tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-357170602024-03-14T02:14:47.897-07:00An American Minister (Formerly) in LondonStories and Sermons from My Time in LondonRev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.comBlogger276125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-70254779839897065712014-11-28T04:52:00.002-08:002014-11-28T05:33:53.699-08:00Thanksgiving Message 2014 <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>(This message was given on Thanksgiving Day in St Paul's Cathedral. The sermon text was Matthew 22:34-40.)</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving
today. It’s a gift to be able to gather and celebrate in this beautiful place
of worship. We are, as always, grateful to the people of St Paul’s for
welcoming us on this special day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanksgiving weekend is the busiest travel period of the
year in the US. Airports are packed and highways are filled to capacity as
people are headed for reunions with families and friends. I know that many of
you have family members visiting today. I also know that many of you are here
in London and missing your families—missing your homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of us will try to soothe those feelings later with a
Thanksgiving feast. Turkey and all the trimmings, different regional touches to
the meal, pies and cakes and all kinds of treats. If we’re all very quiet we
could probably hear our stomachs growling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the real point of Thanksgiving is remembering to be
thankful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone knows that it’s important to say thank you. It’s
part of the glue that holds us all together—it’s we teach our kids, right? “Say
please and thank you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being grateful—and saying “thank you” out loud—is a good
and healthy part of being alive—it’s an essential part of being in a community.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forbes Magazine says that gratitude in the workplace
isn’t what it ought to be. “Only 10% of adults say “thanks” to a colleague
every day,” according to the writer, “and just 7% express gratitude daily to a
boss.” This is important, according to Forbes, because 49% of managers believe
that a culture of gratitude increases profits.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Worrying about profits isn’t exactly what I was going for
here today. But whether it’s profitable or not, every language and culture has
its own way of saying thank you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those of you who know Pinterest: There are 377
different ideas for thank-you gifts on the first page alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But sometimes, apparently, it’s difficult to find the
right words. And so of course, there’s a website to help us with that. It’s
simply called “40 Thank You Phrases,” and it has such creative options as:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am
all gratitude, or,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
will forever be beholden to you, and:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks
a Ton.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They
get slightly more creative as you work your way down the list.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Words
are powerless to express my gratitude.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
thank you from the bottom of my heart.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consider
yourself heartily thanked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
list includes some unexpected gems such as:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please
accept my vehement protestations of gratitude.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And
for those of us who come from California, the list actually includes this
familiar phrase:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was so awesome of you—thanks. (All that’s missing is the Dude at the end of the
sentence.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But of course, sometimes, we simply forget how important
it is to say thank you, and the results can be fairly severe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Huffington Post</i>
shared the story of a young woman who was invited to a wedding for a couple she
didn’t know very well. She decided to get a little creative with the gift, and so
she filled a picnic basket with all kinds of fancy condiments and delicacies
and specialty candies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bride was not impressed. She sent her guest a message
that read: “I'm not sure if this is the first wedding you have been to, but for
your next wedding, people give money in envelopes now. I spent $200 (the bride
went on) covering you and your date’s meals, and I got some Fluffy Whip and Sour
Patch Kids in return. Consider this a heads-up for the future.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bride went on to demand a receipt for the items in
the gift basket.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know, right? I cringe every time I read that message. That
poor groom. Sometimes it’s a comfort to know that no matter how badly you
behave, nothing you do could ever be as bad or as rude as something another
person has already done. She probably should have just said thanks. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanksgiving is a day set aside to say thank you—a day to
be grateful to God for life and the blessings we enjoy. But more it’s more likely
that we think about the other important things: the food—the friends and
family—the football games to watch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. We Americans grow
up learning about that first Thanksgiving—our entire set of traditions and the
industry around the holiday, all stem from the story we’ve inherited that
describes that very first meal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But did you know that the only eyewitness account of that
first celebration of Thanksgiving is just 115 words long? That’s right. Just a
little over a hundred words, and look what we’ve done with it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our text this morning is even shorter than the
description of that first Thanksgiving—just 92 words, but it is packed with an
amazing and life-changing message. In our passage this morning, in this brief
text from the Gospel according to St Matthew, we find a roadmap to a meaningful
and fulfilling life—a path to true and lasting greatness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In our story from Matthew today, Jesus is being tested by
some Pharisees. These biblical scholars followed Jesus around and listened to
his teachings—then they put their heads together and tried to come up with
questions that would somehow back Jesus into a theological corner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They ask him: Which is the greatest commandment in the
Law? And Jesus answers: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: GillSansMT;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it:
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We’re right to remember the first part of what Jesus says
in this passage—to love God and love your neighbor is such an important thing
for us to know—it is, in so many ways, the essential ingredient to a full and
happy life. We’re right to remember those two rules for living, but I’m struck
by the last thing Jesus says here, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Really? Think about that for a moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Law helped shape the behavior of God’s people. It was
where the followers of God learned their ethics, and the boundaries of what
they should and should not do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Prophets corrected God’s people went they went astray—when
their worship was hollow, and when they forgot to be just and fair in the ways
they did business. When God needed to discipline his people, he spoke through
the prophets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now Jesus comes along and says simply, Love God and love
your neighbor. “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so the core of the Christian message—the one that
everything else hangs on—is this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love God, and love your neighbor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here’s the bottom line: If you can make the small leap to
see following God’s commandments as a way of being grateful to God, then there
is no better expression of gratitude—no better way to say thank you—than the
one we see in our text today: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Love God, and love your neighbor. Every other law and
every other prophet—the sum total of everything we know about living the life
of faith—everything hangs on these two commandments. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may know that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in
this cathedral 50 years ago. In one of his speeches Dr. King said this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<br />“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle, or Einstein's Theory of Relativity, or the Second Theory of Thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe that's what's missing in places like Ferguson this week.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Maybe both sides have forgotten what's really important.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A heart full of grace, and a soul generated by love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s what the life of faith is really all about. Because
let’s be honest here: any trained monkey can follow a list of rules. The life
of faith is different. True greatness is different. God calls us to a “soul
generated by love,” for him and for our neighbors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But maybe you’re having a hard time loving God right now.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe the thought of loving God never occurred to you
before. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s OK. God isn’t going anywhere. He’ll be waiting for
you when you’re ready, and in the meantime there is so much for us to do. But
where do we start?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i> have just published a
book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Path Appears</i>. In so
many ways this book is a thoughtful, hopeful, and very specific answer to the
question: How do I love my neighbor?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They tell some great stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like the kid who was told by his third grade teacher that
he would never amount to anything. A trio of family friends started mentoring
him, and after college and a career as a journalist, Lester Brown is an evening
news anchor in Boston. Oh, and the mentoring charity he started will serve
30,000 kids this year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or the group in Africa that provides chlorine dispensers
to families so they can drink clean water. The units cost $1.98 per year, and
they reduce one of the major contributors to childhood deaths by 40 percent.
That’s 2 dollars a year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or the high school students in Southern California who were
so moved to see how kids around the world were prevented from learning, that
they raised $200,000 for a partner school in Haiti. High school kids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This book is a treasure trove of opportunities to help
other people, and it’s a feast for those of you who base everything on a good
answer to the Return on Investment question. (You know who you are.) Here’s one
just for you: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A medical doctor applied his knowledge of infectious
diseases to the way gang violence spreads in urban communities. The US Justice Department
estimates that the doctor’s program reduced gang shootings by as much as 28%,
and here’s the kicker: for every dollar spent on this program, almost 16
dollars are saved in medical costs and legal fees. That’s in addition, of
course, to fewer young people being shot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve never recommended a book in a setting like this, but
that changes today. If you are at all curious about what you and your family
can do to make this world a better and more livable place, read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Path Appears</i>, and commit to trying just
one single suggestion you find there. Fair warning, though: Doing good—loving
your neighbor—it’s a little like potato chips. You can’t do it just once. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We’ve already heard from Dr. King today. Listen to the
way he once challenged his congregation. He said: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, "What are you doing for others?"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you sit down to your Thanksgiving feast today, take a
moment to think about what you can do for someone else—talk with your family
and friends about one thing you can do or share with another person to make
their life safer or gentler or just better. It’s not about feeling bad. It’s
about setting yourself up to feel better than you’ve ever felt before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If Dr. King is right and life’s most persistent and
urgent question really is ‘What are you doing for others?' If that’s the
question, then let me invite you to take a stab at one of the answers today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What’s the worst that could happen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seriously, what’s the worst thing that could happen, if
we spend just a fraction of our day thinking about how we might help another
person? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The resources and talents represented in this room today
could change the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we continue our celebration of this wonderful
Thanksgiving Day, think back on our text. The best way we can be thankful today
is to love God, and to love our neighbors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything hangs on those two commandments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so may that be true in your home and in mine, today
and every day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amen. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span>Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-91977092373963115822014-10-20T06:32:00.001-07:002014-10-21T02:30:06.314-07:00All In (Acts 8:26-40)<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(This message in one in a series called "Acts of the Spirit," and was given at the American International Church in London on 19 October 2014)</span></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the things I’m noticing is that a fresh reading of
Acts is changing how I see what the church is meant to be. Over these last few
weeks we’ve been looking at Acts and following three separate themes: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The miraculous origins of the church.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The meaning and experience of God’s presence in
the world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The call on us as the church in the 21<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>st</sup>
century.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luke is telling the story here—it begins in his gospel
and continues in the book of Acts. So it’s no surprise that the first thing he
shows Jesus doing is talking about the Kingdom of God. Just to review: The
Kingdom is not a place or a realm, with limits or boundaries. The Kingdom as
Jesus talks about it is the experience of God’s reign—God’s values and ethics
and authority over all things and all places and all people. Jesus comes back
from the dead and talks about the Kingdom for 40 straight days—40 days of
teaching the disciples and the early believers about that Kingdom of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we come to our text this morning, the church is growing
by the thousands each week. The first persecution is beginning to take shape,
and Stephen has been martyred under the watchful eye of a Pharisee named Saul.
Stay tuned: he’s going to be important very soon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Acts 8:26-40<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="versenum9"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>26</strong></i></span><span class="versetext4"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Now an angel<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1"></a>
of the Lord said to Philip,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2"></a> "Go south to the road--the
desert road--that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." </i></span><span class="versenum9"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>27</strong></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> So he started out, and on his way he met an
Ethiopian<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="a"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3"></a> eunuch,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4"></a> an important
official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians.
This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="5"></a> <span class="versenum9"><strong>28</strong></span>
and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the
prophet. <span class="versenum9"><strong>29</strong></span> The Spirit told<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="6"></a> Philip,
"Go to that chariot and stay near it." <span class="versenum9"><strong>30</strong></span>
Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.
"Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked. <span class="versenum9"><strong>31</strong></span> "How can I," he said, "unless someone
explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>come up and sit with him. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="versenum9"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>32</strong></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The eunuch was reading this passage of
Scripture: "He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before
the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. <span class="versenum9"><strong>33</strong></span>
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his
descendants? For his life was taken from the earth."<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="b"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="7"></a> <span class="versenum9"><strong>34</strong></span> The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell
me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" <span class="versenum9"><strong>35</strong></span> Then Philip began<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="8"></a> with that very
passage of Scripture<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="9"></a> and told him the good news<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="10"></a>
about Jesus. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="versenum9"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><strong>36</strong></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> As they traveled along the road, they came
to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I
be baptized?"<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="c"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="11"></a> <span class="versenum9"><strong>38</strong></span>
And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went
down into the water and Philip baptized him. <span class="versenum9"><strong>39</strong></span>
When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip
away,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="12"></a> and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way
rejoicing. <span class="versenum9"><strong>40</strong></span> Philip, however, appeared at Azotus
and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="13"></a> until
he reached Caesarea.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So where are we in this text? The early church is under persecution.
Stephen has been murdered. A Pharisee named Saul is chasing the leaders of the
church all over the region<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philip, one of the men chosen to manage the distribution
of food, is on the run. He’s traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, a
road that passes by the city of Hebron, and the graves of Abraham and Sarah. He
meets a eunuch. Eunuchs were men whose sexual parts were removed so they could
be trusted to guard harems and run government offices. This guy was a treasury
official in Ethiopia—he was a powerful man who was trusted to oversee the
treasury of the queen. But there’s more for us to know here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the OT eunuchs are listed as permanently unclean and
restricted from the Temple. Deut. 23:1 says: “<span class="text">No one who has
been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the </span><span class="small-caps"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span></span><span class="text">.” Eunuchs were not permitted to the community of faith. Now we know
there were all kinds of restrictions on people who were temporarily unclean for
a whole range of reasons: touching various animals or bodily fluids, menstrual
cycles, and a range of other natural conditions. All of these could be
restored. People who had made themselves unclean somehow could ritually cleanse
themselves and be back in the Temple the next day. Eunuchs were different. They
were permanently, irrevocably barred from worshipping God in the assembly of
the faithful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="text">One writer described it this way: “</span>The
law strictly forbids a eunuch from entering the temple. Their transgression of
gender binaries and inability to fit into proper categories made them profane.
They did not fit in the tent.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But notice that the eunuch is on his way back from
worshiping in Jerusalem, where in all likelihood he was turned away and
prevented from worshiping. When Philip finds him he’s reading a scroll of
Isaiah 53. Think about how hard it must have been for him to get his hands on
that scroll. There was no Barnes & Noble or Waterstone’s down the
street—there were no Kindles with Bibles loaded into them. This man had spent a
small fortune on a hand-copied scroll of the book of Isaiah, and he read it as
a way to help him follow God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philip greets the man and hears him reading out loud from
Isaiah. Riding in his chariot. Out in the desert. Still feeling rejected after
his visit to Jerusalem. Reading out loud from the Scriptures. Philip asks him
if he understands what he’s reading, and the man is a little exasperated, maybe
from just being turned away at the Temple: “How can I understand it unless
someone explains it to me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Turns out the eunuch is reading a passage we read every
Advent season, from the heart of Isaiah 53, where the suffering Messiah is
promised to us. How perfect is that? How perfect is it that his question is
about who this prophet might be? The Ethiopian is watching and waiting for Advent,
and Philip gets to tell him that it’s already here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philip takes the question and hits it out of the park,
and this Ethiopian gender outsider becomes the very first non-Jewish convert to
the Christian faith. They see a little pond or oasis or whatever kind of water
you find on a desert road, and this Ethiopian government official says: Is
there any good reason why I can’t be baptized? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think about that question. There are a lot of things
Philip could have said at this moment. He could have quoted that Deuteronomy
passage and left him there. He could have said that his sexual identity meant
that even if he believed, he could never be a part of the church. Of course
that’s not what happened. Philip is a product of the miraculous work of the
Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Philip is a new creation. Philip listened to the
risen Jesus talk about the Kingdom of God for 40 straight days, and in this
story it’s clear that he understood what it meant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one of those unexplainable moments, Philip is taken
out of the story. What’s funny is that the Ethiopian guy doesn’t even notice.
All of his prayer and study and longing to understand God has led him to this
encounter with someone who had the answers. He rides back to Africa singing
songs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a great story about being ready to share the
faith. About being sensitive to the questions and searching of people around
us. But here’s another thing in this story that we should remember:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We should never
ignore the significance of the fact that the first Gentile convert in the Bible
was a black sexual outcast.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is Palestine in the first century, under the control
of the Roman Empire. There were no diversity programs or sensitivities then.
And yet the first recorded Gentile to accept the message of the gospel of Jesus
Christ was a black sexual outcast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you think about the miracles of the New Testament,
never forget this one. Never forget how Philip the apostle lived the message of
the gospel of Jesus Christ when he ran into an Ethiopian eunuch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What do we make of this? It’s crucial to notice here that
after Pentecost, after the gift of the Holy Spirit, the trajectory of the
church of Jesus Christ is one of radical inclusion. Jews from outside the Holy
Land; Gentiles from anywhere and everywhere; even those whose gender identities
and lifestyles were outside the mainstream. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Pentecost,
after the gift of the Holy Spirit, the trajectory of the church of Jesus Christ
is one of radical inclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what the heck happened? What happened to that
inclusive trajectory? What happened to the church being a place that was always
trying to outdo itself in welcoming the stranger, the outcast, the ones no one
else would accept?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The truth is that it’s not long before the church became
so deeply connected to the culture, that it came to reflect the culture’s
biases and taboos and hatreds. There are all kinds of examples.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Women in leadership in the 1<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>st</sup> century were
edged out as the church gave in to the patriarchy of the surrounding culture.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sharing and communal living of the early church is
obliterated by individualism and the rise of private property and unrestricted
capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Closer to home in American history: Slaveowners in the
American South could celebrate passages that seemed to condone slavery as a
perpetual norm—as something that would always be OK, while at the very same
time their slaves could be reading the same Bible and longing for release from
bondage to the Promised Land.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe Ann Lamott puts it best when she says: “You know
you’ve created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that’s not the way it was supposed to be. That’s not
the way Christian culture was meant to speak in a prophetic voice to whatever
host culture it finds itself in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The church of
Jesus Christ, powered by the Holy Spirit, is meant to be a place of radical
inclusion—a place where we compete to see how lavishly we can share the love of
God with each other and with our neighbors.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we’re going to get this one wrong, then it should be
on the side of being too generous—too open—too loving, and not the other way
around. That’s what Luke is showing us in the stories of the Acts of the
Apostles. That’s what this church can be when we allow the reign of God to
cover this place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can we take away from this text this morning? Three
crucial things to remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, God is already working in the hearts of people all
around us, even on the margins. Maybe especially on the margins. That Ethiopian
was searching for God on his own, desperately waiting for someone to share the
Good News with him. He didn’t get any help from the religious establishment of
the day. People all around us are searching for God on the own. Our job is to
enter into those conversations with our own stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, the gift of the Holy Spirit trumps
everything—even the limits God himself placed on the life of faith in the Old
Testament. This is the hardest one for us. My own denomination is tearing
itself apart because it’s forgotten who it was called to be—not a keeper of
rules, but a demonstration of grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And finally, because of that, we’re called to remember
that everybody is welcome here. We’re called to be agents of that open,
flexible, grace-filled love that Philip showed the Ethiopian. No matter where
they’re from, or who or how they love. If they’re willing to seek the God of
the Bible through the ministry of Jesus Christ, then we should be looking for
the nearest puddle to baptize them in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Acts is getting interesting, isn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just remember this: The church of Jesus Christ, powered
by the Holy Spirit, is meant to be a place of radical inclusion—a place where
we compete to see how lavishly we can share the love of God with each other and
with our neighbors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May that be true in this place, and in every place that
claims the name of Jesus Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.</span></div>
Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-14574834352276532952012-11-28T01:18:00.000-08:002012-11-28T01:18:27.661-08:00Thanksgiving 2012: Whatever is True
<em>(On Thanksgiving Day, the American community in London gathered in St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate this special holiday. It was my honor to give the message for the service--the text of the sermon is below.)</em><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I want to
wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving today. It is a gift to be able to
gather and celebrate in this beautiful place of worship. We are, as always,
grateful to the people of St Paul’s for welcoming us on this special day.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Thanksgiving
weekend is the biggest travel period of the year in the US. Airports are packed
and highways are filled to capacity as people are headed for reunions with
families and friends. I know that many of you have family members visiting
today. I also know that many of you are here in London and missing your
families—missing your homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Most of us
will try to soothe those feelings later with a Thanksgiving feast. Turkey and
all the trimmings, different regional touches to the meal, pies and cakes and
all kinds of treats. If we’re all very quiet we could probably hear our
collective stomachs growling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">And of
course there’s football. Not the elegant, non-stop version they play here, but
the heavily padded, hard-helmeted, brutal, stop-start version they play in the
States. It’s a beautiful thing. Sitting around with your friends and family,
watching other people pound each other in front of massive crowds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">But as much
as football is a part of this special day, Thanksgiving is a lot more like
baseball than football. Remember what the philosopher said… And by philosopher
of course I’m talking about the American comedian, George Carlin. Remember what
he said about the difference between football and baseball:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“In football
the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on
target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers
with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz; sometimes he has to use a shotgun.
With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy
territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that
punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In baseball,
though, the object is just to go home.”</span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I know a lot
of us are away from home today. Thinking about our families is a big part of
the Thanksgiving holiday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I read this
past week about a family that wanted to do something special for Thanksgiving. Here’s
how the story goes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“The Taylors
were proud of their family tradition. Their ancestors had travelled to America
with the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower. They had included Congressmen,
successful entrepreneurs, famous sports people and television stars. They
decided to research and write a family history, something for their children
and grandchildren. They found a specialist genealogist and writer to help them.
Only one problem arose - how to handle Great Uncle Jefferson Taylor who was
executed in the electric chair of the state prison.<span style="color: black;"> </span>The
writer said she could handle the story tactfully. When the book appeared the
section about Jefferson read: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Great Uncle
Jefferson Taylor occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important
government institution, he was attached to his position by the strongest of
ties, and his death came as a great shock.”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now I got
that story off the internet, and I have no idea if it’s really true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Hardly a day
goes by without someone sending me some story or claim in an email, or tweet, or
a Facebook message, and I have to wonder if it’s really true. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We’ve all
heard about how Bill Gates wants to send us some money or a new computer; we’ve
heard that Walt Disney is actually frozen somewhere, hoping to be thawed back
to life; We’ve been warned about the dangers of drinking Coca-Cola and eating
Pop Rocks candies; some people have tried to recharge their iPods by plugging
them into an onion (don’t raise your hands if you tried that); yesterday I saw
that Marilyn Monroe’s recipe for cooking a turkey was going around; and we’ve
all heard how signing on to Facebook will be the end of privacy as we know it.
That last one might actually be true… For the most part, though, all of these
are myths being spread around the world wide web.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Who can we
trust when we hear strange stories on the internet? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What source
can we rely on to keep us from taking these claims at face value?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Where do we turn
to find out if any of these things are true?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The answer,
of course, is Snopes.com. Snopes.com is a website that researches the stories
that circulate on the internet, and either confirms or debunks their details.
It has become a regular part of my day to check the Snopes site when something
crosses my screen that doesn’t look quite right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In our text
today, the Apostle Paul, writing to his favorite church, was acting like the Snopes
site—he was trying to cut through the different messages that were being spread
around the first century church. Paul was reminding the early Christians to
keep their eyes focused on the truth that inspired their faith in the first
place. He was reminding them that their hearts and minds needed protection—that
they needed to be safeguarded from the messages going viral in that time and
place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">He said:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Do not
worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">He follows
that with this charge: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is
just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there
is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these
things.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Whatever is
true…” Keep your minds focused on things that are true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Wouldn’t that
be nice? In a political climate that has become less about ideas and more about
discrediting people, wouldn’t it be nice if we could spend more of our time
focusing on what’s true and just and pure? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now the
dictionary gives us a range of definitions for true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">To be true
is to be accurate: getting the facts and details just right.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">To be true
is to be honest: being trustworthy and faithful in what we say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Maybe for us
it’s summed up best by being near to the center of the target—Elvis Costello
can help with this one: “My aim is true,” he told us. To be true is to be
steadfast and loyal; to be consistent and just. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Whatever is
true”, Paul says. Think on these things. Put them into practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Maybe for us
today it’s most important to remember that truth isn’t just something we find
when we look hard enough. Truth is also a discipline that we have to learn and
practice and protect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">For
Christians this means trusting that the work God accomplished through Jesus
Christ is enough for all of us—for the whole world—that it has the power to
restore our lives and this earth to the way they were meant to be. That’s the
story of the Christian gospel, and it’s a great and wonderful story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">But whatever
your faith tradition might be, the practice of knowing and telling the truth is
essential for healthy, peaceful, honest living. Remember how Paul started our
passage today:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Don’t worry
about anything, but in everything by prayer and thanksgiving let your requests
be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds...”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Bringing our
lives before God with thanksgiving in our hearts can be a source of peace. Being
thankful is one of the ways we keep our lives centered—it can keep us from
being too anxious—it can give us the peace that we crave. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In the old television
show, The X-Files, there was often a poster in the background that said “The
Truth is Out There.” But for us we know that sometimes the truth out there can
be harsh and threatening. Maybe that’s the biggest lesson we learned in this
last presidential campaign cycle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">After this
past year of sniping and slandering and destroying—after this year of conflict
over how governments should govern and how economies should work—after this
season of disunity and bitterness—after all of that, what if we paused to be
thankful for the freedoms we share, for the opportunities we have to change the
world and make it a better place for the people at the bottom of the wealth
chain?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now that
would be honorable and just and pure—it would be pleasing and commendable and
it would be worthy of praise and celebration. Mostly, though, it would be true.
It would acknowledge the truth that there is desperate need in the world, and
that the combined resources and brainpower present in this very room, on this
very day, could help to provide a solution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Thanksgiving
is a perfect time to be reminded that our feasts today are only a part of
today’s story. Our plenty tells only a part of what’s true about the world
today. And if we’re to be the sort of people who experience that peace of God
that surpasses understanding, then our celebrations and meals have to tell the
whole truth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Let me
invite you, whatever your Thanksgiving holiday looks like, let me invite you to
take a moment and talk about this around your table. Tell the truth today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Not to feel
guilty, but to sense the possibilities for solving some of the world’s most
challenging problems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Not to cast
blame, but to join together in unity, and to refuse to let another year go by
without learning more about how the other two-thirds of the world lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Not to be
drowned in grief, but to be immersed in the hope that God has and shares for
his world and his people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Let your
feast today, the turkey and stuffing, the bread and wine—let your feast today
inspire you and your family to work for a day when everyone simply has enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Because
that’s what it means to tell the truth. And that’s what it means to be truly
thankful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">My son and I
are learning the prayer of St Francis of Assisi—we say it together each morning
on our way to school. The words of this prayer acknowledge the problems of the
world, but they also ask for God’s help in being a part of the solution—they
ask for the strength to live and share a different truth, one filled with
justice and peace for all people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Listen to
these words, and make them your own prayer today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Lord, make
me an instrument of your peace.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Where there
is hatred, let me sow love;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">where there
is injury, pardon;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">where there
is doubt, faith;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">where there
is despair, hope;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">where there
is darkness, light;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">and where
there is sadness, joy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">O Divine
Master, grant that I may not so much seek</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">to be
consoled as to console;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">to be
understoodas to understand;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">to be loved
as to love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">For it is in
giving that we receive;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">it is in
pardoning that we are pardoned;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">and it is in
dying that we are born to eternal life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Happy
Thanksgiving to all of you, and may God bless you today, and every day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-82531101706759840172012-02-13T07:11:00.000-08:002012-02-13T07:20:22.344-08:00Closer Than You Think<em>(This is one in a series of messages on the Gospel According to Mark.)</em><br /><br /><strong>Mark 1:14-20<br /></strong><br />(This message was preceded by the choir singing “Libera Me” from Faure’s <em>Requiem</em>.)<br /><br />I have three pieces of classical music on my iPod, alongside my less-lofty music: Mozart’s <em>Requiem</em>, Brahms’ <em>Requiem</em>, and Faure’s <em>Requiem</em>. I don’t know if that reveals an obsession with death or not, but the music is beautiful.<br /><br />The words here are from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, which goes back to the 13th century when it used to be called the Black Mass. In the changes after Vatican II there was a significant shift in the funeral services used by the Catholic Church. The emphasis on sorrow and grief was replaced by a stance of hope and joy, based on trust in the saving work of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.<br /><br />The anthem we just heard said this:<br /><br />“Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death on that dreadful day when the heavens and the earth shall be moved, when thou shalt come to judge the world through fire. I quake with fear and I tremble, awaiting the day of account and the wrath to come.”<br /><br />But the service ends with this prayer:<br /><br />“May Angels lead you into paradise; may the Martyrs receive you at your coming<br />and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.<br />May a choir of Angels receive you,<br />and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.”<br /><br />Isn’t that beautiful? Let’s pray for a moment.<br /><br />We continue our series on the Gospel of Mark today. From the very beginning Mark teaches the connection between the Jesus story and the story of Israel. For this part we need to have in all of our minds the words God said to Abraham when he called him in Genesis 12 and promised that he would be the father of a great and chosen nation. God said:<br /><br />“I will make you into a great nation, <br />and I will bless you;<br />I will make your name great, <br />and you will be a blessing.<br />I will bless those who bless you, <br />and whoever curses you I will curse;<br />and all peoples on earth <br />will be blessed through you.”<br /><br />Let me make this part very clear as we move forward. Jesus came as the promised Messiah or King to complete the story of Israel that started with that conversation between God and Abraham. Then, as the King, he went to the Cross to take everyone’s sin and brokenness onto his own shoulders. That’s now he establishes his Kingdom on earth, and now he calls every person and every place to follow him and live by a new set of values and priorities and loves.<br /><br />That’s the answer to the three big questions Mark is answering in his account of Jesus life and work:<br /><br />Who is the Messiah?<br />What did the Messiah do?<br />What are we supposed to do about it?<br /><br />We find the complete gospel of Jesus Christ in the answers to those questions.<br /><br />Anything less ignores the continuity that drives the story of the Bible from beginning to end. Anything else doesn’t do justice to the mission of God among his people and in his creation. Anything that calls itself “the gospel” that doesn’t include this whole story, is catastrophically incomplete.<br /><br />Today our text follows right after Jesus’ own baptism. It’s a great scene where Jesus comes out of the Jordan River and the heavens open and the Holy Spirit lands on Jesus like a dove. God’s voice comes from the heavens and says: “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”<br /><br />Not a bad start to his ministry.<br /><br />In true Mark style, our text immediately follows the baptism of Jesus. If you’re able, please stand for the reading of God’s word today.<br /><br /><em>After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him.<br /><br />When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. </em><br /><em><br /></em>Mark’s story of Jesus gets exciting right from the start. Last week Mark led off with “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God,” and immediately introduced us to the wild man we know as John the Baptist. Jesus own baptism and his temptations in the desert are taken care of in a mere four verses, and by the time we get to our text John is already in prison. <br /><br />The silencing of John the Baptist brings Jesus into the full-on start to his ministry. “After John was put in prison,” Marks tells us, “Jesus went into Galilee and preached the gospel of God.”<br /><br />The next section captures the essence of the message Jesus preached during his earthly ministry.<br /><br />“The time has come,” Jesus said. This is a reference to Jewish expectation. The prophets had communicated God’s promise of a Messiah for centuries, but in the 1st century that had been reduced to a hope for a military leader who would drive out the Romans and who would purge Jerusalem of people who didn’t believe as they did—the faith as practiced had become self-serving. It had forgotten, as Israel had done so often, that being God’s chosen brought a responsibility with it: to communicate and share God’s blessing with all the nations. The prayers of Jesus’ day sounded a little like we all did as kids, sitting on Santa’s lap and reciting our Christmas list.<br /><br />“The Kingdom of God is near.” I’ll confess here that I miss the old way of saying that: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” It’s within reach. It’s getting closer all the time. The momentum toward the fulfillment of God’s promises is closer than you think. It’s worth reminding ourselves here of what Jesus means when he refers to the “Kingdom.”<br /><br />We tend to think of kingdoms as places with boundaries and limits—places where you’re either in or out. But in the language of the New Testament we should see “kingdom” as God’ reign—the ongoing demonstration of his sovereignty over all people and all places—God’s power over all things, even death. When Jesus refers to the kingdom being near, this is what he’s talking about.<br /><br />“Repent and believe the gospel.” This is the call of Jesus to strip away your self-serving expectation, and to believe that God has come to bring peace and justice and shalom to the world he loves.<br /><br />That’s just the first two verses of our text, by the way. Remember that last week I said that parts of Mark’s gospel read like the executive summary of the Jesus story.<br /><br />The next section shows Jesus calling Simon, Andrew, James and John to be his disciples. It’s fair to assume that they had already believed that Jesus was the Messiah, so it doesn’t have to be as abrupt as it looks on the page. But still the call was no less dramatic. Jesus said “Follow me,” and that was clearly a call to leave everything behind and surrender their lives and plans and even their values, and to follow the King.<br /><br />Tim Keller, in <em>King’s Cross</em>, said that the difference between the Christian faith and other religions is this: Most other faiths require a series of behaviors in order to meet the divine—to gain ultimate consciousness—to earn the highest prize. What they often amount to is advice.<br /><br />The difference between following Jesus and other religions is that while they give you a path to follow, Christ gives us good news. Keller has a great way of saying this:<br /><br />“The gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it’s about being called to follow a king. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done—but someone with the power and authority to do what needs to be done, and then to offer it to you as good news.”<br /><br />That helps us understand the way Jesus looked out at some men who were in the middle of their workday—it helps us understand how he could simply say “Follow me,” and have them drop what they were doing to follow him.<br /><br />It’s also where Christ’s call translates for us today, here in this place, as we seek to learn what it means to be disciples of Jesus. Keller adds this:<br /><br />“Come, follow me, Jesus is saying.<br />Follow me because I’m the King you’ve been looking for.<br />Follow me because I have authority over everything,<br />yet I humbled myself for you.<br />Because I died on the cross for you<br />when you didn’t have the right beliefs or the right behavior.<br />Because I brought you news and not advice.<br />Because I’m your true love, your true life—follow me.”<br /><br />Following Christ requires a surrender on our part. Not a surrender of responsibility or action, and not a surrender of vision or creativity, but a surrender of the idea that all of this begins and ends with us. A surrender of our secret belief that we’re in charge—that we’re the king of our own worlds. The call to faith in Jesus Christ is a call to surrender our values for his—our lives for his.<br /><br />As we move through the Gospel of Mark over these next months, the idea of Jesus as King will be balanced by a reminder to us that if he’s the King, then we’re not. If he’s the King, then the call on our lives is to yield to him—to worship and follow him—and to serve the world that he loves, in his name.<br /><br />It’s in that surrender that our preoccupation with sorrow and grief is replaced by a stance of hope and joy, based on trust in the saving work of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.<br /><br />Only one hymn will do when we’re talking about surrendering to God. Let’s stand and sing together: “I Surrender All.”Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-12429084034516643572012-02-08T02:12:00.000-08:002012-02-08T02:22:19.129-08:00Better News Than We Thought<em>(This message is the first in a series on the Gospel of Mark.)</em><br /><br /><strong>Mark 1:1-8<br /></strong><br />This past week we watched a documentary about a series of protests against Apartheid back in the 70s. The protests focused on the South African national rugby team, and their tours of other nations. Anti-Apartheid protesters disrupted a series of matches, drawing attention to the injustices toward blacks in South Africa. There were interviews of participants on both sides. Some of those who were against the protests were convincing, but time has proven that they were mistaken—time has proven that they missed the point about what was really important.<br /><br />Thirty years later they turned out to be on the wrong side of history. Apartheid was wrong—it was an example of a massive injustice inflicted by the strong against the weak—it was wrong, and getting rid of it without a full-scale war has to be seen as one of the great political victories of the last century. The final moments of the film showed the celebration among both blacks and whites, when the first integrated South African rugby team won the World Cup. It was so moving.<br /><br />The Gospel According to Mark uses a similar strategy. It was the first of the four gospels to be written and circulated, and part of the point was a call to all of us not to be on the wrong side of history—not to miss the point of who this Jesus person was and what he meant and means for everyone and everything in this world. Mark’s story of Jesus is an expression of the central message of the Christian faith. It talks about three main things:<br /><br />Who the Messiah is,<br />what the Messiah did,<br />what we’re supposed to do about it.<br /><br />From the very beginning Mark teaches the connection between the Jesus story and the story of Israel. For this part we need to have in all of our minds the words God said to Abraham when he called him in Genesis 12 and promised that he would be the father of a great and chosen nation. God said:<br /><br />“I will make you into a great nation, <br />and I will bless you;<br />I will make your name great, <br />and you will be a blessing.<br />I will bless those who bless you, <br />and whoever curses you I will curse;<br />and all peoples on earth <br />will be blessed through you.”<br /><br />Let me make this part very clear as we get started.<br /><br /><strong>Jesus came as the promised Messiah or King to complete the story of Israel that started with that conversation between God and Abraham. Then, as the King, he went to the Cross to take creation's sin and brokenness onto his own shoulders.<br /></strong><br />That’s now he establishes his Kingdom on earth, and now he calls every person and every place to follow him and live by a new set of values and priorities and loves.<br /><br />That’s the answer to the three big questions Mark is answering in his account of Jesus life and work:<br /><br />Who is the Messiah?<br />What did the Messiah do?<br />What are we supposed to do about it?<br /><br />We find the complete gospel of Jesus Christ in the answers to those questions.<br /><br />Anything less ignores the continuity that drives the story of the Bible from beginning to end.<br />Anything else doesn’t do justice to the mission of God among his people and in his creation.<br />Anything that calls itself “the gospel” that doesn’t include this whole story, is catastrophically incomplete.<br /><br />But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our text this morning is the first few verses of Mark’s gospel, Mark 1:1-8. If you’re able, please stand for the reading of God’s word today.<br /><br /><em>The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.</em><br /><br /><em>It is written in Isaiah the prophet:<br />“I will send my messenger ahead of you, </em><br /><em>who will prepare your way”— </em><br /><em>“a voice of one calling in the desert, </em><br /><em>‘Prepare the way for the Lord, </em><br /><em>make straight paths for him.’” </em><br /><br /><em>And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” </em><br /><br />Have you ever spent much time talking with someone who can’t get to the point? Yeah, that’s never going to be your problem with Mark. This book gets to so many points, so quickly, that you can be out of breath after just a few chapters. Mark uses some variation of the word “immediately” 47 times in 16 chapters. This is the gospel for people with short attentions spans.<br /><br />But the main point for us in this text is the definition of this “gospel” Mark is talking about. The church gets this part wrong far too often.<br /><br />On the liberal side, Jesus gets reduced to being a great moral example. He loved the poor so we do too. He was tolerant, so we should be too. This side of things doesn’t take Jesus’ own claims seriously—it doesn’t see him as the Messiah, as the fulfillment of Israel’s story, or the one who came to redeem the world as its rightful servant king.<br /><br />The evangelical side doesn’t do much better. A preacher posted this on Twitter the other day:<br /><br />“The gospel in four words: ‘Christ in my place.’”<br /><br />That’s not nearly enough. When personal salvation becomes the main part of the story, it misrepresents who Jesus was and makes it too easy to ignore the other main parts of the story. It allows us, by comparison, to ignore the poor or injustice or the environment, or to turn loving our neighbors and enemies into an abstraction that doesn’t really change anything about the way we live and love and work and spend.<br /><br />It leads us into the lie that the Kingdom of God is some future place, instead of the reign of God at work in all times and in all places and in all people. “Christ in my place” is such a severely edited version of the gospel that it ends up perverting the gospel message.<br /><br />Mark has a different definition, one that begins where we should begin, with God’s promises in the Old Testament. The Old Testament references from Isaiah and Malachi serve as a flashback right at the start of the book, to help us understand both the present and future.<br /><br />So what is this gospel Mark is talking about? Bob Guelich, who was my New Testament professor in seminary, summed it up this way:<br /><br />“The gospel is the message that God acted in and through Jesus Messiah, God’s anointed one, to effect God’s promise of shalom, salvation and God’s reign.”<br /><br />See how that ties everything together?<br /><br />This is something that Scot McKnight and other writers are taking up with a lot more urgency these days. They see the huge impact of the true gospel being reduced to individual fire insurance—a ticket to get punched so that we can avoid eternal punishment. McKnight writes about the way of thinking that limits the gospel to “Justification by faith that Jesus died on the cross to save me from my sins.”<br /><br />In his book, <em>The King Jesus Gospel</em>, McKnight recalls a conversation with a pastor who believed this was the sum total of the gospel. He asked him: “So did Jesus preach the gospel?” The guy thought for a moment, and then said no, because Jesus didn’t preach about the cross and the resurrection and Pentecost. I’m still stunned by the gall of someone actually thinking that Jesus himself couldn’t have preached the gospel of, well, Jesus, because he couldn’t talk about the parts of his ministry that hadn’t happened just yet.<br /><br />Do you see how this is a stunted view of the gospel? In our own text this morning Mark says that the beginning of the gospel is underway before Jesus even starts his ministry. “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God,” Mark says.<br /><br />And that beginning he’s talking about is John the Baptist announcing that the King is coming. That’s the gospel. That’s the good news. When the good news for the whole world is reduced to the personal, it’s no longer the gospel and, quite frankly, it’s not very good news, either.<br /><br />This is where it’s important to remember that the promised Messiah was a promised King. It was a King that would glorify and extend the reign of God himself over all things and all places. Anything less than that turns the message into something completely different from what it was intended to be.<br /><br />In this election year everyone seems to be taking sides on what kind of politics Jesus would approve of. A Stanford psychologist measured the relationship between Christian beliefs and political views. The conclusion of the study was that most liberals understand that Jesus might have views that are more conservative than their own, but also at the same time that most conservatives agree that Jesus would hold more liberal views than theirs. (click <a href="http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?Docid=661218">here </a>for the article).<br /><br />The point here isn’t to suggest that we vote one way or the other. It’s to recognize this simple truth:<br /><br /><strong>If you’re picking and choosing political views that you know Jesus wouldn’t agree with, he’s probably not the King and Lord of your life just yet.<br /></strong><br />The task for us as we make our way through Mark’s gospel, and as we try to make the gospel real in our own lives—all of that means we have to remember a few things:<br /><br />Christ came to establish his kingship, not start a club.<br />He came to transform culture, not to be subject to it.<br />He came to complete the story of redemption that God started in the Garden.<br />He came to write the climax of the Bible’s story, of Israel’s story, the story of God’s blessing for all nations.<br />He came to heal what was wounded, restore what was broken, and to offer forgiveness for everything that has gone so painfully wrong in each one of our lives.<br />He came to do all that, and also to offer each one of us the chance to live with him forever.<br /><br />“The gospel is the message that God acted in and through Jesus Messiah, God’s anointed one, to effect God’s promise of shalom, salvation and God’s reign.”<br /><br />That’s the Gospel that Mark is about to show us. It’s a much bigger story, with more meaning for more people than we usually give it credit for. It is, at the same time, the history and the future of God’s people and his creation. It’s better news than we ever could have thought or even imagined. It tells us who the Messiah is, what the Messiah did, and what we’re called to do about it.<br /><br />The gospel is the history of God’s active love for his people and this world. The invitation in Mark’s gospel is to be on the right side of that history—to be caught up in God’s redemptive plan, and to serve his world in his name.<br /><br />That invitation is meant to begin with a meal together. The Lord’s Table is where we come to be nourished and strengthened for the journey of faith. It’s where we come in our weakness and brokenness and fear, and leave strong and restored and courageous. Come to the Table. Let’s pray together.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-63389480002206834042012-02-03T01:22:00.000-08:002020-06-01T13:59:36.648-07:00Through a Glass ManlyOver on Rachel Held Evans’ blog, she’s invited her manly readers to respond to John Piper’s latest comments on masculinity and faith, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Check this out before you read on: <a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/john-piper-masculine-christianity">http://rachelheldevans.com/john-piper-masculine-christianity</a><br />
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These days some Christian men are talking a lot about being, well, Christian men, and a lot of it comes off as a little strange. Mark Driscoll thinks we should be reimagining Christ as a sort of 1st-century badass, shoving his way through Roman-occupied Galilee and giving Pharisees the finger on the way to the Cross. He likes to think that our inheritance from Jesus Eastwood is a life of no-tears faith, rockin’ worship and getting laid. John Piper takes a slightly less aggressive approach. He has long warned that women in leadership roles is an indication of a deep-seated problem with the church, and lately he’s come to the conclusion that God himself gave Christianity a masculine feel, whatever that means, and that women should accept and enjoy that.<br />
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So like I said, there’s a fair amount of manliness popping up in churches these days.<br />
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This is nothing all that new in American evangelicalism. Dwight Moody said similar things back in the late 1800s, but for far more sensible reasons. The massive shift toward industrialization and urbanization in post-Civil War America kept working men away from home and church for six or seven days out of every week. The work they did was often dirty, dangerous and dehumanizing, and their time off was spent sleeping or drinking. As a result the Christian faith became associated with the women who were its most visible practitioners, and Moody believed that if men were ever going hear a credible expression of the Christian message, preachers were going to have to butch it up a little. He didn’t say anything against women, though. He simply wanted men to feel more welcome—<em>as men</em>—in the Christian culture of the day. We can credit Moody with a part of our contemporary emphasis on reaching out to the marginalized people around us (the working men of Moody’s time), and making them welcome in our midst.<br />
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That’s substantially different both in motivation and tone than what Mark Driscoll and John Piper are selling these days. I honestly can’t say that I know what has them in such a state.<br />
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What I do know is this. The first two Christian leaders to take me seriously, questions and all, and to model the love of Jesus to me, were women. I grew up in Southern California, not too far from Fuller Seminary, and Kathleen and Mary were pastors-in-training, gaining experience by serving as interns in local churches. What I learned later was that they were also trailblazers, women who were clearly gifted and called by God into ministry, but who had to fight (gently and patiently, as it turned out) for the chance to serve the church—<em>as women</em>—as Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Alongside the passages of Scripture that have been used to fence the pulpit for men only, I also see these two women who helped to shape me into the Christian and pastor I have become.<br />
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That’s a pretty significant set of data for my own understanding of how men and women and faith all go together. Here’s another.<br />
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When Dustin Hoffman was given the Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer, he took the statuette, held it up to his eyes, and said: “Just as I thought. This has no genitalia.” I’ve always wanted to say that about God, too. Yes, he reveals himself as Father, and we need to believe that and wrestle with it and continue to pray the Lord’s Prayer as it was given to us. But we don’t have to overconclude from God as Father that he’s limited in any way to one expression of gender, or that somehow, as it seems to follow for Piper and Driscoll, mothers and daughters don’t measure up. We also shouldn’t overwork the traditional understanding of differences between men and women in such a way that limits either from being all that God intends. The kindest, most gently loving person I ever met was a man. Some of the toughest people I know today are women. So what? Those are personal descriptions, not prescriptions, and we forget that simple difference at great cost.<br />
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One of my favorite reminders from the Apostle Paul’s writings is that we see now as “through a glass darkly.” I’ve always understood that to mean that here and now, in our fallen and broken state, we aren’t always (or ever) going to grasp the full depth and measure of what the Gospel means in our lives and families and communities. It’s always made me a little suspicious of people who were a little too sure about things. Did they have a clearer glass than I did? The caution here is that we should be careful about letting our politics, or our traditions, or our manhood, obscure our vision any more than it already is. The glass is dark enough already. Let’s not muck it up even more.<br />
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So what do I make of all this? What do I—as a man who is also a Christian, a husband, a father and a pastor—what do I teach my son about men and women and Jesus and faith? On the one hand I’m thankful that in my denominational tradition he won’t see the issue in the same conflicted way that I did at his age. But with this resurgence of gender role navel-gazing, especially in its more testosterone-fueled variant, it seems more important than ever to make sure we give our son as clear a sense as possible of our equal value and freedom in Christ.<br />
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I choose to do that in stories. I’ll tell him about the way Kathleen took me under her wing when I was the most awkward 10th grader in history. I’ll tell him about how it felt when Mary sang with me and challenged me in college. I’ll tell him that life is best when we are willing to grow and learn from anyone who is willing to pour their lives into ours. I’ll tell him that right now, at 11 years old, I’m praying for someone to come into his life and help make Christ real to him, no matter what they’re packing under the hood (that was for Driscoll). I’ll tell him, well, you get the idea.<br />
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Maybe there are masculine qualities to the stories we see in the Bible, but every one of those has to pass through the crucible of Paul’s radical vision for Christian community in Galatians 3:28. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The point of Paul’s vision for the Christian church was for the barriers between us to be crushed and wiped away, not to be shored up and nurtured. That’s the church I want for my son. That’s the kind of Christianity I think we’re meant to enjoy. It’s an aspirational faith, one where we’re not limited by the prejudices and limits we inherit, but one that always moves, slowly at times, toward the joyfully inclusive celebration of the King’s banquet.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-55236353521895323592012-01-04T03:33:00.000-08:002012-01-04T03:35:48.060-08:00Christmas Eve 2011<span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>In Small Packages<br /></strong></span><br />I saw an ad for a laptop the other day—it was a picture from the side to show how thin and light it was. Seriously—this thing was less than an inch thick, and yet it was more powerful than any computer I’ve ever had.<br /><br />It seems like we’re always trying to make things smaller. Everyone gets a laugh out of seeing Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, walking on the beach and chatting on a cell phone that looks about the size of a shoebox. I think they even called that model “The Brick” because of its size and weight. Now my Blackberry can create the illusion that I’m always in my office, and it fits in my shirt pocket.<br /><br />For those of us who grew up with stereo systems that filled pieces of living room furniture, the iPod is still a little amazing.<br /><br />If you’re old enough to remember Apollo 11 and the mission to get a couple of guys walking on the moon, it may surprise you to know that you have far more computing power in your laptop than they did at Mission Control, and that computer took up an entire wing of the building. And that’s not all. You have about 100x more memory in your smartphone than they did on the spaceship itself.<br /><br />Cameras, computers, mobile phones and even cars—so many things are smaller and more efficient than they were in their original form.<br /><br />Even Twitter is getting into the smaller-is-better game. Each message, or tweet, on Twitter is limited to 140 characters. Everything from messages about what people are having for dinner, to the real-time report of the raid on Osama bin Laden—all of that happens on Twitter at the tiny rate of 140 characters per message.<br /><br />The main parts of the Christmas story that we’ve heard tonight can be told through Twitter messages:<br /><br />“Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child & give birth to a son, & you are to give him the name Jesus.” That comes in at a perfect 140 characters.<br /><br />And how does Mary respond?<br /><br />“My soul magnifies the lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has been mindful of the humble estate of his servant” Room to spare at 128 characters.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the angels are surprising some shepherds in the fields. “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a savior has been born to you.” Just under the wire at 139.<br /><br />The promise to Mary is pretty economical: “This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a mange” Just 89.<br /><br />And the kicker, the praise-filled song the angels sing as the heavens are opened above some terrified shepherds: “Glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace to all people on whom his favor rests.” That heavenly message only takes 86 characters.<br /><br />There are a couple of newborns in our circle of friends these days. Our own son is 11 now, and one of the things you forget after a while is just how small a newborn baby really is.<br /><br />In the Christmas story we talk about the angels and Mary and Joseph and shepherds. We even talk about barn animals that aren’t actually in the story. But we don’t often think about just how small Jesus was on that first night. He was probably 7 pounds or so—about 3 kilos—just half a stone.<br /><br />But that little baby was sent—he was born and raised and shaped and called—he was sent to be the Messiah, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people, the one who would reconcile God and all of his creation, once and for all. Such a huge gift in such a small package.<br /><br />More than 500 feet underground, at the border between Switzerland and France, there is a massive circular tunnel—17 miles around—that is used to conduct scientific experiments.<br /><br />Now I’m going to try to explain this without sounding like Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory.”<br /><br />The Large Hadron Collider is a laboratory where particle beams of protons and other materials are smashed together to try and recreate the conditions that brought about the beginnings of the universe. They’re looking for a tiny particle, smaller than an atom, called a Higgs boson. Physicists believe that the Higgs boson particle is the thing that transforms energy into mass. In other words, it will help explain how solid things first appeared—and keep appearing—in the universe.<br /><br />That tiny thing is often called The God Particle, because it has the potential to explain how everything got here—how this all got started—and maybe even where we’re going. All of these scientists and engineers—10,000 of them from more than 100 countries—all of these people looking for the meaning of the universe in something so small.<br /><br />That’s why we’re here tonight. The Word of God, the meaning of the universe, the Messiah and savior of everyone and everything, came in the form of a small child, a newborn baby, and nothing was ever the same again.<br /><br />Christmas Eve is as good a time as any to remember who this Christ-child was and is. In one of our confessions we say this:<br /><br /><em>In life and death we belong to God.<br />Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,<br />The love of God,<br />And the communion of the Holy Spirit,<br />we trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel,<br />whom alone we worship and serve.<br /><br />We trust in Jesus Christ,<br />Fully human, fully God.<br />Jesus proclaimed the reign of God:<br />preaching good news to the poor<br />and release to the captives,<br />teaching by word and deed<br />and blessing the children,<br />healing the sick<br />and binding up the brokenhearted,<br />eating with outcasts,<br />forgiving sinners,<br />and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.<br />Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition,<br />Jesus was crucified,<br />suffering the depths of human pain<br />and giving his life for the sins of the world.<br />God raised Jesus from the dead,<br />vindicating his sinless life,<br />breaking the power of sin and evil,<br />delivering us from death to life eternal.<br /><br /></em>All of that began with the birth of this one baby: Jesus the Messiah.<br /><br />If you’re searching or wondering about this Jesus we’ve been going on about, don’t let another Christmas go by without looking for the answers to your questions—without praying and asking to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.<br /><br />That gift is always there for you—always waiting to be opened, even when we come with more questions than answers. If you’re curious, and you don’t have a Bible to read, let me know and I’ll get you one that you can keep. Don’t let another Christmas go by without finding out for yourself who this Jesus is.<br /><br />For tonight, though, as we prepare to have meals and give gifts and wear bad sweaters and all the other things that go into this day. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, never forget what God did—and what he promises to do—in the birth of that one baby boy, on that one holy night. Amen.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-27927409247622396002011-12-06T10:45:00.000-08:002011-12-06T10:50:35.707-08:00Second Sunday of Advent<strong>Luke 1:46-55<br /></strong><br />At the end of the Cold War someone found a book from the 18th century buried in some papers in East Berlin. The book was about 100 pages long, and it was filled with symbols and words that no one could translate. The book was in a code so unbreakable that it had lasted for almost 300 years without being cracked. That is, until a few months ago.<br /><br />The book is known as the Copiale Cipher, and it was finally translated by three scientists—one from the States and two from Sweden. As it turns out it was the manual for a secret society in Germany. It described their rituals and practices, and also their fascination with ophthalmology and eye surgery. Strange club.<br /><br />The story of how they broke the code is interesting, and it reminds us of how hard it can be sometimes to understand what God is trying to teach us in the Scriptures. That’s not the issue in today’s text.<br /><br /><em>And Mary said:<br />“My soul glorifies the Lord </em><br /><em>and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, </em><br /><em>for he has been mindful </em><br /><em>of the humble state of his servant. </em><br /><em>From now on all generations will call me blessed, </em><br /><em>for the Mighty One has done great things for me— </em><br /><em>holy is his name. </em><br /><em>His mercy extends to those who fear him, </em><br /><em>from generation to generation. </em><br /><em>He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; </em><br /><em>he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. </em><br /><em>He has brought down rulers from their thrones </em><br /><em>but has lifted up the humble. </em><br /><em>He has filled the hungry with good things </em><br /><em>but has sent the rich away empty. </em><br /><em>He has helped his servant Israel, </em><br /><em>remembering to be merciful </em><br /><em>to Abraham and his descendants forever, </em><br /><em>just as he promised our ancestors.”</em><br /><em></em><br />I’ve said before here that Mary is one of my favorite people in the Bible. She’s a young single pregnant teenager in a culture that wasn’t all that forgiving. But she’s been told by an angel that she’s carrying God’s child, and she responds with such faith and courage that it’s hard not to admire her.<br /><br />Let’s remember just how courageous Mary is being at this point.<br /><br />God calls all kinds of people to do his work, and most of them respond with excuses or try to get out of it. Abraham says he’s too old, and so does Sarah. Moses suggests to God that he made a mistake, and recommends that God try his brother. Jonah flat out runs away. God calls him to a task and he turns around and does a 100-yard dash…that is, until a fish gets him to come back.<br /><br />Jesus—even Jesus, when he is in the garden of Gethsemane—even Jesus asks if God can come up with some kind of a Plan B.<br /><br />Mary, though, somehow gets it and is willing to hear God’s call no matter what. Remember what she says to the angel just a few verses before our text:<br /><br />“I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”<br /><br />Mary’s full response comes in the form of an outburst of praise. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she says. What we have after that is a song where Mary shows how deeply and completely she has absorbed God’s plan, even if she might have been terrified.<br /><br />Mary didn’t misunderstand.<br />Mary didn’t try to haggle with God.<br />Mary didn’t have to decode God’s call in order to know what to do.<br />Mary understood God’s call on her life, and she responded by singing his praises.<br /><br />We learn some things about God in Mary’s song:<br /><br />First, God calls people to come to him in faith: “His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.”<br /><br />Second, we see God’s sovereignty: “He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”<br /><br />Third, God nourishes us for the calling he has given us: “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” That’s not just a slam on the rich. God is calling out anyone who thinks they don’t need him—that they can take care of themselves apart from God. Mary describes a great feast that is open to anyone who admits their need for God.<br /><br />And finally, in Mary’s song we see the fulfillment of God’s promises and the foundation for the promises to come: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” If God could be trusted then, then we can trust him now.<br /><br />I like that there is an image of a meal here, which shouldn’t really be a surprise if you know me. I like the picture of a feast for anyone willing to trust God more than they trust their own power or money. This meal is where we’re filled with “good things,” with God’s mercy and forgiveness, with his salvation and Holy Spirit.<br /><br />When the group of scholars cracked that 18th-century cipher, they were quick to say that it was their ingenuity and not fancy technology that got the job done. “This is something humans did, not something computers did,” they said.<br /><br />What we celebrate during this season isn’t anything humans did. We celebrate God reaching down to all of us with the gift of his son—the gift of a way back to living the lives we were meant to live all along.<br /><br />When we come to the Table we remember something crucial and life-changing that we were not able to do on our own. The sacrifice of Jesus is what we’re called to remember as we take the bread and the cup. It’s a sacrifice we can’t make for ourselves.<br /><br />Mary helps us understand that. As we come to the Table this morning I invite you to say a prayer of thanks that a teen-aged girl in the first century was wise enough and brave enough to hear God’s call and say: “May it be to me as you have said.”<br /><br />My prayer is that we can all show that kind of faith this Advent season. Let’s pray.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-31639451715531105752011-11-25T05:49:00.000-08:002011-11-25T05:52:50.143-08:00Thanksgiving Message 2011(This message was given in St Paul's Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day 2011.)<br /><br /><strong>Ephesians 2:14-22<br /></strong><br /><em>14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.<br />19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.<br /></em><br />Good morning, and Happy Thanksgiving. It is truly an amazing thing to be able to worship together in this beautiful cathedral. We’re honored to be here.<br /><br />According to the website About.com, these are the Top 5 Family Thanksgiving Traditions. This is really the only day when I get to use material like this, so bear with me.<br /><br />First, there is the turkey dinner, though there are regional variations on how that’s prepared. There’s the traditional roasting; in New England you can have a salt-encrusted turkey; in Hawaii apparently they rub coffee on the bird before roasting—that may be a way to try to prevent falling asleep immediately after the meal. And somewhere in the south, God bless ‘em, they’re deep-frying turkeys today.<br /><br />Second, of course, is football. Now for our English friends—or really anyone not from the States—we’re not talking about soccer here. We’re talking about heavily padded, fully helmeted, oversized American football. It’s a part of the holiday to sit and watch football before and after the big turkey dinner. I have three NFL games recorded at my house, just so we can have them on in the background today.<br /><br />Third are the parades, though that really means the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And fourth is fighting over the wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey. Apparently the tradition of breaking the wishbone and making a wish dates back to the ancient Etruscans in the 4th century BC. Aren’t you glad you came today?<br /><br />Finally, Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without somehow pausing to give thanks for the blessings in our lives. Even in hard times, it’s important to be thankful for the gifts of life and family and friends, even if we’re separated by distance or time. We’re here today to join together and give thanks, and it’s a blessing to be here.<br /><br />Unlike a lot of other American holidays, Thanksgiving is celebrated at home. In the States people get away from home whenever a long weekend comes along. Martin Luther King Jr weekend in January means a ski trip, and if the snow holds out so does Presidents’ weekend in February. Memorial Day is the start of summer, so we go to the beach or the lake. The 4th of July is for picnics in the park. For Labor Day weekend we’ll try to squeeze in one more outdoorsy vacation, and on it goes.<br /><br />But Thanksgiving is about being home, or at least in someone’s home, and about sharing our homes with those who are far away from theirs. It’s about opening our doors and welcoming family and friends and even strangers to a time of food and football and fellowship.<br /><br />I remember the first time I celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife’s family. We’d been married for just a few weeks, and even though I knew the people around the table, I was still a little nervous. More than any other holiday, Thanksgiving is steeped in very specific traditions. How you prepare the turkey, what kind of pies to serve, what do you do with the sweet potatoes, and then there’s the cranberry sauce.<br /><br />Seriously. Let me just pause here for a moment. I‘ve seen people get in heated arguments about whether or not canned cranberry sauce is acceptable for a Thanksgiving table. Even now I can feel the tension in the room. Personally I love a good slice of canned cranberry sauce, complete with those little dents and ridges from the inside of the can.<br /><br />But what made that first Thanksgiving dinner with my wife’s family so special, was how they included me and welcomed me to their table, and how they tried very hard to add a few of my own traditions into that first celebration together. It was wonderful to be included that way. I didn’t feel like a stranger or visitor at all—I felt like part of the family from the very first moment.<br /><br />That’s what I love about the passage we heard from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians a few minutes ago. It’s a beautiful statement of the unity we’re meant to have as people of faith. Christ “came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we all have access to the Father by one Spirit.”<br /><br />And then Paul gets to the point. “So then,” he says, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…”<br /><br />“You are no longer strangers and aliens…[but] members of the household of God.” You’re part of the family now.<br /><br />Rena Garcia was my friend in elementary school. This past summer we caught up at our 30-year high school reunion, and it wasn’t more than a few minutes before we shared a very special Thanksgiving memory from our childhood days. We grew up in Southern California, a part of the state that was filled with people from somewhere else. It was good preparation for living in London—we were surrounded by people and languages from all over the world. Half of Rena’s family was from Spain, and the other half from Mexico.<br /><br />I remember that on the day before Thanksgiving each year, Rena came to school dressed like a Pilgrim—a carefully made black and white dress that looked exactly like the pictures of pilgrims we were reading about in our lessons at school. The teachers loved it so much that they passed Rena around like an artifact—she went from room to room where the teachers would show her off or use her as a visual aid for their explanation of that first Thanksgiving. I can still picture her—her brown skin and beautiful smile all dressed up like a 17th-century English dissenter, the people we grew up calling Pilgrims.<br /><br />I think I may have felt sorry for Rena. I found out later that her mother had made the dress, and then sent her daughter off to the dangerous jungle we knew as primary school. I felt sorry for her, but one of the great things I learned later was that she wasn’t nearly as embarrassed about wearing the costume as we thought.<br /><br />Because in Rena’s family there was a point to wearing that costume to school. Rena’s mother dressed her that way to make it clear to everyone that she was an American —that she belonged—that she was part of the family now. For her it was a gentle way of asking to be accepted—of wanting to fit into her country. At our reunion a handful of us shared our memory of the dress with Rena, and she couldn’t wait to go back and tell her mom that we’d all remembered it.<br /><br />Thanksgiving is a time of gathering and reconnecting and accepting and remembering—it’s a holiday that’s perfect for looking a loved one in the eye and telling them how thankful you are that they’re a part of your life—how thankful you are that you get to be friends or family together.<br /><br />Thanksgiving is also a time to welcome new friends. I’ve been hearing stories this past week of families who always set extra places at the table on Thanksgiving, just in case someone didn’t have a place to go. Some people invite students over, and others include a member of the military at their family gatherings. Homeless missions across the US today are serving turkey and all the trimmings to men and women and children who don’t have anywhere else to go.<br /><br />All of this is a way to say what Paul said to his friends in Ephesus: “You are no longer strangers and aliens.” You’re part of the family now.<br /><br />Paul’s letter was to a city that needed to hear a message of reconciliation and hope. The people of Ephesus lived under the threat of persecution; there were social and religious conflicts; and even within the fragile early church there was a danger of losing touch with the message that brought them together in the first place.<br /><br />It’s a relevant message for today, no matter what your own faith tradition might be. For Christians this is a call to unity—unity of belief and unity of purpose made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. But whatever you believe today, for all of us there is an invitation in this passage to come together and share in a common purpose and mission.<br /><br />“You are no longer strangers and aliens.” You’re part of the family now.<br /><br />As we look back on it, Thanksgiving didn’t really get off to a very easy start at all. Not long after the first Thanksgiving feast, devout pilgrims changed everything and celebrated the day of Thanksgiving with fasting and prayer. That doesn’t sound nearly as fun as a big joyful meal together.<br /><br />Later, when Abraham Lincoln officially established the holiday in October of 1863, America was in the middle of the Civil War. The very first Thanksgiving was celebrated just months after the Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle in the war.<br /><br />Thanksgiving—this special day of giving thanks for the blessings in our lives—Thanksgiving has survived some very difficult and painful times.<br /><br />The Occupy protesters outside today remind us that we’re in hard times again. But they also remind us that we have neighbors, people God calls us to love, who have experiences and fears and concerns that might be very different from ours.<br /><br />And maybe one of the blessings of a protest here, today, just outside these doors—maybe the blessing for us on this Thanksgiving day is that the people who are most vulnerable and who have been affected most deeply by our wounded economy—those men and women are no longer strangers. They’re with us this morning, here in this place.<br /><br />One way we can celebrate this day of thanks—along with the food and football and fellowship—one way we can demonstrate our gratitude is to listen to the voices of those who struggle. We listen, even when those voices provoke or irritate us—we listen, because we’re not meant to be strangers anymore.<br /><br />There are all kinds of things to be thankful for, even in difficult times. Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times this week, told the story of a teen-aged boy who is a gifted pianist. He broke his right arm recently, but instead of giving up he went out and bought a copy of Ravel’s Concerto for the left hand and learned to play a new way.<br /><br />Maybe that’s good advice for all of us this Thanksgiving. Clearly something is broken. Clearly we can’t go on the same way we’ve been going. But maybe, if we look hard enough, we can find other ways to live and grow and serve and make something new and beautiful together. Maybe, if we can turn the heat down a little and look for the light, we can find a way ahead that is more just, and more fair for everyone.<br /><br />Maybe that makes all of us pilgrims, in a way. We search for ways to heal our hurts and those of our neighbors—we move around looking for better ways to raise our families and engage the world around us. Maybe we’re all pilgrims now, looking for God’s blessings as we work and study and play.<br /><br />There are all kinds of things to be thankful for, but today, on this Thanksgiving Day, we pilgrims can be drawn to the promise in Paul’s words. “You are no longer strangers and aliens…[but] members of the household of God.” You’re part of the family now.<br /><br />Happy Thanksgiving. May God bless you, today and every day. Amen.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-45562787279785509502011-10-21T07:36:00.002-07:002021-10-15T07:31:31.436-07:00Saying Goodbye to a Friend<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<strong>John Charles Harmon (1963-2011</strong>)</div>
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John D'Elia, Shane Sindle, Earl Bryant and John Harmon</span></div>
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I’m back in California this week, seeing family, reconnecting with people, and saying goodbye to a friend I’ve known my whole life. There were four of us boys, among some other great friends who grew up at First Presbyterian Church in Burbank, who stayed connected over the last 40 years or so. The four of us played baseball together, went to church camps and conferences together, and over the years supported, participated in and disrupted a generation of youth ministry at the church where we were raised. Some of the stories you’ve heard, and others aren’t really fit to print here. But through all of it, Shane Sindle, Earl Bryant, John Harmon and I developed friendships that shaped us as kids and which continue to influence us in our adult years. My childhood and adolescence are unrecognizable without John, Shane and Earl in the background (probably laughing about something), and it occurs to me that virtually everything I learned about Jesus as a kid I learned with those guys at my side.<br />
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The four of us had and have lots of other friends, but there was something special about our relationship that became even more so over the years. Once we got into our 40s we saw a new value or preciousness to the fact that we’d been together so long. It was clear we would do anything for each other, and even better, we began to go out of our way to make sure the others knew it. In the movie “Stand By Me” the narrator says: “It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.” In my friendships with John, Shane and Earl it was more like friends who entered into each other’s lives and then sat down and stayed for a long meal.<br />
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John died last week and the rest of us are trying to make some sort of sense of it. There isn’t any big answer to John’s loss, of course, but it’s important to wrestle with the questions. John was a complicated guy. Funny, gentle, charming, and almost childlike on the one hand, while on the other he struggled with depression and grief, and could never really escape the temptation to numb both of those with an assortment of drugs. Now the rest of us are thinking back to signals missed and clues overlooked, but the answer is, very honestly, that John wasn’t the type to reach out easily for himself. Just once in the 40+ years that I knew him did he call me and ask for help. He’d gotten himself in to a pattern of using that had destroyed his finances, his relationship, and was taking its toll on his body. My wife and I drove up to see him in Santa Barbara 13 years ago or so. We didn’t solve much, but it was a reminder to both John and myself that we’d do anything we could to help the other.<br />
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We’re left with this moment to begin to say goodbye. I don’t want to be here. I want to be back at my house in London with my family or in my office, thinking about how the four of us were going to get together next summer. I want there to still be one more chance for the four of us to hang out and talk about our lives. Maybe that’s what is giving my grief such an especially intense pain: I can’t imagine a world that John isn’t in. I can’t imagine a world where we won’t have another chance to tell the same old stories and comment on how those stories made us the guys we became.<br />
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The service is tomorrow and we’ll gather in the coming days to talk and cry and make plans for getting together in the future. I hope the sadness goes away and I expect it will, mostly, but for Earl and Shane and myself I think there will always be an enormous space among us, a space where John belongs. I believe in the promise of an afterlife, even if I can’t quite wrap my head around what that means. I believe I’ll see John again, whole and strong and filling his days with worship instead of the drugs that ruined him. But even with that hope it breaks my heart that I won’t see him again here, in this beautiful, broken, joy-filled, painful life.<br />
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So we say goodbye to John, in the “sure and certain hope of the resurrection,” as the Christian tradition says, though there will be varying degrees of sureness and certainty, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends this week. I just wish they were all here.</span>Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-24706767369975199162011-09-19T05:25:00.000-07:002011-09-19T05:25:36.413-07:00"And the Second is Like It"<br />
<strong>Matthew 22:34-40</strong><br />
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It’s been a little nostalgic this past week to think about some old neighbors of mine. We had a Japanese-American family on one side, and their grandfather shared with me about his experiences as an internee in Manzanar during WWII. Down the street there were neighbors we didn’t know very well, but we learned pretty quickly that the wife had a hard time parking her big car in their narrow driveway. She would get home at about 5:30 every day, and honk for her husband to come out and park the car for her. For years whenever we heard a car horn, our family joke was “that lady can’t park.”<br />
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On the other side of our house was a family that had a bible study during the 70s that had a big influence on my mom’s life. Across the street there was a Puerto Rican family from New York. The boy who lived there was a little younger than me and tagged along with whatever I was doing at the time. They took me to the beach once when I was about 10, and I remember afterward the dad taking us out on the front lawn where he kneeled down and rinsed the sand from our feet. To this day he’s the only person I can remember ever washing my feet besides myself or my parents.<br />
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We had some interesting neighbors, but I never really thought about what it might mean to love those people. I didn’t choose them. I didn’t know them all that well. I never really thought about loving them.<br />
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Turns out Jesus did. <br />
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And not just the neighbors that live in places near us at any given time. Jesus calls us to love neighbors, and by neighbors he really means pretty much anyone who isn’t you. Sometimes he means people who you can’t even stand. Occasionally he means people who would rather kill you than be loved by you. <br />
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In multiple places and in different ways, Jesus Christ calls us to love the people around us—the other people he made and loves and wants to reconcile to himself. Yeah, if you thought a series on loving your neighbors was going to be sweet and easy, better think again.<br />
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As we move past the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, this seems like the perfect time to talk about loving our neighbors—maybe even about loving our enemies. Jesus talks about both a lot, especially compared to some of the other issues that churches get wrapped up in. He talks about it a lot, and if we’re honest we’ll admit that we don’t talk about it much at all. So, in memory of those who were lost on September 11th, and also in the 10 years since then, we’re going to take this on and see what we learn.<br />
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Talking about loving God and our neighbors is really an extended conversation about what it means to be a mature Christian, to be a follower of Jesus. The church has spent 2000 years mostly trying to define what it means to be a Christian in terms of statements of things we believe. But Jesus had a different perspective. He saw faith as being thoroughly linked with action—not to earn God’s love, but as evidence that we’ve experienced God’s love.<br />
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Now I’m not ready to give up the idea that what we believe is crucial to being a Christian. I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying here. Doctrine matters—if only to put the brakes on our temptation to re-create God in our own image. Doctrine matters, but it’s not the point. <br />
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Jesus doesn’t define the life of faith by what we believe as much as he defines it by who and how well we love. Jesus doesn’t say “they’ll know you’re my followers by your sound doctrine.” No, Jesus says: “By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” <br />
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Uh-oh.<br />
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<em>34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” </em><br />
<em>37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” </em><br />
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It was a regular part of Jewish prayer life to begin and end each day with the prayer known as Shema Yisrael. We know it like this: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”<br />
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This was the prayer that every faithful Jew said in the morning and again at night. It was the foundation for everything else. In our text someone approaches Jesus to trip him up, to catch him in some willful disobedience to the Jewish tradition. “What’s the most important commandment?” the guys asked.<br />
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Jesus took the main point of the Shema prayer and joined it with another line from Leviticus 19:18. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”<br />
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So Jesus’ response was to take a familiar answer and add to it something that hadn’t been connected to it before. Sure, every faithful Jew knew that they were supposed to love God, but it was easy to minimize that obscure bit about loving your neighbor. Jesus not only joined them together, but he added that “all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”<br />
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So the essence of being a follower of Jesus is to love God with all we’ve got—our heart and soul and mind—and to love and care for our neighbor as much as we love and care for ourselves. <br />
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How important is all of this? How central is this idea to what it means to be a Christian person? Let’s let Jesus take that one. He said: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”<br />
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Everything depends on this. When Jesus says “all the Law and the Prophets” he means the entire foundation of faith in the one, true God. It’s such an enormous claim—such an over-the-top radical statement—it’s so huge that I can’t believe Matthew 22:40 hasn’t ended up on t-shirts and keychains and anywhere else it can be printed. I can’t believe we haven’t seen on a poster in the end zone of an American football game.<br />
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Everything depends on this.<br />
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Think about that for a moment. Everything the Bible teaches on sexuality or personal morality. Everything the Bible teaches on peacemaking or social justice. Everything we know or will ever know about theology and doctrine. <br />
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Everything depends on this.<br />
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Everything hangs on the one-two punch of “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”<br />
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We talk a lot about loving and serving God here. We worship and fellowship together, we try to grown our faith through Bible study and reading. You saw today that we’re trying to move out in faith in this community and around the world to be God’s messengers, and there’s more to that report during our Coffee Hour today.<br />
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But loving our neighbor in the way that God defines love—and the way God defines neighbor—doing that part is a little more of a challenge. We’re going to focus on how these go together to form us into the people God wants us to be. <br />
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Over the next few months I want to invite you to read along in a very good book called The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, by Mark Labberton. Stephanie and I read it earlier this year, and we think it would be a helpful guide for thinking some of this through in the context of the rest of our lives. We have copies available downstairs if you’re interested.<br />
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Loving our neighbors, the author says, is about aligning our hearts to God’s so that we see the world and the people in it with his eyes, his heart. This is directly connected to the issue of justice in the world. Listen to what he writes.<br />
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“Our hearts don’t consciously will injustice. Nor do they deliberately withhold compassion. Nor is it that tales of injustice fail to grab us and concern us. Yet our hearts are weak and confused. Our hearts are easily overwhelmed and self-protective. They’re prone to be absorbed mostly with the immediacy of our own lives. Our hearts have the capacity to seek justice, but they’re usually not calibrated to do so—at least not beyond concern for our inner circle. In a world of such hearts, virulent injustice thrives. Systemic injustice, the absence of the rule of law, and the suffering of so many innocents at the hands of oppressors—that injustice relies on the complicity and distraction of our ordinary hearts.”<br />
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In order to love our neighbors, even when our neighbors are our enemies, our hearts have to be calibrated—they have to be retuned so that we see the world and the people in it with God’s eyes—with God’s heart. It’s not easy—it seems overwhelming and challenging and impossible. And yet here’s the thing:<br />
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Everything depends on it.<br />
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Over these next few months we’re going to wrestle with what it means to love our neighbors. We’re going to do it with this Jesus Creed in mind, and starting next week, one way or another, we’ll hear it or say it together every Sunday until Advent.<br />
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“Hear O people of London, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.<br />
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, <br />
With all your mind and with all your strength.<br />
Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”<br />
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Amen.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-53730907856770183062011-09-12T00:50:00.000-07:002011-09-12T00:57:22.640-07:00September 11th: "Everyone Has a Story"<strong>Acts 1:1-11<br /></strong><br />Everyone has a story.<br /><br />When I was growing up my parents used to talk about where they were when John F. Kennedy was killed. I remember where I was when the Challenger space shuttle exploded and crashed. It was the way my grandparents remembered Pearl Harbor or VE-Day. All of those tragic, historic moments become markers that stay with us—they become a part of the way we see the world around us. They shape how we think about everything that happens after that moment.<br /><br />Everyone has a story.<br /><br />This past week, as we’ve come up to the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, people have been sharing their stories of where they were and what they were doing—of people they knew who had been lost or who had suffered losses.<br /><br />One of my closest friends from childhood is a flight attendant for American Airlines. She has a terrifying story to tell.<br /><br />Some of my colleagues who are pastors in New York or New Jersey or Connecticut remember the tragic funerals that filled their calendars and broke the hearts of their congregations.<br /><br />For months after the attacks, The New York Times ran a series of biographical sketches called “Portraits of Grief,” telling a little of the stories of almost 2000 of the victims who died that day—from bankers to busboys, from soldiers to security guards, from police officers to transit workers to those 343 firefighters who ran into the Towers and never came back. The stories gave faces and names to the numbers we heard on the news. It was essential reading.<br /><br />Over the past few weeks the Los Angeles Times has been collecting short articles that highlight the impact of that day on people’s memories now.<br /><br />I was working for Fuller Seminary in California at the time of the attacks, had been in New York on a fund raising trip about a week and a half before. Most of us on the west coast were sleeping when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center—it was 545am in California. Many of us who woke up to the news at 6 saw the second plane crash a few minutes later. My son was not quite a year and a half old that day. I wondered what kind of world he was going to grow up in.<br /><br />Everyone has a story.<br /><br />Acts 1:1-8<br /><br /><em>1 In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”<br />6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”<br />7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”</em><br /><br />Our text from the first chapter of Acts is a story that comes right at the end of Jesus’ ministry and before the birth of the church—for those of you who follow these things, this passage falls just before the Ascension and Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. The disciples are in the presence of the risen Christ, still trying to figure out what exactly happened over the last month or so. Everything was going so well, then it all went catastrophically wrong, and then Jesus emerged from the tomb and you get the idea that the disciples were just trying to keep up.<br /><br />Jesus is trying to prepare them for what was coming next, but the disciples didn’t understand what he was talking about. Did you catch that question they asked while Jesus was telling them what to expect? Jesus has lived with them and taught them and demonstrated his love by serving people and healing diseases and casting out demons and dying on the cross—he did all of that to show that the values of his Kingdom are different from those of the world. And after all that they ask him: “So are you going to restore Israel to power now already?”<br /><br />You have to think that Jesus groans here, wishing they could understand what he was telling them, but he presses on and says: “Once the Holy Spirit comes to empower you, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and all over the world.”<br /><br />In so many words Jesus told them: You have a new story to tell, and I want you to tell it everywhere.<br /><br />What was the story?<br /><br />The first part of that story is that God came in the first place, that he took on human form. At Christmas when we sing about “Emmanuel,” we’re celebrating the mystery of “God with us,” of God coming to reconcile us to himself.<br /><br />The second part of our story is the message that Jesus came to share. More than anything else he talked about the Kingdom of God. In his sermons and parables and his confrontations with religious and political power, Jesus described a world with values that went against the grain—of generosity and forgiveness, of grace and love for enemies.<br /><br />But most importantly our story tells of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross—of his taking on our sin and punishment so that we could come freely into the presence of God.<br /><br />When Jesus told his disciples to “be my witnesses,” this is the story he wanted them to tell.<br /><br />Being a witness in Jewish tradition was a very important thing. Only with two witnesses could a case be presented in court. Being an honest witness was so important that it becomes one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against anyone.”<br /><br />To be a witness was to testify, along with others, to the love and grace and sacrifice and redemption available through Jesus Christ.<br /><br />The essence of the gospel is this: Through the life and ministry of Jesus we have seen what the world can look like when it operates according to the values of the Kingdom of God. Through the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah we receive the good news that all people in all places can be reconciled to God.<br /><br />So God’s already done the heavy-lifting. God has already done the work. The call on each one of our lives needs to be crystal clear: It isn’t to save the world. It’s to tell the story of the one who already has.<br /><br />If that’s the story we’re meant to tell, then what does that mean for us today, as we gather to remember a horrible day and the impact it’s had on our lives?<br /><br />First, it means that our lives aren’t trapped or limited by our memories of what happened 10 years ago. The gospel story is there to keep our fear and our anger in check—we have to keep from lashing out in revenge against people Christ came to redeem and to reconcile to himself.<br /><br />Second, that new story means this: In the upside-down values of the Kingdom of God, our story of the September 11th attacks can become a catalyst for more forgiveness, not less. More work in the area of peacemaking, not less. More acts of gospel-sharing grace that tell the story of Jesus Christ in a meaningful, life-changing way.<br /><br />But most importantly, to be a witness to the story of Jesus Christ is a daring, world-changing act of hope in a world that doesn’t have much of it right now. It’s an act of hope wrapped in the faith that announces to the world that Christ has come, Christ has risen, and Christ is coming again to make all things new.<br /><br />How does all of that happen? That’s what we’re meant to discover together as the family of God, the Body of Christ, this local church. That’s why we’re going to spend the next few months here talking about what it means to love our neighbors, even if our neighbors are our enemies. That’s an act of hope.<br /><br />We tend to think of hope as something elusive—something we can’t really find on our own. Sometimes we think of hope as something that happens to us beyond our control.<br /><br />But Christian hope is active—it’s rooted in God’s faithfulness to his promises in the past. Christian hope is a discipline—we practice it daily so that we can get better at it—so that it can be more than simply hoping for a good parking place, or hoping you get into the right school.<br /><br />One great theologian wrote that Christian “Faith hopes in order to know what it believes.”<br /><br />To be Christ’s witnesses in this world is to be people of hope, people who hope so that we can know God’s story is true. And so we can go out and be his witnesses with that new story here in London, all around this country, and to the ends of the earth.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-56664707811735448172011-05-24T09:39:00.000-07:002011-05-24T15:05:48.907-07:00What Joseph Bazalgette Teaches Us About Grace(This message is one in a series titled "20 Questions With Jesus.")<br /><br /><strong>John 21:15-17</strong><br /><br />We’ve all played some variation of 20 Questions before. One person thinks of a person or a thing and the rest have 20 questions to guess what it is. It’s usually a game we play to kill time on a long journey.<br /><br />Jesus asked a lot of questions, too. We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.<br /><br />We’re almost done with this series—just a few more weeks to go. This hasn’t been a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal has been to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something to change or confess or leave behind. That’s the kind of question we have in front of us today.<br /><br />But before we get to the text…<br /><br />If you love history, living in London is like a smorgasbord. Everywhere you look you see some monument, some detail about this amazing place, some story that inspires curiosity and study. OK, maybe that’s just me.<br /><br />The other day I was flipping through a book about London when I came across an event called “The Great Stink of 1858.” Since there is a part of me that is an unreconstructed middle school boy, I had to read what this was about.<br /><br />Basically, the growth of London during the 19th century led to a massive sewage problem that cause several outbreaks of cholera. Most scientists back then believed that cholera was spread through the air—through the smell they called “miasma.” In an attempt to get rid of the odor the government required all cesspits to be drained and allowed to run into the River Thames. Needless to say, this not only killed anything in the river that wasn’t already dead, but it also created an enormous problem of, well, a great stink.<br /><br />Worse, the resulting outbreaks of disease killed tens of thousands of Londoners, and threatened to make the city unlivable.<br /><br />Enter Joseph Bazalgette. He was an engineer who had worked on London’s train system, and he was chosen to solve the problem. His plan, based on the idea that cholera was spread by smell, was to build a sewer system that would carry London’s crud far beyond the city limits so they wouldn’t have to smell it anymore.<br /><br />When planning the network he took the densest estimated population, gave every person the most generous allowance of sewage production and came up with a diameter of pipe needed. He then said 'Well, we're only going to do this once and there's always the unforeseen.' and doubled the diameter to be used. As a result, the massive pipes he build in the mid-1800s are still in use today—still big enough to take every bit of London’s waste product and deliver it to where it can be treated.<br /><br />Now what Bazalgette and his partners didn’t know was that cholera wasn’t spread through odor at all, but through contaminated water supply. But by taking London’s sewage away from the sources of drinking water, he was able to eradicate cholera from the entire region.<br /><br /><em>When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”<br />“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”<br />Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”<br />Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”<br />He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”<br />Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”<br />The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”<br />Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”<br />Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.<br /><br /></em>This is such a powerful moment in Jesus’ ministry. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion, is cornered by his master and forced to re-commit himself to the gospel. John the gospel writer knows exactly what he’s doing here. His readers know about Peter’s denial, but they also would know him later as the leader of the church. It was crucial to include this event in order to show that Peter had been restored to his place as a leader in the early church.<br /><br />But those are just the details. This is also an enormously emotional story. Peter, in front of his friends and partners, has to confront his sin and answer the resurrected Christ. He answers the first time, but Jesus keeps going. You have to wonder at this point if Peter thought Jesus was going to ask him this question all day. In the end it’s just the three times—one for each denial—and by the third time Peter was feeling uncomfortable and wounded by the questions.<br /><br />This is really a story about grace, about God’s freedom to forgive anyone for anything—about his power to clean up any mess no matter what kind of smell it gives off.<br /><br />Maybe that’s what Joseph Bazalgette and the London sewerage system teaches us about the grace of Jesus Christ. The real achievement of Bazalgette’s design is that it was big enough to dispose of whatever crap London could throw at it for more than 150 years…and counting.<br /><br />God’s grace is like that, too. What Jesus reveals to us in his interrogation of Peter is the depths and lengths and limitless nature of his grace toward us.<br /><br />This passage helps us understand the capacity of God’s grace to get rid of the junk in our lives—the waste product that keeps us from becoming healthy people—whatever it is that keeps us from functioning sometimes as a healthy church.<br /><br />Jesus looks Peter in the eye and asks “Do you love me?” over and over again. “Do you love me?”<br /><br />It sounds so simple, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is one of the easy questions in our series.<br /><br />Jesus looks Peter in the eye and asks “Do you love me?”, and in one single question he makes Peter decide if he wants to give his life as a disciple or if he wants to remain broken and lukewarm on the outside.<br /><br />The key to these questions is found in the answers Peter gives.<br /><br />Yes, Lord, you know that I do.<br /><br />Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.<br /><br />Lord you know everything—you know that I love you.<br /><br />It’s Peter’s answers that open the door for Christ’s cleansing, restoring grace. It’s Peter’s confession that he loves Jesus with all his heart that makes his reconciliation and restoration possible.<br /><br />In the end, Jesus looks at each one of us and asks us if we love him. He asks us again and again, even when it makes us uncomfortable—even if it hurts our feelings.<br /><br />Jesus asks us if we love him, and if we do then we answer as Peter did: Yes, Lord, you know that we do. Yes, Lord, you know that we love you. Lord you know everything—you know that we love you.<br /><br />And if that’s true, then Christ’s grace is sufficient to handle anything we need to get rid of in order to move ahead.<br /><br />And if that’s true, then we enter into a new way of living—a life of answering God’s invitation to serve and love and sacrifice as he calls us to do. That’s what we’re celebrating on this very special Sunday. [Note: On this Sunday we celebrated four baptisms, welcomed a group of new members, and commissioned a short-term mission team for trip to Israel.]<br /><br />Some have heard the call to be baptized and commit themselves to becoming disciples of Jesus Christ.<br /><br />Others have taken the next step and come for membership, publicly professing their faith in Christ and their commitment to this church.<br /><br />In a moment a group of people will stand up here and ask for your prayers as they hear God’s call to serve on a short-term mission project in Israel.<br /><br />All of these are examples of an answer to the “Do you love me?” question that Jesus asks all of us.<br /><br />But the power of the question isn’t really just the asking of it. The real power of this question is unleashed when we answer as Peter did: Yes, Lord, you know that we love you. Lord you know everything—you know that we love you.<br /><br />That simple response of acknowledging that we know who we are and whose we are releases a power that we can barely begin to understand.<br /><br />The grace that God offers through Jesus Christ is the lifeblood of this church and of every person who wants to live as a disciple. It is through that grace that we are transformed into the people who will accomplish God’s work in this place.<br /><br />Chris Wright, the worldwide director of John Stott Ministries, said: “I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.”<br /><br />We become the people God wants for his mission when we decide to live differently because of our love for Jesus Christ.<br /><br />The question is on the table: Do you love him? All that’s left is to give your answer.<br /><br />Our hymn of response today is the song of people who have answered Jesus as Peter did. As we prepare to commission our Holy Land team, let’s stand and sing together, “Here I Am, Lord.”Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-249984053194912482011-04-13T02:17:00.000-07:002011-04-13T02:19:27.764-07:00Lent Day 31I’m having a hard time with Lent this year. <br /><br />I want to be reflective and repentant—I want to prepare myself to experience the full joy and power of the Easter miracle—but instead I am anxious and tired and distracted. Some of that is for good reason. There are some challenging and important decisions to make, and some difficult processes to lead right now, and so I’m feeling the weight of my role these days.<br /><br />But in other areas I’m surrounded by joyful and encouraging events in the ministries at our church. Kids are learning about Jesus in a meaningful way in our Sunday School, our men’s fellowship is growing together as we study and build friendships, three teams from our congregation are going out in service to Israel, Haiti and Romania, and this spring we have as many as 18 men and women coming for membership. I’m surrounded by these affirmations of our work, and yet it’s too easy to forget to pause and be thankful...or even simply to enjoy them.<br /><br />Without trying to turn it into just another commodity or product, I’m aware that I what I want is to experience the full Lent moment right now. Maybe that’s what feels depleted or absent to me.<br /><br />Henri Nouwen's reading for today says: "Life in the Spirit of Jesus is therefore a life in which Jesus' coming into the world—his incarnation, his death, and his resurrection—is lived out by those who have entered into the same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus' own life." <br /><br />Maybe the point is that I could not possibly feel less obedient right now.<br /><br />I want to listen for God. I want to conform my life to the life of Christ (and not the other way around). I want to live in that “same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus' own life.”<br /><br />Maybe Lent is supposed to be this hard, and it just took me this long to realize it. What if the reflection and repentance that mark the season of Lent are meant to remind us that this life is not our own, that we are a purchased people, free and enslaved at the same time? What if these feelings are exactly the reminder I need—that we all need—of who we are and whose we are?<br /><br />Nouwen’s prayer at the end of today’s reading includes these words:<br /><br /><em>Help me, Lord, to life a truthful life,<br />A life in which I am guided<br />Not by popularity, public opinion,<br />Current fashion, or convenient formulations,<br />But by a knowledge that comes from knowing you.</em><br /><br />I want to live that truthful life. My prayer for myself and for you is that our lives will be guided by the knowledge that comes from being in the presence of God—knowledge that comes from knowing and being known by Jesus himself.<br /><br />Just 11 days until Easter. God help us.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-92039771125828908582011-04-05T01:07:00.000-07:002011-04-05T01:10:03.939-07:00Radio2 Spot #2Here's a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00zzp5g">link </a>to today's Pause for Thought on The Vanessa Feltz program on BBC Radio2. I'm on at about the 46th minute, happily sandwiched between The Pretenders and Van Halen. The topic, given to me by the BBC, is spiritual health, in recognition of World Health Day this week. Enjoy!Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-90932724384738441982011-03-30T08:52:00.000-07:002011-03-30T09:06:12.013-07:00On the Radio...I was asked a while back to prepare some brief Christian reflections for the early morning drive-time program on BBC Radio2. They gave me topics, like the one for British Mothers' Day this week, and I recorded them about a month ago. The pieces will broadcast on six consecutive Tuesday mornings at 5:45am (UK time), and the first one went out yesterday. <br /><br />If you missed it (I did. Please, 6:30 is early enough!), there's a link to the program <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00zq34n/Vanessa_Feltz_29_03_2011">here</a>. In the time bar just drag the little doohicky to the 45-minute mark. I'm on just after Billy Joel sings "My Life."Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-83812609004714156402011-03-29T02:19:00.000-07:002011-03-29T02:21:42.541-07:00Useful Junk<em>(This message is one in a series titled “20 Questions With Jesus.”)</em><br /><br /><strong>Luke 14:34</strong><br /><br />We were in New York last Sunday and had a great time roaming around the Upper West Side—checking out the shops and enjoying a sunny day. We spent some time in a flea market on Columbus Avenue at 76th Street—it had great shops: everything from furniture to vintage photographs to clothes. My son Ian and I spent some time looking at a collection of artworks made from “found objects.” There were pieces of discarded things in box frames, arranged because they were similar or to tell some story or make a point. They were beautiful. Thimbles, toy soldiers, colored glass.<br /><br />Now we know that “found objects” is another way of saying “junk,” right? The discarded junk Ian and I were looking at had been picked up and rearranged—the pieces had been redeemed and made into something new. You can’t do that with everything, but when it happens it’s a beautiful thing. That thought will help us wrestle with our text this morning.<br /><br />We continue our series, 20 Questions with Jesus. We’ve all played some variation of 20 Questions before. One person thinks of a person or a thing and the rest have 20 questions to guess what it is. It’s usually a game we play to kill time on a long journey.<br /><br />Jesus asked a lot of questions, too. We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.<br /><br />Between now and Pentecost we’re playing 20 Questions with Jesus. This won’t be a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal is to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes. <br /><br />Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live. <br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something in our lives to change or confess or leave behind. That’s the kind of question we have in front of us today.<br /><br /><em>“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”</em><br /><br />I’ll confess that I don’t like this text very much—this isn’t one of my favorite questions that Jesus asks. It seems snarky and mean—maybe what I don’t like is that it seems so graceless and final. <br /><br />The context helps a little. In Luke’s gospel this comes right after Jesus told a large crowd of people what it would cost them to be faithful disciples. It’s a hard passage. It talks about carrying the cross and being willing to leave our own families behind to follow Christ. It talks about counting the cost—about making sure we can finish what we start. It has a section that sounds like it comes from Sun-Tzu’s <em>The Art of War</em>, about considering the strength of your enemy before entering into battle.<br /><br />See what I mean? This isn’t the easy stuff here. It’s about the hard choices—the total demands of Christian discipleship. And then it gets to our passage: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.” <br /><br />It looks just slightly different in the way Matthew writes Jesus’ teaching about salt. In the Sermon on the Mount he talks about bad salt being trampled, which isn’t as violent as it sounds. Some salt in ancient times was so unstable as a compound that it would spoil. When it did it was used for paving—people walked on it or trampled it. It was still useful, even if it wasn’t useful as salt anymore.<br /><br />Our passage starts with: “Salt is good.” We’ve talked before about how useful salt has been though history. It’s been a preservative and an antiseptic. It’s been an aphrodisiac and a rust-remover (there’s a joke there somewhere). In Roman times soldiers were paid in salt, which where we get the word: salary. Mostly, though, we know it as a flavoring. Serving salted vegetables is where we get the word “salad” from.<br /><br />The rabbis in Jesus’ day talked about Israel as flavorless salt, meaning that it wasn’t fulfilling its end of the covenant God made with Abraham—Israel was meant to be a source of blessing to all the nations. Ancient rabbis, when they wanted to be critical of the way God’s people failed in their calling, described Israel as “insipid salt,” salt which had lost or given up its ability to be salt.<br /><br />That’s part of the background for our text today. Salt is good, Jesus says, but if it loses its flavor how can you make it salty again? The simple answer is that you don’t –it just gets tossed out. That’s the part that sounds hopeless to me—it sounds like everything is somehow disposable when it fails us or disappoints us. It’s hopeless on its own, if we read it outside what we know about the rest of Jesus’ teaching—outside of the promise Jesus offers to make “all things new.”<br /><br />Because we all know that things wear out. We buy clothes and shoes and other things, and enjoy them while they’re useful, and then they get replaced. Sometimes we can find new uses for things—we can reshape them or remake them into something different or beautiful—we can make them useful again in some way.<br /><br />Sometimes that process can be miraculous.<br /><br />It’s hard to imagine, but there are over 3.5 billion mobile phones in active use today. 290 million in the US and 75 million in the UK—in this country there are more mobile phones in use than there are people. That doesn’t account for the billion and a half unused phones sitting in drawers or tossed in the trash. Those phones have been set aside—they’re essentially high-tech junk.<br /><br />Hold that thought for a moment.<br /><br />According to the World Health Organization, each year 300 to 500 million people develop malaria and 1.5 to 3 million–mostly children–die. A simple lab test of blood could diagnose and lead to treatment for many of these patients, but many have no access to health facilities with the right lab equipment. Measuring the shape of blood cells is a key way to diagnose anemia, tuberculosis and malaria—three killers in the developing world. Part of the problem is that there aren’t nearly enough microscopes to handle all the tests.<br /><br />Aydogan Ozcan is a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. He developed a little tool that can take a blood sample and send its image—in the form of a hologram—to a hospital or a lab…using the camera function in old mobile phones. They take the shapes of the blood cells and reconstruct them for doctors into images they would see in a microscope. <br /><br />The potential for lifesaving is staggering. Remember that there are a billion or more phones that have been set aside as junk, and that each year 300 to 500 million people develop malaria and 1.5 to 3 million–mostly children–die.<br /><br />The best part of the story—the miraculous part, really—is that it costs about 10 dollars per phone—about six quid—10 dollars to turn an unused, junked mobile phone into a lifesaving diagnostic tool.<br /><br />The good news in the hard question Jesus asks us today is that it’s not the end of the story. This passage has to be read alongside God’s redeeming work that begins in the Garden and continues through to today. This text has to be read with the Cross in our sights—Christ’s transforming work for his creation and all people. The good news is that whatever happens—whatever changes come our way—God is working and reshaping and creating, even in the midst of our deepest losses.<br /><br />Maybe we’re all in the process of becoming useful junk. Maybe we’re all “found objects” like the ones I saw with Ian last week. Maybe the point of the gospel is that all of us can be reclaimed and redeemed and transformed into something useful and beautiful. The key isn’t to focus on what might be lost. The key is to rejoice when we’re found and remade by the one who loves us and calls us to love and serve in his name.<br /><br />The hope in this hopeless question that Jesus asks is found in the rest of the gospel. I’ve been reading through Henri Nouwen’s devotional during this season of Lent, and in yesterday’s pages he talked about the Prodigal Son, and how happy the father was when he came home. Remember how the dad kissed his son and told him that he loved him over and over again? Nouwen writes: <br /><br />“This is the voice that Jesus wants us to hear. It is the voice that calls us always to return to the one who has created us in love, and wants to re-create us in his mercy.”<br /><br />My prayer for all of us is that we’ll listen for God’s voice and his mercy, as he re-creates us into the people and the church he calls us to be. Amen.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-40110682696757315272011-03-15T15:24:00.000-07:002011-03-15T15:28:27.012-07:00Lent: An Invitation to Prayer?So the first week of Lent comes to a close. How is it going for you?<br /><br />We’re on vacation this week, visiting Washington, DC and some friends around this part of the country—more on that in a later post. The season of Lent, with its reflection and repentance and refocus on the life of discipleship—everything that makes up this time of the church year is meant to turn our eyes toward God. How is that going?<br /><br />Part of how we connect to God is through prayer. Now I know it’s part of my calling to help people in their life of prayer, but it’s one area in my ministry where I feel particularly unskilled and, well, out of my depth. I’ve prayed—I’ve prayed a lot in my time as a Christian. Some of the prayers were regular daily sort of check-ins, and others were those prayers of desperation that we’ve all shouted at one time or another. Most of my prayers loitered somewhere in between those two extremes, and so here we are.<br /><br />Rodney Clapp draws a distinction in a recent article in <em>Christian Century</em>, between two kinds of prayer, faithful and superstitious. When we link certain kinds or quantities of prayer somehow with God’s ability to act, we’re in the realm of superstition and magic. Faithful prayer differs from that, Clapp writes, saying that it “differs from superstition in that it does not presume control. It petitions God, the power at the center of all that is, while it does not presume on God’s answer or response. Faithful prayer is habitual prayer, prayer that does not only occur in crisis and does not end when a crisis is resolved. Faithful prayer is part and parcel of an ongoing relationship, a lifelong conversation, a prolonged attempt not to control God but to discern God’s presence and activity in all that befalls us.”<br /><br />In Henri Nouwen’s <em>Show Me the Way</em>, he writes this as a part of today’s meditation: “The crisis of our prayer life is that our mind may be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from him.”<br /><br />Is that helpful to you or just another way of saying we don’t do this very well?<br /><br />I’m going to choose to be encouraged by this. In the spirit of the Lent season I want to be a part of that ongoing relationship Clapp talks about—that conversation that God is inviting me into. I want my heart to warm with the experience of God, even as I study and learn and reflect on what I try to know.<br /><br />As we move into a second week of this beautiful, challenging season, let me invite you to start your own conversation with God. Not as a shopping list of needs and wants, and not as an act of superstition—this invitation is to a lifelong relationship, a process of learning to discern God’s presence and activity in everything we do.<br /><br />One way to get started is to take what we call the Lent Challenge. Say the Lord's Prayer five times each day between now and Easter. If your prayer life is stuck or cold, this is a great way to remember why and how we connect to God. Try it...you won't be sorry.<br /><br />Amen?Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-72240761896113799482011-03-10T01:31:00.001-08:002011-03-10T03:27:08.786-08:00Lent Blues (Already?)Here I am at the first day after Ash Wednesday, and already I’m feeling as though I’ve lost any momentum for Lent. There are challenges at work that make me feel less than spiritually switched on, my family is preparing for a vacation even though I can’t imagine being away right now, and then there’s my own heart, which feels a little bruised and resistant to introspection.<br /><br />How do I slow down and take hold what Lent is offering?<br /><br />Each year I struggle to read through Henri Nouwen’s Lent reader, <em>Show Me the Way</em>. Today’s entry is forcing me to re-think my expectations of what this time of the year means and teaches. I hear the words “reflection” and “repentance” and I promptly give in to the temptation to make Lent about me—about my sin, my needs, my struggle to live a life of hope. I step into Lent and feel as though I’ve simply given my self-absorption a new, fancier name…a spiritual, church-sanctioned name, no less.<br /><br />See what I mean about losing steam for Lent on the very first day?<br /><br />The first sentence of Nouwen’s reading for today says: “A life of faith is a life of gratitude—it means a life in which I am willing to experience my complete dependence upon God and to praise and think him unceasingly for the gift of being.”<br /><br />Oh, boy.<br /><br />The very first line pierces me to the heart. Is my life of faith a life of gratitude? In my living and praying and studying and working and loving—in all of that, am I aware that it all revolves around being thankful to God?<br /><br />The rest of the sentence helps me make sense out of where I want to be this season. I really am grateful to God for my life. I’m thankful for my wife and my step-daughter and my son. I'm amazed at the friends and colleagues God has given me. I still wake up most mornings a little surprised that I get to be the pastor of a church, a place that I love with people who are teaching me far more than I’ll ever be able to give back. I really am thankful, when I take the time to think about it, that God’s grace reaches into the darkest parts of my life, turns the light on and says, “I think we can do something with this mess.”<br /><br />Now we’re getting somewhere.<br /><br />The reminder today, as we look ahead to the Lenten season, is to be grateful to God for the gift of our very being. Whatever prompts you to “praise and thank him unceasingly,” I encourage you to make that the focus of the time between now and Easter. Whatever else you might do during this season of Lent, remember to pause and be thankful as often as you can.<br /><br />We might just survive these 40 days after all.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-60583603117536716112011-03-08T04:31:00.000-08:002011-03-09T02:45:25.061-08:00Welcome to LentThis is my favorite introduction to the season of Lent, taken from a book by Henri Nouwen called <em>Show me the Way</em>. Lent is a hard season for us because it represents a call to repentance, reflection and a handful of other things we’re not so good at. Still, taking 40 days or so to think about Christ’s work in our lives before we dive into the happy hymns and chocolate bunnies of Easter can’t be a bad thing. Here’s the quote:<br /><br />----------------------------------<br />“God’s mercy is greater than our sins.<br /><br />There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but to self-preoccupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failures and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says: ‘I am too sinful to deserve God’s mercy.’ It is the guilt that leads to introspection instead of directing our eyes to God. It is the guilt that has become an idol and therefore a form of pride.<br /><br />Lent is the time to break down this idol and to direct our attention to our loving Lord. The question is: ‘Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God’s mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?’<br /><br />The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God’s mercy.”<br />----------------------------------<br /><br />Isn’t that beautiful and haunting and challenging all at the same time? I tend to think so much of my own failures that I forget that my sin is not the point. God’s grace, given to us through Jesus Christ, is the true point of my life’s story, and yours...and yours...and yours.<br /><br />We live out that struggle between the seasons on a daily basis, between the cold and death of winter and the restored and rediscovered life of spring. Between the awareness of just how far we stray from God, and the shock at what he has accomplished in order to draw us near. Lent is our time to pause and take notice of what is happening around us and in us. It’s not just for self-reflection, though that’s a key part of it. Lent is a time to sharpen our focus on Christ and his world, on the needs of people around us, on the gifts we’ve been given to meet those needs, and to discover all over again the hope that we have because of the Easter miracle.<br /><br />But I’m getting ahead of myself.<br /><br />Easter will come, but for now we try to re-create the sense of conviction that being in God’s presence prompts in each one of us. To repent and ask for forgiveness. And to anticipate that day when life wins the battle once and for all. Welcome to Lent.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-36098963291769582312011-02-08T02:10:00.000-08:002011-02-08T04:46:06.198-08:00A Question on the Table<em>(This is the first in a series of messages titled "Twenty Questions With Jesus.")<br /></em><br /><strong>Mark 8:27-30</strong><br /><br />When I was a kid we used to play Twenty Questions on road trips. You know how the game goes—one person thinks of something, usually animal, mineral or vegetable, and the rest have twenty yes or no questions to try to figure out what the thing is. My sisters and I used to play it (in-between choruses of "You Are My Sunshine"), and now we play it with Ian.<br /><br />Twenty Questions is usually a game we play to pass the time on a long journey. Today we’re going to turn that around a little and begin a long journey together. We’re going to spend the next twenty weeks looking at selected questions that Jesus asked during his ministry—there are <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">actually</span> hundreds of them recorded in the Bible.<br /><br />We talk a lot about the sermons of Jesus, or his parables, or the conversations he had with his disciples. This is a little different from that. Jesus often used questions to help people understand what he was about—or to get people to wrestle with something he taught—or to prompt some kind of action that would show that his followers were learning how to live out what he was teaching.<br /><br />Between now and Pentecost we’re going to play Twenty Questions with Jesus. But this won’t be a game we play just to kill time on a long drive. The goal is to give us some insight into who Jesus is and what Jesus wants from us…as we are each on our own journey of faith and growth and discovery.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are theological—they get at something we’re supposed to know about him and his purposes.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions are ethical—they get at what we’re supposed to do or how we’re called to live.<br /><br />Sometimes the questions Jesus asks are confrontational—they force us to see something to change or confess or leave behind.<br /><br />The most important of the questions do all of the above, like the one we’re starting with today.<br /><br /><em>27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Caesarea</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Philippi</span>. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”<br />28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”<br />29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”<br />Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”<br />30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. </em><br /><br />This story appears in almost the exact same form in Matthew, Mark and Luke—the gospels that tell the story of Jesus as a story without very much interpretation. First Jesus asks the disciples who the crowds say that he is, and then he turns the question on the Twelve. Jesus asks them this question to see where they are in understanding his ministry, and then almost immediately he tells them that he’s going to have to die to make his point—to accomplish the mission that he came to do. He's not ready for this story to be spread just yet, so he asks them to keep it secret for just a little while longer.<br /><br />The point of the passage rests on these questions. “Who do the people say that I am?” “Who do you say that I am?”<br /><br />Questions are crucial to growing into mature faith. Questions are the ways we learn and struggle and come to understand things. I have all kinds of questions. They’re the same ones we all have.<br /><br />Why is there so much suffering in the world?<br />What about other religions?<br />What really happens when we die?<br /><br />I have all kinds of questions.<br /><br />But in the end my ability to understand the responses God might offer to any of my questions—my ability to understand God’s answers is dependent on my answer to this big fat enchilada of a question that Jesus asks all of us:<br /><br />“Who do you say that I am?”<br /><br />Two things to notice about this question:<br /><br />Part of this is theological: Who is Jesus? There are the textbook answers: Son of God; Savior of the world; prince of peace—you’<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">ve</span> probably heard those before. Jesus himself said “I am the way, the truth and the life—no one comes to the Father except through me.”<br /><br />Lots of people don’t want to wrestle with that one—with what Jesus actually says about himself, and so they rely completely on their own feelings about who Jesus is…to them. The danger in relying only on our feelings or thoughts about Jesus is that he becomes a savior in our own image, instead of the other way around.<br /><br />I have a Jesus Action Figure with me this morning. Have you seen one of these? It comes with “<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">poseable</span> arms and a gliding action.” I can do a lot of things with this little toy, but it <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">doesn</span>’t ask anything of me—it <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">doesn</span>’t ask me any questions—it <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">doesn</span>’t demand anything from my life. As a matter of fact this Jesus Action Figure is completely dependent on me for it to do anything. That’s not the Jesus of the Scriptures.<br /><br />When Jesus asks us “Who do you say that I am,” he’s asking “Just how much of my teaching are you willing accept—to wrestle with and believe. And so part of this question is theological.<br /><br />But I think that the biggest part of this question is <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">missional</span>: Notice that he <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">doesn</span>’t say: “Who do you think that I am…when no one’s looking—when you’re hidden away?” This is not just a question about belief—this is a question about our habits and practices as followers of Christ. Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that to? Maybe the better question is: Do you ever say anything about who I am to people? Do you say anything about me?<br /><br />I’<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">ve</span> been reading Stan Guthrie’s new book called <em>All That Jesus Asks</em>. It’s the new addition to the recommended reading list in the bulletin. In one chapter he’s talking about the miracles of Jesus—the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">healings</span> and battles with the spiritual realm—and he says this:<br /><br />“In these events we see that Jesus, unlike the religious action figures sold at <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Wal</span>-Mart, is not infinitely bendable, able to assume whatever postmodern pose we give him. He’s not the pious, otherworldly, slightly effeminate savior we see in so much religious art. No, his hands are rough, even cracked, from hard work. He’s stared evil and suffering in the face, seized them by the scruff of the neck, and lived to tell about it.”<br /><br />As we celebrate Communion together today, we have the usual bread and cup, but today there’s also a question on that Table. Jesus invites us to come and share in this meal and to remember who he is and what he’s done for us. Jesus invites us to be together with him, but he also asks this question: “Who do you say that I am?”<br /><br />We may have different answers to that question right now, but we can’t really get anywhere unless we’re willing to face it honestly, with all our doubts and struggles and questions.<br /><br />As we come to the Table, my prayer for us is that we’ll commit ourselves to this journey of twenty questions—that we’ll enter into a time of prayer and study and reflection—that we’ll be ready when someone else asks us who we say Jesus is—that we’ll have an answer that introduces that person to the one who came and lived and loved and stared evil and suffering in the face and lived to tell the tale.<br /><br />Let’s pray together.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-87085355626562915952011-01-12T07:21:00.000-08:002011-01-12T07:23:28.958-08:00A Big Hiatus!Hi All,<br /><br />It's not your imagination! This page has been dormant for a few months now. I've been working a lot through the holidays, and when I get a chance to go online it's usually to update my Facebook page. I'm not giving up on the blog, just taking some time away to rethink what this page ought to be. Stay tuned.<br /><br />JohnRev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-85282042712581804342010-10-18T03:08:00.000-07:002010-10-18T03:11:45.354-07:00More Than We Can Imagine(This message is one in a series on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together'.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Stewardship Sunday</strong></span><br /><br /><strong>Ephesians 3:14-21<br /></strong><br />We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’ Why Ephesians? I’ll put the quote we’ve been reading into my own words: Ephesians gives us a peek at the way God’s Spirit takes lives like ours and turns them into his church. That sums it up pretty well.<br /><br />So I’ve been telling the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile, but now I can’t do that anymore. Someone was poking fun at me this week, saying that the whole structure of this series is obsolete now that the miners have been rescued. Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I can’t keep using the story.<br /><br />The images we saw late Tuesday night and all day Wednesday into early Thursday morning—I caught myself laughing and crying and wondering how it all went so well. As we watched those men come out of that capsule, so many of them prayed and thanked God for making it back to the surface. And I know, everyone would say that if they’d been through the same ordeal. But did you notice that most of these guys talked about their prayers—talked about their relationships to Jesus Christ as if they’d known him before they went in the hole.<br /><br />That’s important, because otherwise it would be too easy to discount the faith of the miners as foxhole faith. You know the saying: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Well the miners we watched on our TV screens this week were buried a lot deeper than any foxhole, and their faith was deeper, too.<br /><br />We’re studying Paul’s letter to the Ephesians because it’s designed to help churches grow—to helm them grow in depth of faith and in service to each other and the world. We’re talking about growing together, and this journey through Ephesians is one of the ways we can do that.<br /><br /><em>For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.<br /><br />Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.</em><br /><br />Last week Stephanie talked about the first half of this chapter. Paul starts in the first verse sounding like he’s about to pray, then he interrupts himself with a description of how God has spoken through him and worked through him to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world. In our passage this morning Paul picks up the prayer right where he left off.<br /><br />And how does Paul, leading apostle of the early church, writer of most of the letters in the New Testament, rabbi of rabbis, Pharisee of Pharisee—how does big time Paul start his description of how he prays for the Ephesians?<br /><br />On his knees.<br /><br />Paul kneels and begins to pray one of the richest, most generous prayers in the entire Bible.<br /><br />He prays for God to strengthen his church. That’s a good reminder for us: this is God’s church, not ours; God is our source of power.<br /><br />He prays that Christ will live in and through the people of the church. Churches can easily slide into functioning as just another kind of human organization, like a school or charity or social club. The point here is that Christ—and all that that name means for us—Christ is who we follow, and it’s in Christ’s name that we serve.<br /><br />He prays that the Ephesians will begin to grasp how much Christ loves them. This can be an incredibly difficult thing to swallow. After working in different kinds of ministries for 25 years or so, one of the hardest things I’ve seen people wrestle with is truly believing that God loves them no matter what, warts and all.<br /><br />He prays that they’ll never forget that Christ’s love is the most important thing they’ll ever know. Now that one is a challenge, too. This is a pretty well-educated and successful crowd. I look out there and I can see some Harvards and Princetons and Penns—I can see folks who studied at great public universities, and people with advanced degrees in all kinds of subjects from business to science to the humanities.<br /><br />No matter what you may think you know, Paul says here, it’s dwarfed by this one single thing—this one crucial data point: Jesus loves you. Jesus the Messiah, loves you.<br /><br />Karl Barth was one of the giants in the world of theology in the 20th century. Late in his career he was giving a lecture and one of the students there asked him to describe his most important conclusion from a lifetime of studying the Scriptures. He paused for a moment, then sang the song: ‘Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.’<br /><br />Allowing ourselves to be embraced fully by the love of Jesus is the most important thing any of us will ever know.<br /><br />In the end Paul prays that the Ephesians—that the church—will be filled to the very top with the fullness of God. That everything we do or say or give or create will somehow reflect the God who made us and redeems us and loves us in spite of what we might do—who loves us often times in spite of who we’ve become.<br /><br />This is an extravagant prayer—it’s a prayer that’s meant to show us and remind us of how mind-blowingly generous God has been to us—how generous he wants to be to his church.<br /><br />Eugene Peterson tells the story of an American family that adopted a Haitian girl who had been orphaned in an accident. They brought her to their home—there were already two teenage boys in the family—they brought her home and when they sat down to their first dinner together, the parents noticed something crucial. As the boys tore through their meals and devoured seconds and thirds of everything on the table, the little girl looked sad and worried.<br /><br />The mother guessed correctly that the new addition to the family thought that this might be all the food there was, and so she took her by the hand and led her around the kitchen. She opened the fridge to show her that there would be plenty of food for the next day. She opened the bread drawer to show that there were more loaves. She showed her the pantry where there were mounds of food for the coming days and weeks.<br /><br />What the mom did was show her little girl the abundance of what was available to her—that she would never be hungry again, even if she did have to share meals with her growing brothers.<br /><br />When God adopts us into his family through Jesus Christ, and when the Holy Spirit steps in to shape us into his church—as all of that happens, Paul takes us by the hand in this prayer—he takes us around to show us how much great stuff is there for us to enjoy. He shows us the abundance of God’s grace and provision, of love and mercy for us. “I pray that you would be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”<br /><br />But we know that prayer can be a challenge for us sometimes. The day after the miners came out of that hole in Chile, Mark Galli, the editor of <em>Christianity Today</em>, wrote a challenging article on prayer that got right to the heart of what bothers us most about bringing our concerns before God. Mark’s problem is what to make of all the times we pray for things—for healing, for peace, for good to win over evil once in a while—we pray for things that don’t go the way we ask. What does that mean for us as we pray?<br /><br />“First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing being prayed for. Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.”<br /><br />Our passage today ends with a benediction. This one might be familiar to many of you—in the church where I grew up this was the benediction almost every Sunday.<br /><br /><em>Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.</em><br /><br />It’s a challenge to us to open our eyes and see that to aim too low is to miss what God has in store for us—what God is prepared to give us—what God wants to do in us and through us.<br /><br />C.S. Lewis wrote about this tendency that people have of underestimating what God has to share with us. He writes:<br /><br />“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”<br /><br />It’s this benediction that informs our giving and pledging as we move into our season of talking about stewardship. It’s the benediction that reminds us that our participation is not about fueling God’s work in this church and in the world. Our giving is our way of joining into the work that God is already doing—the places where God’s spirit is already active. As generous as this congregation can be, if it all depended on our giving we’d be in serious trouble.<br /><br />But that’s not how the story goes. What we do here is part of God’s work that is more than we could ever imagine. We join in as a privilege, not a chore—as a gift and not just another bill to pay. As we continue to talk about how Paul’s letter to the Ephesians helps us grow together, and as we add to that our own conversation about the ministry of this church, keep this last verse in your mind:<br /><br /><em>Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!</em><br /><br />Amen.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-52151199307841334312010-10-06T10:31:00.001-07:002010-10-06T10:33:48.455-07:00Radical Reassembly<em>(This message is one in a series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together'.)</em><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Ephesians 2:14-22<br /></span></strong><br />We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’ Why Ephesians? When we started we read this quote: “We immerse ourselves in Ephesians to acquire a clean, uncluttered imagination of the ways and means by which the Holy Spirit forms church out of just such lives as ours.” That sums it up pretty well.<br /><br />I’ve been telling the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile. They’ve been there for 60 days now, trapped 2300 feet underground, and it looks as though they won’t be rescued for another month. Remember that when the miners were found they’d already organized themselves into teams—they were sharing regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this wasn’t part of their standard procedures. Most of this was handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.<br /><br />That’s how we want to be here in this church.<br /><br />What we learn from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a lot like what we can learn from those miners in Chile. Their skill and commitment, their willingness to stay together and trust each other—none of that happened by accident. It worked because they studied and remembered and practiced what to do when disasters strike. When that mine caved in no one had to tell them that they needed to look out for one another—to take care of each other. They’d been getting ready all along.<br /><br />That’s what we’re going to do.<br /><br />As we work our way through Ephesians we’re going to be honest about life and faith and the world, and we’re going to see how this important book of the Bible helps us become more a more mature church—a church family that’s ready for anything. Too often churches forget that part of our job is to help people express and share and live their faith beyond the walls of this place—in the other 167 hours of the week.<br /><br />I want to take that part of the church’s job more seriously.<br /><br />Ephesians is going to provide road map for us as we grow individually and as a church family. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus has a lot to say about life and faith and how to live in a world that doesn’t always understand who we are. Today’s passage is an important part of that.<br /><br /><em> 14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.<br /> 19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.</em><br /><br />Some things to know about this text:<br /><br />Look how active Jesus is in this passage. There are nine verbs to describe all that God has done through Jesus to grow us into a faithful church. Jesus is our peace, he made us one, he broke down the wall of hostility, he abolished the law, he created a new humanity, he made peace, he reconciled, he put hostility to death, and he proclaimed peace. Whatever else we learn from this passage about the way God interacts with us, we should at least be aware that he is active, that he’s busy, that he isn’t just sitting back and watching what his people do without getting involved.<br /><br />Paul says that Christ ‘himself is our peace.’ Last year we spent a lot of time talking about the idea of shalom. In the Old Testament shalom has a broad range of meanings. It can refer to the communal well-being of the nation, or physical health, or a sense of contentedness or happiness in relationships. It often describes a state of completion and wholeness. One writer called it ‘the webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ But most often it gets translated simply as ‘peace.’<br /><br />When Paul calls Jesus our peace, he’s saying that in his life and ministry, through his teachings and healings, in his death and resurrection—through the work of Christ we’ve been offered a chance to experience the shalom we were meant to know—to live the life we were meant to live.<br /><br />Paul says as much in the next lines: ‘Christ’s purpose was to create one person out of two—unity out of division—by reconciling us through his cross. That’s the core of the good news of the gospel right there—that whatever separates us from God or from each other or from the earth—that everything that divides us is somehow healed and reconciled through Jesus Christ.<br /><br />But we’re still kept apart by what Paul calls hostility—the ‘dividing wall of hostility.’ Now that phrase in itself packs a pretty good punch. The dividing wall of hostility could describe all kinds of things—racial hatreds, the grudges that keep some countries fighting forever or at least ready to go to war. It could describe the way that different kinds of abuse make trusting another person seem impossible. A dividing wall of hostility could describe the way we interact with anyone who’s wounded us in some way.<br /><br />Paul’s readers might have thought of those things, but more likely they knew about the wall in the Temple in Jerusalem that was meant to separate Jews from Gentiles. The Temple was the holiest place in the world for Jews. It represented their history, their present faithfulness, and also their hope for a Messiah and a restored kingdom. The Temple was one place where even the Romans didn’t intrude, and where the priests and leaders were allowed to make the rules.<br /><br />On the wall in the Temple separating Jews from Gentiles there was an inscription that read:<br /><br /><strong>“Let no foreigner enter within the partition and enclosure surrounding the temple. Whoever is arrested will himself be responsible for his death which will [soon] follow”</strong><br /><br />This was known as the ‘dividing wall of hostility.’ This is what was torn down through the ministry of Jesus the Messiah.<br /><br />Listen to how Eugene Peterson translated this in <em>The Message</em>:<br /><br />“Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to you insiders. He treated us as equals, and [in doing] so made us equals. Through his we both share the same Spirit, and have equal access to the Father.”<br /><br />The point of all this is that we’ve been reassembled. We come to Christ with every single kind of brokenness—we come in pieces, but we’ve been put back together. It’s a radical form or reassembly—of being reconciled to God and to each other in ways that we didn’t think were possible—ways that aren’t humanly possible. We come in pieces, but we go with the peace that only Christ can offer.<br /><br />What does all of this mean for us as we grow together as a church family?<br /><br />First, part of growing together means focusing on what God has done for us individually. Whatever we’ve done that separated us from God—whatever sins we’ve committed or guilt that we carried—whatever brokenness we bring to him, he promises to heal and cleanse and restore. When people talk about coming to faith, this is what they mean: accepting the forgiveness and restoration that God offers us through Jesus Christ.<br /><br />Second, growing together means just that: growing as a community that loves and sharpens and serves each other in peace and unity. Notice I said unity here and not uniformity. There’s a pretty important difference between those two. We don’t have to do all of this in the same way, by the same set pattern. But we are called to work and grow together as people who have been taught and empowered to live in community by God’s Holy Spirit.<br /><br />And finally, growing together means that we take how we’ve been restored and made into a community—we take the way God has worked in our lives and we turn it outward, sharing it with our neighbors, strangers on the street, and the rest of the world. Growing together as a church community means going into those places where walls of hostility still separate and oppress people, and working to tear those walls down.<br /><br />We come to Communion with the same expectations that brought faithful Jews to the Temple in Jerusalem. We come remembering what God has done in our lives through Jesus the Messiah, and how our lives have been transformed and restored to the shalom we were made for. We also come with our eyes open to what God is doing today—to the blessings we receive and the work we’re called to do together as his church.<br /><br />Finally, we come because God has made promises to us. We come as people of hope—not some pie-in-the-sky dreaming about clouds and wings and harps, but a real-world hope based on the promises Jesus made to come back and make all things new. In Communion we share the past, present and future of our faith. We invite you to come to the Table this morning.Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35717060.post-47627941893661649292010-09-28T08:01:00.000-07:002010-09-28T09:45:02.181-07:00Grace Changes Everything<em>(This message is one in a series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians titled, 'Growing Together.')</em><br /><br /><strong>Ephesians 2:1-10</strong><br /><br />We continue our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians titled ‘Growing Together.’<br /><br />Why Ephesians? When we started we read this quote: “We immerse ourselves in Ephesians to acquire a clean, uncluttered imagination of the ways and means by which the Holy Spirit forms church out of just such lives as ours.” That about sums it up.<br /><br />Last week I told the story of those 33 miners stuck in a hole in Chile. Their part of the mine caved in and for the last 50 days or so they’ve been trapped a half-mile underground. It took 17 days for the rescue teams to locate where they were trapped, and the task of bringing them to the surface is expected to go into November.<br /><br />Remember that when the miners were found they’d already organized themselves into teams—they were sharing regular rations, they sleep and exercise and keep watch over each other in shifts. Most of this isn’t part of their standard procedures. Most of this is handed down informally from grandfather to father to son—they’ve gone through so many tragic mining events that they’ve learned how to be ready—how to take care of each other and live.<br /><br />That’s how we want to be here in this church.<br /><br />What we learn from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a lot like what we can learn from those miners in Chile. Their skill and commitment, their willingness to stay together and trust each other—none of that happened by accident. It worked because they studied and remembered and practiced what to do when disasters strike. When that mine caved in no one had to tell them that they needed to look out for one another—to take care of each other. They’d been getting ready all along.<br /><br />That’s what we’re going to do.<br /><br />As we work our way through Ephesians we’re going to be honest about life and faith and the world, and we’re going to see how this important book of the Bible helps us become more a more mature church—a church family that’s ready for anything.<br /><br />Because we know that hard things are going to happen even as we grow in our lives as disciples. We also know that we struggle with believing that we can trust God at his word. And finally, we wonder where being a follower of Jesus fits in this crazy world. Too often churches forget that part of our job is to help people express and share and live their faith beyond the walls of this place—in the other 167 hours of the week.<br /><br />I want to take that part of the church’s job more seriously.<br /><br />Ephesians is going to provide road map for us as we grow individually and as a church family. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus has a lot to say about life and faith and how to live in a world that doesn’t always understand who we are. Today’s passage is an important part of that.<br /><br />For years, every time I sat down to watch an American football game on TV, I saw the same thing. After a touchdown, the special teams would come out for the extra point. The offense and defense would get ready and the net would go up behind the goalposts to make it easier get the ball back after the kick. That’s when you’d see it. There was always some guy in the stands holding up a bright yellow sign that said Eph. 2:8.<br /><br />I always wondered about that guy. What did he do for a living? Did any of his family or friends know that that’s how he spent his Sunday afternoons? What made him get a season ticket just so that he could have these few moments in each game when he might be seen on television holding up a Scripture reference that no one knew?<br /><br />Our passage today includes that text of Scripture. Listen for God’s word to you.<br /><br /><em>As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.</em><br /><br />First, that is one abrupt start to a passage. We go from some pretty flowery theological language—even for Paul—in the first chapter to this. In the first chapter we hear “praise be to our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms,” and “I pray that your heart may be enlightened in order that you may experience the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” We go directly from that to ‘As for you’. Now when you hear a sentence that starts with As for you, you know it’s not going to go well for you. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…”<br /><br />I remember reading this and thinking: “I’m going back to the first chapter…it was a lot more fun.” But that would be missing the point. We can’t get to the important idea of God’s grace unless we get a reminder of just how much we need that grace in our lives.<br /><br />The crucial truth to take from this text is that our sin isn’t the end of our story.<br /><br />In the very next breath Paul writes: “But because of his great love for us…” God’s love and mercy are the starting point of our new lives, and he gives us that gift before we even understand that we need it. We saw in Romans last year that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us…” It’s like having a friend who starts to make up with you before you’ve even said you’re sorry.<br /><br />And then we get to Grace.<br /><br />“It is by grace you have been saved.” What is this grace we keep hearing about? The pastor I grew up with talked about it as ‘undeserved favor’, something we can’t earn or make for ourselves—something we have to receive from someone else.<br /><br />Eugene Peterson puts it this way: “Grace originates in an act of God that is absolutely without precedent, the generous, sacrificial self-giving of Jesus that makes it possible for us to participate in resurrection maturity. But we can’t participate apart from a willed passivity, entering into and giving ourselves up to what has gone before us…Such passivity does not come easy to us. It must be acquired.” Uh-oh.<br /><br />I’ll bet my lunch money for a week that none of us actively tries to acquire any kind of passivity, that none of us consciously trains our kids to be passive in any way. And yet, without learning how to give ourselves up to the presence and action of God from time to time, we miss a crucial part of the grace he offers us.<br /><br />The bottom line is this: God’s graces changes our values and methods and priorities. God’s grace changes <em>everything</em>, because when we welcome and make room for God’s grace in our lives, we experience in a deeper way the life that he wants for us—the life that he gives for us. We find that our salvation doesn’t come from how much we earn or what we own or where our kids go to school. Our salvation comes only from God, and only in the form of a gift we don’t deserve.<br /><br />The whole point of this text is wrapped up in the last three verses, including the one that guy held up on his sign: Ephesians 2:8-10. Listen to how all of that sounds in <em>The Message</em>.<br /><br />“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”<br /><br />What should we take away from this part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians?<br /><br />First: Learning to be ready to take care of each other as a Christian community begins with believing that through Christ God has taken care of us first. Our text today reads chronologically: God acted, so we could become who we were meant to be, so we could go where we were meant to go.<br /><br />Second: Through Christ we join God in the work he’s doing in this world. Churches tend to think we’re out there, leading the spread of the gospel in the world. But the best advice I ever got for how to become an effective church was this: “Look around and see what God is already doing in the world, and join in.” Being a maturing, growing church is about seeing where God is working, and throwing ourselves into the effort. I said last week that the point isn’t what the church ought to be doing, but what God wants to do through the people of the church.<br /><br />That’s the best insurance against thinking that we’re the ones behind the good things that happen here. Last week we heard Zena and Natasha talk about their time on a mission trip with Habitat for Humanity. Pretty easy to feel good about that one—we helped pay their expenses, they went and did the work at the site—it would be easy to think that we were behind all of that. We weren’t. What happens in this place isn’t what we do, it’s what God does through us.<br /><br />And finally: That work is done through the church—through the imperfect, broken, complaining, addicted, abused, jealous, greedy and forgiven people…people just like us. Understanding that grace changes everything begins with acknowledging that there are parts of our lives that we need God to enter in and change.<br /><br />I could throw a list at you, but seriously, don’t we all know where we wish God would transform us into the people he made us to be? The key here is that we don’t have to be perfect, don’t have to be successful, don’t have to be rich, don’t have to send our kids to elite universities—we don’t have to measure up to have God use us in a meaningful way. The old saying goes like this, and it’s true: God doesn’t care about our ability, what he really wants is our availability.<br /><br />When I think back on that guy at football games who held up the Eph. 2:8 sign, my first thought is probably similar to yours: ‘What a nut.’<br /><br />But in the end all he was really trying to do was remind us of something very important, that it is by grace that we’re brought into God’s presence and kingdom—that it’s by grace that we have been saved. It’s by grace alone that we have anything in our lives that matters.<br /><br />That reminder is the task of the church. That’s how we prepare for hard times—it’s how we learn to take care of each other when those hard times come—it’s how we fellowship and worship and grow in faith and serve the world. It is by grace that we learn to live the way we were meant to live all along.<br /><br />This passage of Ephesians is the gateway to being a mature disciple of Jesus. Maybe the right response to the guy with the sign wasn’t to dismiss him. Maybe the right move was to buy a season ticket and sit next to him so he could hold a bigger sign.<br /><br />My prayer for all of us is that we’ll grow into a church that announces to the world the good news that we find in that single verse from Ephesians.<br /><br /><em>“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”</em><br /><br />There is just one hymn that will measure up to the power of that passage of Scripture. Let’s stand and sing it together: ‘Amazing Grace.’Rev. John A. D'Eliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03460378542471421949noreply@blogger.com0