents we have a responsibility to raise our children right.  And often times, we see them as a reflection on us.  Sometimes I think we get so caught up in that, that we forget what a treasure they really are.  A grandparent doesn’t get caught up in all that.  In fact, I’ve never seen anyone any more heartbroken that a grandmother who raised her children in the church, and then sees her own children fail to raise her grandchildren in the church.  A grandparent knows what it means to love unconditionally, maybe even better than a parent.  God knows what it means to love unconditionally, as well.  After all, that’s exactly how he looks at us.

  Now back to the older brother.  He’d been loyal to his father all of his life, while his younger brother had taken advantage of their father and squandered his inheritance on dissolute living.  Then when his brother came back – when the prodigal son returned – his father threw him the biggest party he’d ever seen.  The older brother was angry, and refused to go in the house.

  Do you remember how we talked about the context of the parable of the prodigal son?  It was in response to the scribes and Pharisees being critical of Jesus for dining with sinners and tax collectors.  This part of the parable was directed at them.  They’d been faithful to God all their lives.  They didn’t appreciate the fact that all this fuss was being made over lost sinners.  They were, in essence, the older brother in this parable.

  I think a lot of us can relate to the older brother here, as well.  Many of us have been faithful to God all our lives.   Oh, we may have taken a bad turn here and there – after all, a lot of us went to college – but for the most part, we have been faithful to God all our lives.  And Jesus is saying here that those who come to the faith at the last minute are entitled to all of that to which we are entitled as well?  That doesn’t seem fair, does it?  How can God consider these sinners to be on equal footing with us?

  God can do it because God loves us unconditionally.  Like I said earlier, there is a difference between hating the sin and hating the sinner.  We may not approve of everything our children do, but does that affect the love we have for them?  I don’t think it does.  In fact, I think the gospel according to John puts God’s perspective on this quite well.  John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”  That’s John 3:16.  But when we read John 3:16, we must never forget John 3:17.  John 3:17 says, “For God sent the Son into the world – not to condemn the world – but that the world might be saved through him.”  And there you have it; a new narrative about God.  God…is love.

  But what about the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son?  He refused to go in to the party, so his father came out to him.  He said, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was lost and now is found.”

  We don’t know what the older brother ultimately did.  Did he go in to the party and welcome his brother, or did he stand in the field and pout?  Jesus does not give us the answer.  And maybe that’s a good thing.  Considering what you now know about the unconditional love of God, what would you have done?  Amen.

 

12-16-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

 

CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS GENEROUS

  I recently read an article written by a minister named MaryAnn Dana in a publication called Journal for Preachers.  When Rev. Dana was in seminary, she and a number of her seminary classmates had gone overseas to take a special class when they encountered something they found to be very peculiar.  This is how she described it:

Several years ago I attended a study trip with seminary classmates at the World Council of Churches.  We spent a few days in Munich before arriving in Geneva for the course.  The museum there had a display of Christmas-related artifacts, and we were fascinated by a bearded goat-like creature that appeared to be preying on small children.  Without a working knowledge of German to read the accompanying placards, we could only assume that the goatman was Santa’s evil twin. 

  Rev. Dana and her classmates were not far off.  What they saw was a beast-like creature known as Krampus.  Local folklore taught that during the Christmas season, Santa Claus came and rewarded good children with gifts.  Yet at the same time, an evil beast called Krampus came and gave bad children a lump of coal.  If a child was particularly bad, Krampus might actually stuff the child in his sack and carry him off to his lair.  And you were afraid you were teaching your children things that might land them on a psychiatrist’s couch one day!  What this represents is what we might call a performance-based narrative.  Do good, and you’ll be rewarded with good.  Do bad, and you’ll be recompensed with bad.  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

  Several weeks ago, we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything within us.  Change happens when something else is modified.  What is it that needs to be modified?  What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is.  We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is, if we’re ever going to change what and what we are, because everything about us stems from our own internal narrative.

  As Jesus is God incarnate, we determined to let Jesus establish our new internal narrative.  We noted how many people see God as an angry judge.  Citing a passage from the gospel of John, Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  In their minds it had to be one or the other.  Blindness was believed to be punishment from an angry God.  Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them.  He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.  He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  In other words, “God is good; God wills the good…and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.”  Then Jesus healed the man born blind.  The point is that God wills what’s best for us.  The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture.  Yet the narrative Jesus clearly sets out to establish within us is that God is good.

  We considered how much of our experience might lead us to believe that God cannot be trusted.  Why, even Jesus was not spared the agony of the cross when he begged God to do so.  Thus, what we did was embark upon the process of conducting a spiritual inventory.  In other words, we took the time to count our blessings.  What we discovered is that while our troubles are real, they are really quite small compared to God’s widespread mercy.  The more we are able to comprehend how many blessings we really have – freely given and freely received – the more we come to realize that God truly wills what’s best for us.  And when that moment of revelation occurs, we can’t help but discover that God is indeed trustworthy.

  Today our aim is to establish within us the narrative that God is also generous.  Yet what we experience in the world today might lead us to believe otherwise.  In the opening illustration, we examined what we called a performance-based narrative.  Good children received gifts from Santa, while bad children received lumps of coal from Krampus…or worse.  From a very young age we learn that our parents’ approval is dependent upon good behavior; that school grades are given on the basis of performance; that popularity or affection is offered due to attractiveness; and that rejection, loneliness, despair and isolation are the consequences of failure.  And when every person in every situation in every day of our lives treats us on the basis of how we look, or how we act, or how we perform, it is difficult not to project that onto God.

  My uncle Daryl was about a year-and-a-half younger than my father.  They grew up on a farm in western Iowa and attended a one-room schoolhouse when they were young.  My father always told me that his nickname was “Muscles,” and Daryl’s nickname was “Pickles,” but my uncle Daryl always told me it was the other way around.  In any case, both grew up to be farmers, although my father sold out and went off to college to become an electrical engineer when he was about thirty-two.  Daryl continued to farm and was quite successful at it…that is, until the farm crisis hit in the early 1980s. 

  Here’s what happened.  Daryl was a very successful farmer and was thinking about putting up a large pole building.  He spoke to his local banker about it one time, but he was hesitant.  The banker insisted, “Go ahead and do it.  Times are good.  What could possibly go wrong?”  So Daryl borrowed $40,000.00 and erected a pole building.  He put up a 240 acre farm he’d inherited as collateral.  Farmland in Iowa was going for about $2000.00 an acre at the time.  I’ll let you do the math yourselves. 

  Daryl paid on his loan and had worked it down to about $10,000.00.  In the meantime, the local bank had sold Daryl’s loan to a faceless corporation in Des Moines.  Then the farm crisis hit and Daryl – like a lot of other farmers in the Midwest – couldn’t pay back his loan.  So that faceless corporation came and took his 240 acre farm.  That $10,000.00 debt essentially cost him about $480,000.00.  And it was all perfectly legal.

  Daryl, as you might suspect, was a little upset by this.  He came to my father to borrow $10,000.00 but in 1982, $10,000.00 was a lot of money, and my father simply could not bail him out.  In the end, Daryl said to my father, “I can’t believe this is happening.  What did I do to make God turn his back on me?”  And there you have it: a performance-based narrative about God.

  You don’t have to look very far in the pages of Scripture to prove such a narrative about God.  Consider the rather unsettling passage we read from the book of Acts.  In the first century Christian community, all things were held in common.  That’s a nice way of saying socialism.  Nobody possessed abundance, yet nobody lacked for anything either.

  A married couple by the name of Ananias and Sapphira belonged to that first century Christian community.  Then one day, they sold a piece of land.  What they were supposed to do was bring all of the proceeds and lay them at the feet of the apostles.  Yet Ananias and Sapphira plotted to keep some of the money for themselves.  When Ananias lied to the apostles about how much money he’d received, he dropped dead on the spot.  When Sapphira came later and backed up her husband’s story, she dropped dead, as well.  They lied before God, and they were struck down for it.  That, my friends, is a performance-based narrative about God.  And it seems as though the Bible backs it up.

  Yet perhaps saying that sin has its consequences is different than saying that God rejects us entirely because of our sin.  After all, isn’t the larger theme of the Bible the steadfast love of God that culminates in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ on behalf of a wayward world? Thus, perhaps we should interpret the entire Bible and some of its more troubling stories in light of Jesus Christ.  Because truth be told, I think Jesus gives us a vastly different narrative.

  Consider the passage I read a moment ago from the gospel according to Matthew.  Two thousand years ago, there may have been as many as 18,000 men milling about the streets of Jerusalem on any given day, looking for work.  As the story goes, a landowner came to town at about 6:00 a.m. to hire laborers for his vineyard.  He agreed with the laborers for the usual day’s wage, then sent them into his vineyard to work.  About three hours later, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and sent them into his vineyard to work.  He did the same thing at noon; he did the same thing at three; and he did the same thing again at 5:00 p.m. 

  At the end of the day, his business manager called the laborers together to pay them.  The laborers who began work at five – the laborers who probably worked for only about an hour – received a full day’s pay.  So did the laborers who worked for three hours, so did the laborers who worked for six hours, and so did the laborers who worked for nine hours.  The laborers who had worked for twelve hours thought they were due a little more.  When they received no more than what they had agreed upon initially, they grumbled against the landowner.  The landowner replied, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Or are you envious because I am generous?” 

  Now we can all probably relate to the laborers’ disgruntlement.  That’s because we tend to put ourselves in the place of the laborers; we tend to look at this story from the laborers’ perspective.  Instead, let’s try to look at this story from the landowner’s perspective.  The landowner paid most of those laborers far, far more than he had to.  The theme of this story thus becomes the landowner’s generosity, not the shorting of a few disgruntled laborers.  And if the landowner is meant to represent God in this story, the narrative that Jesus describes of God…is one of a God who is abundantly generous. 

  Our problem is that we operate out of what might be called the myth of scarcity.  We have this irrational fear that there may not be enough to go around.  Jesus breaks the myth of scarcity by revealing a God of generosity.  If you don’t believe me, then just consider a few human attributes that come from God.  One human attribute is love.  The more we love, the more our capacity for love grows.  Another human attribute is forgiveness.  The more we forgive, the more our capacity for forgiveness grows.  Attributes expand and grow…it’s commodities that decrease.  Yet perhaps Jesus is even trying to assure us here that our commodities will never run out if we trust in God and share them in Jesus’ name.  Jesus reveals a God who is generous.  And when we come to sense the incredible generosity of God, we can’t help but become generous ourselves.  And maybe that’s the point.

  I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel the other day called Wild Russia.  A mother Snowy Owl had captured a lemming and brought it back to her two young owlets.  The bigger of the two snatched the lemming and began to devour it.  The smaller of the two was too weak to fight for it, and the mother owl was aware of that.  So she took the lemming from the bigger owlet and gave it to the smaller owlet, but the bigger one took it right back.  The smaller owlet was on the brink of starvation, and eventually died, because it could not compete with its sibling for food.  The narrator of the show simply called it “survival of the fittest.” 

  Maybe that’s the message Jesus is trying to drive home in us.  The way of the world is survival of the fittest.  The way of God is generosity to a fault.  And if God is abundantly generous…then maybe we should be too.  Amen.

 

12-02-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

 

CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS TRUSTWORTHY

  From November of 1997 until May of 2002, I worked on my Doctor of Ministry degree at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.  The program required that I go down there twice a year for about ten to twelve days at a time.  It was 740 miles from my driveway in Salem, Ohio to the parking lot at the seminary.  I used to leave on Sunday afternoons after leading worship at my church, and drive until 11 or 12 o’clock at night.  I was much younger then.

  My poor wife had to run the household all by herself in my absence.  And, like any good father trying to buy his way back into the good graces of his children, I always came home bearing gifts.  One year my daughter – who was probably five years old at the time – wanted me to bring her back a Furby.  A Furby was a fuzzy little robotic toy that could talk to you and move its arms and blink its eyes.  Thus, when I had a little free time, I went to a mall and found a Furby.  Money was a little tight in those days, and a Furby was not an inexpensive toy.

  A few days before I was scheduled to return home, I was talking to my daughter on the phone.  She said, “Did you get me my Furby, Daddy?”  I said, “Mariah, a Furby costs $35.00.”  To which she quickly replied, “Do you know what I got you, Daddy?”  I said, “What, Mariah?”  She said, “I got you a hug and a kiss…and that’s priceless!”  Of course, I immediately went out and dropped $35.00 on a Furby.

  There is a special bond between a father and a daughter.  There’s a special bond between a father and a son, too, but it isn’t quite the same.  My boys call me “Dad,” or one of several nicknames they have for me, but my daughter always calls me, “Daddy.”  She’s twenty years old now and is a junior in college.  And the last thing she says to me whenever I talk to her on the phone is, “I love you, Daddy.”  That’s a very special word to me.  I suspect that’s a very special word to many of you as well.  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

  Several weeks ago, we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything within us.  Change happens when something else is modified.  What is it that needs to be modified?  What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is.  We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is if we’re ever going to change who and what we are… because everything about us stems from our own internal narrative.

  As Jesus is God incarnate, we determined to let Jesus establish our new internal narrative.  We noted how many of us see God as an angry judge.  Citing a passage from the gospel of John, Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  In their minds, it had to be one or the other.  Blindness was believed to be punishment from an angry God.  Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them.  He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.  He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  In other words, “God is good; God wills the good...and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.”  Then Jesus healed the man born blind.  The point is that God wills what’s best for us.  The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture.  Yet the narrative Jesus sets out to establish within us is that God is good.

  Today our aim is to establish the narrative within us that God is also trustworthy.  Consider the passage I read from the gospel according to Mark.  Jesus has just shared his last supper with his disciples, and established what we call the sacrament of communion.  It was late on that first Maundy Thursday.  Looming on the horizon was the first Good Friday; looming on the horizon was Jesus’ impending crucifixion.  Thus, Jesus left the upper room and went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

  He took with him Peter and James and John.  Knowing exactly what was about to happen to him, he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death.  Remain here, and watch.”  Then going a little further into the garden, Jesus dropped to his knees and cried, “Abba, Father, all things are possible with thee.  Remove this cup from me…yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”  Now I could probably write an entire book about the rich theological content of that one simple prayer.  Instead, let’s take a look at just a couple of things, and try to understand the narrative Jesus reveals to us here about God. 

  The first thing Jesus says is, “Abba, Father.”  The word “Abba” is an Aramaic word.  Aramaic, of course, was the language of the day.  Hebrew was the language of the Scriptures, Greek was the language of the Romans, but Aramaic was the language of the people of God.  The word “Abba” only appears three times in all of Scripture: once on Jesus’ lips in the Garden of Gethsemane, once in Romans and once in Galatians.  The word literally means, “Daddy.”  So in other words, at Jesus’ most crucial time of trial, he cries out to God, saying, “Daddy!  Help me!” 

  Such was the relationship between Jesus and God.  Jesus called him, “Daddy.”  The word itself implies a closeness, a relationship, and an intimacy that defies description.  What’s more, I think it reveals the level of trust that Jesus had in God.

  A number of years ago, my family and I were at the Kennywood amusement park in Pittsburgh.  There is a roller coaster there called The Phantom’s Revenge.  I wanted to go on it, but neither of my boys would go on it with me.  My daughter said, “I’ll go on it with you, Daddy.” 

  So we stood in line for 45 minutes.  We were fortunate enough to sit in the front seats of the very first car.  The ride lasted all of a minute-and-a-half and – truth be told – it scared me to death!  I don’t think I’ve ridden it since!  It’s because I don’t like to stand in line that long, not because I’m afraid or anything.  Anyway, after we got off, I asked my daughter, “Mariah, were you afraid?”  She said, “No.”  I said, “Why not?”  She said, “Because I was with you, Daddy.”

  For better or for worse, my daughter trusted me.  I was and am clearly not worthy of such implicit trust.  I love her and would do anything for her, and I would never put her in harm’s way intentionally.  But I am a limited, finite human being.  In her eyes, however, being with me meant that she was completely safe.  Maybe that’s what it means to have a Daddy.

  Jesus called God, “Daddy,” when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Thomas Smail puts it well in his book, The Forgotten Father.  He writes:

The Father that Jesus addresses in the garden is the one that he has known all his life and found to be bountiful in his provision, reliable in his promises, and utterly faithful in his love.  He can obey the will that sends him to the cross with hope and expectation, because it is the will of Abba whose love has been so proved – that it can now be trusted so fully – by being obeyed so completely.  This is not legal obedience driven by commandment…but trusting response to known love.

  In Jesus’ mind, God was trustworthy.  We know that because Jesus called him “Daddy.”  Yet note that he also says, “Remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”  Remove this cup from me.  The Greek word for cup is po-tare-ion.  It literally means cup or drinking vessel.  Yet the cup is meant to represent, by implication, what it contains.  The cup Jesus sought to have removed was the pain and suffering he was about to endure.  Perhaps we have a cup or two we’d like to have removed as well.

  I have a good friend who battled leukemia six years ago.  The chemotherapy protocol and the bone marrow transplant he endured were nearly unbearable.  When it comes to cancer, sometimes it seems as though the cure is worse than the disease.  Yet my friend survived.  He got through it and was living a happy and successful life of gratitude to God.  And then the cancer came back.  What do you say to a person you know and love who says to you, “Why is God doing this to me?” 

  We want to say to God – as Jesus said to God – “Remove this cup from me.”  And when we say that, we can say it with confidence because sometimes God does remove the cup.  But sometimes he doesn’t.  He did not remove the cup from Jesus.  Yet Jesus trusted God enough to say, “Not what I will, but what thou wilt.”  Jesus trusted God enough to make his way to the cross.

  It occurs to me that perhaps the problem is that we think this is the most important phase of our existence.  We think this earthly life is the most important phase of our existence.  Maybe it’s not.  Maybe this earthly life is like a seed that we plant in the ground.  The seed – with the proper sunlight, nutrition and care – grows into a beautiful flower.  In other words, maybe the most important phase of our existence is yet to come.  After all, the next phase of our existence is supposed to last for all eternity.

  Jesus believed that God was trustworthy.  He trusted God enough to make his way to the cross.  He knew the proper way to view God’s grace and mercy.  I’m not entirely sure we do.  Thus, I want to conduct an experiment with you.  It’s an experiment the Rev. Dr. George Buttrick conducted with the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown New York City some 60 years ago.  I believe it is equally applicable today.

  What do you see?  What do you see when you look at this piece of paper?  (Walk down the aisle and display the paper.)  There is no trick here.  Just tell me what you see.  What do you see?

  You see a black dot, don’t you?  We focus on the black dot and fail to notice the white paper that surrounds it.  And therein lies the problem.  We notice the black dots in our existence and fail to notice the widespread mercy that surrounds it.  We need to learn to deliberately call to mind the joys of our existence, and to focus on them...if we’re ever going to come to find God to be trustworthy.

  Counting your blessings is a powerful spiritual exercise.  Perhaps what we need to do is conduct a spiritual inventory.  Make a list of all the blessings in your life.  Are you thankful for your family?  Write that down.  Are you thankful for your home?  Write that down.  Are you thankful for your job?  Who gave you the mental capacity to earn a living?  Are you thankful for the air that you breathe or the water you drink?  Who created the earth and stocked it with abundance?  Make a list of all the blessings in your life.  I think what you will find is that there’s a lot of white paper surrounding the blots on your page as well.

  Our troubles are real.  But they are small compared to God’s widespread mercy.  The more we are able to comprehend how many blessings we really have – freely given and freely received – the more we will come to realize that God truly wills what’s best for us.  And when that moment of revelation occurs, our trust in God…can’t help but increase.  Amen.

 

11-25-2012 Sermon by Rev. Larry Peters

 

BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST IS KING

Rev. Larry Peters

November 25, 2012

Psalm 95:1-5

2 Samuel 5:1-5

John 12:9-19

  Hearing today’s gospel lesson you might think that I have the seasons mixed up.  You say “This lesson is about Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem – Palm Sunday.”  Well, yes it is – but the lesson is also telling of Jesus coming as King, and that is truly the season we are in!  The King is coming!  Make straight His way!  Make straight His way into your heart, your home.  Get yourself straight, and your home in order – for the King is coming!  Are you ready to meet the King?

  Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, a day on which we declare that Christ is King and no other; that Christ rules and that the reign of Christ is supreme!  One of the problems with Christ the King Sunday, though, is that here in America we are not used to the idea of being under the rule of the kings.  This country was birthed through a conflict, a revolutionary war with the country of England and its king.  America has no history of kings who have lived within its borders.  But we know of citizenship; and we pride ourselves on being good citizens of the country in which we live.  We should know that there is a difference between kings and kingdoms, governments and leaders of this world and that of Christ the King and the Kingdom of God.

  Jesus said that His Kingdom is not of this world, and His followers do not follow the ways of this world.  Christ the King Sunday is about declaring and recognizing Christ as Lord of your life and preparing for His Kingdom come and His reign as King of kings and Lord of lords.  That is why I ask if you are ready to receive Christ as your King.  The decision you make to receive Christ as Lord of your life marks a new beginning for you.

  The time is right.  Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the church calendar, and marks a new beginning – the season of Advent.  Advent itself means a new arrival, a coming of a king.  Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent with our focus on the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord at Christmas – Christ’s birth.  We watch for the signs of Christmas and for when Christ will come again.  We proclaim that the Kingship of Christ has come, is now, and will come again!  Christ is always King as we must always recognize it!

  The gospels tell us that the King, our Lord, arrives as a baby at Christmas.  We are told that most people did not recognize the significance of the birth of Jesus, that it was overlooked,  So it is important for us now, at this time, to remind ourselves that we are to recognize the King our Lord, and who we are as His people.  We are to watch for and recognize the signs of the Kingdom and understand the significance of being the church in these times.

  It is a busy time of the year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it is very easy to overlook some important things.  We need to take the time to recognize Christ the King and to realize who we are as the King’s people, the church in the world today.  We need to understand the significance of the ministry to which we are called to do at this time in history; to remember what the vision is, what the mission is.  Do not lose sight of the glory Christ has revealed to us, and will yet reveal to us!  Do not overlook what is important.  And hold on to that which is absolutely essential to faithfully live a life that is true to our Lord God!

  Let’s try to see where we are in relation to our gospel lesson.  We read that a great crowd had gathered.  They were excited to hear that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.  So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel!”  Jesus found a donkey and rode on it; as it is written: “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.  Look, your king is coming, riding on a donkey!”   And those who were there said, “Look, everyone has gone after him!”

  Christ the King!  Let’s not forget it!  Oh – but how easy it is to overlook some important things, or to get confused in this day and age.  We might be more familiar with a similar story that goes like this: A great crowd had gathered.  They were excited to hear that Santa was coming to the mall.  So they took their kids and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hey Santa!  Can you get me this, and that, and the other?!  Santa sure is great!”  Santa had reindeer and a sleigh and rode on it; as the song says, “You better not cry, better not pout – Santa Claus is coming to town!”  And those who were there said, “Look, everyone has gone after him!”

  Now I know that to come down hard on Halloween the day after this city observed its long tradition of having the largest nighttime parade in the state – was one thing.  And I did promise Rev. Jensen that I’d go easy on Santa Claus.  I like Santa Claus; and he may be a nice guy.  But I have to say this: Santa Claus is not our king – because Jesus Christ is our King!

  There are two kingdoms at odds with each other; an earthly kingdom and a heavenly kingdom.  We are the people of God in the world.  We should not follow the ways of the world, because we are under the Lordship of Christ our King.  We are the people of God, the church in the world today, and our mission is to live faithfully and to help lead others to know Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Let us remember who we are, and why we are, and what God would have us to do and to be!  Let’s not get caught up in the world and lose sight of God; the glory Christ has revealed to us and will yet reveal to us.  Do not overlook what is important.  And hold on to that which is absolutely essential to faithfully live a life that is true to our Lord God!

  David was an earthly king with kingdoms and possessions of this world, yet we knew the Lord God to be his King!  Before he became a king, David was a young shepherd boy.  God chose to anoint him and equip him in a very special way.  David was strong and courageous.  He had killed lions and bears who threatened his flock.  He would fight and kill the Philistine giant, Goliath, who challenged the Israelites.  David went into battle believing that God would give him the victory.  The Israelite people recognized David to be a great man, and they made him their king.

  There were some very low points in David’s life, too.  He sinned.  He committed adultery.  He was involved in a man’s murder.  He knew in his heart that he was a sinner; and he knew that the only way that he could be made clean was to go to God.  He would pour out his heart to God.  Many of the psalms written by David reflect the emotions that were felt.  He went to God, just as he was, and confessed his sins and asked God for forgiveness.

  David was a king, but he was human as we are.  David was strong and courageous, but that would not save him.  The point that I hope to make here is that David knew that there is a king, and it wasn’t who he was – but who the Lord God is!  David did not lose sight of God, his Lord, his King.  Because of his faithfulness and the courage he had to face danger and to confess his sins, God loved David.  The Bible says that God called David “a man after His own heart.”  The words to the hymn come to mind now:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.”

  Those words were inspired by the reading found in Hebrews chapter twelve.  Specifically at verse two where we are told more about Jesus.  We learn that we are to look to Jesus who is the pioneer and perfecter (the beginning and completion) of our faith.  We are to build up our faith in Jesus.  We are to build up ourselves in Jesus.  By keeping our eyes fixed upon Jesus; by seeing and knowing who He is as Lord of our life and our King; by following faithfully His leading, Jesus will free us from the bondage of sin and to this world by receiving the power of Christ!

  Jesus takes us from our weakness and insecurities to make us stronger in our faith, knowing that we are children of the King!  The King who endured the cross for our sake!  The King, our Lord God, who went from what looked like shame and defeat, and completely turned it around to proclaim glory and victory!  The Lord our King who is Risen and seated on the throne at the right hand of God!  His reign is now!, and He must rule in our hearts!  Our eyes have been opened to the truth revealed to us.  Now we must take this truth to heart.  Christ is King and we must recognize it!

  Ephesians 1:17 says that the apostle “Paul prays that people may have the eyes of their hearts enlightened.  If they are not enlightened it is very hard to recognize the riches of Christ and the hope that He brings.”  With Christ our King, we have hope!  Jesus brings freedom from hopelessness!  When we know that we are of Christ, we can offer Christ to others.  When we go to people and offer them Christ, we are offering the hope and freedom that Christ brings when they make Him Lord of their life. 

  Do not lose sight of the glory Christ has revealed to us and will yet reveal to us!  May we never lose sight of who we are, and why we are, what God calls us to do.  May we never lose sight of this vision for our church, ourselves as citizens of His Kingdom – on earth as it is in heaven!

  God has called us to be a very important part of the vision, the mission, the ministry of the church.  When we reach out to others, proclaiming the good news from the pulpit or over a cup of coffee, sharing with others, caring for others, feeling for those who are suffering, being glad for those who are happy, ministering to the sick, bringing back to the fold those who have wandered off, making a place for those who have no place to be, we offer them Christ so that they may see and know Him as Lord.

  Offer them Christ!  Tell them of the hope and freedom Christ brings.  Show them the way to be free from the bondage of sin and to this world by receiving the power of Christ.  May you be so empowered, encouraged and enabled to fit others to the kingdom.  We are called to be more than we are – because Jesus Christ is King!  Thank be to God!  Amen!

 

 

   

 

 

 

11-11-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

 

CHRISTIANITY 101: GOD IS GOOD

  My sister, Lora, and her husband, Mike, were married in September of 1982.  For many years they tried to have a baby, without success.  Then, finally, in December of 1995, they had a little boy.  They named him Griffen.  He was a beautiful, healthy, perfect little boy…and no parents ever loved their son any more than Mike and Lora loved Griffen.  Their house had become a home; a couple had become a family.

  When Griffen was eighteen months old, Lora was playing with him on a swing in the back yard.  For some strange reason, he didn’t seem to feel very well, so they sat down together on a blanket.  Suddenly, Griffen collapsed.  Mike and Lora began a frantic trip to the hospital.  As Mike drove and Lora held their little boy, she suddenly cried out, “Hurry, Mike!  Griffen’s stopped breathing!”  Mike quickly pulled into a fire station and those firemen – God bless every one of them – worked valiantly to restore that little boy to life.  In the end, they were unable.  No one knows to this day why that little boy died.

  Mike and Lora were devastated.  There was nothing anyone could say to make their emptiness go away.  Yet believe it or not, there were some people who tried.  One person said to them, “You’re young.  You can always have another baby.”  Another person said, “God never gives us any more than we can handle.”  Another person said, “God just needed him more than you did.”  And last but not least, another person said, “It was God’s will.”  As you might suspect, Mike and Lora were not terribly comforted.

  Does God sometimes give us more than we can handle?  Did God need their baby more than they did?  Was the death of their son really God’s will?  What kind of God would allow his children to suffer so?  Is that the kind of God we are called to worship and adore?  Who is this God that we should love him?  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

  Last week we talked about the contrast between our tendency to gratify the desires of the flesh and the Apostle Paul’s call for us to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  We noted how human will power lacks the capacity to change much of anything.  Change happens when something else is modified.  What needs to be modified?  What needs to be modified is our personal narrative of who and what God is.  We need to have the proper story in our minds as to who and what God is if we’re ever going to change who and what we are…because everything stems from our own internal narrative.

  What does our internal narrative tell us about why bad things happen to people, like that which happened to my sister and her husband?  People actually said to them, “It was God’s will,” and I have no doubt that they really believe that.  Of course, it’s easier to see something as God’s will when someone else is suffering, but that’s beside the point.  We see that same kind of narrative about God in the passage we read from the book of Job.  Allow me to set the scene for you.

  There once was a man in a land called Uz whose name was Job.  Now Job was blameless and upright; a man who feared God and turned away from evil.  He had seven sons, three daughters, a barnyard full of livestock, and a multitude of servants.  He was considered by his peers to be the greatest man in the east.  He was healthy, wealthy and wise.

  As the story goes, God and Satan were having a conversation about Job.  God says to Satan, “Have you seen my servant Job?  He is upright, blameless and faithful.  There is no one else like him on all the earth!”  To which Satan replies, “Of course there is no one else like him on all the earth.  You’ve given him everything anyone could possibly want.  Let me take a few things away from him, and then let’s see how faithful he is.”

  So Satan was given permission to wreak havoc in the life of Job.  His livestock was stolen by plunderers.  His servants were killed in a fire.  His children lost their lives when a house collapsed upon them.  Yet after all that, Job worshipped God and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  But the Devil wasn’t done just yet.  He then afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.  Even his wife said to him, “Curse God and die!”  At first, Job defended God.  Yet soon after that, he came to curse the day he was born.

  Now at this point in time, let me say that I do not believe for a minute that God and Satan have conversations about people where God allows Satan to destroy their lives.  I think the book of Job is meant to be a metaphor.  Oh, there may have really been a Job who suffered so, but it is highly unlikely that God made a deal with Satan to make it that way.  The book of Job is probably a little bit like that movie where they tell us that it’s based upon a true story.  What that means is that the writer has license to elaborate a little bit.  Are you with me?

  So there sits Job in a heap of ashes, cursing the day he was born.  Three of his friends come to console him regarding the reason as to why he has suffered such a fate.  One of those friends was Zophar the Naamathite.  He says to Job, “You say, ‘My doctrine is pure and I am clean in God’s eyes.’  But oh, that God would speak and tell you the secrets of wisdom!  Know then that God exacts of you less that your guilt deserves.”  In other words, “It’s not as bad as it could be,” and “God is clearly punishing you for some sin you must have committed.”

  That, my friends, is a narrative about God.  Call it cause and effect.  When we do good things, God rewards us with good things.  When we do bad things, God punishes us with bad things.  Truth be told, this particular narrative about God hearkens back to Greek mythology.  Nearly all the ancient religions were built on a narrative that says we have to do something in order to get the blessings of the gods, and conversely, if we anger the gods we will surely be punished.  It’s a narrative that can be summed up this way: “God is an angry judge.  If you do well, you will be blessed…but if you do not, you will be punished.”

  Allow me to insert a quick theology lesson here.  As Christians we say, “What we know to be true of Jesus Christ, we know to be true of God.”  Now this occasionally runs counter to what we might read in the Old Testament.  That’s why, when we read the Old Testament as Christians, we must always interpret it as pointing to Jesus Christ.  Thus, in Jesus Christ, in a manner of speaking, God is saying to us, “No, no, no…this is who I am!”  What we know to be true of Jesus Christ, we know to be true of God.  Therefore, our narrative as to who and what God is …must come from Jesus Christ.

  So let’s look back to our earlier narrative.  Is our suffering a result of God’s punishing us for our sin?  Is God an angry judge who says to us, “If you do well, you will be blessed…but if you do not, you will be punished?”  Perhaps we need to consider what Jesus would say about that.  Perhaps we need to look at this from Jesus’ point of view.

  Consider the passage we read from the gospel according to John.  As Jesus and his disciples walked, they encountered a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples – his own disciples, mind you – asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Do you see the narrative from which they were operating?  If a man was born blind, it was clearly the result of some sin his parents committed, or the result of some sin he must have committed in the womb.  Let me also say that those who believed in reincarnation would claim that his blindness was the result of some sin he committed in a previous life.  In fact, reincarnationists believed – I am not making this up – reincarnationists believed that when a man was born blind, it was because he had killed his mother in a previous life. 

  The narrative from which the disciples operated was that God was an angry judge.  Since a man was born blind, it must have been God’s will…it must have been some kind of punishment from God.  So they said to Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  In their minds, it had to be one or the other.

  Jesus set out to establish a new narrative within them.  He quickly replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.  He was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  In other words, “God is good; God wills the good…and the glory of God will ultimately be revealed in him.”  And upon saying those words, Jesus healed the man born blind.  The point is that God wills what’s best for all of us.  The problem is that we don’t see the big picture as God sees the big picture.

  When I graduated from seminary in May of 1985, I had several viable options for employment.  One opportunity was as a solo pastor in a dying church in St. Louis, Missouri.  One was as a solo pastor in a very small town in Columbus Junction, Iowa…and one was as an assistant pastor in a fairly large church in North Platte, Nebraska.  Plotting out my career path in my mind, I felt that accepting the call to North Platte, Nebraska would afford me the best opportunity to get where I wanted to go.  Of course, that reminds me of one of my favorite sayings.  That saying is, “If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans!”  In any case, I turned down the churches in St. Louis and Columbus Junction, and accepted the call to North Platte.

  Prior to accepting the call to a church, I had to go before what was called in those days, The Care of Candidates Committee.  We debated various theological topics for six long hours, and I truly felt I won the battle…but in the end, I lost the war.  By a score of three to two, they voted not to ordain me.  They never really did say why.  Needless to say, I was devastated.  Four years of college and three years of seminary were down the drain.  I thought about going back to school to get a Ph.D. to teach.  I thought about switching over to the United Methodist Church.  After several days of frustration and consternation – not to mention the crushing disappointment I saw in my parents’ eyes – one night, I flopped down on my bed, looked up to the heavens, and cried out to God, “God, I give up!  What do you want me to do?”  And suddenly I knew what I had to do.  I had to contact the church in Columbus Junction again.

  To make a long story short, everything fell into place and a very grace-filled congregation taught me how to be a minister.  But here’s the point.  When the Care of Candidates Committee refused to ordain me, I was more devastated than I had ever been in my entire life.  It seemed like God had abandoned me and the world was coming to an end.  But God had something else in mind.  Had I not gone to Columbus Junction, I would not have the wife I have, I would not have the children I have, and I certainly would not be here. 

  Isn’t it amazing the impact one little decision can have on your entire life?  And isn’t it wonderful that when you get it wrong, sometimes God intervenes to set things right?  God is good.  That’s my personal narrative about God.  God is very, very good.  When things initially went sour, naturally, I was not in a position to realize that.  Yet perhaps our own experiences of disappointment with God say more about us and our expectations…than they do about God.

  When you realize that God smiles more than he weeps; when you realize that his laugh is louder than his reprimand; when you realize that nothing can separate you from the love of God; when you realize that God’s arms are outstretched toward you; when you realize that God makes all things work together for good; when you realize that God has been calling you beloved, innocent and pure ever since he created the universe; when you realize that God has been proud of you every time you’ve succeeded and every time you’ve failed; when you realize that God is the one who’s responsible for every good thing you have; when you realize that God thinks you’re worth dying for; when you realize that God is for you, not against you; when you realize that God is good…everything changes.  Now there’s a narrative about God that we would be wise to claim.  Amen.

 

11-4-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

CHRISTIANITY 101: CAN A LEOPARD CHANGE ITS SPOTS?

  My wife and I were recently driving home after taking our daughter out to dinner in Pittsburgh.  We were travelling north on Interstate 279, right where it merges into Interstate 79.  We were in the right lane behind a very small car that appeared to contain a very large man.  As the lanes came together, the man in the small car in front of us quickly moved from the right lane into the center lane.  It just so happened that there was a Ford pickup truck moving at a very high rate of speed in that center lane, and the small car cut him off.  The man in the pickup truck slammed on his brakes and laid on his horn.  Then he cut in front of me in the right lane, raced around the small car, then jerked his wheel back to the left, cutting off the man in the small car.  He nearly caused about a ten-car pileup.   

  The man in the pickup truck soon got back into the right lane and got off of the interstate at the Wexford exit.  As he proceeded down the exit ramp, he suddenly slowed his vehicle, rolled down his window, stuck out his arm…and extended his index finger.  I believe that’s what is euphemistically referred to as a Pittsburgh wave!  In any case, as we moved past the large man in the small car, I noticed that he was wearing a black shirt with a little white collar.  The man in the small car was a priest!  Thus, the man in the pickup truck cut off – and flipped off – a man of the cloth.  It all happened because one man had cost another man about a quarter of a second from his day.  Some people are just so angry these days.

  A man named Scott Rothstein graduated from law school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in May of 1988.  For 14 years, his law career was relatively inauspicious.  Then in February of 2002, he began a law firm of his own.  In his own words, he was bound and determined to make it the biggest and the best in the state.  But Rothstein needed capital to feed his appetite for success.  The question thus became: Where was he going to get it?

  Rothstein came up with an investment plan that involved purchasing fabricated structured settlements, where people sell their monthly payments from legal cases for lump sums of cash.  The ruse attracted hundreds of investors who paid millions of dollars for settlements that did not exist.  Rothstein promised a return of 15% or more on his investors’ investments.  It all sounded too good to be true…which, of course, it was.

  Rothstein himself owned a fleet of luxury cars.  He had a yacht named after his wife.  He lived in an opulent house where even the toilets were overlaid in gold.  He became a local celebrity.  He was the go-to guy for politicians in need of money, and he was a source of enormous donations for local charities, as well.  Rothstein spent money like it would never run out…but when it did, the devastating truth was revealed.  Rothstein had run a 1.2 billion dollar Ponzi scheme.  In the end, forty-eight-year-old Scott Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in prison.  Some people are just so greedy these days.

  Now try this story on for size.  A woman writes, “My husband got tangled up in a text-messaging fling with one of my friends.  I caught on to it after a couple of weeks, but had no actual proof until I could get my hands on one of our cell phone bills.  There were over 4000 texts and several phone calls between them over the course of a single month!  I confronted him about it, and he admitted to everything.  He says it was nothing more than a phone thing, but I’m not 100% sure.  Still, I’ve done everything possible to make his life absolutely miserable for the last few months.

  “I got a little revenge on my so-called friend as well.  She has very long hair, and takes such pride in it, that I knew I had to do something to ruin it.  So I went to a local bath and body shop and purchased a gift basket of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and perfume.  Then I left the basket on her front porch with a note that said that it had come from a secret admirer…but not until I’d had a little fun with the shampoo and conditioner.  I poured the contents out in a bowl, and replaced them with Nair hair remover.  Then I placed some of the original product back in the bottles, just to make sure they smelled like they should.   

  “She fell for it.  She used the products and most of her hair fell out.  It thrills me to death every time I see her now!  I still have a little more revenge to get, but I haven’t got all the details worked out just yet.  In time, I’m sure I will.”  Some people are just so vengeful these days.  Okay, that’s a good one.  But still, some people are just so vengeful these days. 

  Truth be told, the protagonists in the scenes I have just described could conceivably describe any one of us.  We all have a tendency to be angry, we all have a tendency to be greedy, and we all have a tendency to be just a little bit vengeful.  We all have a tendency to – as the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians – “gratify the desires of the flesh.”  What are the desires of the flesh?  The Apostle Paul says, “The works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity and licentiousness; strife, greed and anger; dissention, envy and vengefulness.”  The list goes on and on.  Paul later adds, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Thus, perhaps we could say that doing those things is not a good thing.  To gratify the desires of the flesh is to keep oneself from encountering the peace of God.

  Paul’s antidote to the desires of the flesh is to live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  Yet the two are so mutually opposed to one another that one cannot possibly give allegiance to both simultaneously.  “The fruit of the Spirit,” Paul says, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  Talk about a contrast of opposites!  The question thus becomes: How do we live by the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, as opposed to the desires of the flesh?  After all, it’s human nature to want to gratify the desires of the flesh.  Can a leopard change its spots?  Can a person really change who and what they are on the inside?

  What people generally do when they want to change something about themselves is to muster up their willpower.  When is the most common time for people to muster up their willpower?  It happens every New Year’s Day.  We call it our New Year’s resolutions.  Of course, research reveals that about 95% of all New Year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January.  And most people assume that the reason they failed to keep their resolutions is because they didn’t have enough willpower.  That’s unfortunate, because willpower – in and of itself – doesn’t really have the capacity to change much of anything.

  You see, the will actually has no power at all.  The will is the human capacity to choose.  “Should I wear my black shoes or my brown shoes today?” we ask ourselves.  If we choose the black shoes, our will is the hinge upon which the decision was made.  But the will did not actually do anything.  The will is not an organ or a muscle that can contract or expand.

  The will is more like a horse that responds to the impulse of its rider.  For example, a horse does not choose where to go.  It goes whatever direction the rider tells it to go.  The will works a lot like that.  Yet instead of one rider, human will has several.  The three primary influences on the will are the mind, the body and the social context.  First, what we think in our minds will in turn create emotions, which lead to decisions or actions.  Second, the body is a complex inner working of impulses that influence the will.  Most of our bodily systems function without our help, but when the body has a need – food or water, for example – it expresses itself to the mind through sensations like hunger or thirst…saying, “Get food or water now!”  And finally, the will is also influenced by social context.  We are highly influenced by the people around us.  Some might call it peer pressure.

  The will itself, however, is neither strong nor weak.  It only has one task: to do what the mind – influenced by the body and the social context – tells it to do.  Therefore, change – or a lack thereof – is not an issue of the will at all.  Change happens when something else is modified.  The question now is: What?  What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots?  What must be modified in order for us to change?

  We human beings are creatures who live by stories – our stories.  From our earliest days we are told stories by our parents that help us interpret how life is or how it ought to be.  As we grow, we form stories of our own on how life is or how it ought to be.  Yet sometimes the stories we form are not as healthy as they should be.

  John was a young man who was born into a house of privilege.  His father owned a thriving insurance firm, and his mother was a social butterfly.  From the time he was an infant, John had everything he wanted, except the one thing he wanted most: the love and affection of his parents.  Thus, he proceeded to come up with ways to get his parents’ attention.  If he could not get it in positive ways, perhaps he could get it in negative ways.

  It all began in kindergarten.  He was accustomed to getting his way at home, and became quite frustrated when he could not get his way at school.  He discovered that at the base of his desk chair leg, there was a stem that enabled the chair to slide.  If you put your feet on either side of it, you could pull the stem off.  The stem was held in place by a long narrow brad that made it resemble a very large tack.  John came up with the idea of putting that tack on the chairs of unsuspecting fellow students.  It amused him to no end when they sprang back out of their chairs far more quickly than they had sat down.  Discipline was handled internally, until the day John placed a tack on the substitute teacher’s chair.  His father was called down to the school, and after considerable negotiation, his father got him off the hook.

  When John was in the sixth grade, the local newspaper ran a front page story about an elementary school break-in.  Televisions and video equipment were stolen.  A few days later, John’s father was startled to discover that all the missing equipment was in his back yard shed.  John swore up and down that he had not broken into the school; that he was only holding the stuff for someone else.  John’s father returned the equipment, and again utilizing his considerable negotiation skills, got his son off the hook.  Are you starting to see a pattern forming here?  John acts out, and then his father bails him out…only John keeps raising the stakes.

  This pattern went on for a number of years.  Finally, when John was in college, after a wild night on the town, John and a few of his friends decided they wanted some railroad ties to decorate their apartment.  They removed a number of railroad ties from an active railway line, causing a train to derail.  Fortunately, no one was hurt…but this time, John’s father could not get him off.  He ended up spending a year in jail.

  Like I said before, we human beings are creatures who live by stories.  John’s story was that he did not believe he was worthy of love and attention, so he concocted various schemes in order to get it.  What John probably needed was a good psychologist to help him develop a measure of self-worth.  He needed to discover that he was a person of value, even when he was not the center of attention.  In order to change his behavior, what he needed was a new narrative.

  We were speaking a moment ago about overcoming our human nature.  We were speaking of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God as opposed to the desires of the flesh.  We noted how the will is incapable of securing such change within us.  We noted how change happens when something else is modified within us.  The question was, “What?”  What must be modified in order for this leopard to change its spots?  What must be modified in order for us to change?

  Maybe what we need is a new narrative as well.  Maybe what needs to change is our narrative about who and what God is.  Do we see God as vengeful and vindictive, or do we see God as loving and compassionate?  Do we see the providence of God as something to be feared, or do we see the providence of God as something to be cherished?  Did God send his Son to be tortured and killed, or did God himself come to earth to suffer in our stead?  Maybe we need to examine our own narratives as to who and what God is.  And that is exactly what we’re going to be doing over the course of the next few weeks.  Amen.

 

10-28-2012 Sermon by Rev. Larry Peters

 

TO GLORIFY GOD IN THIS WORLD

Rev. Larry Peters

October 28, 2012

Psalm 36:1-4

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

John 17:14-19

  What we hear in our Gospel lesson today is part of a prayer that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ prays to God for us.  Imagine the power of this prayer!  Think of the importance of this prayer and the need for our Lord Jesus to pray this prayer for us.

  What does the Lord say when he prays for us?  Let’s look at vv. 14-19 again.  The Lord says first of all that he has given us God’s message.  We have received the Word of God!  This, then, should make a difference in who we are; unless the message, God’s Word, has meant nothing at all to us.  Jesus is the Word that was made flesh and sent by God into the world to save us!  The Word is alive, and will bring life to all who are open to receive this gift in good faith.  God’s Word, we believe, contains everything necessary for our salvation.  God’s Word has the power to shape us into being God’s people!

  This is what God wants for us.  It is also what we should want; to be in this covenant relationship where God is our God, and we are God’s people!  We are set apart from all other creation in this regard.  To be set apart meant that there is a separation, a distinction between us and everything else in the world.

  The result of this is that the world hates us.  Our Lord Jesus himself says this in his prayer for us.  The world hates us; but it should come as no surprise to us, and we are comforted in the fact that Jesus knows how it feels.  Jesus says in John 15:18-19; “If the world hates you, just remember that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, then the world would love you as its own.  But I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it; that is why the world hates you.”  So this part of our Lord’s Prayer for us is about God’s claim upon us as the people of God; and how there are forces in this world that are in complete opposition to this.

  How do we respond to this?  It all matters on how you define Christian character.  Do you see the Christian sitting on one side of the fence allowing all things to happen in this world as if nothing can be done about it?  Or do you see the Christian standing on the other side, faithful, determined, and with courage and resolve to make a difference?  Will we run and hide, or will we stand our ground?  Jesus prays to God saying; “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but I do ask you to keep them safe from the Evil One.”  It sounds to me like our Lord Jesus wants us to stand and fight!  Our Lord, our Commander in Chief, knows that we are in a battle-but the battle is ours!  We will fight, we will win, we will have ultimate victory!

  This world is to be a different sort of place because we are in it!  We will not give in to the ways of the world!  We will work to make a difference for good and for God!  Our purpose, as the people of God, is to glorify God in this world!  Oh yeah, the world hates that!  The world hates God.  The world hates you and me; but Christians, are you ready to overcome this world’s hatred with the love of God?  Are you ready to overcome evil with good?  Are you willing to make a difference?  Are you able to be strong and firm in the face of adversity?  Be of good courage and confidence!  Our Lord and Savior prays for us!  Our God is with us wherever we go!  And we go as the people of God dedicated to loving and serving God in this world!  To God be the glory!

  This has the devil all worked up.  The apostle Peter gives a report saying that “like a roaring lion our enemy, the devil, prowls around looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  We are given instruction to stand firm in our faith and resist him (v.9).  And know that we do not face this situation alone.  The apostle Peter reminds us that we have brothers and sisters in the faith throughout the world who are in the battle with us.

  And we are not alone because God is with us!  God promises to us again and again, as we hear in the Book of Acts, that “we will receive power when the Holy Spirit of God comes upon us; and we will be witnesses for God in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and throughout the world”.  Let’s be sure that we do our part right here in Meadville and the surrounding area!

  We’re coming up to one of my favorite times of the year.  It comes after the elections and after Halloween.  I don’t want to get into a discussion so much about politics today.  Certainly this election is an important one, as all are; but I don’t have time to fry that egg.  But I would like to put some heat on Halloween, or at least bring it to light so we can see it revealed for what it is.  I believe that it is a pastor’s duty to sound the alarm when the enemy approaches and to prepare the saints for spiritual warfare.

  I used to like Halloween, as I suppose every American kid does.  But as I’ve grown older and wiser, I’ve come to believe that Halloween is not something to kid around with or to kid ourselves about.  My mother has noticed my change in attitude, and reminds me of how I used to like Halloween and always looked forward to going “trick-or-treating.”

  Let’s pause here a moment to examine this one of many aspects of Halloween.  “Trick-or-Treat!”, what is that-some kind of threat?  It sounds like a person is saying; “If you don’t do something good for me, then I’ll do something bad to you.”  This can’t be a Christian attitude.  If you want to do more research on Halloween, I believe you’ll have revealed to you more evidence of why this can’t be a Christian holiday.

  Now back to when I was a kid.  I remember one particular Halloween when my friend and I decided to go trick-or-treating” together.  We had the idea to dress as stage coach robbers complete with holsters, toy guns, cowboy hat, and a bandana scarf pulled over our faces.  Our plan was to play the part.  We figured to score big that year on our haul of candy by “holding up” other trick-or-treaters.  Perhaps you’ve heard of the Frito Banditos from Saegertown.  No?  It must be because my mother overheard our plans and put a stop to it.  The bandits never rode out that night-or since.  Looking back, I think that we were saved by grace because certainly a posse would have come after us, and we would have been pounded by some of our intended victims.

  But I wasn’t done yet.  On another Halloween night, I had some firecrackers left over from the Fourth of July.  I thought that I would liven things up a bit by tossing them out from behind a bush at the feet of passing trick-or-treaters.  You didn’t know that I was such a bad boy.  I’m confessing some of my sins before you now, and it’s quite refreshing actually.  The point that I want to make is: however innocent and harmless our fun seems to be, Halloween tends to bring out the bad in us; and it needs to be seen that it is bad for us.

  Halloween originates from pre-Christian times.  Early rituals were celebrated among ancient European peoples.  Again, I encourage you to do some study on your own and become aware of what Halloween is actually about.  The truth will set you free!  I learned that when the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, they made sure to leave behind those unholy practices related to Halloween.  They in fact banned any such observances in this new land.  Remember to give thanks for that this Thanksgiving.  I was surprised to find out that Halloween was not celebrated in this country until the year 1845.  Unfortunately, Halloween eventually found its way over.

  It is shocking to see how the celebration of Halloween has permeated our society in a relatively short period of 167 years!  Let me read to you a brief portion of an article that was in The Meadville Tribune on Friday the 12^th of October, entitled “We’re Spending Billions on Halloween.”

“According to a survey by the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to lay out $2.87 billion on Halloween costumes this year, spending more than $1.1 billion on children’s costumes, $1.4 billion on adult costumes and $370 million on pet costumes.”  (Even pets?  How far will this go?)

 

“The average person will spend $79.82 on Halloween candy, costumes and décor, bringing total spending to $8 billion – the most in the survey’s 10 year history.”

 

The numbers keep going up!  And keep in mind that all Americans have felt the impact of being in the midst of an historic economic downturn.  The article says; “Get the impression that we love this holiday?”

  But why?  Why do we love a holiday that is anti-Christian?  Why do we spend so much of our money on Halloween?  America’s churches, for the most part, are barely able to meet their annual budgets thus limiting their means to provide essential ministry.  And America’s schools are no longer permitted to allow for prayer or reading of Bibles in school; but the celebration of Halloween is big in our schools. 

  Part of the appeal of Halloween is that it is fun.  What’s the harm in having a little fun?  Well, I’m not against having fun.  But we do need to be careful.  Many a sin is fun, or we wouldn’t be so caught up in it!  Be aware!  Be informed!  Know the truth!  Know that as our enemy, the devil, is like a lion ready to devour us, he is also like a snake capable of deceiving us.  The devil has tricked people into believing that Halloween is harmless fun.  The devil has candy-coated Halloween to cover up the lies.  And the devil doesn’t care a hoot about us.  Why should we give the devil his due?

  Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ loves us and wants us to know the truth!  Recall again how he prays for us that we come to see and know the truth.  He is Truth!  Let us be people who know the truth and follow the truth!  We live in this world, but let us not be misled by anything in this world.  Let us be strong and faithful while living in the world, and dedicated to making a difference for good and for God.  We have a purpose in this world and right here where we live, work, play, go to school and go to church.  We are to glorify God in this world!

  The God of all grace will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.  To him be the power forever and ever.  Amen!