All Saints Anglican Church
February 4, 2007
Luke 5: 1-11; I Cor
Today, we have a very happy convergence of “Godincidences”. Our Gospel readings couldn’t be more appropriate for a baptism! Jesus calls his disciples to give up fishing for fish and fish for men instead. I’d like to begin our time by asking a special assistant to come up and help me.
Heather (4 years old) comes up with her mom. We teach the Chorus: Fishers of Men.
“I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men if you follow me. If you follow me; if you follow me. I will make you fishers of men if you follow me.”
So here the disciples had been fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus appropriates Peter’s boat and teaches the crowd, then asks Peter to put into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon is very unsure about this proposition, but obeys – like most of us… Well, if you say so…
They let down their nets and just about kill themselves trying to hoist in all the fish they catch. Big contrast: work all night on your own and catch nothing – go out with Jesus and fill the boat. Hmmm, which one is better?
The catch of fish was symbolic and prophetic. It foreshadowed what Peter and the others would be doing as apostles. In the natural, or flesh, they caught nothing, but in the Lord they would catch exceedingly abundantly above all they could think or ask (Eph. 3:20). The fish are meant to be understood as ‘men’ who will be caught by the Gospel message.
Today we celebrate one man who has been caught by that message, our new brother, Bill Clay. We believe and understand from Bill’s testimony that he was hooked before he invited me to come and visit his home and lead him in a prayer of salvation. Indeed Bill described to me a process, by which, over a period of about three weeks, he felt God working on him. Through contemplating his own mortality, Bill began to come to terms with the ‘legends’ about Jesus and the Bible. One night right before bed-time, he felt a light go on and he was able to affirm the FACT of Jesus, not just the legends about him. The Holy Spirit had done his job and Illumined Bill’s mind, causing the light to go on, affecting a Spiritual Awakening.
I believe at that moment, he was given the gift of saving faith. His prayer of repentance and confession was an acknowledgement of something that God had already done in his life. He had already been hooked and reeled in. Now all that remained was to confess with his mouth something that God had already given him- Grace to believe in his heart.
(Read his Letter?)
I think this illustrates a progressive work in which we receive the Good News, get saved, then are being saved, and will be saved at the last day. It’s like conjugating a verb: God Saved me, He is saving me, and He will save me – if indeed, as Paul says in I Cor. 15:2 we hold fast to the faith that was delivered to us.
Paul has in mind a process of delivering something whole. If you’ve ever seen the Brinks trucks going to or from a bank, you will get the idea. They are delivering to the receiving party the deposit they have been entrusted with. They are very careful to make sure that every penny is accounted for. Paul is just as scrupulous. He delivered to the Corinthians that which he had been entrusted with. It was the Gospel message that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and was resurrected on the third day, and that he appeared to many witnesses, who can attest to the veracity of his resurrection. This is what we call the Tradition, with a capitol T. It is THE Gospel, not just Paul’s Gospel. It is THE Faith, not just Peter’s faith.
Capitol T Tradition is not just conservatism for the sake of not changing, or a fetish for small t tradition because we don’t like change. No, this is just like the Wells Fargo or Brinks guys delivering the very same deposit they received. There is a sense of passing it on to the next person whole and unchanged. This is a dynamic and life-changing message. It is something that we must hold fast to a deliver to others unchanged.
Therefore, we derive our Church slogan from this passage: “Holding Fast the Faith once delivered”.
When we fish for men, we catch them to something. This something is the Gospel by which people are converted and saved. And it is this faith into which people are Baptized when they are saved. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD put it this way: “This is the orthodox faith; this we all believe: into this we were baptized; into this we baptize. (Extracts, Session II, the Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF 2, XIV, p. 249.)
Without this Tradition, this orthodox faith, we become Marine Biologists instead of Fishers of Men – we study all fish with equal curiosity but our policy is strictly ‘catch and release’ instead of catching people into New Life! (Let the reader understand…)
So…when a person is baptized they are ushered into the family of God in a formal, public way. The introduction to the Baptism service in the Book of Common Prayers says that Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.
The catechism on pg 858 says: Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us, as his children and makes us members of Christ’s body, the church and inheritors of the Kingdom of God.
Now a Sacrament is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality. Our brother has already experienced an awakening and a saving faith. But now, by going through Baptism, he will experience the outward sign of that faith as well. Not only that, but there is something real and objective that will take place aside from the experience of faith: he will be accepted in to the family of God, his sins will be washed away in the water of death, he will be raised to walk in newness of life, and receive union with God. In short he will have the Gospel Life that saves us from ourselves and brings us back into relationship with God.
Just a brief word about the method of Baptism: Here is a commentary on Jewish Baptism at the time of Christ from Br. Chris Klein, CJ, Director of Franciscan Vocations:
Within Christianity, there are a variety of views about the proper way to baptize converts. Every denomination is sure that their way is correct and answers all questions to reflect their own bias. I began to wonder how the Jewish John the Baptist was baptizing people and whether or not a Jewish Rabbi could help me to answer this question.
I learned that in Judaism, ritual cleansing is required for any proselyte wishing to join themselves with the people of Israel. Maimonides wrote: "Baptism is absolutely necessary to make a proselyte." (Massekheth, Gerim et.al.).
Many of the laws pertaining to conversion come from the Book of Ruth. Concerning the baptism itself, the water must contain rain water, (water that falls from heaven rather than water from the earth). Baptisms may be performed in oceans, rivers, and lakes in which rain water has fallen. It is a complete emersion overseen by three trained people but unlike many Christian denominations, the candidate must immerse themselves. Each person must submit themselves to God without assistance, (thus no one can boast about how many people they have baptized).
For the sake of modesty, outdoor baptisms are often performed at night, since the individual must not have anything between the water and their skin, (Women are baptized behind a partition). Even the hair and fingernails are clipped very short to allow the water to make complete contact with the skin. When the convert comes out of the water, they must look like a newborn child.
The early church fathers were pragmatic about how to Baptize. While the preference was for immersion in “living” water, the first century Didache gives these instructions:
“After rehearsing all the preliminaries, immerse in running water “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” If no running water is available, immerse in ordinary water. This should be cold if possible; otherwise warm. If neither is practicable, then sprinkle water three times on the head “In the Name of the Father, and of the son and of the Holy Ghost…”
Today we will use a sea shell, the traditional symbol of baptism to pour warm water over the head of our brother. I’d like to ask our Brother Deacon Mark to come and tell us how we will transform this ordinary bowl of water in a river of living water.
Mark comes to describe the process and to add the vial of water to the bowl.
Ask Heather to come with her fishing pole and catch Bill, reeling him in as I say,
Let the candidate for Baptism be presented.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Glory to Glory
A Sermon given on the Last Sunday of Epiphany, 2/18, 2007 at All Saints Anglican Church, Barboursville, WV.
Collect: O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Intro: Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus from an apparently normal human being to the Glorious Son of the Living God. As I studied the readings for today, the Collect seemed to encapsulate very well the overall message of the Old Testament and Gospel lessons. So, what I’d like to do is to break down the collect phrase by phrase to examine the nature of our God, the nature of His glory, and what it means for us to share that Glory. We begin, of course, with God.
“O God”: What kind of God are we addressing? Let’s look at our Psalm for the day, 99. What attributes do you see listed? (Individual Responses) The Lord is King. He is enthroned on high, powerful and great, Awesome. Three times we read He is the Holy One. This means to be Set Apart, to be utterly different than us. He is the lover of justice, the one who forgives our sins, yet punishes the people for their evil deeds.
This is the same God we speak about in our Gloria: Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory, Hosanna in the Highest. Glory = splendor, honor brightness or weightiness. Scripture tells us that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the God whom Moses saw face to face and his own face shone because of it. The Israelites were afraid because of the Brightness on Moses’ face. The God that Moses was spending time with is Holy as pure light is Holy. This kind of light pierces everything it touches, exposing anything impure. It should rightly cause us to fear, and yet we are attracted to it as well.
This light is pure love and all benevolent. It’s no accident the Love chapter from I Corinthians is juxtaposed with these passages that illustrate the glory and purity of God.
John says in his Gospel: We beheld his Glory, glory as of the only begotten son of the father, full of grace and truth.
This is the God we address when we pray, the Mighty One, Glorious in Holiness.
“Revealed his Glory”: As God revealed the Glory of the Son, He was also revealing that Jesus was God – of one substance with the Father, God From God, Light from Light, True God From True God , begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father, as the Nicene Creed tells us. It is the same Glory, the Father and the Son are One.
Before the passion; "To strengthen Jesus, Moses and Elijah came to talk to Him. They stand at the top of separate mountain peaks to the left and right of Christ. They are bowing toward Christ with their right hands raised in a gesture of intercession towards Him. Saint John Chrysostom explains the presence of these two fathers of the faith from the Old Testament in three ways. He states that they represent the Law and the Prophets (Moses received the Law from God, and Elijah was a great prophet); they both experienced visions of God (Moses on Mount Sinai and Elijah on Mount Carmel); and they represent the living and the dead (Elijah, the living, because he was taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire, and Moses, the dead, because he did experience death)."
The disciples also beheld the glory. Peter declared how good it was for them to be there and expressed the desire to build three booths for Moses, Elijah, and Christ.
"This reference to the booths could imply that this occurred during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles when the Jews would be camping out in the fields for the grape harvest; for this Feast had acquired other associations in the course of its history, including the memory of the wanderings in the wilderness recorded in the Old Testament book of Exodus." (Quotes from the Greek Orhtodox Archdiocese of America website).
This association with the Exodus is significant, as the word in our Gospel text ‘departure” is actually “exodus”. Moses and Elijah were talking about Christ’s departure or exodus from the world and how he would return to Glory. Christ temporarily reassumes the former glory he had known, in order to have this conversation.
Peter sees all this and suggested the three booths be built, “not knowing what he had said.” He was like us. We witness something taking place in our lives and we respond in some way, but the truth is that we usually don’t have much of a clue about what God is up to. Immediately after Peter’s little outburst, The Voice Of God speaks from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” This is the same cloud of God’s Shekinah Glory that guided the people of Israel: a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by Day. The purposes of God in that moment are so much greater than anything Peter or the others could have imagined that they are just dumbstruck and fall to the ground.
“Beholding by faith the light of his countenance”: Peter, James and John were chosen to behold the manifest Glory of God in Jesus Christ. We on the other hand must now behold the light of His countenance by faith. Through prayer- and sometimes through an open revelation of God’s glory, we see God. In his light we see light, says the Scriptures.
“We may be strengthened to bear our cross”: It is the presence of God that we experience through our prayer and worship, and through practicing God’s presence that we are strengthened, so that we can bear our cross. This means death to our own selves and our own desires. As we submit to this process we will:
“Be changed into his likeness from glory to glory” 2Cor. 3:18. God’s highest and best desire for us is to be changed into the likeness of Christ. He wants us to go from ‘one degree of Glory to the next” To grow in our Christian lives and to become like Moses, reflecting that radiant glory of God so that people may know that we have been with God; indeed that we live up to the appellation “Christian, or little Christ”.
As we behold the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are to bear Christ and His glory out into our world. In 2 Cor. 3:12-18, Paul proclaims that we are to be very bold in taking this message to the world. We are not to hide our faces like Moses did, but to go out with ‘unveiled face’ proclaiming the Glory of God.
People react in one of two ways. They are either fearful or repelled, as the Jewish people were, and hide from the Glory of God behind a veil, or they are attracted and allow themselves to be changed by that Glory. In 2Cor. 3:16, Paul says that when a person becomes a Christian, the veil is removed and they begin to behold the face of God.
I’d like to relate this to our recent efforts regarding the house at 1410 Charleston Ave.
My initial thought about the house was as a simple memorial to kids who had died a brutal death. It struck me forcibly but, like Peter, I really had, and have, very little idea about all the things that God wants to do through this project. Here are just a few things that have happened.
We began to make contact with the neighbors in the area.
The news media covered our story and told about what we were doing.
We met and ministered to three men who asked for help in dealing with addictions.
I received a call tow weeks ago from a woman in Graywon Kentucky who heads up a group called Parents of Murdered Children. She sent me information about the national support group, and encouraged us to start a local chapter.
I have also made contact with a group of folks headed up by Delegate Don Perdue who wish to start a drug treatment center in our region. Tim White from the Huntinton Housing Authority invited me to a Friday evening meeting last week and the project at 1410 was presented to a goups of folks active in the drug treatment arena, and seen as an excellent adjunct to a long term treatment center.
We have also connected with the Mayor’s office regarding a community service on May the 19th. He has specifically given his endorsement to the service being held in conjunction with the annual victims of crime service.
We have also been able to link up with the Rev. John Perkins, a nationally known Christian author and activist. Lord willing, he will deliver our message on May 19.
I could not have anticipated any of these things that fall morning when I drove by the house on my way to work. But God knows. He has his own plan for the ministry at 1410 Charleston Ave. He desires to do something there, and like Peter, I don’t have much of a clue what it is. I can only say that this is what He seems to be leading us to do. In the process He will glorify Himself and accomplish his own purposes in the earth. Such has it always been. Amen.
Sermon close with singing of "This little light of mine"
DOM
Collect: O God, who before the passion of your only begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Intro: Today is Transfiguration Sunday, when we contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus from an apparently normal human being to the Glorious Son of the Living God. As I studied the readings for today, the Collect seemed to encapsulate very well the overall message of the Old Testament and Gospel lessons. So, what I’d like to do is to break down the collect phrase by phrase to examine the nature of our God, the nature of His glory, and what it means for us to share that Glory. We begin, of course, with God.
“O God”: What kind of God are we addressing? Let’s look at our Psalm for the day, 99. What attributes do you see listed? (Individual Responses) The Lord is King. He is enthroned on high, powerful and great, Awesome. Three times we read He is the Holy One. This means to be Set Apart, to be utterly different than us. He is the lover of justice, the one who forgives our sins, yet punishes the people for their evil deeds.
This is the same God we speak about in our Gloria: Heaven and Earth are full of your Glory, Hosanna in the Highest. Glory = splendor, honor brightness or weightiness. Scripture tells us that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the God whom Moses saw face to face and his own face shone because of it. The Israelites were afraid because of the Brightness on Moses’ face. The God that Moses was spending time with is Holy as pure light is Holy. This kind of light pierces everything it touches, exposing anything impure. It should rightly cause us to fear, and yet we are attracted to it as well.
This light is pure love and all benevolent. It’s no accident the Love chapter from I Corinthians is juxtaposed with these passages that illustrate the glory and purity of God.
John says in his Gospel: We beheld his Glory, glory as of the only begotten son of the father, full of grace and truth.
This is the God we address when we pray, the Mighty One, Glorious in Holiness.
“Revealed his Glory”: As God revealed the Glory of the Son, He was also revealing that Jesus was God – of one substance with the Father, God From God, Light from Light, True God From True God , begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father, as the Nicene Creed tells us. It is the same Glory, the Father and the Son are One.
Before the passion; "To strengthen Jesus, Moses and Elijah came to talk to Him. They stand at the top of separate mountain peaks to the left and right of Christ. They are bowing toward Christ with their right hands raised in a gesture of intercession towards Him. Saint John Chrysostom explains the presence of these two fathers of the faith from the Old Testament in three ways. He states that they represent the Law and the Prophets (Moses received the Law from God, and Elijah was a great prophet); they both experienced visions of God (Moses on Mount Sinai and Elijah on Mount Carmel); and they represent the living and the dead (Elijah, the living, because he was taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire, and Moses, the dead, because he did experience death)."
The disciples also beheld the glory. Peter declared how good it was for them to be there and expressed the desire to build three booths for Moses, Elijah, and Christ.
"This reference to the booths could imply that this occurred during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles when the Jews would be camping out in the fields for the grape harvest; for this Feast had acquired other associations in the course of its history, including the memory of the wanderings in the wilderness recorded in the Old Testament book of Exodus." (Quotes from the Greek Orhtodox Archdiocese of America website).
This association with the Exodus is significant, as the word in our Gospel text ‘departure” is actually “exodus”. Moses and Elijah were talking about Christ’s departure or exodus from the world and how he would return to Glory. Christ temporarily reassumes the former glory he had known, in order to have this conversation.
Peter sees all this and suggested the three booths be built, “not knowing what he had said.” He was like us. We witness something taking place in our lives and we respond in some way, but the truth is that we usually don’t have much of a clue about what God is up to. Immediately after Peter’s little outburst, The Voice Of God speaks from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” This is the same cloud of God’s Shekinah Glory that guided the people of Israel: a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by Day. The purposes of God in that moment are so much greater than anything Peter or the others could have imagined that they are just dumbstruck and fall to the ground.
“Beholding by faith the light of his countenance”: Peter, James and John were chosen to behold the manifest Glory of God in Jesus Christ. We on the other hand must now behold the light of His countenance by faith. Through prayer- and sometimes through an open revelation of God’s glory, we see God. In his light we see light, says the Scriptures.
“We may be strengthened to bear our cross”: It is the presence of God that we experience through our prayer and worship, and through practicing God’s presence that we are strengthened, so that we can bear our cross. This means death to our own selves and our own desires. As we submit to this process we will:
“Be changed into his likeness from glory to glory” 2Cor. 3:18. God’s highest and best desire for us is to be changed into the likeness of Christ. He wants us to go from ‘one degree of Glory to the next” To grow in our Christian lives and to become like Moses, reflecting that radiant glory of God so that people may know that we have been with God; indeed that we live up to the appellation “Christian, or little Christ”.
As we behold the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are to bear Christ and His glory out into our world. In 2 Cor. 3:12-18, Paul proclaims that we are to be very bold in taking this message to the world. We are not to hide our faces like Moses did, but to go out with ‘unveiled face’ proclaiming the Glory of God.
People react in one of two ways. They are either fearful or repelled, as the Jewish people were, and hide from the Glory of God behind a veil, or they are attracted and allow themselves to be changed by that Glory. In 2Cor. 3:16, Paul says that when a person becomes a Christian, the veil is removed and they begin to behold the face of God.
I’d like to relate this to our recent efforts regarding the house at 1410 Charleston Ave.
My initial thought about the house was as a simple memorial to kids who had died a brutal death. It struck me forcibly but, like Peter, I really had, and have, very little idea about all the things that God wants to do through this project. Here are just a few things that have happened.
We began to make contact with the neighbors in the area.
The news media covered our story and told about what we were doing.
We met and ministered to three men who asked for help in dealing with addictions.
I received a call tow weeks ago from a woman in Graywon Kentucky who heads up a group called Parents of Murdered Children. She sent me information about the national support group, and encouraged us to start a local chapter.
I have also made contact with a group of folks headed up by Delegate Don Perdue who wish to start a drug treatment center in our region. Tim White from the Huntinton Housing Authority invited me to a Friday evening meeting last week and the project at 1410 was presented to a goups of folks active in the drug treatment arena, and seen as an excellent adjunct to a long term treatment center.
We have also connected with the Mayor’s office regarding a community service on May the 19th. He has specifically given his endorsement to the service being held in conjunction with the annual victims of crime service.
We have also been able to link up with the Rev. John Perkins, a nationally known Christian author and activist. Lord willing, he will deliver our message on May 19.
I could not have anticipated any of these things that fall morning when I drove by the house on my way to work. But God knows. He has his own plan for the ministry at 1410 Charleston Ave. He desires to do something there, and like Peter, I don’t have much of a clue what it is. I can only say that this is what He seems to be leading us to do. In the process He will glorify Himself and accomplish his own purposes in the earth. Such has it always been. Amen.
Sermon close with singing of "This little light of mine"
DOM
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Blessed are You
A Sermon Delivered at All Saints Anglican Church, Barboursville, WV
2/11/07
Today, in our culture, the idea of Blessing has come tepid and almost meaningless. We use the expression ‘Well, bless my soul…’ People say ‘God Bless You’ when you sneeze. We sometimes hear folks say ‘I am wonderfully blessed’ or ‘That was a real blessing to me’.
Normally, what we mean by this is that I got a nice warm feeling from it and I was encouraged. Sometimes we also mean that we had an increased sense of God at work in our lives, bringing us something that was unexpected and enriched our lives.
Wikipedia gives this meaing:
A blessing (from to bless, Old English bleodsian or bletsian) originally meant "sprinkling with blood" during the pagan sacrifices, the Blóts. A blessing, (also used to refer to bestowing of such) is the infusion of something with holiness, divine will, or one's hopes.
The New Testament word for Blessing is ‘Eulogeo’, to speak well. This is where we get our word Eulogy- a good word. ‘Benediction’ would be a Latin synonym. This sense of the word is to “speak well”; to praise or celebrate with praises, to invoke blessing upon someone or to consecrate a thing with solemn prayers.
The Hebrew word is Berachah: It is found in Deuteronomy 28: 1-14. Here, blessing means material prosperity and peace. It comes about as a result of obeying God and is His special favor bestowed upon his people. Blessing is every good thing: Peace with the peoples around Israel, seasonal rain, agricultural abundance, numerous healthy children and livestock, personal health and the ability to enjoy all these gifts freely. This is Blessing
In our Gospel reading, Jesus speaks praise or blessing upon certain groups of people – those who are poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated and reviled for the sake of the Son of Man.
Immediately our red flags go up. These are not happy conditions! How could this be of God if He is interested in my happiness?! … The answer is that Blessedness is not mere happiness or comfort. It is something far stronger than that.
The immediate context of Jesus proclaiming the Beatitudes is that he was teaching the people. They had come from all around to hear him and there was a great crowd assembled. But they didn’t come just to hear him preach; they also sought him for healing. They were trying to touch him because power was coming out from him and people were being healed! So in order to understand the Beatitude blessings, we have to take the healing power into account.
We talked a few weeks ago about the year of Jubilee and how Jesus read Isaiah 61 in the Synagogue of Capernaum and proclaimed that this Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing that day. In this passage, Jesus is doing the stuff of the Jubilee ministry and his comments about blessing are an amplification of the Year of Jubilee.
The Beatitude Blessings are proclamations that the Kingdom of God had come into our midst. Jesus is saying that fulfillment is in Him, in believing that he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. As we believe in Him, the poor receive the Kingdom. The hungry are filled. Those who weep laugh, and those who are persecuted rejoice. It happens now, but there is also a future fulfillment in mind: our reward is in Heaven.
Likewise, there are woes up ahead. The rich will be without consolation, the full will be hungry, those who laugh will mourn, and those who receive praise are classed with the false prophets. Whoever seeks to fill himself up with the things of the world will not receive the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, if all you want is Stuff, that’s all you get.
The Scriptures set up a contrast between the upright and the wicked. Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17 sound remarkably similar: The good man delights in the law of the Lord, meditating and pondering it day and night. The wicked pursue their selfish pleasures.
The upright are rooted and grounded in the Word of God and so are like trees planted beside flowing water. They are green, well-watered and they prosper even in drought.
The wicked shall not stand before God’s ultimate judgment. They are like dry tumble-weed in the dusty desert pushed along by an unmerciful wind.
One the one hand, we can say that the blessing of God comes upon people when they acknowledge him as God and worship Him. To put it crudely, there is a sort of quid pro quo here: you do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.
Nevertheless, Blessing is not all sweetness and light, for James tells us that we are blessed when we persevere under trial (Jas 1:12), “for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” And the words of Jesus come back to ring in our ears as well: Blessed are you when people hate you and defame you on account of Him. Your reward in heaven is great! There is a Blessing for those who stand up well under persecution and trial!
Yet there is something much more as well, and that is what we mean when we talk about Covenant. God spoke to Abraham in Genesis, chapters 15-17, calling Abraham to follow him to a promised land. God told him He would increase his descendents and that he would be the father of many nations. Kings would come out of his line and all the peoples of the world would be blessed through him. The Covenant of God with Abraham – and later the Covenant with Israel as a nation ( ) established the Jews as God’s own special people, but also charged this people with being a blessing to the rest of the world.
Because the Jewish nation did not fulfill its destiny to be the blessing to the ends of the earth, God turned from them and took the Gospel to the Gentiles, in order to fulfill the promise to bless all the nations of the world through Christ.
And as we said before, this blessing is two-fold. It comes to us immediately upon believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord. We begin to receive all the benefits of obeying God now in this life. But we also look forward to the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom when we go to live with God and the Peaceable Kingdom becomes a reality.
There is also another tantalizing blessing that comes to certain groups of people: Revival and Transformation. Down through history, and even right now in our own day, there are people who experience the special presence of God in Revival. In Fiji, in the Canadian Arctic, in Guatemala, and in Cali Columbia to name of few, people are turning to God in their desperation and are experiencing transformation of their societies that they could not have begun to imagine just a few years ago.
In one community, Almolonga, in Guatemala, the people had a long history of worshipping Mayan idol Maximon. They had a huge problem with drug and alcohol abuse, the jails were full continually, they had no real functioning school system and they could not grow enough food to feed themselves. In desperation, the people decided en masse to break their covenant with the old god and to follow Christ. Immediately then began to experience a revival.
Virtually the entire town became Christian overnight. The problems with addictions dried up, the jails emptied out and were closed for lack of occupancy, and the people began growing and harvesting their own food. Their crops were superabundant and they now export food to other towns. The Blessings of repentance, revival and community transformation have come to them.
This same kind of thing is happening in different parts of the world right now. Many would like to experience it here and now. Our guest from last week, Garry Adkins, told us about Mission Tri-State. This group of pastors and community leaders desperately desire to see the blessings of transformation come to our area. They gather to pray to God for revival, to repent of their sins and those of our country, and to ask God to Bless us by transforming our community.
Folks, this is what we want and need: the Blessing of God in our personal lives and in our community at large. We attract God’s blessing by submitting ourselves to Him in obedience and through humble repentance. And when the Blessing comes, we don’t just hoard it for ourselves, but we share the blessings of God with our neighbors.
This basic impulse to share with others our own blessings is what has sometimes been called the Social Gospel. The Social Gospel has been practiced by the mainline churches and is an attempt to live out the Gospel reality by making our world a more just place. Too often, however, the Social Gospel has become merely social programs lacking true spiritual power or meaning. The experience of the past 150 years of Social Gospel has taught us that mere social programs are not enough to solve financial and racial inequalities.
Rather, for True transformation of society to take place, we need the super-natural power of God to revive us and to bring us the blessings of Kingdom life here and now. This is why we want to link with Mission Tri-State and pray for God to rain down his Holy Spirit upon us. The problems of our world cannot be solved by pro-social entrepreneurship, but rather must depend upon the infilling power of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us each step of the way.
I’ve included Psalm 67 on our reading sheet today. Please join with me in reciting it together.
Prayer: O God, you who bless us exceedingly abundantly above all we can think or ask, grant us the grace of your reviving and transforming power. Help us to be lead of you as we seek to do your will that, we may push back the gates of Hell and your Kingdom may come here on earth as it is in Heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN.
2/11/07
Today, in our culture, the idea of Blessing has come tepid and almost meaningless. We use the expression ‘Well, bless my soul…’ People say ‘God Bless You’ when you sneeze. We sometimes hear folks say ‘I am wonderfully blessed’ or ‘That was a real blessing to me’.
Normally, what we mean by this is that I got a nice warm feeling from it and I was encouraged. Sometimes we also mean that we had an increased sense of God at work in our lives, bringing us something that was unexpected and enriched our lives.
Wikipedia gives this meaing:
A blessing (from to bless, Old English bleodsian or bletsian) originally meant "sprinkling with blood" during the pagan sacrifices, the Blóts. A blessing, (also used to refer to bestowing of such) is the infusion of something with holiness, divine will, or one's hopes.
The New Testament word for Blessing is ‘Eulogeo’, to speak well. This is where we get our word Eulogy- a good word. ‘Benediction’ would be a Latin synonym. This sense of the word is to “speak well”; to praise or celebrate with praises, to invoke blessing upon someone or to consecrate a thing with solemn prayers.
The Hebrew word is Berachah: It is found in Deuteronomy 28: 1-14. Here, blessing means material prosperity and peace. It comes about as a result of obeying God and is His special favor bestowed upon his people. Blessing is every good thing: Peace with the peoples around Israel, seasonal rain, agricultural abundance, numerous healthy children and livestock, personal health and the ability to enjoy all these gifts freely. This is Blessing
In our Gospel reading, Jesus speaks praise or blessing upon certain groups of people – those who are poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated and reviled for the sake of the Son of Man.
Immediately our red flags go up. These are not happy conditions! How could this be of God if He is interested in my happiness?! … The answer is that Blessedness is not mere happiness or comfort. It is something far stronger than that.
The immediate context of Jesus proclaiming the Beatitudes is that he was teaching the people. They had come from all around to hear him and there was a great crowd assembled. But they didn’t come just to hear him preach; they also sought him for healing. They were trying to touch him because power was coming out from him and people were being healed! So in order to understand the Beatitude blessings, we have to take the healing power into account.
We talked a few weeks ago about the year of Jubilee and how Jesus read Isaiah 61 in the Synagogue of Capernaum and proclaimed that this Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing that day. In this passage, Jesus is doing the stuff of the Jubilee ministry and his comments about blessing are an amplification of the Year of Jubilee.
The Beatitude Blessings are proclamations that the Kingdom of God had come into our midst. Jesus is saying that fulfillment is in Him, in believing that he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. As we believe in Him, the poor receive the Kingdom. The hungry are filled. Those who weep laugh, and those who are persecuted rejoice. It happens now, but there is also a future fulfillment in mind: our reward is in Heaven.
Likewise, there are woes up ahead. The rich will be without consolation, the full will be hungry, those who laugh will mourn, and those who receive praise are classed with the false prophets. Whoever seeks to fill himself up with the things of the world will not receive the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, if all you want is Stuff, that’s all you get.
The Scriptures set up a contrast between the upright and the wicked. Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17 sound remarkably similar: The good man delights in the law of the Lord, meditating and pondering it day and night. The wicked pursue their selfish pleasures.
The upright are rooted and grounded in the Word of God and so are like trees planted beside flowing water. They are green, well-watered and they prosper even in drought.
The wicked shall not stand before God’s ultimate judgment. They are like dry tumble-weed in the dusty desert pushed along by an unmerciful wind.
One the one hand, we can say that the blessing of God comes upon people when they acknowledge him as God and worship Him. To put it crudely, there is a sort of quid pro quo here: you do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.
Nevertheless, Blessing is not all sweetness and light, for James tells us that we are blessed when we persevere under trial (Jas 1:12), “for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” And the words of Jesus come back to ring in our ears as well: Blessed are you when people hate you and defame you on account of Him. Your reward in heaven is great! There is a Blessing for those who stand up well under persecution and trial!
Yet there is something much more as well, and that is what we mean when we talk about Covenant. God spoke to Abraham in Genesis, chapters 15-17, calling Abraham to follow him to a promised land. God told him He would increase his descendents and that he would be the father of many nations. Kings would come out of his line and all the peoples of the world would be blessed through him. The Covenant of God with Abraham – and later the Covenant with Israel as a nation ( ) established the Jews as God’s own special people, but also charged this people with being a blessing to the rest of the world.
Because the Jewish nation did not fulfill its destiny to be the blessing to the ends of the earth, God turned from them and took the Gospel to the Gentiles, in order to fulfill the promise to bless all the nations of the world through Christ.
And as we said before, this blessing is two-fold. It comes to us immediately upon believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord. We begin to receive all the benefits of obeying God now in this life. But we also look forward to the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom when we go to live with God and the Peaceable Kingdom becomes a reality.
There is also another tantalizing blessing that comes to certain groups of people: Revival and Transformation. Down through history, and even right now in our own day, there are people who experience the special presence of God in Revival. In Fiji, in the Canadian Arctic, in Guatemala, and in Cali Columbia to name of few, people are turning to God in their desperation and are experiencing transformation of their societies that they could not have begun to imagine just a few years ago.
In one community, Almolonga, in Guatemala, the people had a long history of worshipping Mayan idol Maximon. They had a huge problem with drug and alcohol abuse, the jails were full continually, they had no real functioning school system and they could not grow enough food to feed themselves. In desperation, the people decided en masse to break their covenant with the old god and to follow Christ. Immediately then began to experience a revival.
Virtually the entire town became Christian overnight. The problems with addictions dried up, the jails emptied out and were closed for lack of occupancy, and the people began growing and harvesting their own food. Their crops were superabundant and they now export food to other towns. The Blessings of repentance, revival and community transformation have come to them.
This same kind of thing is happening in different parts of the world right now. Many would like to experience it here and now. Our guest from last week, Garry Adkins, told us about Mission Tri-State. This group of pastors and community leaders desperately desire to see the blessings of transformation come to our area. They gather to pray to God for revival, to repent of their sins and those of our country, and to ask God to Bless us by transforming our community.
Folks, this is what we want and need: the Blessing of God in our personal lives and in our community at large. We attract God’s blessing by submitting ourselves to Him in obedience and through humble repentance. And when the Blessing comes, we don’t just hoard it for ourselves, but we share the blessings of God with our neighbors.
This basic impulse to share with others our own blessings is what has sometimes been called the Social Gospel. The Social Gospel has been practiced by the mainline churches and is an attempt to live out the Gospel reality by making our world a more just place. Too often, however, the Social Gospel has become merely social programs lacking true spiritual power or meaning. The experience of the past 150 years of Social Gospel has taught us that mere social programs are not enough to solve financial and racial inequalities.
Rather, for True transformation of society to take place, we need the super-natural power of God to revive us and to bring us the blessings of Kingdom life here and now. This is why we want to link with Mission Tri-State and pray for God to rain down his Holy Spirit upon us. The problems of our world cannot be solved by pro-social entrepreneurship, but rather must depend upon the infilling power of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us each step of the way.
I’ve included Psalm 67 on our reading sheet today. Please join with me in reciting it together.
Prayer: O God, you who bless us exceedingly abundantly above all we can think or ask, grant us the grace of your reviving and transforming power. Help us to be lead of you as we seek to do your will that, we may push back the gates of Hell and your Kingdom may come here on earth as it is in Heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN.
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