Core Values: Christ-Centered

Here is my message from Sunday. We began a new series on our core values, and the passage was on Acts 19:1-7 and Mark 1:4-11:

In what is the crescendo in the call to discipleship in the gospels, Jesus asks the disciples “who do people say that I am?”  They say that some say that he is Elijah, remembering back to our message on Jesus being the prophet as to why that answer is important, and some say perhaps John the Baptist has returned, or maybe one of the other prophets. But then Jesus asks the crucial question: Who do you say that I am? And Simon says “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” and it is then that Jesus changes his name to Peter, the rock, and says that it is upon this rock that I will build my church. Now there is some debate about whether that rock is Peter himself, or whether the rock is Peter’s confession of faith. That the church’s foundation and solid rock on which it stands is the proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the Living God. Because it turns out that we have to answer that same question about who Jesus is for ourselves. No one can answer that question for us. We have to have our own answer. And really we see that throughout scripture. If you remember in our Genesis series, for a while, Jacob only talks about the God of his father Isaac. It’s not his God, but his father’s God. It’s only later in his life that we hear about the God of Jacob, that Jacob has accepted God as his own. Or later after Joshua has taken the people into the promised land, he says to them, after recounting all that God has done for them, he says “You must choose this day whom you are going to serve” and then he responds “as for me and my household, we will serve all Lord.”

Now I say all this for several reasons. One of them being that when I lead confirmation classes for youth, one of the first questions I ask is what does it mean to be a Christian? They will talk about things we might believe, or things we are supposed to do, or about going to church, sort of generic things. But, what they never say, until I get more direct, is that being a Christian means following Christ, or worshipping Christ, or proclaiming Christ as the Messiah, the son of the living God. We might think that’s sort of basic, of what it means to be a Christian and yet it doesn’t seem to be for many people. That when they answer the question about Christianity, following Christ is not the first answer given.

Traveling the Prayer Paths: At the Cross

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 23:26-34:

Today we conclude our path in looking at the prayer’s that Jesus prayed, and how he prayed and what he prayed, by looking at Jesus’ prayer from the cross of offering forgiveness. Now it could probably argued that Jesus actually offers three prayers from the cross. One is “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” and we could look at that as a prayer of learning to turn our lives over to God, except in this case it is literally his life that is being turned over. That’s an important prayer, and perhaps one we could place with the prayers of going to a quiet place to pray, but one which we are not going to discuss, at least not today. The second is “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” a quote from psalm 22, and one of my favorite scripture passages, which is a cry of despair, which for simple classification of prayers I am going to put with Jesus’ prayer asking God to take the cup from him, which we discussed last week. And so, although it’s a really important passage, we are not going to discuss it, although I was supposed to give a short message on this passage for the community Good Friday service, but which probably won’t happen this year. I would encourage you to go read the 22nd Psalm which moves from a cry of despair to one of God’s triumph, which I think is attached to Jesus’ cry. But again, another message for another day. And so today, for prayers, we are going to be looking at the prayer of forgiveness, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

But before we do that, a quick recap of the other things we learn from Jesus’ prayers. The first is that just as Jesus often went and spent time by himself in prayer, that we are to do the same thing, whether it’s just a few moments, or a few hours, or even a few days, or maybe even 40 days, but we need that time to talk with God, but even more importantly to listen to God. Second was to be in prayer throughout the day in everything that we do, most especially to be in prayer for others, a great thing always, but especially now, and also to pray for God’s help with those things that seem impossible, that we need God’s help to accomplish. Third is to make sure to give prayers of thanksgiving, not just in good times, but also in troubling times, most especially in troubling times so that we can be reminded of the blessings we receive and the fact that God is always with us. Then the prayer for last week was Jesus lamentation, or cry of asking the cup to be taken from him, which had us talking about embodied prayer, that is our bodies being engaged with the words that we are saying, about, again, going to a quiet place, about listening to God when we pray, and also about asking God for things, like help in times of despair. But also knowing that merely because what we ask for doesn’t happen, doesn’t mean it is the will of God, or that God isn’t there for us or doesn’t care, because every time we go to God in prayer we receive the Holy Spirit and God’s assurance that we are not alone. And so that then leads us into the last prayer.

Wrath Versus Peacemakers

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The texts were Matthew 5:1-12 and 5:38-48:

Most of us probably remember where we were and what we were doing 15 years ago today. We remember the moment when we first heard about a plane, or planes hitting the world trade center, we remember seeing people fleeing from the buildings, and seeing the fire department running towards the buildings. We remember the buildings collapsing and our tears and our sorrow and our questions and maybe our fears. Some watched from a distance not knowing anyone involved, and others had their lives ripped apart that day.  When we lived in Boston, Linda and I were friends with a woman who had a plane ticket for one of those flights, but her meeting in LA got cancelled, and so she never got on board, and in both churches we served there, literally right around the corner from both of them was a memorial to the people in those towns who had lost their lives on that day. and yet in the devastation of that moment we experienced something special, something unique. We witnessed bravery and heroism most of us had only heard about. We witnessed sacrifice and selflessness. We witnessed a nation, and to a large degree a world, coming together, not based on national or tribal affinities, but based on a shared and common humanity.

Jesus said that “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And so, someone said that in witnessing the firefighters and the police officers running into a burning building while everyone else was running out, laying down their lives for their friends in the greatest sense of that word, we glimpsed the kingdom of God. Of course that glimpse did not last long, and we soon turned away from the things that brought us together, and instead started building up barriers and walls, shouting tribal chants and seeking revenge and war. A war that continues to this day, so that this year’s entering college freshmen can never remember a time in which we as a nation were not at war. But for a moment, in the midst of the chaos and violence and tragedy, we witnessed the kingdom of God.

One of the responses I received about what people would like me to preach on was to talk about the election and how we as Christians should be thinking about and responding to what is happening. With disgust might be one response, but probably not the appropriate one. I do think it’s appropriate that we talk about the election, but how I was going to do that was the issue. I do know that there are some people who get upset and think that politics should never be talked about it in church, but that’s actually an impossibility. Because to proclaim Jesus as Lord and King, is to make a political statement; it’s to claim where our allegiance belongs, to God, and also where it doesn’t belong, to the things of the world. In addition, Jesus had a lot to say about things that are impacted by what we would call the political realm. So if we are to proclaim ourselves as Christians, as followers of Christ, that is political.