Sunday, November 30th, 2014---Advent: Prepare the Way

This Sunday begins the Advent season!  This is the season of waiting for Christmas, for Christ's birth. 

I must admit, it's not always fun to wait. We seem to want to "jump the gun" to Christmas, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. We should be excited for Christmas to come because of what that day means to us!

In our culture, with all the Christmas decorations, Christmas commercials, and holiday shopping deals rolling around as the calendar turns to November and December, we face the temptation to bypass the necessary and hopeful waiting that Advent brings us. 

We are invited to wait with the hopeful anticipation and nervous excitement of a child. We are reminded that in the waiting, God gives us this hope for Christ's birth. Along with it, we receive the peace, joy, and love of God that eventually satisfies our waiting. 

During this Advent season, we will be exploring how we may prepare the way for Christ as we wait, anticipate, and hope for Christmas. 

Inherit the Kingdom---Sunday, November 23rd, 2014

As we have marched through this month of "Tough Love," which has included some of Jesus' words of judgment, I have found it rather difficult to dig out some of the more positive, encouraging, loving words of Jesus. Last week, you heard me say that the parable of the talents is not all about judging the third servant for burying his coins, but a story about how generous God really is.

The Scripture for this week is the passage that follows the parable of the talents, Matthew 25: 31-46. It is titled in my Common English Bible "Judgment of the Nations." Friends, this is another tough passage, but we are all challenged to find out who God really is here.

"Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began."

God, through the love of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, wants to share the kingdom with us. We have the ultimate, life-giving opportunity to inherit the kingdom of God by serving the "least of these," our neighbors. 

We need to remember this as we approach the Advent season.

See you Sunday!

Serve Without Fear---Sunday, November 16th, 2014

God has created us uniquely.

It is by God's design that no one is quite like us. (even my twin and I have major differences!) We live, love, and walk with God, all in different ways. 

And we serve God and neighbor in different ways, too. 

No one has ever lived the life you have lived before, and no one ever will. It is this fact that sometimes makes us fearful for doing the wrong thing, making the wrong decisions, and not loving others "correctly." 

If no one has ever been you before, how do you know if you are being you "correctly?"

A hint comes in the parable of the talents, found in Matthew 25: 14-30. The man who gives each of his servants talents (a unit of money equal to about 15 years of earnings by a day laborer) was very upset with the servant who hid his talent out of fear. 

The other servants went out and doubled what the master gave them and then were entrusted with more. They did this instinctively; they were not told what to do, they were just given the money. 

God does a similar thing in us. God has entrusted us with much (gifts, skills, resources, etc.) and we are to faithfully respond to that trust. We need not, and shall not, live in fear of what God has given us, God trusts us too much.

So live into what God has given you, you don't have to be afraid.

See you Sunday!

Be Prepared!---Sunday November 9th, 2014

I think that God loves it when we expect God to show up. Call it a "holy expectancy" of God's presence, if you will.

Matthew 25: 1-13 struggles with this notion, as it portrays ten young bridesmaids as they take their lamps to go and meet the groom. 5 were "foolish" and forgot oil for the lamp, while the other 5 brought oil, thus they were "wise." The groom was late to arrive, but they were all excited when he showed up, and they prepared their lamps. Because the groom was late, the lamps burned oil, so the 5 "foolish" bridesmaids ran out and asked for the "wise" bridesmaids to share theirs. They would not share because then theirs would run out of oil, too. So they suggest that they go buy their own oil. When they did this, the groom came and the 5 "wise" bridesmaids went with him to the wedding without the "foolish"ones. They came later and the groom would not them in, saying "I don't know you."

Then Jesus closes the parable by saying "keep alert."

So this parable is about preparedness and alertness for God. It is not enough to expect God, although that is a necessary first step. Holy expectancy must meet holy preparedness. The result could be a divine encounter, which is what we all strive for.

I admit that I attempt to make nice and neat equations, formulas, and strategies for even such things as this (a divine encounter). Life does not work out to nice and neat formulas, let alone our spiritual life with God. But this helps me see that merely expecting God to show up is not enough, I must be ready, I must be prepared, I must be alert for God. I think expecting God is a declaration of faith in God, but then what happens when you notice that God has shown up? What happens when you notice God moving in some way?

If we are not prepared, our light may burn out.

God is not present in our lives to simply show up, to make appearances. God is not a celebrity, and we are not God's paparazzi. God is here to change lives, and God shows up in our lives so that we can bring about the kingdom of God in this world, in this life.

See you Sunday!

Becoming Humble---Sunday, November 2nd, 2014

This Sunday is All Saints Sunday, as well as Communion Sunday for us. What an important day this is as we recognize those who have gone before us, as well as Christ's sacrifice for us. Our lives are impacted by those family members and friends that have shown us the love of God in real and tangible ways. They lived as representations of the incarnate God, who lives with us through the love of others.

I think of my grandmother when I hear the word "saint." It wasn't because she was perfect, overly pious, but because she showed me that God loved me. She loved me. I hope and expect that many of us have those people in our lives, now gone, that live on through what the taught and showed us. Their love lives on through us. God's love lived through them.

Matthew 23: 1-12 teaches us to be humble, for it is the humble who will be exalted. Those who are proud will be humbled by God. That is not a dull affair, folks. Being humbled by God does not simply mean that God will nicely point out where we fall short of a humble servant's heart. When we "lift ourselves up," (v12) we are setting ourselves up to be "brought back down to earth" by God.

Many of the saints that have gone before us have shown us the humility that this passage is trying to get us to reach or pursue. People of God who make an impact on us do so by showing us that it is not all about them, but about others, about God. Showing God's love is not a proud endeavor in which we can "puff ourselves up" because it always points to God, not ourselves.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. Humility means not placing yourself too high or too low, but just where you belong. It's OK to be proud of what is happening in your life. The danger is giving ourselves too much credit, and not enough to God and to those around us.

See you on Sunday, where we will remember and celebrate the saints that have gone before us, as well as the humble sacrifice Jesus made for us.

The Great Commandment---Sunday, October 26th, 2014

Our sermon series, "The Upside-Down Kingdom" will close this week with one of the most powerful, practical, essential, simple, difficult, and important things that Jesus ever said:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself." 

These commandments are not hard to understand, but they are so difficult to truly follow. It's as if Jesus knows that we will have to spend our life dedicated to this task of love in order to truly follow it. These commandments are not static; it takes an attitude of love each day in order to follow them. For the disciples and those questioning Jesus, these commands replaced the laws of sacrifice in order to appease God. For us today, these commandments shed new light on our practices and beliefs. These commandments become the essence of the Christian life.

These are not laws but rather an invitation to live according to God's grace and love for us, which will bring us joy and purpose in our lives.

The kingdom is upside-down, this is true from these verses as well. The kingdom of heaven represents the truism that we are filled up with God's love not when we absorb it all for ourselves, but give it back to God and to those around us. But we should not forget that Jesus also expects us to love ourselves well, saying "love your neighbor as yourself." We need not give and love so much that we don't know and experience God's love for ourselves.

See you on Sunday!

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

This Sunday's sermon will be focused on Matthew 20:1-16, which is the parable of the workers in the vineyard. I debated using this passage back in July during the "Pictures of the Kingdom" series, and it would have fit in well there, too. This parable begins like the ones we have looked at before. Jesus begins telling the parable by saying "The Kingdom of heaven is like..." The punchline at the end of the passage made me think to save it for this series, because the statement is SO upside-down:

"So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”

We are so use to expecting to get "what we deserve" and what is "fair" all the time. When we don't, we like we have been cheated, taken advantage of, and we likely to respond in a way such as those first workers who showed up at the vineyard. Jesus presents another upside-down picture of the kingdom: what you deserve and what is owed to you does not matter. Truth be told, we don't deserve anything from Jesus, yet he is always there. What he has done, is doing, and will do for us is not based on our merit, but on God's love and grace. 

The landowner told those first workers who showed up that they would get a denarian for their work that day, and that was a very generous amount of coin. What he did not tell them is that the "late" workers would also get that amount, for working less. 

Friends, Jesus love and grace is the same amount for all who show up to follow him, no matter how "late" they are. 

See you on Sunday!