A Sermon deliverd to All Saints Anglican Church on February 10, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV , based on Matthew 4:1-11.
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Having observed Ash Wednesday in our small groups, I’m sure we have discussed what types of abstinence or spiritual disciplines we will observe for these forty days.
One of the things we notice right off the bat when we begin to practice a new intention is that no sooner do we start than we begin to fail. We are like Oscar Wilde, who glibly remarks in one of his plays, “I can resist anything but temptation”. (Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act I)
In today’s reading from Matthew, we see Jesus confronting temptation and successfully resisting it. Since he is our great Exemplar, we want to be like him. Therefore it behooves us to notice what Jesus did in response to temptation from the Adversary.
Fasting and Temptation
We must first note that immediately after his Baptism by John, “… Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness… [specifically] to be tempted by the devil (Mt.4:1). This was the way God wanted Jesus to begin his ministry – to be tempted by his enemy right off the bat. Fasting quiets the mind and the soul, making us more open to God and heightening our spiritual awareness. It gets God’s attention, because it lets Him know we are serious about our intention.
Fasting also leaves us physically vulnerable. In a famous example of understatement, Matthew tells us that “…after fasting forty days and forty nights, he (Jesus) was hungry. (4:2). Jesus was spiritually in tune with God but physically hungry. The Devil knew that He was going to be a formidable enemy , so he was quick to try to undermine Jesus’ ministry with several temptations.
As we begin to consider this in terms of our own lives, I think we need to ask ourselves some pointed questions.
Three Pointed Questions
Do we even believe in the Devil? – That he is real and personal, that he hates us and has a terrible plan for our lives?
Do we believe that the Devil tempts us to sin?
Do we even believe in Sin and its real effects upon our spiritual life?
The Devil, our Tempter
Author CS Lewis tells us that:
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” (Screwtape Letters).
Most of us don’t have the latter problem so much. Instead we wrestle with actually disbelieving their existence.
But to quote Hal Lindsey, “Satan is alive and well on planet earth”. He is a real personage. Lucifer, God’s worship leader, arrogantly thought he could take over God’s throne and rebelled against Him.
War ensued and God tossed Lucifer – now Satan, the Adversary, out of heaven, along with a third of the angels – all of whom now serve Satan as underdevils. Satan and his minions are real and they “prowl around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour” (I Pet. 5:8).
We need therefore, to “Be sober-minded and … watchful…, mindful that the Enemy of our soul does indeed try to tempt us.
For an interesting and entertaining study of the temptation tactics Satan and his ‘lowerarchy” employ read CS Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters.” It will enlighten you as to how subtle our enemy really is.
Sin
In 1973, Psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a book called “Whatever Became of Sin?” He caused great consternation in many circles by asking whether we had become so psychologically oriented that the notion of sin had become passé. But I’m here today to tell you that sin
is real and separates us from God. Sin is any action or thought that goes against God’s will for us. It’s not just our actions – though these are extremely important, but our thoughts as well – just as Jesus told us when he said that even to look upon a woman lustfully was sin (Matthew 5:28).
Sin is birthed in our hearts and then comes to life when we give attention and energy to the desire of our hearts. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” says Jesus (Matthew 15:19).
Sin grieves the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30) and Separates us from God:
“…your iniquities have made a separationbetween you and your God,and your sins have hidden his face from youso that he does not hear” (Is 59:2)
The Good News is that because we have been saved and adopted as God’s children, this separation is not eternal leading to damnation, rather it a temporary disruption of our relationship with God, that can be healed after we repent of our sin. Nevertheless, unconfessed sin in the life of a Christian can lead to very grave consequences, even death. (I John 5:16) “Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15).
So….Sin is real, and it has real impact in our lives. Satan is real and He really does tempt you to sin so that you will be at odds with God.
The Nature of Temptation
Let’s now think a little bit about the Nature of Temptation. James tells us that no one is tempted by God, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (1:14)
Desire is what tempts me. And what do I desire? I want what I want when I want it! - Whatever makes me happy, whatever I think I want, whether that be an object, an experience or a relationship – or to put it crudely: ‘Money Sex and Power” (see the book by the same name by Richard Foster).
Really, what we are talking about is Idolatry, that is: asking a thing or a person to do something for you that only God can do. This Idolatry has within it the seeds of self-sufficiency. I want to fulfill my perceived needs and wants my way – just like Frank Sinatra. I don’t’ care what God says, I want what I want when I want it! Temptation appeals to our basic desire to be self-sufficient and thus is a type of Pride.
The Blessing of Resistance
Now over against this basic desire to do things my way, God promises us something very good for doing things His way:
“Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:15).
Successfully resisting Satan and his temptations brings us the Crown of Life – that is life in fellowship with God – Divine Favor plus human happiness, all that a human being could reasonably want.
So with all that in mind as prologue, let’s consider how we imitate Jesus in his resistance of temptation.
How to resist temptation like Jesus:
Fast, Pray, and Apply the Word
Fasting increases spiritual awareness – and as we observe with Christ, also opens us up to the attack of the enemy.
Praying to God shows my dependence upon God. I’m not doing thing in my own power, but in His.
Applying the Word correctly give us the ammunition we need to resist the Devil when he comes after us. ‘Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee” says Ps. 119:11. Satan twists the Word to His own purposes; he is a subtle and deceitful enemy and not to be trifled with.
There is much more to say about how to resist the enemy, but rather than give a long list of tips, I’d like to tell you the story of a Successful Resistance.
A Successful Resistance
Recently, one of my clients loaned me a book called “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.” It is the true story of a Tutsi woman named Immaculee Ilibagiza and how she lived through the bloody genocide of 1994 in which nearly a million Tutsi – and Hutu Rwandans died. During the three-month killing spree her entire family, save one brother, was brutally murdered. She and seven other women survived by huddling together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s home while machete-wielding killers hunted for them.
During the endless hours of isolation and terror in her hiding place, Imaculee faced temptation in a way that few of us ever will. A Roman Catholic Christian from childhood, she prayed the rosary 12-13 hours per day for comfort, but she was constantly reminded that the Lord’s prayer calls us to ‘forgive those who trespass against us’. She treid not to think about those who killed her family because she knew she couldn’t forgive them.
One time, when the killers were literally inches from discovering her, she could hear people outside laughing and chanting demonically, “Kill the Tutsis big and small ….kill them one and kill them all. Kill them!”
She heard an ugly whispering in her head: “Why are you calling on God? Don’t you have as much hatred in your heart as the killers do? Aren’t you as guilty of hatred as they are? You’ve wished them dead; in fact, you wished that you could kill them yourself! You even prayed that God would make them suffer and make them burn in hell.”
The insidious voice continued, “Don’t call on God, Immacuee. He knows that you’re a liar. You lie every time you pray to Him to say that you love Him. Didn’t God create us all in His image? How can you love God but hate so many of His creations?”
“It’s no use…don’t call on God. Who do you think sent the killers here for your? HE did! Nothing can save you. God doesn’t save liars.”
Can you feel how wicked and manipulative this is? Just like Satan taunted Jesus and misquoted Scripture, so too he used biblical reasoning against Immaculee to taunt and demoralize her.
The killers did eventually leave, and she made an attempt to forgive them, but deep inside she believed they deserved to die. She pleaded with the Lord, “Please open my heart, Lord, and show me how to forgive. I’m not strong enough to squash my hatred – they’ve wronged us all so much…my hatred is so heavy that it could crush me. Touch my heart, Lord, and show me how to forgive”
She struggled with this for days on end, barely eating or drinking anything. Finally the struggle climaxed when she heard the wails of an infant. It’s mother had been killed and the child was left to die in the street. Immaculee listened to the cries weaken and then stop suddenly followed by the ominous snarling of dogs. She called out to God: “How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?”
At that moment she says, “I hear His answer as clearly as if we’d been sitting in the same room chatting: You are all my children…and the baby is with Me now. “ In God’s eyes, the killers were part of His family, deserving of love and forgiveness. I knew that I couldn’t ask God to love me if I were unwilling to love His children.” She did pray for the killers and God did touch her heart. "For the first time," she says, "I pitied the killers. I asked God to forgive their sins and turn their souls toward His beautiful light. That night I prayed with a clear conscience and a clean heart. For the first time since I entered the bathroom, I slept in peace" (adapted from pages 91-94).
Folks, I don’t know about you, but to me this is about as tough as it gets! Notice how she overcomes. She struggles honestly with her feelings. She talks to God. Sometimes she avoids talking about her true feelings. She wrestles with God. She prays and fasts. Finally, after days of agony culminating in an unspeakable atrocity, she is quiet, and the Lord speaks clear words of truth and freedom to her.
Imaculee Ilibagiza submitted herself to God. She resisted the devil. She drew near to God in prayer; she persevered under trial with fasting. The devil fled from her when she applied God’s Word.
And God gave her the grace to forgive her enemies, securing for her the Crown of Life.
Dear Brothers and Sisters, I pray that you and I never have to go through what Imaculee endured. But rest assured, if we do have something terrible to face in the future, God will be with us. Jesus promised that He would never leave us or forsake us (Heb.13:5-6). He promised that if we keep our minds stayed upon Him, he would give us perfect peace (Is. 26:3) and that He would guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:6,7).
As you face temptations, hold fast to the Lord, pray without ceasing and apply His Word to your situation. As you resist the enemy in this way, you will succeed and you know the blessing of overcoming.
May God help us all. AMEN.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
God’s Promise to the Righteous and the Wicked
God’s Promise to the Righteous and the Wicked 020308
Psalm 37 (Beatitudes Mt. 5)
.
Thesis: God Promises to dwell with His people, to bless them and to judge the wicked.
I. Background: The Promise in Leviticus 26:3-13
Imagine that you and your family are Hebrews. You have just left Egypt, the land where your people have been slaves for 400 years, and you have come to camp in the desert near Sinai. It’s been an amazing journey. You have seen God smite the Egyptians with plagues, you’ve gone through the Red Sea and watched the Egyptian army be swallowed up - and now God has told you to go into a Promised Land where he will bless your people. Through Moses, here is what He says:
3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. 6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. 7 You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. … 9 I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. … 11 I will make my dwelling among you… 12 And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves… (Leviticus 26:3-13)
Sounds pretty good, right?! God is going to give you a special place to live and He is actually going to live with you there: “I will make my dwelling among you… 12 And I will walk among you…
All you have to do is obey what he tells you and you’ve got it made! God Himself will walk among you, there will be plenty to eat, there will be no enemies – they will all be cut off and God will make you fruitful and multiply you. Just like in the Garden of Eden! How amazing is that!
If you know anything at all about the rest of the history of the Hebrew people, you’ll recognize that events did not play out exactly as outlined in Leviticus. Israel has almost always been at war or upheaval. The promise of peace has been mostly fleeting – mostly because of Israel’s disobedience. But our message today is one of hope because despite Israel’s disobedience, we are going to see that God will indeed fulfill every one of these promises to both the righteous – and the wicked.
II. The Promise reiterated in Ps. 37
Fast forward now to the time of King David. David, as you know, was a warrior. But he was also a passionate worshipper. He loved to write Psalms, and the one we read today, 37, is a poem written to encourage, instruct and edify the Hebrew people. David’s aim in this Psalm is to artfully expand upon God’s word in Leviticus and to contrast the ways of the Righteous and the Wicked.
He starts out with a special exhortation to the righteous:
37:1 Fret not yourself because of evildoers;be not envious of wrongdoers!2 For they will soon fade like the grassand wither like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the Lord,and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;trust in him, and he will act.6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,and your justice as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,over the man who carries out evil devices!
8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. (37:1-9).
In these nine verses we read two references to dwelling in and inheriting the land, (v 3, 9). David is reminding the people of the promise God made to the nation of Israel that if they would be faithful, he would establish them in the Promised Land. Their obedience would secure for them the blessings of peace because their enemies would be cut off – and God would walk amongst them personally.
Indeed, many of these promises came true during David’s lifetime. He united the kingdom and ushered in a time of peace, but the sword did not depart from his household his entire life. The people had to wait for Solomon to take the throne to experience the zenith of their peace and prosperity. Yet even in their triumph, there were some key things missing:
Although God did dwell among the people in his temple, he did not walk among them face to face nor did he rule them directly. Many years prior to Solomon, the people had decided they wanted to be like the other nations and have a king. Just as at Sinai when the people became afraid of God and asked Moses to speak to God for them, so too, they wanted a King to be an intermediary. The actual face to face presence and rule of God was too scary to handle directly.
So David’s Psalm is both an exhortation to the people and a reiteration of the hope that one day the Kingdom of God would come to earth just as it is in Heaven ( hmmm, sounds familiar…).
III. God Promises to deal with the Wicked
One of the key things about heaven on earth is that the Wicked get what’s coming to them. Unlike the Righteous, who are described as ‘blameless’ (vv.18, 37), “blessed” (vv.22,26) and “upright” , the wicked are: ‘evildoers’ (vv1,9),’wrongdoers (v1), ‘enemies of God’ (v 20), ‘cursed by Him” (v22), ‘ruthless’ (v35) and ‘transgressors” (v.38).
The Wicked “plot against righteous and gnash their teeth (v12). They ‘draw their sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and the needy and to slay the upright (v14). They borrow and do not pay back (v 21). They watch to put the righteous to death (v32). They carry out evil devices and prosper in their way’ (v7).
Sounds like one of my college roommates ---I’m not kidding!
But seriously, these descriptions really do have a contemporary feel. We all know wicked people who seem to prosper, who seem to get away with murder while we, who seek to be good Christians, suffer without justice. There is a temptation to envy the wicked and to be jealous of what seems so easy for them.
But let’s look at God’s attitude towards them: The Lord laughs at the wicked (v. 13). The wicked are cursed by God (v. 22). They are insubstantial – here today and gone tomorrow (v.3), their glory is passing like the grass of the field (v.20).
The movie American Gangster told the story of Frank Lucas, a black drug kingpin from New York. For a period of time, he seemed untouchable. He got fabulously wealthy and literally got away with murder. But he was being tracked down by Richie Roberts and his team of federal drug agents, who eventually got the goods on Frank. He went to jail for 15 years after turning State’s evidence, and the last scene of the movie shows him emerging from the prison utterly alone and penniless.
He was an example of what happens to the Wicked: They fade like grass and wither (v 3). They shall be cut off (v 9). A sword will enter their own heart, and their bows and their arms will be broken (vv. 15,16). The Wicked will perish, they will vanish and they will be utterly cut off (vv. 20, 22). Even their children will be cut off (v.28) and they will pass away with out leaving a trace (v 36).
Cut off, cut off, cut off. In the Jewish world of David’s day, where belonging is everything, being cut off would have been the worst thing that could happen to someone. David is reassuring the people: The wicked are going to ‘get theirs’.
Here again, however, the rub is that it doesn’t always seem to happen on our timetable or even on this earth. It can get downright tedious watching the wicked prosper. It would be really nice if God would Zap a few of them occasionally and we could see Justice being done with our own eyes.
So David gives a whole host of other reassurances to the Righteous – those who follow and obey God:
God will act on your behalf; He will bring forth your righteousness and justice (vv5,6). The righteous will indeed inherit the land and delight in abundant peace (vv9, 11). The Lord will uphold the Righteous (v16). His heritage will remain. (v 18). He will not be put to shame, but will have abundance in famine (v19). Again - he will inherit the land (v22). God will uphold the righteous, he will not let them fall. He will not forsake them and their children will become a blessing. (v26). On and on it goes. Blessings heaped upon blessings. Time doesn’t allow us to list every one minutely, but I think you can see the pattern.
Let’s reiterate here that the promise of Obedience was to inherit the land of Palestine and to live there unmolested in abundance. Let’s also reiterate that in the very best of times for the Jewish people, these promises were only partially fulfilled. They were told to ‘wait upon the Lord (v 7,34). Little did they realize that what they were waiting for was the Coming of the Lord Jesus.
IV. The Promise Modified in the Beatitudes
When Jesus came to earth, God did indeed dwell bodily with human beings. They did see him face to face – but it wasn’t exactly in the context of universal peace. Surely there was never a more strife-ridden place than Palestine at the time of Christ!
In the Beatitudes, Jesus modifies the Promise: the Kingdom of God will not be the triumphal Heaven-on-Earth reign that the Jewish people expected. Rather, in this Kingdom, the poor in spirit, the persecuted and those who mourn are blessed. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled. The merciful will receive mercy, the pure in heart shall see God, the peacemakers will be called the sons of God – and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Shades of Psalm 37:11! …the meek shall inherit the land …
So here is Jesus, talking about inheriting the land. But what land does he mean? Palestine? Ashland? Hurricane or Huntington?
How about all and none of the above? For the Beatitudes clearly indicate that the Kingdom is not of this world but of the Spirit.
V. The Promise Fulfilled: God dwells in and with His people.
Ever since Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the first believers at Pentecost, the people don’t dwell in a promised land – rather, God dwells in the people! You and I have the Holy Spirit living inside us. We don’t need a piece of geography to experience the Kingdom of God; we have it inside us!
So the Promise is fulfilled: Wherever we go, the Kingdom of God goes along in us. Although as believers we do not inherit a specific piece of real estate, the plan for the righteous is always the same: for God to dwell with us and bless us – wherever we live - and to judge the Wicked.
So when do the Wicked get theirs? The answer is that we have to wait for the summing up of all things in the great battle of Armegeddon and the eventual recreation of the heavens and the earth.
In his second letter, (3:7) Peter tells us that the present heavens and earth …are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. It may seem as if this is a long way off and that God may be unjust in holding off so long, but “The Lord is not slow about his promise…but is patient towards you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (v 9). I, for one, am glad that he postpones His judgment. If He hadn’t I would have been toast long ago!
But never fear, “ The day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up” (II Pet. 3:10). The wicked get burned to a crisp after God has given them plenty of time to repent. And then comes the ultimate fulfillment of all we have been talking about today.
“…according to His Promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (II Pet. 3:12).
Our destiny as Christians is to live in a new Heaven/Earth in which every one of the promises God spoke in Leviticus will literally come to pass! In fact, the original project that God began at Eden find its perfect fulfillment in this New City of God. It’s coming – just as Andre Crouch sings about it: Soon and Very Soon we are going to see the Lord …
VI. Our behavior in light of the Promise
If then, we are looking for the coming of the Day of the Lord and “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought we to be? (v.11,12).
Peter urges us to be “diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless” (v 14), to ‘be on guard, lest we be carried away by the error of unprincipled men (v17) and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (v 18). He might just as well have said:
(Psalm 37:1) Fret not yourself because of evildoers…3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;4 Delight yourself in the Lord,…5 Commit your way to the Lord…7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!Fret not yourself…9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Amen.
Psalm 37 (Beatitudes Mt. 5)
.
Thesis: God Promises to dwell with His people, to bless them and to judge the wicked.
I. Background: The Promise in Leviticus 26:3-13
Imagine that you and your family are Hebrews. You have just left Egypt, the land where your people have been slaves for 400 years, and you have come to camp in the desert near Sinai. It’s been an amazing journey. You have seen God smite the Egyptians with plagues, you’ve gone through the Red Sea and watched the Egyptian army be swallowed up - and now God has told you to go into a Promised Land where he will bless your people. Through Moses, here is what He says:
3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. 6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. 7 You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. … 9 I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. … 11 I will make my dwelling among you… 12 And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves… (Leviticus 26:3-13)
Sounds pretty good, right?! God is going to give you a special place to live and He is actually going to live with you there: “I will make my dwelling among you… 12 And I will walk among you…
All you have to do is obey what he tells you and you’ve got it made! God Himself will walk among you, there will be plenty to eat, there will be no enemies – they will all be cut off and God will make you fruitful and multiply you. Just like in the Garden of Eden! How amazing is that!
If you know anything at all about the rest of the history of the Hebrew people, you’ll recognize that events did not play out exactly as outlined in Leviticus. Israel has almost always been at war or upheaval. The promise of peace has been mostly fleeting – mostly because of Israel’s disobedience. But our message today is one of hope because despite Israel’s disobedience, we are going to see that God will indeed fulfill every one of these promises to both the righteous – and the wicked.
II. The Promise reiterated in Ps. 37
Fast forward now to the time of King David. David, as you know, was a warrior. But he was also a passionate worshipper. He loved to write Psalms, and the one we read today, 37, is a poem written to encourage, instruct and edify the Hebrew people. David’s aim in this Psalm is to artfully expand upon God’s word in Leviticus and to contrast the ways of the Righteous and the Wicked.
He starts out with a special exhortation to the righteous:
37:1 Fret not yourself because of evildoers;be not envious of wrongdoers!2 For they will soon fade like the grassand wither like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the Lord,and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;trust in him, and he will act.6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,and your justice as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,over the man who carries out evil devices!
8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. (37:1-9).
In these nine verses we read two references to dwelling in and inheriting the land, (v 3, 9). David is reminding the people of the promise God made to the nation of Israel that if they would be faithful, he would establish them in the Promised Land. Their obedience would secure for them the blessings of peace because their enemies would be cut off – and God would walk amongst them personally.
Indeed, many of these promises came true during David’s lifetime. He united the kingdom and ushered in a time of peace, but the sword did not depart from his household his entire life. The people had to wait for Solomon to take the throne to experience the zenith of their peace and prosperity. Yet even in their triumph, there were some key things missing:
Although God did dwell among the people in his temple, he did not walk among them face to face nor did he rule them directly. Many years prior to Solomon, the people had decided they wanted to be like the other nations and have a king. Just as at Sinai when the people became afraid of God and asked Moses to speak to God for them, so too, they wanted a King to be an intermediary. The actual face to face presence and rule of God was too scary to handle directly.
So David’s Psalm is both an exhortation to the people and a reiteration of the hope that one day the Kingdom of God would come to earth just as it is in Heaven ( hmmm, sounds familiar…).
III. God Promises to deal with the Wicked
One of the key things about heaven on earth is that the Wicked get what’s coming to them. Unlike the Righteous, who are described as ‘blameless’ (vv.18, 37), “blessed” (vv.22,26) and “upright” , the wicked are: ‘evildoers’ (vv1,9),’wrongdoers (v1), ‘enemies of God’ (v 20), ‘cursed by Him” (v22), ‘ruthless’ (v35) and ‘transgressors” (v.38).
The Wicked “plot against righteous and gnash their teeth (v12). They ‘draw their sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and the needy and to slay the upright (v14). They borrow and do not pay back (v 21). They watch to put the righteous to death (v32). They carry out evil devices and prosper in their way’ (v7).
Sounds like one of my college roommates ---I’m not kidding!
But seriously, these descriptions really do have a contemporary feel. We all know wicked people who seem to prosper, who seem to get away with murder while we, who seek to be good Christians, suffer without justice. There is a temptation to envy the wicked and to be jealous of what seems so easy for them.
But let’s look at God’s attitude towards them: The Lord laughs at the wicked (v. 13). The wicked are cursed by God (v. 22). They are insubstantial – here today and gone tomorrow (v.3), their glory is passing like the grass of the field (v.20).
The movie American Gangster told the story of Frank Lucas, a black drug kingpin from New York. For a period of time, he seemed untouchable. He got fabulously wealthy and literally got away with murder. But he was being tracked down by Richie Roberts and his team of federal drug agents, who eventually got the goods on Frank. He went to jail for 15 years after turning State’s evidence, and the last scene of the movie shows him emerging from the prison utterly alone and penniless.
He was an example of what happens to the Wicked: They fade like grass and wither (v 3). They shall be cut off (v 9). A sword will enter their own heart, and their bows and their arms will be broken (vv. 15,16). The Wicked will perish, they will vanish and they will be utterly cut off (vv. 20, 22). Even their children will be cut off (v.28) and they will pass away with out leaving a trace (v 36).
Cut off, cut off, cut off. In the Jewish world of David’s day, where belonging is everything, being cut off would have been the worst thing that could happen to someone. David is reassuring the people: The wicked are going to ‘get theirs’.
Here again, however, the rub is that it doesn’t always seem to happen on our timetable or even on this earth. It can get downright tedious watching the wicked prosper. It would be really nice if God would Zap a few of them occasionally and we could see Justice being done with our own eyes.
So David gives a whole host of other reassurances to the Righteous – those who follow and obey God:
God will act on your behalf; He will bring forth your righteousness and justice (vv5,6). The righteous will indeed inherit the land and delight in abundant peace (vv9, 11). The Lord will uphold the Righteous (v16). His heritage will remain. (v 18). He will not be put to shame, but will have abundance in famine (v19). Again - he will inherit the land (v22). God will uphold the righteous, he will not let them fall. He will not forsake them and their children will become a blessing. (v26). On and on it goes. Blessings heaped upon blessings. Time doesn’t allow us to list every one minutely, but I think you can see the pattern.
Let’s reiterate here that the promise of Obedience was to inherit the land of Palestine and to live there unmolested in abundance. Let’s also reiterate that in the very best of times for the Jewish people, these promises were only partially fulfilled. They were told to ‘wait upon the Lord (v 7,34). Little did they realize that what they were waiting for was the Coming of the Lord Jesus.
IV. The Promise Modified in the Beatitudes
When Jesus came to earth, God did indeed dwell bodily with human beings. They did see him face to face – but it wasn’t exactly in the context of universal peace. Surely there was never a more strife-ridden place than Palestine at the time of Christ!
In the Beatitudes, Jesus modifies the Promise: the Kingdom of God will not be the triumphal Heaven-on-Earth reign that the Jewish people expected. Rather, in this Kingdom, the poor in spirit, the persecuted and those who mourn are blessed. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled. The merciful will receive mercy, the pure in heart shall see God, the peacemakers will be called the sons of God – and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Shades of Psalm 37:11! …the meek shall inherit the land …
So here is Jesus, talking about inheriting the land. But what land does he mean? Palestine? Ashland? Hurricane or Huntington?
How about all and none of the above? For the Beatitudes clearly indicate that the Kingdom is not of this world but of the Spirit.
V. The Promise Fulfilled: God dwells in and with His people.
Ever since Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the first believers at Pentecost, the people don’t dwell in a promised land – rather, God dwells in the people! You and I have the Holy Spirit living inside us. We don’t need a piece of geography to experience the Kingdom of God; we have it inside us!
So the Promise is fulfilled: Wherever we go, the Kingdom of God goes along in us. Although as believers we do not inherit a specific piece of real estate, the plan for the righteous is always the same: for God to dwell with us and bless us – wherever we live - and to judge the Wicked.
So when do the Wicked get theirs? The answer is that we have to wait for the summing up of all things in the great battle of Armegeddon and the eventual recreation of the heavens and the earth.
In his second letter, (3:7) Peter tells us that the present heavens and earth …are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. It may seem as if this is a long way off and that God may be unjust in holding off so long, but “The Lord is not slow about his promise…but is patient towards you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (v 9). I, for one, am glad that he postpones His judgment. If He hadn’t I would have been toast long ago!
But never fear, “ The day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up” (II Pet. 3:10). The wicked get burned to a crisp after God has given them plenty of time to repent. And then comes the ultimate fulfillment of all we have been talking about today.
“…according to His Promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (II Pet. 3:12).
Our destiny as Christians is to live in a new Heaven/Earth in which every one of the promises God spoke in Leviticus will literally come to pass! In fact, the original project that God began at Eden find its perfect fulfillment in this New City of God. It’s coming – just as Andre Crouch sings about it: Soon and Very Soon we are going to see the Lord …
VI. Our behavior in light of the Promise
If then, we are looking for the coming of the Day of the Lord and “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought we to be? (v.11,12).
Peter urges us to be “diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless” (v 14), to ‘be on guard, lest we be carried away by the error of unprincipled men (v17) and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (v 18). He might just as well have said:
(Psalm 37:1) Fret not yourself because of evildoers…3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;4 Delight yourself in the Lord,…5 Commit your way to the Lord…7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!Fret not yourself…9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Amen.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Christ the Healer
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on January 13, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Hosptial , Huntington, WV, based on
Acts 10:34-38
Imagine for a moment that you are a member of a large church and that an epidemic of illness in your town. You have attended 40 funerals in as many days, and virtually everyone you know is sick unto death – adults, little kids, teens – everybody.
Your faith in God has been severely tested and you feel as though you’re just about ready to give up on faith altogether.
In anguish of heart, you pray for God to show you some sign or message that will help you make sense out of all the suffering. Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, Acts 10:38 comes to mind with great clarity: …”how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him…”
In this moment of clarity, God reveals to you the nature of Satan as the Defiler and Christ as the Healer. Your tears are wiped away and you feel strengthened and encouraged to tell the world about your revelation, firm in the knowledge that the message of Acts 10:38 is relevant for today because Jesus is just the same today as he was back in the time of Acts.
If you were successful in imagining this scenario, you can imagine what it was like for John Alexander Dowie, who experienced just such a thing in 1874 in a suburb of Sydney Australia, during a catastrophic epidemic of illness. Immediately after having had this moment of clarity, Dowie received an urgent summons to pray for a young girl that was dying. He relates the experience this way:
“With just a feeling as a shepherd has who hears that his sheep are being torn from the fold by a cruel wolf, I rushed from my house, ran hatless down the street, and entered the room of the dying [girl]. There she lay groaning, grinding her clenched teeth in the agony of the conflict with the destroyer, the white froth, mingled with her blood, oozing from her pain-distorted mouth. I looked at her and then my anger burned. “Oh,” I thought, “for some sharp sword of heavenly temper keen to slay this cruel foe who is strangling that lovely maiden like an invisible serpent, tightening his deadly coils for a final victory.”
From our vantage point in 2008, it would be easy to look back and say that the later invention of sulpha drugs and antibiotics would certainly have been such a sharp sword, and that in our day, we have largely eradicated such suffering. But that would be overconfident , for all we have to do is think of the health problems that challenge us today and realize that while we have made huge strides in eliminating some diseases, such as smallpox – there are still a host of diseases that are vexing to medical science and that the fundamental issues relating to sickness and faith remain the same.
Picking up our story again, Dowie tells how “the doctor, a good Christian man, was quietly walking up and down the room quietly sharing the mother’s grief. Presently, he stood at my side and said, “Sir, are not God’s ways mysterious?”
“Instantly, “recalls Dowie, “the sword was flashed in my hand – the Spirit’s sword, the Word of God. “God’s way!” I said, pointing to the scene of conflict, “how dare you, Dr. K-, call that God’s way of bringing His children home from earth to Heaven? No, sir, that is the devil’s work, and it is time we called on Him Who came to ‘destroy the work of the devil’ to slay that deadly foul destroyer, and to save the child. Can you pray, Doctor, can you pray the prayer of faith that saves the sick?” At once, offended at my words, my friend was changed and saying, “You are too much excited sir, ‘tis best to say ‘God’s will be done,’ [and] he left the room.
Excited! The word was quite inadequate for I was almost frenzied with Divinely imparted anger and hatred of that foul destroyer, Disease, which was doing Satan’s will. “It is not so,” I exclaimed, ‘no will of God sends such cruelty, and I shall never say “God’s will be done’ to Satan’s works, which God’s own Son came to destroy, and this is one of them.” Oh, how the Word of God was burning in my heart: “Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.” And was not God with me? And was not Jesus there and all His promises true? I felt that it was even so, and turning to the mother I inquired, “Why did you send for me?” To which she answered, “Do pray, oh pray for her that God may raise her up.” So we prayed. What did I say? It may be that I cannot recall the words without mistake…I cried:
“Our Father, help! And Holy Spirit teach me how to pray. Plead Thou for us, oh, Jesus, Savior, Healer, Friend, our Advocate with God the Father. Hear and heal, Eternal One! From all disease and death deliver this sweet child of Thine. I rest upon the Word. We claim the promise now. The Word is true, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.’ Then heal her now. The Word is true, “I am the Lord, I change not.’ Unchanging God, then prove Thyself the healer now. The Word is true, ‘These signs shall follow them that believe in My Name, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ And I believe, and I lay hands in Jesus’ Name on her, and claim this promise now. The word is true, ‘The prayer of faith shall save the sick.’ Trusting in Thee alone, I cry, oh, save her now, for Jesus’ sake, Amen!”
Instantly, reports Dowie, the child relaxed into a deep sleep and the fever broke. She survived and became the breakthrough case that stopped the epidemic in Dowie’s congregation; not another person in his church died after this.
Our Jaded View
Today, our view of healing evangelists is jaded by our experience of high profile ethical and financial lapses by these same individuals. TV distorts our picture of the healing ministry, and our inherent Western rationalism fights against belief in divine healing. We dismiss the possibility of spiritual healing as mere enthusiasm, wish fulfillment or possibly some sort of trickery.
Compassion and the Theological Basis of Healing Ministry
Yet notice in our story, that the basis for Dowie’s healing prayer is deep, gut wrenching anguish over the suffering of his people and the realization that it is not God that inflicts disease upon us but that illness is a tragic result of Sin having entered the world through the defilement of Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve.
The theological basis for the prayer of faith is that the world as we see it now is not the world that God originally created. Everything in our world changed dramatically when Sin defiled the first couple. Think of it as the introduction of the first genetic mutation if you will - Mutation that radically altered everything within us and around us.
It is against this background that we look to our Savior Christ as our Healer sent by God to deliver us from the ravages of Sin and sickness. From our texts today, let us consider together some of the rationale and basis for God healing us in Christ.
First, from Isaiah 42: 5, we see God as our Creator:
“Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it…” The Lord is the One who gives us life to begin with; He is our architect and manufacturer. His original design is not for us to live in misery, but to walk with Him in harmony.
As Creator, he calls His people into a righteous Covenant with Him.
“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people…”
Over and over again, we see God making covenants – with Abraham first, and then subsequently reiterating this covenant with Jacob and Moses and Joshua – and finally through Jesus. God wants to be our God and he wants us to walk with him as His beloved people.
This covenant is to be the basis for blessing the whole world:
“I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” (vv. 6,7). Immediately we can hear the words of the song of Simeon: ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior whom you have prepared for all the world to see, a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people, Israel.”…
The covenant with Israel is to be the basis for the healing of the world, and this healing is to be mediated by God’s chosen servant, Messiah: “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”…
Healing here is couched as an issue of justice: God’s chosen servant will come to set things right in the world. (v. 1). He will not rest in his mission until he establishes justice in all the earth (v. 4). Isaiah declares that this is a new thing God is doing in the earth (v.9). ‘before they spring forth I tell you of them”, he says.
Again, Isaiah is speaking of Christ and his God-anointed ministry to us. Jumping ahead to Matthew’s narrative of Christ’s baptism then, we can easily connect the dots and see that this is the new thing Isaiah is talking about.
John’s immersion of Jesus was not for the taking away of sin, but to recognize that Jesus is the Chosen Servant prophecied by Isaiah, and to anoint Jesus for his work. Jesus tells John that he goes down into the water in order to fulfill all righteousness. He is being commissioned into His ministry.
When Jesus comes up out of the water, the Sprit of God descends upon him, and the voice of God affirms, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am will pleased.” In other words, This is the guy Isaiah was talking about. Listen up! This is it!
Again, there is the Old Testament affirmation from Psalm 2: Thou art my Son, Today have I begotten Thee. (V. 7). God ‘births his Son into his ministry, acknowledging and commissioning Him for the Work of Healing the World.
In his sermon #100 on the mystery of the Lord’s Baptism, St. Maximus of Turin expounds thusly:
“The Gospel tells us that the Lord came to the Jordan to be baptized and to be consecrated by heavenly signs. This day too, we may rightly call his birthday, for while on Christmas he was physically born among people, today he is reborn in sacramental mystery. “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” His mother offered him to the wise men to adore; his Father offers him to all the world.”
Christ’s baptism also paves the way for us to follow him into our own Baptism. ‘Christ is baptized first so that Christians may follow his example with confidence’, says Maximus. Not only that, but the very water of baptism is ‘sanctified and purified by him. …For when the water spread over him, all water is cleansed for our baptism, and the source is purified so that it may be a fountain of grace for coming peoples.” (Quoted in Benedictine Daily Prayer, pg 105).
Christ’s healing ministry begins when he is baptized and his first ‘patient’ is the water itself! Jesus purifies the water, so that the water of our baptism may heal us of our sin sickness!
Jesus our Prototype
Now just as Jesus is our divine prototype in Baptism, so too is He in His anointing by the Holy Spirit. Just as The Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus, so too he comes upon us in our salvation and Baptism. This is the reason why people are anointed after being baptized. They are ‘Chrismated” or sealed in the Spirit, to indicate that the Holy Spirit now lives in them and rests upon them.
Returning to Acts 10:38: “ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth… with the Holy Spirit and with power…
God empowered Jesus by anointing Him with the Holy Spirit so that he could go about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil. This was to bring about justice in the world by releasing people from the curse and stain of Sin, from the defilement of Satan, and to bring about a progressive restoration of all that was lost in the Fall. As we sing in “Joy to the World,” “ He comes to make His blessings known, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found, far as, far as, the Curse is found. Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan the Defiler.
Now keep in mind that this reading from Acts is part of the Sermon that Peter delivered after the Gentile Cornelius and all his family got saved. This sermon announces the spreading of the Gospel to all Gentile peoples. A little later in the text we learn that the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius, his family and all who heard the word proclaimed. They are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, they begin to speak in tongues and then they are baptized in water, just as Jesus was. Same water, same Holy Spirit. Same Jesus. Same God the Father. It’s all the same today, just as it was back then.
This then, is the basis for our contemporary practice of the healing ministry. We follow Jesus in baptism, we get the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we become his witnesses, being commissioned to spread the Gospel to all people, to open the eyes of the blind, to heal the sick and to bring justice to the earth by the systematic destruction of Satan’s defilements.
In the next few weeks and months, we are going to learn much more about this ministry of healing, but I really want you to receive from this message that we as Christians are not wild-eyed fanatics, or greasy charlatans when we pray for the healing of the sick. No, we are God’s children, following the ministry of His Son, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil.
After you take communion, come for healing prayer as well. It’s God’s gift to you, just like Salvation, just like the Body and Blood of Jesus. We don’t disparage the healing art of medicine one little bit by saying all this, but Jesus came to set the captives free. Healing is the “Children’s bread. It’s yours by birthright, so come and get it!...Amen?
AMEN.
Acts 10:34-38
Imagine for a moment that you are a member of a large church and that an epidemic of illness in your town. You have attended 40 funerals in as many days, and virtually everyone you know is sick unto death – adults, little kids, teens – everybody.
Your faith in God has been severely tested and you feel as though you’re just about ready to give up on faith altogether.
In anguish of heart, you pray for God to show you some sign or message that will help you make sense out of all the suffering. Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, Acts 10:38 comes to mind with great clarity: …”how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him…”
In this moment of clarity, God reveals to you the nature of Satan as the Defiler and Christ as the Healer. Your tears are wiped away and you feel strengthened and encouraged to tell the world about your revelation, firm in the knowledge that the message of Acts 10:38 is relevant for today because Jesus is just the same today as he was back in the time of Acts.
If you were successful in imagining this scenario, you can imagine what it was like for John Alexander Dowie, who experienced just such a thing in 1874 in a suburb of Sydney Australia, during a catastrophic epidemic of illness. Immediately after having had this moment of clarity, Dowie received an urgent summons to pray for a young girl that was dying. He relates the experience this way:
“With just a feeling as a shepherd has who hears that his sheep are being torn from the fold by a cruel wolf, I rushed from my house, ran hatless down the street, and entered the room of the dying [girl]. There she lay groaning, grinding her clenched teeth in the agony of the conflict with the destroyer, the white froth, mingled with her blood, oozing from her pain-distorted mouth. I looked at her and then my anger burned. “Oh,” I thought, “for some sharp sword of heavenly temper keen to slay this cruel foe who is strangling that lovely maiden like an invisible serpent, tightening his deadly coils for a final victory.”
From our vantage point in 2008, it would be easy to look back and say that the later invention of sulpha drugs and antibiotics would certainly have been such a sharp sword, and that in our day, we have largely eradicated such suffering. But that would be overconfident , for all we have to do is think of the health problems that challenge us today and realize that while we have made huge strides in eliminating some diseases, such as smallpox – there are still a host of diseases that are vexing to medical science and that the fundamental issues relating to sickness and faith remain the same.
Picking up our story again, Dowie tells how “the doctor, a good Christian man, was quietly walking up and down the room quietly sharing the mother’s grief. Presently, he stood at my side and said, “Sir, are not God’s ways mysterious?”
“Instantly, “recalls Dowie, “the sword was flashed in my hand – the Spirit’s sword, the Word of God. “God’s way!” I said, pointing to the scene of conflict, “how dare you, Dr. K-, call that God’s way of bringing His children home from earth to Heaven? No, sir, that is the devil’s work, and it is time we called on Him Who came to ‘destroy the work of the devil’ to slay that deadly foul destroyer, and to save the child. Can you pray, Doctor, can you pray the prayer of faith that saves the sick?” At once, offended at my words, my friend was changed and saying, “You are too much excited sir, ‘tis best to say ‘God’s will be done,’ [and] he left the room.
Excited! The word was quite inadequate for I was almost frenzied with Divinely imparted anger and hatred of that foul destroyer, Disease, which was doing Satan’s will. “It is not so,” I exclaimed, ‘no will of God sends such cruelty, and I shall never say “God’s will be done’ to Satan’s works, which God’s own Son came to destroy, and this is one of them.” Oh, how the Word of God was burning in my heart: “Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.” And was not God with me? And was not Jesus there and all His promises true? I felt that it was even so, and turning to the mother I inquired, “Why did you send for me?” To which she answered, “Do pray, oh pray for her that God may raise her up.” So we prayed. What did I say? It may be that I cannot recall the words without mistake…I cried:
“Our Father, help! And Holy Spirit teach me how to pray. Plead Thou for us, oh, Jesus, Savior, Healer, Friend, our Advocate with God the Father. Hear and heal, Eternal One! From all disease and death deliver this sweet child of Thine. I rest upon the Word. We claim the promise now. The Word is true, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.’ Then heal her now. The Word is true, “I am the Lord, I change not.’ Unchanging God, then prove Thyself the healer now. The Word is true, ‘These signs shall follow them that believe in My Name, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ And I believe, and I lay hands in Jesus’ Name on her, and claim this promise now. The word is true, ‘The prayer of faith shall save the sick.’ Trusting in Thee alone, I cry, oh, save her now, for Jesus’ sake, Amen!”
Instantly, reports Dowie, the child relaxed into a deep sleep and the fever broke. She survived and became the breakthrough case that stopped the epidemic in Dowie’s congregation; not another person in his church died after this.
Our Jaded View
Today, our view of healing evangelists is jaded by our experience of high profile ethical and financial lapses by these same individuals. TV distorts our picture of the healing ministry, and our inherent Western rationalism fights against belief in divine healing. We dismiss the possibility of spiritual healing as mere enthusiasm, wish fulfillment or possibly some sort of trickery.
Compassion and the Theological Basis of Healing Ministry
Yet notice in our story, that the basis for Dowie’s healing prayer is deep, gut wrenching anguish over the suffering of his people and the realization that it is not God that inflicts disease upon us but that illness is a tragic result of Sin having entered the world through the defilement of Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve.
The theological basis for the prayer of faith is that the world as we see it now is not the world that God originally created. Everything in our world changed dramatically when Sin defiled the first couple. Think of it as the introduction of the first genetic mutation if you will - Mutation that radically altered everything within us and around us.
It is against this background that we look to our Savior Christ as our Healer sent by God to deliver us from the ravages of Sin and sickness. From our texts today, let us consider together some of the rationale and basis for God healing us in Christ.
First, from Isaiah 42: 5, we see God as our Creator:
“Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it…” The Lord is the One who gives us life to begin with; He is our architect and manufacturer. His original design is not for us to live in misery, but to walk with Him in harmony.
As Creator, he calls His people into a righteous Covenant with Him.
“I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people…”
Over and over again, we see God making covenants – with Abraham first, and then subsequently reiterating this covenant with Jacob and Moses and Joshua – and finally through Jesus. God wants to be our God and he wants us to walk with him as His beloved people.
This covenant is to be the basis for blessing the whole world:
“I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” (vv. 6,7). Immediately we can hear the words of the song of Simeon: ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior whom you have prepared for all the world to see, a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people, Israel.”…
The covenant with Israel is to be the basis for the healing of the world, and this healing is to be mediated by God’s chosen servant, Messiah: “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”…
Healing here is couched as an issue of justice: God’s chosen servant will come to set things right in the world. (v. 1). He will not rest in his mission until he establishes justice in all the earth (v. 4). Isaiah declares that this is a new thing God is doing in the earth (v.9). ‘before they spring forth I tell you of them”, he says.
Again, Isaiah is speaking of Christ and his God-anointed ministry to us. Jumping ahead to Matthew’s narrative of Christ’s baptism then, we can easily connect the dots and see that this is the new thing Isaiah is talking about.
John’s immersion of Jesus was not for the taking away of sin, but to recognize that Jesus is the Chosen Servant prophecied by Isaiah, and to anoint Jesus for his work. Jesus tells John that he goes down into the water in order to fulfill all righteousness. He is being commissioned into His ministry.
When Jesus comes up out of the water, the Sprit of God descends upon him, and the voice of God affirms, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am will pleased.” In other words, This is the guy Isaiah was talking about. Listen up! This is it!
Again, there is the Old Testament affirmation from Psalm 2: Thou art my Son, Today have I begotten Thee. (V. 7). God ‘births his Son into his ministry, acknowledging and commissioning Him for the Work of Healing the World.
In his sermon #100 on the mystery of the Lord’s Baptism, St. Maximus of Turin expounds thusly:
“The Gospel tells us that the Lord came to the Jordan to be baptized and to be consecrated by heavenly signs. This day too, we may rightly call his birthday, for while on Christmas he was physically born among people, today he is reborn in sacramental mystery. “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” His mother offered him to the wise men to adore; his Father offers him to all the world.”
Christ’s baptism also paves the way for us to follow him into our own Baptism. ‘Christ is baptized first so that Christians may follow his example with confidence’, says Maximus. Not only that, but the very water of baptism is ‘sanctified and purified by him. …For when the water spread over him, all water is cleansed for our baptism, and the source is purified so that it may be a fountain of grace for coming peoples.” (Quoted in Benedictine Daily Prayer, pg 105).
Christ’s healing ministry begins when he is baptized and his first ‘patient’ is the water itself! Jesus purifies the water, so that the water of our baptism may heal us of our sin sickness!
Jesus our Prototype
Now just as Jesus is our divine prototype in Baptism, so too is He in His anointing by the Holy Spirit. Just as The Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus, so too he comes upon us in our salvation and Baptism. This is the reason why people are anointed after being baptized. They are ‘Chrismated” or sealed in the Spirit, to indicate that the Holy Spirit now lives in them and rests upon them.
Returning to Acts 10:38: “ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth… with the Holy Spirit and with power…
God empowered Jesus by anointing Him with the Holy Spirit so that he could go about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil. This was to bring about justice in the world by releasing people from the curse and stain of Sin, from the defilement of Satan, and to bring about a progressive restoration of all that was lost in the Fall. As we sing in “Joy to the World,” “ He comes to make His blessings known, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found, far as, far as, the Curse is found. Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan the Defiler.
Now keep in mind that this reading from Acts is part of the Sermon that Peter delivered after the Gentile Cornelius and all his family got saved. This sermon announces the spreading of the Gospel to all Gentile peoples. A little later in the text we learn that the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius, his family and all who heard the word proclaimed. They are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, they begin to speak in tongues and then they are baptized in water, just as Jesus was. Same water, same Holy Spirit. Same Jesus. Same God the Father. It’s all the same today, just as it was back then.
This then, is the basis for our contemporary practice of the healing ministry. We follow Jesus in baptism, we get the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we become his witnesses, being commissioned to spread the Gospel to all people, to open the eyes of the blind, to heal the sick and to bring justice to the earth by the systematic destruction of Satan’s defilements.
In the next few weeks and months, we are going to learn much more about this ministry of healing, but I really want you to receive from this message that we as Christians are not wild-eyed fanatics, or greasy charlatans when we pray for the healing of the sick. No, we are God’s children, following the ministry of His Son, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil.
After you take communion, come for healing prayer as well. It’s God’s gift to you, just like Salvation, just like the Body and Blood of Jesus. We don’t disparage the healing art of medicine one little bit by saying all this, but Jesus came to set the captives free. Healing is the “Children’s bread. It’s yours by birthright, so come and get it!...Amen?
AMEN.
How the Wise seek Him
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Chapel of St. Mary's Hospital, Huntington WV. Based on Matthew 2: 1-12
Epiphany Sunday 2008
Today we celebrate the visit of the magi to Jesus. These men are almost entirely mysterious to us today. They make their first appearance after the birth of Christ, pay him a quick visit and then disappear from the narrative as quickly as they showed up. They are of course exotic, and they make for wonderfully colorful figures in the crèche’s and nativity scenes that are so ubiquitous this time of year. But they are also figures who represent to us something very important about the nature of faith and it’s interaction with knowledge. Namely, that human wisdom can be used by God to discover His plans, but it takes an active faith to meet the God we learn about.
Let’s look at some of the ways the Wise men were indeed wise, and how they used their wisdom to find the Lord:
Now we know that the Magi came from the east. They were apparently students of the stars; astrologers and philosophers in the best sense. Probably schooled in the mystery religions, they knew that when a new star arose, that it was a portent, a sign of something that God was doing. They were wise in the cosmic ways of God – they knew he works through heavenly signs.
But they were wise in another way: they knew that it would not be sufficient to merely see the star and realize that God was up to something. No, they understood that once they discerned something, they had to act on it. They had to take the information they had discerned and combine it with faithful action – they had to go worship this newborn king.
Now notice that these magi were not about diplomatic networking with local kings. If that was their goal, they could have stopped at Herod’s house, hobnobbed with him, given him some rich gifts and then be on their way with no trouble. Instead, they stopped at Herod’s place just long enough to ask him where they could find the newborn King of the Jews – again, so that they might worship him. Their simple request created consternation with Herod and with the whole of Jerusalem as well! Not exactly something diplomatic to do!
I believe that God intended this visit to shake up Herod and Jerusalem and to give them a prophetic notice that it was time to do as the wise men were doing – to bring their prideful self-will into faithful obedience, and to follow the Magi in worshipping Jesus the King. Curiously, Herod does show a certain perverse kind of faith. He seems to trust the prophetic Word enough to inquire where the Christ was to be born. He also seems to implicitly recognize that the wise men had discerned something that was potentially BIG. But instead of combining his knowledge with faithful action, he schemes and lies in order to gain information so that he can protect his own skin and kingdom!
If the Magi are paradigms of Good Men, Herod is the epitome of the bad, faithless man. Even without knowing much about the man himself, we sense from the text that he is up to no good. He’s a snake in the grass. But the wise men are wise enough not to call him out on his intentions. Rather, they nod and go their way, intent on seeking Jesus – perhaps even believing that Herod was sincere in his desire to worship the child.
And God graciously leads them. Many modern day astronomers have undertaken to explain the nature of the new star that led the Magi. Once, when I was about 13, I remember going to our high school library one evening in Advent with my parents and listening to a lecture about something called a ‘heliacal rise”. I don’t have a clue about this now, but I remember thinking that this guy is trying very hard to explain something that is inherently mysterious.
As I read this text, it almost seems as if the miracle of the star may have been a sort of Command Performance – a special star that God caused to appear to the wise men in order to lead them to Jesus- whether or not anyone else saw it.
Again, however, let’s point out that if others did see this star, they did not combine their knowledge with faithful action as the Magi did or they too would have shown up from many points on the compass, rejoicing as the Magi did, at the appearance of the star and following it to Jesus.
In verse 11 of our text, we see the climax of their search. The wise men came into the house where Jesus was with Mary, and they fell down and worshiped him. They gave him the symbolic gifts fit for a king - gifts that also foreshadowed the burial and entombment of this king – and they worshipped him. In others words, they gave him the praise and ascribed to him the worth He was due. In modern parlance, they ‘came to Jesus” , they responded to the altar call, they laid their all on the altar and they Got SAVED! Their knowledge had led them to take faithful action and they were rewarded by finding the King they sought. And because this King was not to reign on earth, but to have a heavenly kingdom, the wise men then departed to go home.
And here is where we see that the Magi were not only wise in all the ways we have discussed so far, but they were also smart enough to recognize a warning from God that came to them in a dream. Having been warned they obeyed the warning and went home by another way. Imagine how the story might have ended had they discounted the dream and gone back to Herod! Their obedience saved them and Jesus as well.
So out of this exotic and colorful story let’s derive some lessons for ourselves today:
1) Look for what God is doing in your world today.
At our Vestry retreat yesterday, Rev. Ron Crum stressed this point by urging us to find out what is our present reality. Not WWJD – What would Jesus do? But WIJD – What is Jesus Doing? For us as All Saints Anglican Church, Jesus has clearly led us to band together and stand for the Historical Faith Once Delivered. He is clearly encouraging us in our worship by gifting us with the use of this beautiful Chapel - that we didn’t have to build or maintain! It’s been done and is being done for us! We are free to enjoy the beauty of our surroundings which affirms one of our core values as a worshipping body - the Beauty of Liturgical Sacramental Worship. God is helping us to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
2) Use your intellect to discern God’s purposes. As Anglicans, we value the right use of reason and preserving the orthodox faith we have received – that which we call the Tradition with a Capitol T. We can use our minds to help us pursue what seems to be good to us and to the Holy Spirit (ACTS 15). Jim Akers presented to us some of his research about CANA and the Anglican Mission in the Americas. We learned some new things that might affect our decision-making, and it was very helpful.
3) Combine belief with faithful action. Go and seek Jesus, and worship Him. I commend you all for doing just that as you have left places that may not have been worshipping Christ, in order to follow an “uncertain star” (ASAC) that leads to faithful worship of our God. Our next faithful action as a body will be to apply to actually apply to either CANA and or AMiA.
4) Beware of Herod! Watch out for those who feign belief in order to destroy you and your faith. (Enough Said!)
5) Worship God with the Best you can muster. Bring him your precious gifts of God Frankincense and Myrhh, fit for a King. Ascribe to the Lord the Honor due His name. If the wise men thought it was important enough for them, it’s important enough for us too! I wear a signet ring with the letters DOM, a traditional Benedictine slogan. The letters stand for Deo Optimo Maximo – To God the Highest and the Best. This is the attitude with which I wish to serve God. I hope you do too.
6) Pay attention to warnings. God may be trying to get your attention! Over and over again in the first chapters of the Gospels, we read of angels coming to deliver messages to Mary, to Joseph, to the Shepherds, and to the wise men. Some times these messages come through open visions, and sometimes and more ominously they come through dreams. God loves you enough to warn you when you’re about to get into trouble. Pay attention and Herod won’t kill you; pay attention to your dreams – God may be leading you to something wonderful!
I’d like to close by reiterating the collect for the day as our closing prayer: O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Epiphany Sunday 2008
Today we celebrate the visit of the magi to Jesus. These men are almost entirely mysterious to us today. They make their first appearance after the birth of Christ, pay him a quick visit and then disappear from the narrative as quickly as they showed up. They are of course exotic, and they make for wonderfully colorful figures in the crèche’s and nativity scenes that are so ubiquitous this time of year. But they are also figures who represent to us something very important about the nature of faith and it’s interaction with knowledge. Namely, that human wisdom can be used by God to discover His plans, but it takes an active faith to meet the God we learn about.
Let’s look at some of the ways the Wise men were indeed wise, and how they used their wisdom to find the Lord:
Now we know that the Magi came from the east. They were apparently students of the stars; astrologers and philosophers in the best sense. Probably schooled in the mystery religions, they knew that when a new star arose, that it was a portent, a sign of something that God was doing. They were wise in the cosmic ways of God – they knew he works through heavenly signs.
But they were wise in another way: they knew that it would not be sufficient to merely see the star and realize that God was up to something. No, they understood that once they discerned something, they had to act on it. They had to take the information they had discerned and combine it with faithful action – they had to go worship this newborn king.
Now notice that these magi were not about diplomatic networking with local kings. If that was their goal, they could have stopped at Herod’s house, hobnobbed with him, given him some rich gifts and then be on their way with no trouble. Instead, they stopped at Herod’s place just long enough to ask him where they could find the newborn King of the Jews – again, so that they might worship him. Their simple request created consternation with Herod and with the whole of Jerusalem as well! Not exactly something diplomatic to do!
I believe that God intended this visit to shake up Herod and Jerusalem and to give them a prophetic notice that it was time to do as the wise men were doing – to bring their prideful self-will into faithful obedience, and to follow the Magi in worshipping Jesus the King. Curiously, Herod does show a certain perverse kind of faith. He seems to trust the prophetic Word enough to inquire where the Christ was to be born. He also seems to implicitly recognize that the wise men had discerned something that was potentially BIG. But instead of combining his knowledge with faithful action, he schemes and lies in order to gain information so that he can protect his own skin and kingdom!
If the Magi are paradigms of Good Men, Herod is the epitome of the bad, faithless man. Even without knowing much about the man himself, we sense from the text that he is up to no good. He’s a snake in the grass. But the wise men are wise enough not to call him out on his intentions. Rather, they nod and go their way, intent on seeking Jesus – perhaps even believing that Herod was sincere in his desire to worship the child.
And God graciously leads them. Many modern day astronomers have undertaken to explain the nature of the new star that led the Magi. Once, when I was about 13, I remember going to our high school library one evening in Advent with my parents and listening to a lecture about something called a ‘heliacal rise”. I don’t have a clue about this now, but I remember thinking that this guy is trying very hard to explain something that is inherently mysterious.
As I read this text, it almost seems as if the miracle of the star may have been a sort of Command Performance – a special star that God caused to appear to the wise men in order to lead them to Jesus- whether or not anyone else saw it.
Again, however, let’s point out that if others did see this star, they did not combine their knowledge with faithful action as the Magi did or they too would have shown up from many points on the compass, rejoicing as the Magi did, at the appearance of the star and following it to Jesus.
In verse 11 of our text, we see the climax of their search. The wise men came into the house where Jesus was with Mary, and they fell down and worshiped him. They gave him the symbolic gifts fit for a king - gifts that also foreshadowed the burial and entombment of this king – and they worshipped him. In others words, they gave him the praise and ascribed to him the worth He was due. In modern parlance, they ‘came to Jesus” , they responded to the altar call, they laid their all on the altar and they Got SAVED! Their knowledge had led them to take faithful action and they were rewarded by finding the King they sought. And because this King was not to reign on earth, but to have a heavenly kingdom, the wise men then departed to go home.
And here is where we see that the Magi were not only wise in all the ways we have discussed so far, but they were also smart enough to recognize a warning from God that came to them in a dream. Having been warned they obeyed the warning and went home by another way. Imagine how the story might have ended had they discounted the dream and gone back to Herod! Their obedience saved them and Jesus as well.
So out of this exotic and colorful story let’s derive some lessons for ourselves today:
1) Look for what God is doing in your world today.
At our Vestry retreat yesterday, Rev. Ron Crum stressed this point by urging us to find out what is our present reality. Not WWJD – What would Jesus do? But WIJD – What is Jesus Doing? For us as All Saints Anglican Church, Jesus has clearly led us to band together and stand for the Historical Faith Once Delivered. He is clearly encouraging us in our worship by gifting us with the use of this beautiful Chapel - that we didn’t have to build or maintain! It’s been done and is being done for us! We are free to enjoy the beauty of our surroundings which affirms one of our core values as a worshipping body - the Beauty of Liturgical Sacramental Worship. God is helping us to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
2) Use your intellect to discern God’s purposes. As Anglicans, we value the right use of reason and preserving the orthodox faith we have received – that which we call the Tradition with a Capitol T. We can use our minds to help us pursue what seems to be good to us and to the Holy Spirit (ACTS 15). Jim Akers presented to us some of his research about CANA and the Anglican Mission in the Americas. We learned some new things that might affect our decision-making, and it was very helpful.
3) Combine belief with faithful action. Go and seek Jesus, and worship Him. I commend you all for doing just that as you have left places that may not have been worshipping Christ, in order to follow an “uncertain star” (ASAC) that leads to faithful worship of our God. Our next faithful action as a body will be to apply to actually apply to either CANA and or AMiA.
4) Beware of Herod! Watch out for those who feign belief in order to destroy you and your faith. (Enough Said!)
5) Worship God with the Best you can muster. Bring him your precious gifts of God Frankincense and Myrhh, fit for a King. Ascribe to the Lord the Honor due His name. If the wise men thought it was important enough for them, it’s important enough for us too! I wear a signet ring with the letters DOM, a traditional Benedictine slogan. The letters stand for Deo Optimo Maximo – To God the Highest and the Best. This is the attitude with which I wish to serve God. I hope you do too.
6) Pay attention to warnings. God may be trying to get your attention! Over and over again in the first chapters of the Gospels, we read of angels coming to deliver messages to Mary, to Joseph, to the Shepherds, and to the wise men. Some times these messages come through open visions, and sometimes and more ominously they come through dreams. God loves you enough to warn you when you’re about to get into trouble. Pay attention and Herod won’t kill you; pay attention to your dreams – God may be leading you to something wonderful!
I’d like to close by reiterating the collect for the day as our closing prayer: O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Dear Mom
This letter was read to All Saints Anglican Church on December 23, 2007.
It purports to be written by a Greek believer living in Palestine around the year AD 60 or so...
Dear Mom,
I hope you don’t mind me being so familiar. There are so many now who love you and call you “Mother”, that it only seems natural for me to do the same…
I was talking with Matthew the other day - and we were reminiscing about the Gospel he wrote about Yeshua: how he walked among us, died on the cross and rose from the grave to save us from our sins. It still amazes me to think that he grew up in our midst and we never had a clue that he would go on to become Messiah.
But then I thought that you must surely have known all along and that it must have been terribly difficult for you to keep that knowledge to yourself – especially when people were accusing you of being unfaithful to Joseph, your betrothed. I understand from Matthew that Joseph considered divorcing you early on, but thought better of it when he realized what would happen to you as a single mother. In fact, someone even told me that you came very close to being stoned by your own townspeople one time…It makes me shudder to think about it.
If it hadn’t been for Gabriel coming to tell Joseph that your son had been conceived of the Holy Spirit and that he would become the Savior of his people…who knows where we would be now! I sure would have liked to see Joseph’s face when the angel told him that the child’s name would be Yeshua, the one foretold by the prophet Isaiah!
I also keep going back to what it must have been like for you when Gabriel told you that you would bear this child. They say that you just accepted it. “Be it done to me according to your word”, I think is what you said. Amazing! Weren’t you scared? Didn’t you want to run away? You, just a teen-age girl, and here you were going to have a child that would be the Savior! I think I would have asked the angel to find someone else.
You must have been quite a courageous young woman! In fact, I KNOW you were, because I read the words of the song you sang when you went to visit Elizabeth. I got them from that Gentile physician, Luke, who came to listen to you tell your story that one time. He has written up his Gospel too, including some things that Matthew left out.
Your “Magnificat” reminds me a lot of the song Hannah sang when she gave birth to Samuel. Were you thinking about that when you sang to Elizabeth? I bet you were…
It seems like you thought that Yeshua would be king when he grew up – that he would bring down Herod and Caesar and reign over all. That was pretty subversive stuff! Did you ever talk to anyone else about these thoughts? And if you did, did you look over your shoulder to see if there was a Roman soldier around? You could have gone to prison for treason!
At any rate, I was just writing to tell you how much I love you and appreciate what you did for us all. I know I don’t say it enough, that I take you for granted some times. But we’re coming up on the day we celebrate Yeshua’s birth (isn’t it great that people can remember Him instead of getting wild and crazy at the Saturnalia?!) and I thought I should put down in words what I feel about you – that I should be one of the generations to rise up and call you Blessed, just like you said in your song. For you truly were blessed to carry our Lord in your body and to be the very first Christian – even though I know it was very painful for you to have to watch him suffer at the hands of the Jews and the Romans. (I guess Simeon was right when he said that a sword would pierce your soul.)
I know too that it must have been confusing to have heard such wonderful prophecies about Yeshua being the cause of the fall and rise of many in Israel and that he would be a King like David before him – only to see His ministry taken up with the poor, the outcast, and even the enemies of our people. I don’t blame you and your other children for thinking he was crazy and trying to stop Him from embarrassing the family at Capernaum. “Jesus’ as the Greeks call him was certainly a surprise to us all!
But what a blessing it must have been to be among the firs to see him risen from the Dead – and to be there with the others in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came down! They say it sounded like a mighty rushing wind and that tongues of fire appeared above each one there! Did you speak in another language that day? And if so, did you know what language it was? But I digress…
This letter dear mother, is to honor you and to give you thanks for your faithfulness to our God. Because of you, all of us have begun to live through your son Jesus and we are truly grateful. We want you to know that we’ll be thinking about you during all the festivities coming up in the next few days and that your memory is very precious to us.
Please think about us too - and when you see your Son, could you put in a good word for us? Thanks.
With all my love, I am
Your son,
Andreas
It purports to be written by a Greek believer living in Palestine around the year AD 60 or so...
Dear Mom,
I hope you don’t mind me being so familiar. There are so many now who love you and call you “Mother”, that it only seems natural for me to do the same…
I was talking with Matthew the other day - and we were reminiscing about the Gospel he wrote about Yeshua: how he walked among us, died on the cross and rose from the grave to save us from our sins. It still amazes me to think that he grew up in our midst and we never had a clue that he would go on to become Messiah.
But then I thought that you must surely have known all along and that it must have been terribly difficult for you to keep that knowledge to yourself – especially when people were accusing you of being unfaithful to Joseph, your betrothed. I understand from Matthew that Joseph considered divorcing you early on, but thought better of it when he realized what would happen to you as a single mother. In fact, someone even told me that you came very close to being stoned by your own townspeople one time…It makes me shudder to think about it.
If it hadn’t been for Gabriel coming to tell Joseph that your son had been conceived of the Holy Spirit and that he would become the Savior of his people…who knows where we would be now! I sure would have liked to see Joseph’s face when the angel told him that the child’s name would be Yeshua, the one foretold by the prophet Isaiah!
I also keep going back to what it must have been like for you when Gabriel told you that you would bear this child. They say that you just accepted it. “Be it done to me according to your word”, I think is what you said. Amazing! Weren’t you scared? Didn’t you want to run away? You, just a teen-age girl, and here you were going to have a child that would be the Savior! I think I would have asked the angel to find someone else.
You must have been quite a courageous young woman! In fact, I KNOW you were, because I read the words of the song you sang when you went to visit Elizabeth. I got them from that Gentile physician, Luke, who came to listen to you tell your story that one time. He has written up his Gospel too, including some things that Matthew left out.
Your “Magnificat” reminds me a lot of the song Hannah sang when she gave birth to Samuel. Were you thinking about that when you sang to Elizabeth? I bet you were…
It seems like you thought that Yeshua would be king when he grew up – that he would bring down Herod and Caesar and reign over all. That was pretty subversive stuff! Did you ever talk to anyone else about these thoughts? And if you did, did you look over your shoulder to see if there was a Roman soldier around? You could have gone to prison for treason!
At any rate, I was just writing to tell you how much I love you and appreciate what you did for us all. I know I don’t say it enough, that I take you for granted some times. But we’re coming up on the day we celebrate Yeshua’s birth (isn’t it great that people can remember Him instead of getting wild and crazy at the Saturnalia?!) and I thought I should put down in words what I feel about you – that I should be one of the generations to rise up and call you Blessed, just like you said in your song. For you truly were blessed to carry our Lord in your body and to be the very first Christian – even though I know it was very painful for you to have to watch him suffer at the hands of the Jews and the Romans. (I guess Simeon was right when he said that a sword would pierce your soul.)
I know too that it must have been confusing to have heard such wonderful prophecies about Yeshua being the cause of the fall and rise of many in Israel and that he would be a King like David before him – only to see His ministry taken up with the poor, the outcast, and even the enemies of our people. I don’t blame you and your other children for thinking he was crazy and trying to stop Him from embarrassing the family at Capernaum. “Jesus’ as the Greeks call him was certainly a surprise to us all!
But what a blessing it must have been to be among the firs to see him risen from the Dead – and to be there with the others in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came down! They say it sounded like a mighty rushing wind and that tongues of fire appeared above each one there! Did you speak in another language that day? And if so, did you know what language it was? But I digress…
This letter dear mother, is to honor you and to give you thanks for your faithfulness to our God. Because of you, all of us have begun to live through your son Jesus and we are truly grateful. We want you to know that we’ll be thinking about you during all the festivities coming up in the next few days and that your memory is very precious to us.
Please think about us too - and when you see your Son, could you put in a good word for us? Thanks.
With all my love, I am
Your son,
Andreas
Waiting
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on 3rd Advent, 2007
Hampton Inn, Barboursville, WV
Last week, Father Mark reminded us that 400 years elapsed between the Prophet Malachi and John the Baptist. The OT prophets spoke words of encouragement to the nation of Israel but the nation had to wait until the ‘fullness of time’ came and Jesus came to fulfill those prophecies.
I imagine they struggled with waiting. I know I do. Waiting is difficult.
We want things quickly. We hate to wait. It’s a little like this ketchup bottle – the ketchup came out too slowly in the old glass bottles, so we invented a squeeze bottle so we could forcefully squeeze out the thick sauce. Then that wasn’t good enough. We invented the upside down bottle where we could have the ketchup come out right away! We hate to wait so much that we would rather endure water board torture than to sit still and wait.
I think I’ve said this before, but if I wanted to really torture you, I’d say, “I’m going out for a while, wait for me until I return.”…After about 90 minutes you’d all start getting restless, and want to leave. Waiting is hard for human beings, especially when things aren’t going the way we expected them to go.
Even John the Baptist, the “greatest man ever born of woman” had doubts. When John observed Jesus in action John wasn’t sure this is exactly what he had in mind. His life was on the line and he wanted to know if he was sticking his neck out for the right person. So when John sent his followers to Jesus, asking for reassurance, Jesus directed John back to the prophet Isaiah by saying,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Being an Old Testament prophet himself, John should have recognized that Jesus was quoting Isaiah (35:5,6):
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,and the ears of the deaf unstopped;6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer,and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.For waters break forth in the wilderness,and streams in the desert;
Jesus had also used similar words to announce his ministry.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,because the Lord has anointed meto bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captives,and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,and the day of vengeance of our God;to comfort all who mourn…Isaiah 61:1-2.
John should have understood that Jesus was announcing that the time of waiting had come to an end. The people of Israel were now to recognize that their promised King had come to them and that He was ushering in His Kingdom.
The only problem was that Jesus didn’t look anything like a King or act like one. Because he didn’t ride in on a white horse and dramatically defeat the Roman oppressor, most people didn’t accept Him as King.
True, they found his miracles interesting – especially the part about getting free bread, but all the Suffering Servant stuff just didn’t really get it. Jesus didn’t look or act the part of a conquering King because he was inaugurating a different kind of Kingdom – one that could only be recognized by the lowly and humble of heart.
WE face the SAME Challenge.
As Christians, we face the same challenge as the Jews faced. Jesus promised that He would return to us, but it has been 2,000 years and he still hasn’t come back. The apostle James urged the believers even back in the first century to be patient:
James 5:7-10:
7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
We need to have a keen sense that the Lord is returning and may return any day. The prayer “Marana Tha” expresses this: “Come quickly Lord Jesus”. But by the same token we must realize that Jesus has tarried now for some 2, 000 years. When the Lord says quickly, he means us to understand that “one day is as a thousand years”… On His calendar, it’s only been a couple of days since He left!
So we must be patient. But what to do while we are waiting?
Occupy until I Come (Luke 19:13)
We are to ‘occupy’ – to engage in our Father’s business:
To bring the Good News to the poor – to evangelize.
To open the eyes of the blind, both spiritually and physically.
Bind up the brokenhearted – to minister to those who grieve and are hurting from various life circumstances.
As Henri Nouwen puts it, we are to:
“Be alert, be alert, so that you will be able to recognize your Lord in your husband, your wife, your parents, your children, your friends, your teachers, but also in all that you read in the daily papers. The Lord is coming, always coming. Be alert to recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord” (H. Nouwen, Gracias! A Latin American Journal).
Our waiting is not simple passive inactivity, but an active anticipation, a participation in bringing the Kingdom of God to our world right now.
We pray, we reach out to heal wounds and to bring people to the saving knowledge of Christ all in obedience to his will. We do this gladly and hopefully, but at the same time we know that our efforts can only be partial until Jesus returns and sets up His righteous rule here on earth.
An Illustration from the Great Anglican Confusion
Anglicans have had to wait for many years – some would say as many as forty years- while the liberal experiment within The Episcopal Church worked itself out. Certainly when Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop in 2003, we saw the experiment reach its apex and have had to wait patiently for the Anglican world to realign so as to reflect the reality that there are now two Anglican communions in the world. Things seem to have moved as slowly as thick ketchup in a glass bottle for the last four years. But now it appears that events are rapidly coming to a climax in which all our waiting will find fruition.
Our own Archbishop Mark had been trying for several years to make a connection with the the ACN and Common Cause. The main holdup seemed to be what to do with the Bishops. Mark finally came to the conclusion that the only way to find acceptance with CANA was to renounce his Bishop’s staff and apply to CANA as a priest serving his own parish.
This past week, he called me and told me that this had finally happened. He has formally been accepted into the Nigerian church as a priest and is relating to David Anderson (Atlanta) as his bishop. He is urging us to make application to CANA as individual parishes and clergy, and it seems now that the way is primed for us to also be accepted into this new expression of orthodox Anglicanism.
We have had to wait patiently and to suffer uncertainty. But now I believe that we must recognize the time of our visitation. Just as Israel was challenged to accept the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in their time, I believe that the Lord is coming to us in the guise of CANA.
Our time of waiting and longing for godly, courageous, orthodox leadership is coming to an end. We are about to step over the threshold into a new reality – the reality of being a full fledged member of an exciting ‘Latter Day” movement of God’s Spirit on the Earth.
This does not mean that we our way will be easy or without controversy. In fact, I am confident that we are heading into a time when our membership in CANA will be attacked by those who think they represent the ‘real’ expression of Anglicanism in America. If you haven’t already lost friends over being part of All Saints Anglican Church, I’m sure you will in the future.
But you are also about to be amazed by the new friends God brings our way. And the new thing He will do will surpass exceedingly all that we could have thought or imagined.
Friends, let us welcome the changes that will occur within the next 8-12 weeks. It is Jesus Coming to us here and now.
Let us also recognize that Jesus will come to us again bodily – in the clouds with great Glory in order to set up His kingdom here on earth.
Until he comes again personally, let us resolve to spend ourselves and suffer as need be for His kingdom. I am confident that we will be rewarded richly both here and in the hereafter.
Marana Tha! AMEN
Hampton Inn, Barboursville, WV
Last week, Father Mark reminded us that 400 years elapsed between the Prophet Malachi and John the Baptist. The OT prophets spoke words of encouragement to the nation of Israel but the nation had to wait until the ‘fullness of time’ came and Jesus came to fulfill those prophecies.
I imagine they struggled with waiting. I know I do. Waiting is difficult.
We want things quickly. We hate to wait. It’s a little like this ketchup bottle – the ketchup came out too slowly in the old glass bottles, so we invented a squeeze bottle so we could forcefully squeeze out the thick sauce. Then that wasn’t good enough. We invented the upside down bottle where we could have the ketchup come out right away! We hate to wait so much that we would rather endure water board torture than to sit still and wait.
I think I’ve said this before, but if I wanted to really torture you, I’d say, “I’m going out for a while, wait for me until I return.”…After about 90 minutes you’d all start getting restless, and want to leave. Waiting is hard for human beings, especially when things aren’t going the way we expected them to go.
Even John the Baptist, the “greatest man ever born of woman” had doubts. When John observed Jesus in action John wasn’t sure this is exactly what he had in mind. His life was on the line and he wanted to know if he was sticking his neck out for the right person. So when John sent his followers to Jesus, asking for reassurance, Jesus directed John back to the prophet Isaiah by saying,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Being an Old Testament prophet himself, John should have recognized that Jesus was quoting Isaiah (35:5,6):
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,and the ears of the deaf unstopped;6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer,and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.For waters break forth in the wilderness,and streams in the desert;
Jesus had also used similar words to announce his ministry.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,because the Lord has anointed meto bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captives,and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,and the day of vengeance of our God;to comfort all who mourn…Isaiah 61:1-2.
John should have understood that Jesus was announcing that the time of waiting had come to an end. The people of Israel were now to recognize that their promised King had come to them and that He was ushering in His Kingdom.
The only problem was that Jesus didn’t look anything like a King or act like one. Because he didn’t ride in on a white horse and dramatically defeat the Roman oppressor, most people didn’t accept Him as King.
True, they found his miracles interesting – especially the part about getting free bread, but all the Suffering Servant stuff just didn’t really get it. Jesus didn’t look or act the part of a conquering King because he was inaugurating a different kind of Kingdom – one that could only be recognized by the lowly and humble of heart.
WE face the SAME Challenge.
As Christians, we face the same challenge as the Jews faced. Jesus promised that He would return to us, but it has been 2,000 years and he still hasn’t come back. The apostle James urged the believers even back in the first century to be patient:
James 5:7-10:
7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
We need to have a keen sense that the Lord is returning and may return any day. The prayer “Marana Tha” expresses this: “Come quickly Lord Jesus”. But by the same token we must realize that Jesus has tarried now for some 2, 000 years. When the Lord says quickly, he means us to understand that “one day is as a thousand years”… On His calendar, it’s only been a couple of days since He left!
So we must be patient. But what to do while we are waiting?
Occupy until I Come (Luke 19:13)
We are to ‘occupy’ – to engage in our Father’s business:
To bring the Good News to the poor – to evangelize.
To open the eyes of the blind, both spiritually and physically.
Bind up the brokenhearted – to minister to those who grieve and are hurting from various life circumstances.
As Henri Nouwen puts it, we are to:
“Be alert, be alert, so that you will be able to recognize your Lord in your husband, your wife, your parents, your children, your friends, your teachers, but also in all that you read in the daily papers. The Lord is coming, always coming. Be alert to recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord” (H. Nouwen, Gracias! A Latin American Journal).
Our waiting is not simple passive inactivity, but an active anticipation, a participation in bringing the Kingdom of God to our world right now.
We pray, we reach out to heal wounds and to bring people to the saving knowledge of Christ all in obedience to his will. We do this gladly and hopefully, but at the same time we know that our efforts can only be partial until Jesus returns and sets up His righteous rule here on earth.
An Illustration from the Great Anglican Confusion
Anglicans have had to wait for many years – some would say as many as forty years- while the liberal experiment within The Episcopal Church worked itself out. Certainly when Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop in 2003, we saw the experiment reach its apex and have had to wait patiently for the Anglican world to realign so as to reflect the reality that there are now two Anglican communions in the world. Things seem to have moved as slowly as thick ketchup in a glass bottle for the last four years. But now it appears that events are rapidly coming to a climax in which all our waiting will find fruition.
Our own Archbishop Mark had been trying for several years to make a connection with the the ACN and Common Cause. The main holdup seemed to be what to do with the Bishops. Mark finally came to the conclusion that the only way to find acceptance with CANA was to renounce his Bishop’s staff and apply to CANA as a priest serving his own parish.
This past week, he called me and told me that this had finally happened. He has formally been accepted into the Nigerian church as a priest and is relating to David Anderson (Atlanta) as his bishop. He is urging us to make application to CANA as individual parishes and clergy, and it seems now that the way is primed for us to also be accepted into this new expression of orthodox Anglicanism.
We have had to wait patiently and to suffer uncertainty. But now I believe that we must recognize the time of our visitation. Just as Israel was challenged to accept the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in their time, I believe that the Lord is coming to us in the guise of CANA.
Our time of waiting and longing for godly, courageous, orthodox leadership is coming to an end. We are about to step over the threshold into a new reality – the reality of being a full fledged member of an exciting ‘Latter Day” movement of God’s Spirit on the Earth.
This does not mean that we our way will be easy or without controversy. In fact, I am confident that we are heading into a time when our membership in CANA will be attacked by those who think they represent the ‘real’ expression of Anglicanism in America. If you haven’t already lost friends over being part of All Saints Anglican Church, I’m sure you will in the future.
But you are also about to be amazed by the new friends God brings our way. And the new thing He will do will surpass exceedingly all that we could have thought or imagined.
Friends, let us welcome the changes that will occur within the next 8-12 weeks. It is Jesus Coming to us here and now.
Let us also recognize that Jesus will come to us again bodily – in the clouds with great Glory in order to set up His kingdom here on earth.
Until he comes again personally, let us resolve to spend ourselves and suffer as need be for His kingdom. I am confident that we will be rewarded richly both here and in the hereafter.
Marana Tha! AMEN
Welcoming Jesus, Our Neighbor
A Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church, First Advent Sunday 2007 at the Hampton, Inn, Barboursville, WV
Epigraph:
The Advent journey is an invitation to climb the mountain of the Lord. The journey consists of a slow, gradual ascending up the mountain path. As with all uphill climbing, there are certain dangers along the way, but also the joyful expectation of one day reaching the mountaintop that is the house of the Lord.
Br. Victor Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette
Isaiah 2:1-5 The Mountain of the Lord
2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter daysthat the mountain of the house of the Lordshall be established as the highest of the mountains,and shall be lifted up above the hills;and all the nations shall flow to it,3 and many peoples shall come, and say:“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,to the house of the God of Jacob,that he may teach us his waysand that we may walk in his paths.”For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.4 He shall judge between the nations,and shall decide disputes for many peoples;and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation,neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob,come, let us walkin the light of the Lord.
About Advent (From introduction of Advent and Christmas : Wisdom from Henri JM Nowen:
“The four weeks of Advent are often thought of as symbolizing the four different ways that Christ comes into the world: 1) at his birth as a helpless infant in Bethlehem; 2) at his arrival in the hearts of believers; 3) at his death; and 4) at his arrival on Judgment Day.”
“Because Christmas falls on a different day of the week each year, the fourth week of Advent is never really finished; it is abruptly, joyously, and solemnly abrogated by the annual coming again of Christ at Christmas. Christ’s Second Coming will also one day abruptly interrupt our sojourn here on earth.”
Today we want to focus on how Christ comes to the World in the form of our neighbors.
Courses in Neighboring?
Author Robert Lupton tells of being invited to speak at the ‘urban emphasis’ week at a well-known Christian College. He posed the question to a group of upperclassmen, “What is the number-one mandate for the followers of Christ?”
Evangelize! was one student’s immediate response, citing the Great Commission from Matthew 28. When he pushed the students harder to think about what Jesus actually said was the most important mandate, one of the students tentatively answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thine heart, mind, soul and strength and they neighbor as thyself?”
Agreeing with the student, Lupton went on to ask the question, “Given that Scripture declares this to be our number-one mandate, then what courses do you have here on neighboring?...Who teaches neighboring 101?” From Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, pp 15, 16.
It’s a startling thought: our number one mandate from Christ is to love God, and then love our neighbors as ourselves. Our lesson from Romans reinforces this message. “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom. 13:8-10).
Too often, says Lupton, we have viewed our primary task as ‘saving souls’. The problem is that people are not disembodied souls, they are a complete package of body, soul and spirit. “When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith,’ says Lupton (pg. 16). A …Church that skips over these basics on the way to ‘deeper’ theological pursuits can hardly be considered biblically faithful”, he asserts. (Also noting that he hasn’t been invited back to speak at the school in question…)
Tie-in with Advent
Christ comes into the world as a little baby. He comes as a stranger: a neighbor who could find no room in the inn and no one to welcome him and his family. Our challenge is to find room in our hearts for Jesus, our neighbor, in addition to Jesus our Savior and Lord. Christ comes to us in the form of our neighbors, just as Benedict asserts in his rule “Every visitor shall be welcomed as if they were Christ.”
We should love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is the concrete proof of the existence of the Unseen Real. It is an argument for the existence of God that catches people off-guard. As David Frederick is fond of saying, “There is no defense against love.”
Christ comes into the world in flesh, Incarnates God’s love to us. We are to incarnate God’s love to the world. Even the World acknowledges that we should care about hour neighbors in a special way during this season. The Charleston Gazette and other papers run features about helping the neediest families at Christmas. But as the Church caring about our neighbors is to be our constant emphasis; something we do year-round.
Love and the Second Coming
One of the themes of Advent is the coming of the Kingdom of God into our world, and looking for the return of Christ.
37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man… 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming… 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Mt. 24:37-44).
And: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand.” Rom. 13: 11-12.
While we do indeed look for the bodily return of our Lord, loving one’s neighbor brings the Kingdom into this world, it Realizes the unseen kingdom, brings into the Now the “Eschaton” or “last things”. Therefore, by loving your neighbors, you are helping God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The Neighboring initiative
The Lord desires to use us as his hands and feet in this project of loving our neighbors.
Over the course of the last several months it has become increasingly clear that we need to start pull together a separate board for Hope House in order to broaden our reach and help us to accomplish our goals. But it is also apparent to me that having the house affords us an opportunity to reach out in other ways to the poor and needy. This would include opportunities to collaborate with various organizations in our anti-drug message, to invest in the neighborhood around Hope House through the development of such things as food co-ops, real-estate development, job assistance, etc.
Therefore, a group of us from the vestry are now in the process of researching the formation of a separate 501C3 organization to allow us to do some of these things. In thinking about the structure of such an organization, it seems to me that we need an umbrella corporation that would give us the freedom to do several things eventually and that Hope House is just the first project among many eventual project.
I have been very impressed with Lupton’s idea of ‘neighboring’.
In his book, he cites a number of examples where the wider community often opposes the plans of a church because ultimately the plan is not good for the neighborhood. For example, a church wants to buy and raze a whole block of houses to make room for a parking lot. The parking lot in turn is full of cars from people who don’t live in the neighborhood and who aren’t invested in it. Efforts by the church do not contribute to the integrity of the neighborhood, either because projects run people off or because the local neighbors are not engaged.
We faced this ourselves with Hope House because some of our neighbors were concerned that we would come into the area, try to get money and assets for our church and then take off, leaving the area worse than when we found it. The church, especially in Huntington, WV faces much cynicism thanks to some charlatans who have taken advantage of people before we ever arrived.
Therefore, I have proposed that we consider starting a faith-based organization called “The Neighboring Initiative.”
The Neighboring Initiative would seek to be a vehicle for community development on a community scale. Its guiding principle would be “Is it good for the neighborhood? Is it good for my neighbors? And by this, we in turn imply that what is good for neighborhoods is for people to be empowered or challenged to do for things themselves, not simply to have ministry inflicted upon them.
Some potential slogans for such a group might be:
“Challenging neighbors to love one another as themselves.”
“Empowering neighbors to work together to preserve their communities.”
“Reaching out to our neighbors for the Love of Christ.”
Fulfilling the Great Commission one relationship at a time
Hope house is an attempt to reach out and love our neighbors through ministering to specific needs – comforting those who mourn (Is 61: 1-2) and warning the young to avoid the danger and foolishness of drug use. But during Advent we also have some other ways of reaching out to our neighbors.
Other ways to love our neighbors
Currently, we meet in Barboursville. Our neighbor is the Veteran’s Home. Last year we took up a collection of items for the Vets, and I would propose that we do something similar this year, collecting lap blankets, throws, personal care items, etc for those who actually live at the Center. We could take these things up to the Center after Church on the 16th of December.
Another personal prayer project would be to join thousands of other people in praying for peace and safety in our neighborhoods, our cities and our country. Many have joined an effort called One Minute for Peace. The idea is to stop what you are doing each evening at 9pm and pray for one minute for the peace and well-being of our country.
I would strongly suggest we do this. Having participated for many months with Mission Tri-State pastors in praying for the Mayor of Huntington and for safety in the Tri-State area, I am convinced that prayer does indeed change things.
Finally, I’d like to close with a prayer from my good friend Audley Kilburn. Almost every time we pray at Hope House Audley prays this or something very close. Listen closely and see if you can catch the spirit of the prayer. You might also hear the faint rustle of angel wings as they join in with praise to our God.
Audley’s Prayer: let there be love joy and peace all throughout these neighborhoods. Take away the drugs and the violence O Lord, take away the love of money and turn the hearts of the people to you Lord. In Christes (sic) sure and holy name, Amen.
Epigraph:
The Advent journey is an invitation to climb the mountain of the Lord. The journey consists of a slow, gradual ascending up the mountain path. As with all uphill climbing, there are certain dangers along the way, but also the joyful expectation of one day reaching the mountaintop that is the house of the Lord.
Br. Victor Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette
Isaiah 2:1-5 The Mountain of the Lord
2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter daysthat the mountain of the house of the Lordshall be established as the highest of the mountains,and shall be lifted up above the hills;and all the nations shall flow to it,3 and many peoples shall come, and say:“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,to the house of the God of Jacob,that he may teach us his waysand that we may walk in his paths.”For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.4 He shall judge between the nations,and shall decide disputes for many peoples;and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation,neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob,come, let us walkin the light of the Lord.
About Advent (From introduction of Advent and Christmas : Wisdom from Henri JM Nowen:
“The four weeks of Advent are often thought of as symbolizing the four different ways that Christ comes into the world: 1) at his birth as a helpless infant in Bethlehem; 2) at his arrival in the hearts of believers; 3) at his death; and 4) at his arrival on Judgment Day.”
“Because Christmas falls on a different day of the week each year, the fourth week of Advent is never really finished; it is abruptly, joyously, and solemnly abrogated by the annual coming again of Christ at Christmas. Christ’s Second Coming will also one day abruptly interrupt our sojourn here on earth.”
Today we want to focus on how Christ comes to the World in the form of our neighbors.
Courses in Neighboring?
Author Robert Lupton tells of being invited to speak at the ‘urban emphasis’ week at a well-known Christian College. He posed the question to a group of upperclassmen, “What is the number-one mandate for the followers of Christ?”
Evangelize! was one student’s immediate response, citing the Great Commission from Matthew 28. When he pushed the students harder to think about what Jesus actually said was the most important mandate, one of the students tentatively answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thine heart, mind, soul and strength and they neighbor as thyself?”
Agreeing with the student, Lupton went on to ask the question, “Given that Scripture declares this to be our number-one mandate, then what courses do you have here on neighboring?...Who teaches neighboring 101?” From Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, pp 15, 16.
It’s a startling thought: our number one mandate from Christ is to love God, and then love our neighbors as ourselves. Our lesson from Romans reinforces this message. “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom. 13:8-10).
Too often, says Lupton, we have viewed our primary task as ‘saving souls’. The problem is that people are not disembodied souls, they are a complete package of body, soul and spirit. “When we skip over the Great Commandment on the way to fulfilling the Great Commission, we do great harm to the authenticity of the faith,’ says Lupton (pg. 16). A …Church that skips over these basics on the way to ‘deeper’ theological pursuits can hardly be considered biblically faithful”, he asserts. (Also noting that he hasn’t been invited back to speak at the school in question…)
Tie-in with Advent
Christ comes into the world as a little baby. He comes as a stranger: a neighbor who could find no room in the inn and no one to welcome him and his family. Our challenge is to find room in our hearts for Jesus, our neighbor, in addition to Jesus our Savior and Lord. Christ comes to us in the form of our neighbors, just as Benedict asserts in his rule “Every visitor shall be welcomed as if they were Christ.”
We should love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is the concrete proof of the existence of the Unseen Real. It is an argument for the existence of God that catches people off-guard. As David Frederick is fond of saying, “There is no defense against love.”
Christ comes into the world in flesh, Incarnates God’s love to us. We are to incarnate God’s love to the world. Even the World acknowledges that we should care about hour neighbors in a special way during this season. The Charleston Gazette and other papers run features about helping the neediest families at Christmas. But as the Church caring about our neighbors is to be our constant emphasis; something we do year-round.
Love and the Second Coming
One of the themes of Advent is the coming of the Kingdom of God into our world, and looking for the return of Christ.
37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man… 42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming… 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Mt. 24:37-44).
And: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. 12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand.” Rom. 13: 11-12.
While we do indeed look for the bodily return of our Lord, loving one’s neighbor brings the Kingdom into this world, it Realizes the unseen kingdom, brings into the Now the “Eschaton” or “last things”. Therefore, by loving your neighbors, you are helping God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The Neighboring initiative
The Lord desires to use us as his hands and feet in this project of loving our neighbors.
Over the course of the last several months it has become increasingly clear that we need to start pull together a separate board for Hope House in order to broaden our reach and help us to accomplish our goals. But it is also apparent to me that having the house affords us an opportunity to reach out in other ways to the poor and needy. This would include opportunities to collaborate with various organizations in our anti-drug message, to invest in the neighborhood around Hope House through the development of such things as food co-ops, real-estate development, job assistance, etc.
Therefore, a group of us from the vestry are now in the process of researching the formation of a separate 501C3 organization to allow us to do some of these things. In thinking about the structure of such an organization, it seems to me that we need an umbrella corporation that would give us the freedom to do several things eventually and that Hope House is just the first project among many eventual project.
I have been very impressed with Lupton’s idea of ‘neighboring’.
In his book, he cites a number of examples where the wider community often opposes the plans of a church because ultimately the plan is not good for the neighborhood. For example, a church wants to buy and raze a whole block of houses to make room for a parking lot. The parking lot in turn is full of cars from people who don’t live in the neighborhood and who aren’t invested in it. Efforts by the church do not contribute to the integrity of the neighborhood, either because projects run people off or because the local neighbors are not engaged.
We faced this ourselves with Hope House because some of our neighbors were concerned that we would come into the area, try to get money and assets for our church and then take off, leaving the area worse than when we found it. The church, especially in Huntington, WV faces much cynicism thanks to some charlatans who have taken advantage of people before we ever arrived.
Therefore, I have proposed that we consider starting a faith-based organization called “The Neighboring Initiative.”
The Neighboring Initiative would seek to be a vehicle for community development on a community scale. Its guiding principle would be “Is it good for the neighborhood? Is it good for my neighbors? And by this, we in turn imply that what is good for neighborhoods is for people to be empowered or challenged to do for things themselves, not simply to have ministry inflicted upon them.
Some potential slogans for such a group might be:
“Challenging neighbors to love one another as themselves.”
“Empowering neighbors to work together to preserve their communities.”
“Reaching out to our neighbors for the Love of Christ.”
Fulfilling the Great Commission one relationship at a time
Hope house is an attempt to reach out and love our neighbors through ministering to specific needs – comforting those who mourn (Is 61: 1-2) and warning the young to avoid the danger and foolishness of drug use. But during Advent we also have some other ways of reaching out to our neighbors.
Other ways to love our neighbors
Currently, we meet in Barboursville. Our neighbor is the Veteran’s Home. Last year we took up a collection of items for the Vets, and I would propose that we do something similar this year, collecting lap blankets, throws, personal care items, etc for those who actually live at the Center. We could take these things up to the Center after Church on the 16th of December.
Another personal prayer project would be to join thousands of other people in praying for peace and safety in our neighborhoods, our cities and our country. Many have joined an effort called One Minute for Peace. The idea is to stop what you are doing each evening at 9pm and pray for one minute for the peace and well-being of our country.
I would strongly suggest we do this. Having participated for many months with Mission Tri-State pastors in praying for the Mayor of Huntington and for safety in the Tri-State area, I am convinced that prayer does indeed change things.
Finally, I’d like to close with a prayer from my good friend Audley Kilburn. Almost every time we pray at Hope House Audley prays this or something very close. Listen closely and see if you can catch the spirit of the prayer. You might also hear the faint rustle of angel wings as they join in with praise to our God.
Audley’s Prayer: let there be love joy and peace all throughout these neighborhoods. Take away the drugs and the violence O Lord, take away the love of money and turn the hearts of the people to you Lord. In Christes (sic) sure and holy name, Amen.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Fathering a Hurting World
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on
November 18, 2007
I picked him up by the side of the road on a cold and blustery morning. No, it wasn’t a puppy – but in a way he was. I’ll call him Kevin. He was a young man of twenty four who had come to Huntington the previous day with his father for an overnight stay. Now he was going back home, but something was radically wrong with the entire scenario.
First of all, he shouldn’t have been walking down the side of I -64 during rush hour. Second it was cold and he should have had a jacket and a hat – maybe a hoodie. Instead all he had on was a long sleeve T shirt. Third, he had no backpack or other belongings with him. And fourth, he was attempting to walk – without even trying to hitchhike.
Now most of you know that I pick up hitchhikers and that I’m not too put off by scruffy characters. Even so, the above factors caused me to sit up and take notice. Of course I stopped, but this time when I stopped, I was feeling something I don’t normally experience – the almost visceral concern of a father for a son. Besides the fact that I have no sons – only daughters, this young man moved me deeply in the course of a mere cursory glance at highway speed.
When he got in the car, I asked him where he was going. “Beckley”, he said. “I was told this is the right road to take to get there.” That’s right, I replied as he got in. “I’m going to Charleston, so that should get you about half way. But I have to go on into work and Beckley is about 50 miles beyond Charleston. What takes you to Beckley?” I asked.
“I’m going home. Came down here with my father last night and he was going to take me back, but he decided to get messed up on drugs and this morning at 7:00 am he told me he wasn’t going to take me back home…I’ve got to get back to my job, and I don’t have any money, so I only had one choice – Walk.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, half in admiration and half in amazement. “Were you planning to walk all the way to Beckley?”
“Yup”
“Wow. So what kind of work do you do?
“I work for McDonald’s”
“And you were going all the way back today just so you wouldn’t miss work?”
“Yup, I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I only make $6.75 per hour, but I need the money.”
He went on to explain that his parents were both involved in drugs, that they had all previously lived in Florida, and that one day when he was 13, his mother and father suddenly left him all alone – and didn’t return until he was 21!
Most amazingly, he had somehow managed to find work on a nearby farm and scrape together enough money to make the house payments and the utility bills. He also continued to go to school, graduating when he was 18! Talk about a Super Kid!
Of course, I expressed my complete amazement, to which he replied, “ Yeah – I didn’t lose the house until they came back. They got divorced shortly after they came back, and the house went back to the bank. I figure I’ve paid about $70,000 over the years, and lost it all. I guess I’ve given my parents one too many chances this time.”
This last comment struck me – Given your parents too many chances! They’re supposed to take care of you, to create safety and security for you and to help you know God! But instead of doing all these noble things, they acted like spoiled children and you had to grow up when you were 13. And somewhere inside there’s a child that still wants his parents to love and nurture him! Again, totally amazing.
We were now about half way to Charleston. I had just enough time to get to work comfortably – and no dollars in my wallet (plastic has become way too easy to use). But at this point, I was hooked. He was the same age as my middle daughter, and he had been abandoned by his father and mother. There was no way I was going to let him walk from Charleston to Beckley – so I took him on to the Greyhound Bus station and he nervously agreed to let me buy him ticket to Beckley.
The only problem was that the bus wouldn’t leave until about 3:30, some 6 hours away. Fortunately the bus depot is only a block from the Town Center mall – and a couple more blocks from a movie theater, so I showed him around the several block area, gave him enough money to see him through the day, and wished him well.
He had a sort of chagrined and embarrassed look on his face as got out of the car, but before he went, he thanked me. It was the look of someone who was accustomed to being independent but had no choice but to accept the “kindness of strangers”.
Turning Hearts
The entire encounter put me in mind of our Scripture from Malachi this morning, “… he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:6).
The prophet was talking about the coming of about what would happen when Jesus the Messiah showed up on the scene: namely, John the Baptist would appear and announce him – and then the ministry of Christ would cause this wonderful turning of hearts to occur. But many would also reject the message and would fall under judgement. It sounds very contemporary in many ways.
Today, in our land, one of the single most pressing problems facing us – especially in the black community is fatherlessness. Irresponsible men like Kevin’s father leave their children with their mothers (sometimes the mothers leave too!) and abandon their kids to an indifferent upbringing. I’ve said this before, but it behooves us to remember that the illegitimacy rate in the black community is near 80%. In much of the white community it is as high as 50%. Friends, this phenomenon has definite consequences!
Do you also recall that we talked about the percentage of people who do not attend church regularly? That figure too is 80% or better. It’s the majority of people today who have left the church and see no reason to worship God. Is it a coincidence that both these phenomena are occurring together?
I don’t think so.
Psychologist Paul Vitz is the author of a fascinating book called Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. In this book, Vitz explains how Freud put forward the theory of Projection i.e.: “God is a projection of our own intense, unconscious desires.” (pg.6), and turns this notion on it’s head, suggesting that Atheism is itself a mirror image of this theory. In other words, Nonbelief in God is a projection of a person who experienced a weak, ineffective or abusive father growing up, and then who in turn rejects God because of the bad experience.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dung are all shown to have had physically abusive, distant or cruel fathers, while Albert Schweitzer, GK Chesterton and Dietrich Bonhoffer are all shown to have had close and lovingly involved fathers.
There are of course, other intervening variables such as birth order, philosophical and political trends and the differences that father absence has on males and females. But in general, the theory seems to hold that having a bad father leads to the rejection (by males) of the God principle, and the resultant substitution of an equally vivid belief in some other belief system, such as communism or facism. For men, God seems to embody the principles of right and wrong, good and evil. So the lack of a good father leads to a search for an alternate organizing principle.
In girls, having a bad father seems to lead to the rejection of the Father relationship and the tendency to substitute another equally vivid Relationship for that of the Father. Often this is expressed through lesbianism and the embrace of Feminism as a rejection of the bad patriarchal father. The abuse of the father relationship leads to rejection of the father’s authority.
This pretty much sums up what we see in our culture today. Millions of people have rejected traditional religion because they have had weak, abusive or absent fathers. They have not experienced their father’s heart being turned towards them and their hearts being turned towards their fathers. This tragic lack of love results in much violence, in gangs substituting for fathers and in people being unable to fathom the concept of God The Father. As a result, we have fallen under God’s judgment – namely that we have reaped the results of rejecting God and the very foundations of our culture are at risk today.
The Challenge and Dilemma
What’s a nation and a church to do then? …Quite simply, we must find ways of bringing the Father’s Love to the people who need it most. We do this by showing God’s Love to the people we encounter day by day.
When I picked up Kevin, my father’s heart was moved to compassionate action because of God the Father’s seeking love for the world. After observing his situation and listening to his story, there was no way I was going to allow him to try to walk to Beckley! Admittedly, hanging out at the mall and riding the bus may not have been the greatest experience in the world, but then again, I seem to remember my daughters hanging out at the mall for many hours – so it can’t be that bad.
At any rate, at the risk of holding up my own actions as praiseworthy, I use this story as an example of how we can bring the Love of Father God into a desperate world. And I think there are some principles to be drawn out here.
1) Open Your Eyes
All you have to do is open your eyes and pay attention to what you see. Needs are all around us; they will present themselves to us if we but attend.
2) Be Available
We must be available. Not only must we attend, but we must then be available to the Lord to be an instrument of his peace to those we come in contact with. Each day, renew your availability for God to use as Wishes.
3) Listen. Open the ears of your heart and listen for the still small voice of God telling you what to do. If you don’t know what to do, just stop until you have a clue. If you ask for wisdom, God will give it to you generously and without reproach.
4) Do whatever he tells you. This is what Mary the mother of Jesus told the servants at the wedding of Cana: “Do whatever he tells you to do.” After you hear the plan, take action to alleviate the suffering you have become aware of. This action is often very simple: Listen to someone talk for a while, take them to the bus depot, buy a ticket for them to get home, give them some money for a cup of coffee. The list could go on and on, but the basic point is to bring the Deep Love of God the Father to a hurting world.
Acting in this way, anyone can be a ‘father’ to the world. Although we value spiritual gifting and we want to draw out everyone’s unique individual gifts, still the basic principle is that we all have the ability to be God’s hands and feet to the world. We can all help to protect the weak, the powerless and the oppressed like Kevin.
Will we respond?
I wonder if we can respond to this challenge? This coming week, are you willing to Open your eyes, to Make yourself available to the Lord, to Listen to Him and to act on His behalf? If you are, look for an opportunity, respond to it and then tell your small group about it, or bring the story here and tell us what happened.
This is how we will bring the Love of Jesus to our hurting world.
May God give us grace to apply what we have heard. AMEN.
November 18, 2007
I picked him up by the side of the road on a cold and blustery morning. No, it wasn’t a puppy – but in a way he was. I’ll call him Kevin. He was a young man of twenty four who had come to Huntington the previous day with his father for an overnight stay. Now he was going back home, but something was radically wrong with the entire scenario.
First of all, he shouldn’t have been walking down the side of I -64 during rush hour. Second it was cold and he should have had a jacket and a hat – maybe a hoodie. Instead all he had on was a long sleeve T shirt. Third, he had no backpack or other belongings with him. And fourth, he was attempting to walk – without even trying to hitchhike.
Now most of you know that I pick up hitchhikers and that I’m not too put off by scruffy characters. Even so, the above factors caused me to sit up and take notice. Of course I stopped, but this time when I stopped, I was feeling something I don’t normally experience – the almost visceral concern of a father for a son. Besides the fact that I have no sons – only daughters, this young man moved me deeply in the course of a mere cursory glance at highway speed.
When he got in the car, I asked him where he was going. “Beckley”, he said. “I was told this is the right road to take to get there.” That’s right, I replied as he got in. “I’m going to Charleston, so that should get you about half way. But I have to go on into work and Beckley is about 50 miles beyond Charleston. What takes you to Beckley?” I asked.
“I’m going home. Came down here with my father last night and he was going to take me back, but he decided to get messed up on drugs and this morning at 7:00 am he told me he wasn’t going to take me back home…I’ve got to get back to my job, and I don’t have any money, so I only had one choice – Walk.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, half in admiration and half in amazement. “Were you planning to walk all the way to Beckley?”
“Yup”
“Wow. So what kind of work do you do?
“I work for McDonald’s”
“And you were going all the way back today just so you wouldn’t miss work?”
“Yup, I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I only make $6.75 per hour, but I need the money.”
He went on to explain that his parents were both involved in drugs, that they had all previously lived in Florida, and that one day when he was 13, his mother and father suddenly left him all alone – and didn’t return until he was 21!
Most amazingly, he had somehow managed to find work on a nearby farm and scrape together enough money to make the house payments and the utility bills. He also continued to go to school, graduating when he was 18! Talk about a Super Kid!
Of course, I expressed my complete amazement, to which he replied, “ Yeah – I didn’t lose the house until they came back. They got divorced shortly after they came back, and the house went back to the bank. I figure I’ve paid about $70,000 over the years, and lost it all. I guess I’ve given my parents one too many chances this time.”
This last comment struck me – Given your parents too many chances! They’re supposed to take care of you, to create safety and security for you and to help you know God! But instead of doing all these noble things, they acted like spoiled children and you had to grow up when you were 13. And somewhere inside there’s a child that still wants his parents to love and nurture him! Again, totally amazing.
We were now about half way to Charleston. I had just enough time to get to work comfortably – and no dollars in my wallet (plastic has become way too easy to use). But at this point, I was hooked. He was the same age as my middle daughter, and he had been abandoned by his father and mother. There was no way I was going to let him walk from Charleston to Beckley – so I took him on to the Greyhound Bus station and he nervously agreed to let me buy him ticket to Beckley.
The only problem was that the bus wouldn’t leave until about 3:30, some 6 hours away. Fortunately the bus depot is only a block from the Town Center mall – and a couple more blocks from a movie theater, so I showed him around the several block area, gave him enough money to see him through the day, and wished him well.
He had a sort of chagrined and embarrassed look on his face as got out of the car, but before he went, he thanked me. It was the look of someone who was accustomed to being independent but had no choice but to accept the “kindness of strangers”.
Turning Hearts
The entire encounter put me in mind of our Scripture from Malachi this morning, “… he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:6).
The prophet was talking about the coming of about what would happen when Jesus the Messiah showed up on the scene: namely, John the Baptist would appear and announce him – and then the ministry of Christ would cause this wonderful turning of hearts to occur. But many would also reject the message and would fall under judgement. It sounds very contemporary in many ways.
Today, in our land, one of the single most pressing problems facing us – especially in the black community is fatherlessness. Irresponsible men like Kevin’s father leave their children with their mothers (sometimes the mothers leave too!) and abandon their kids to an indifferent upbringing. I’ve said this before, but it behooves us to remember that the illegitimacy rate in the black community is near 80%. In much of the white community it is as high as 50%. Friends, this phenomenon has definite consequences!
Do you also recall that we talked about the percentage of people who do not attend church regularly? That figure too is 80% or better. It’s the majority of people today who have left the church and see no reason to worship God. Is it a coincidence that both these phenomena are occurring together?
I don’t think so.
Psychologist Paul Vitz is the author of a fascinating book called Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. In this book, Vitz explains how Freud put forward the theory of Projection i.e.: “God is a projection of our own intense, unconscious desires.” (pg.6), and turns this notion on it’s head, suggesting that Atheism is itself a mirror image of this theory. In other words, Nonbelief in God is a projection of a person who experienced a weak, ineffective or abusive father growing up, and then who in turn rejects God because of the bad experience.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Dung are all shown to have had physically abusive, distant or cruel fathers, while Albert Schweitzer, GK Chesterton and Dietrich Bonhoffer are all shown to have had close and lovingly involved fathers.
There are of course, other intervening variables such as birth order, philosophical and political trends and the differences that father absence has on males and females. But in general, the theory seems to hold that having a bad father leads to the rejection (by males) of the God principle, and the resultant substitution of an equally vivid belief in some other belief system, such as communism or facism. For men, God seems to embody the principles of right and wrong, good and evil. So the lack of a good father leads to a search for an alternate organizing principle.
In girls, having a bad father seems to lead to the rejection of the Father relationship and the tendency to substitute another equally vivid Relationship for that of the Father. Often this is expressed through lesbianism and the embrace of Feminism as a rejection of the bad patriarchal father. The abuse of the father relationship leads to rejection of the father’s authority.
This pretty much sums up what we see in our culture today. Millions of people have rejected traditional religion because they have had weak, abusive or absent fathers. They have not experienced their father’s heart being turned towards them and their hearts being turned towards their fathers. This tragic lack of love results in much violence, in gangs substituting for fathers and in people being unable to fathom the concept of God The Father. As a result, we have fallen under God’s judgment – namely that we have reaped the results of rejecting God and the very foundations of our culture are at risk today.
The Challenge and Dilemma
What’s a nation and a church to do then? …Quite simply, we must find ways of bringing the Father’s Love to the people who need it most. We do this by showing God’s Love to the people we encounter day by day.
When I picked up Kevin, my father’s heart was moved to compassionate action because of God the Father’s seeking love for the world. After observing his situation and listening to his story, there was no way I was going to allow him to try to walk to Beckley! Admittedly, hanging out at the mall and riding the bus may not have been the greatest experience in the world, but then again, I seem to remember my daughters hanging out at the mall for many hours – so it can’t be that bad.
At any rate, at the risk of holding up my own actions as praiseworthy, I use this story as an example of how we can bring the Love of Father God into a desperate world. And I think there are some principles to be drawn out here.
1) Open Your Eyes
All you have to do is open your eyes and pay attention to what you see. Needs are all around us; they will present themselves to us if we but attend.
2) Be Available
We must be available. Not only must we attend, but we must then be available to the Lord to be an instrument of his peace to those we come in contact with. Each day, renew your availability for God to use as Wishes.
3) Listen. Open the ears of your heart and listen for the still small voice of God telling you what to do. If you don’t know what to do, just stop until you have a clue. If you ask for wisdom, God will give it to you generously and without reproach.
4) Do whatever he tells you. This is what Mary the mother of Jesus told the servants at the wedding of Cana: “Do whatever he tells you to do.” After you hear the plan, take action to alleviate the suffering you have become aware of. This action is often very simple: Listen to someone talk for a while, take them to the bus depot, buy a ticket for them to get home, give them some money for a cup of coffee. The list could go on and on, but the basic point is to bring the Deep Love of God the Father to a hurting world.
Acting in this way, anyone can be a ‘father’ to the world. Although we value spiritual gifting and we want to draw out everyone’s unique individual gifts, still the basic principle is that we all have the ability to be God’s hands and feet to the world. We can all help to protect the weak, the powerless and the oppressed like Kevin.
Will we respond?
I wonder if we can respond to this challenge? This coming week, are you willing to Open your eyes, to Make yourself available to the Lord, to Listen to Him and to act on His behalf? If you are, look for an opportunity, respond to it and then tell your small group about it, or bring the story here and tell us what happened.
This is how we will bring the Love of Jesus to our hurting world.
May God give us grace to apply what we have heard. AMEN.
Beauty and Vengeance
We are accustomed to thinking about how to be loving to one and all, to not be judgmental and to accept others as Christ. But here, God's Word tells us that a day of reckoning will come. It will be a day in which nonbelievers ‘pay the piper’ for playing their song of unbelief – and it will indeed be harsh and categorical. Why will God be so very demanding of the nonbeliever? Because, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:19 and ff:
“… what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The sheer beauty of this world should, in fact, testify to the nature and existence of our God. Today, some scientists are beginning to acknowledge this link to Truth. The book, “The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet”, discusses at great length how recognizing beauty in our world can point us to Ultimate Truth. Author Thomas Dubay quotes Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman as saying, “you can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity” (pg. 13). Robert Augros and George Stanciu are also cited in their book The New Story of Science, saying “all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth” (pp.41-52).
Scientists look to the traits of beauty to lead them in their researches because in the first place, Beauty is objective – it’s “out there’. It’s not simply what’s in the eye of the beholder, but rather it is a “property of the objective world.” (EPB, pg. 38,39). By this is meant that Beauty is Simple or Pure. It is free from impurities of needless additions. Astrophysicist Roger Penrose, commenting on Einstein’s theory of relativity says, “no rival theory comes close to general relativity in elegance or simplicity of assumption.” (Black Holes” in The State of the Universe, ed. Geoffrey Bath, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980).
This Simplicity is both complete and economical; it takes everything into account and leaves nothing out. It encompasses the classical philosophical traits of Unity and Wholeness. That which is elegantly simple points to Truth.
Scientists also look for the element of Harmony. Einstein himself asserted that ‘without belief in the inner harmony of the world there could be no science.’ (EPB, pg 40). Theories that harmonize previously unrelated facts are considered objectively beautiful.
Finally, the recognition of Brilliance is a third aspect of the scientific understanding of the Beautiful. Sir George Thomason, in his book, the Inspiration of Science says, “in physics, as in mathematics, it is a great beauty if a theory can bring together apparently different phenomena and show that they are closely connected; or even different aspects of the same thing.” (EPB pg. 41). Such brilliance in a theory is considered beautiful.
But this idea of beauty is not just a scientific abstraction.
“Beauty is the Battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov. EPB. Pg. 20).
When people take a look at our objectively beautiful universe, they must decide what this Beauty means. Does it point to a beautiful, artful Creator who desires a relationship with us, or is this beauty an inexplicable artifact of a meaningless universe in which the biggest question humans face is whether or not to commit suicide? I think you can guess which side I endorse.
As Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “… we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” In other words, God is an Artist. He has created us to live in this beautiful world and to recognize His handiwork in the beauty around us. Our natural response to this beauty should be Wonder. Whoever cannot wonder is not truly Alive. Sadly, the reason why people cannot Wonder is because of their own sinfulness.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I Cor. 2:14). Such a condition describes a person dead in his sin, unable to respond to beauty, unable to Wonder, unable to recognize the Glory of his Artist Creator. Such a person is in darkness, even while surrounded by Light, that is to say God’s Glory or radiance. Most horribly, God admits no excuse for such a condition. It is a willful turning away from Simple Reality and as such is punishable by eternal separation from God.
Romans 1 again, verses 21-25, “ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
This is why “…the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” because in “their unrighteousness, [they] suppress – or hold down - the truth.” They refuse to acknowledge the abundant evidences for God’s existence and for His salvific action in our world. Therefore they suffer judgment. And “when he comes… to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,…” (2 Thes. 1:10), these unrighteous ones will be excluded from fellowship with God. And it will be because of their own willful choices!
But brothers and sisters, we are convinced of better things for you! “ To this end we (like Paul) always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (vv. 11, 12).
As Christians, we are to glorify our God, to reflect back to Him some of the brilliance of the radiant Light that emanates from his person. We are also charged with the mission of reaching out to those who are spiritually dead in their sins and helping them to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ so that they too, may know the blessings of fellowship with him, the blessing of Eternal Life.
Let us remember that there are still 75,000 people in our area (at least) who need this saving knowledge. Let us not rest content until every last one of them has heard the Good News., and let us appeal to that great and merciful Judge to delay the time of his judgment so that He may bring in as many people as possible into that Glorious and Beautiful Light. AMEN.
“… what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The sheer beauty of this world should, in fact, testify to the nature and existence of our God. Today, some scientists are beginning to acknowledge this link to Truth. The book, “The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet”, discusses at great length how recognizing beauty in our world can point us to Ultimate Truth. Author Thomas Dubay quotes Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman as saying, “you can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity” (pg. 13). Robert Augros and George Stanciu are also cited in their book The New Story of Science, saying “all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth” (pp.41-52).
Scientists look to the traits of beauty to lead them in their researches because in the first place, Beauty is objective – it’s “out there’. It’s not simply what’s in the eye of the beholder, but rather it is a “property of the objective world.” (EPB, pg. 38,39). By this is meant that Beauty is Simple or Pure. It is free from impurities of needless additions. Astrophysicist Roger Penrose, commenting on Einstein’s theory of relativity says, “no rival theory comes close to general relativity in elegance or simplicity of assumption.” (Black Holes” in The State of the Universe, ed. Geoffrey Bath, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980).
This Simplicity is both complete and economical; it takes everything into account and leaves nothing out. It encompasses the classical philosophical traits of Unity and Wholeness. That which is elegantly simple points to Truth.
Scientists also look for the element of Harmony. Einstein himself asserted that ‘without belief in the inner harmony of the world there could be no science.’ (EPB, pg 40). Theories that harmonize previously unrelated facts are considered objectively beautiful.
Finally, the recognition of Brilliance is a third aspect of the scientific understanding of the Beautiful. Sir George Thomason, in his book, the Inspiration of Science says, “in physics, as in mathematics, it is a great beauty if a theory can bring together apparently different phenomena and show that they are closely connected; or even different aspects of the same thing.” (EPB pg. 41). Such brilliance in a theory is considered beautiful.
But this idea of beauty is not just a scientific abstraction.
“Beauty is the Battlefield where God and Satan contend with each other for the hearts of men.” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov. EPB. Pg. 20).
When people take a look at our objectively beautiful universe, they must decide what this Beauty means. Does it point to a beautiful, artful Creator who desires a relationship with us, or is this beauty an inexplicable artifact of a meaningless universe in which the biggest question humans face is whether or not to commit suicide? I think you can guess which side I endorse.
As Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “… we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” In other words, God is an Artist. He has created us to live in this beautiful world and to recognize His handiwork in the beauty around us. Our natural response to this beauty should be Wonder. Whoever cannot wonder is not truly Alive. Sadly, the reason why people cannot Wonder is because of their own sinfulness.
“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I Cor. 2:14). Such a condition describes a person dead in his sin, unable to respond to beauty, unable to Wonder, unable to recognize the Glory of his Artist Creator. Such a person is in darkness, even while surrounded by Light, that is to say God’s Glory or radiance. Most horribly, God admits no excuse for such a condition. It is a willful turning away from Simple Reality and as such is punishable by eternal separation from God.
Romans 1 again, verses 21-25, “ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."
This is why “…the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” because in “their unrighteousness, [they] suppress – or hold down - the truth.” They refuse to acknowledge the abundant evidences for God’s existence and for His salvific action in our world. Therefore they suffer judgment. And “when he comes… to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed,…” (2 Thes. 1:10), these unrighteous ones will be excluded from fellowship with God. And it will be because of their own willful choices!
But brothers and sisters, we are convinced of better things for you! “ To this end we (like Paul) always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (vv. 11, 12).
As Christians, we are to glorify our God, to reflect back to Him some of the brilliance of the radiant Light that emanates from his person. We are also charged with the mission of reaching out to those who are spiritually dead in their sins and helping them to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ so that they too, may know the blessings of fellowship with him, the blessing of Eternal Life.
Let us remember that there are still 75,000 people in our area (at least) who need this saving knowledge. Let us not rest content until every last one of them has heard the Good News., and let us appeal to that great and merciful Judge to delay the time of his judgment so that He may bring in as many people as possible into that Glorious and Beautiful Light. AMEN.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Increase our Faith!
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on the occasion of the First Anniversary of the founding of the church, and based on Luke 17:5-10
This past week, as I read the words of Jesus, “If you had faith like a mustard seed…” it immediately occurred to me that for the past year we have actually been living out the words of Scripture!
Last year at this time we were coming together for the first time as a worshipping body. We were coming out of prolonged pain with the Episcopal Church and we had finally decided we had had enough. We were taking the plunge – stepping out in faith, Stepping up to the challenge and Stepping into the promises of God. We had nothing, or next to nothing. Mark and I hadn’t even had a chance to buy white albs for ourselves, so we used our black Benedictine robes.
It was a case of ready, fire, aim! And true to that slogan, we have been systematically developing into a fully-functioning body that has its own flavor and reason for being – one that goes beyond just being an angry split from TEC into one that expresses God’s will and plan for us and the communities in which we reside.
Think back and ask yourself: If All Saints Anglican Church had not come into being, would we have had a baptism in this room eight or nine months ago? Would there have been four teens baptized on Dutch Ridge last week? Would Fr. Mark be standing before you today as a priest? Would there be a Hope House today? Only God knows the answer to these questions, but the likely answer is NO!
As we have stepped out in faith, God has richly blessed us – exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’d like to now reflect on how the Lord actually does this in our lives.
Sparking a Vision
It seems to me that God typically sparks us with a vision, inspiring us to act. This vision can be positive or negative. To show the contrast, we at All Saints have come out of churches that we thought were following a wrong path. We carried a vision for a body of believers that would not have to be shackled to heretical teaching and so we were willing to launch out and start a new church.
Mike Harris has lived up on Dutch Ridge for about 7-8 years. As he interacted with his neighbors, he began to catch a vision for starting a church to minister to those who were not in church or had been wounded in church situations previously. This I would say was an essentially positive vision of something that wasn’t there, but could be there God willing.
Obstacles
Then, once we have the vision, we have to wait and deal with obstacles. And the purpose of these obstacles seems to be to drive us to prayer. We wait and we suffer, and in the process we learn to be patient, to persevere and to pray.
Resistance
God will often resist us in our efforts so that we will remember who is God and who is not. Often times, we are too eager to trust our own strength and intelligence. The Scripture says God resists the proud but lifts up the humble” If we get ‘too big for our britches’, he will allow us to fail in order to drive us back to prayer and to remember that it is not by strength nor by might, but by my power says the Lord. When God is resisting us, no amount of prayer will remove the obstacle – we’re praying against the wrong person! Instead we need to back off and remember to trust him, to stop our own thrashing and to simply sit still until he is ready to Act.
Dramatic Action
After all that waiting and suffering, when He has us where he wants us, then God will frequently act in a sudden, dramatic fashion. A church suddenly comes into being one Sunday in October after planning on waiting until January. One Baptism turns into Four. A $38,000 house sells for $10,000. These are all examples of how God has made us wait and pray, and then suddenly advocated remarkably on our behalf. It is typical of Kingdom living and working. Just like Moses leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea – there is no doubt Who did that work. And that is important, because there is always the tendency to forget and to slip into the illusion that our works alone made things happen.
Sleep Metaphor
Perhaps this all can be represented by using the metaphor of sleep. After the hectic activity of our day, we retire and fall into the vulnerable mini-death of sleep. In it our strength is renewed, just as Isaiah says, “In returning[1] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” IS. 30:15. We are meant to rest in God as our source and provision, trusting Him for the increase.
The Challenge: Exercise Faith
So our challenge is to Rest in God, but exercise our Faith at the same time. We can say that Faith is a faculty, the development of which enables Human Beings to participate in the Divine Nature (II Pet. 1:4).
As Fallen people, we must Work by the sweat of our brow to sustain ourselves. But we must realize that we cannot overcome the thorns of the fallen earth by ourselves. In order to prosper, we must submit ourselves to God, after the fashion of Proverbs 3:5,6:
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not lean on your own understanding.6 In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths.
Anglican Temperament
It is especially important for us as Anglicans to do this. Our temperament as a people is to do things deliberately and orderly, according to good reason and best practices. But in the midst of all that managerial competence, we must make room for the leading of the Holy Spirit. As an example from History: If the Anglican Church had found a way to make room for the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all Methodists would be Anglicans today! Failure to make room for what God is doing results in being left behind in the dust.
Warning;
As we go into our First Annual Business Meeting, we must remember that the Church is not a Business; it is a family. Nevertheless, every family must do business in order to survive and thrive.
The Business affairs of the Church support and enable the mission of the church, not vice versa.
The church should not measure its success by how much money it has at its disposal (TEC has lots). Nevertheless, He who is faithful in little is faithful also in Much (Mt. 25:21).
The Church should not measure its value of success by its size, nevertheless, a healthy church grows.
We need to discern what God is doing and then Join Him in that.
How to Increase your Faith
*Take God at His Word. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Eph. 3:20.
*Speak to the Mulberry Bush: (Tell Story of Bruce Taylor and healings) Speak to the condition about the Kingdom of God. Declare God’s purposes to the fallen, and bring the Will of God to bear on earth as it is in Heaven.
*Attempt Something Great for God, something you cannot do alone, and something that takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
Friends, I think we, as All Saints Anglican Church are living this out. Cindy and I are delighted to be a part of this faithful, orthodox body of Anglican Believers. There were days when we never thought we would have this kind of church to worship in. But here we are! Although we are small, I believe that God will grow us over time, honoring our faithfulness.
Let us celebrate what God has done over this past year and expect that he will do things beyond our ability to imagine in the next year. AMEN.
This past week, as I read the words of Jesus, “If you had faith like a mustard seed…” it immediately occurred to me that for the past year we have actually been living out the words of Scripture!
Last year at this time we were coming together for the first time as a worshipping body. We were coming out of prolonged pain with the Episcopal Church and we had finally decided we had had enough. We were taking the plunge – stepping out in faith, Stepping up to the challenge and Stepping into the promises of God. We had nothing, or next to nothing. Mark and I hadn’t even had a chance to buy white albs for ourselves, so we used our black Benedictine robes.
It was a case of ready, fire, aim! And true to that slogan, we have been systematically developing into a fully-functioning body that has its own flavor and reason for being – one that goes beyond just being an angry split from TEC into one that expresses God’s will and plan for us and the communities in which we reside.
Think back and ask yourself: If All Saints Anglican Church had not come into being, would we have had a baptism in this room eight or nine months ago? Would there have been four teens baptized on Dutch Ridge last week? Would Fr. Mark be standing before you today as a priest? Would there be a Hope House today? Only God knows the answer to these questions, but the likely answer is NO!
As we have stepped out in faith, God has richly blessed us – exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’d like to now reflect on how the Lord actually does this in our lives.
Sparking a Vision
It seems to me that God typically sparks us with a vision, inspiring us to act. This vision can be positive or negative. To show the contrast, we at All Saints have come out of churches that we thought were following a wrong path. We carried a vision for a body of believers that would not have to be shackled to heretical teaching and so we were willing to launch out and start a new church.
Mike Harris has lived up on Dutch Ridge for about 7-8 years. As he interacted with his neighbors, he began to catch a vision for starting a church to minister to those who were not in church or had been wounded in church situations previously. This I would say was an essentially positive vision of something that wasn’t there, but could be there God willing.
Obstacles
Then, once we have the vision, we have to wait and deal with obstacles. And the purpose of these obstacles seems to be to drive us to prayer. We wait and we suffer, and in the process we learn to be patient, to persevere and to pray.
Resistance
God will often resist us in our efforts so that we will remember who is God and who is not. Often times, we are too eager to trust our own strength and intelligence. The Scripture says God resists the proud but lifts up the humble” If we get ‘too big for our britches’, he will allow us to fail in order to drive us back to prayer and to remember that it is not by strength nor by might, but by my power says the Lord. When God is resisting us, no amount of prayer will remove the obstacle – we’re praying against the wrong person! Instead we need to back off and remember to trust him, to stop our own thrashing and to simply sit still until he is ready to Act.
Dramatic Action
After all that waiting and suffering, when He has us where he wants us, then God will frequently act in a sudden, dramatic fashion. A church suddenly comes into being one Sunday in October after planning on waiting until January. One Baptism turns into Four. A $38,000 house sells for $10,000. These are all examples of how God has made us wait and pray, and then suddenly advocated remarkably on our behalf. It is typical of Kingdom living and working. Just like Moses leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea – there is no doubt Who did that work. And that is important, because there is always the tendency to forget and to slip into the illusion that our works alone made things happen.
Sleep Metaphor
Perhaps this all can be represented by using the metaphor of sleep. After the hectic activity of our day, we retire and fall into the vulnerable mini-death of sleep. In it our strength is renewed, just as Isaiah says, “In returning[1] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” IS. 30:15. We are meant to rest in God as our source and provision, trusting Him for the increase.
The Challenge: Exercise Faith
So our challenge is to Rest in God, but exercise our Faith at the same time. We can say that Faith is a faculty, the development of which enables Human Beings to participate in the Divine Nature (II Pet. 1:4).
As Fallen people, we must Work by the sweat of our brow to sustain ourselves. But we must realize that we cannot overcome the thorns of the fallen earth by ourselves. In order to prosper, we must submit ourselves to God, after the fashion of Proverbs 3:5,6:
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not lean on your own understanding.6 In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths.
Anglican Temperament
It is especially important for us as Anglicans to do this. Our temperament as a people is to do things deliberately and orderly, according to good reason and best practices. But in the midst of all that managerial competence, we must make room for the leading of the Holy Spirit. As an example from History: If the Anglican Church had found a way to make room for the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all Methodists would be Anglicans today! Failure to make room for what God is doing results in being left behind in the dust.
Warning;
As we go into our First Annual Business Meeting, we must remember that the Church is not a Business; it is a family. Nevertheless, every family must do business in order to survive and thrive.
The Business affairs of the Church support and enable the mission of the church, not vice versa.
The church should not measure its success by how much money it has at its disposal (TEC has lots). Nevertheless, He who is faithful in little is faithful also in Much (Mt. 25:21).
The Church should not measure its value of success by its size, nevertheless, a healthy church grows.
We need to discern what God is doing and then Join Him in that.
How to Increase your Faith
*Take God at His Word. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Eph. 3:20.
*Speak to the Mulberry Bush: (Tell Story of Bruce Taylor and healings) Speak to the condition about the Kingdom of God. Declare God’s purposes to the fallen, and bring the Will of God to bear on earth as it is in Heaven.
*Attempt Something Great for God, something you cannot do alone, and something that takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
Friends, I think we, as All Saints Anglican Church are living this out. Cindy and I are delighted to be a part of this faithful, orthodox body of Anglican Believers. There were days when we never thought we would have this kind of church to worship in. But here we are! Although we are small, I believe that God will grow us over time, honoring our faithfulness.
Let us celebrate what God has done over this past year and expect that he will do things beyond our ability to imagine in the next year. AMEN.
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