No comments for two weeks

Due to the annual meeting this Sunday and my being absent next Sunday, I will not have any sermon comments for the blog for this week or next week.  I will see if I can get Katie Hartwell, our guest preacher and seminary student, to send me her sermon notes to post next week.

Peace,

Richard

Reflections on "Reading the Signs" Deuteronomy 6: 20-25; I Corinthiansw 1: 18-31

I'm not sure I ever had this sermon figured out.  In fact, I'm not even sure what I said during the sanctuary service when I was in the "foolishness" section near the end.  I do remember thinking, "how do I work my way out of this?"  It reminded me that not having the discipline to stick to what I have prepared can lead to some problems when I preach.  I generally free lance some, but usually I have thought about where I might go.

I also found the variety of biblical narratives on signs to be overwhelming.  Paul seems to not think we should look for signs, although he had a pretty big sign from God on the road to Damascus.  I actually think the Deuteronomy passage shows a misuse of signs to blackmail the Israelites into obeying the rules.  Jesus offers a mixed bag on whether we should look for signs.  Maybe "signs" was not the right approach to get at the question:  "How do we know what God is telling us?"

“Reading the Signs” January 15, 2012; FPC, Troy Deuteronomy 6: 20-25; I Corinthians 1: 18-31

Introduction: As many of you know, while I was gone last summer I heard lots of stories from different people about their faith journeys. I discovered the repetition of statements like “this seemed like a sign from God,” or “I was looking for a sign, and...”

It has me puzzling over how to recognize signs from God. I don't have it figured out, but

Move 1: When you are looking for signs, you are more likely to find them.

a. Sound simple, but it seems to work that way.

1. Story I heard last summer went something like this: a man is praying for guidance; he is at a time in his life when he wants or maybe needs; he has been asking God for guidance. He discovers an opportunity to participate in a new ministry that seems to fit them. A welcome sign from God.

b. chick flick – Fools Rush In.

1. female lead character is a spiritual, Roman Catholic who has grown up in an Hispanic family.

2. the male lead character is a WASP, where the P not only stands for Protestant, but Presbyterian in particular.

3. She believes in signs; he does not.

She share this conversation when she becomes pregnant and finds herself stuck in traffic next to a huge Catholic church.

Isabel Fuentes: It was a sign, Alex.Alex Whitman: Of what?Isabel Fuentes: That the baby would be Catholic.Alex Whitman: Oh, well, then it's a good thing you weren't stopped in front of an IHOP.

1. One person was looking for signs and found them.

2. The other person was not looking for signs, so he did not see the sign.

3. I might add that add the critical moment in the movie when the music changes and the story line shifts so that everything will come out well, the man suddenly is looking for signs.

4. then, everywhere he looks, he sees signs.

100. when we look for signs, we probably will find them.
     
     
     Move 2: If you interpret your life through the lens of faith, you discover signs as well.
     a. Not necessarily on the look-out for signs, but reflects on life through faith and discovers signs from God.
     
     
     b. Heard the story from a woman this summer. She had been living her life normally. She had her routines; she knew what the next day and the next day was going to bring. Satisfied with her life.
     
     
     1.  Cancer disrupts her life. Diagnosis and treatment. Good results.
     But her perspective has changed. She looks at what has happened and asks the question: “Where is God in all this?”
     
     
     2.  Her answer – my medical battle and recovery is a sign from from God that I need to change my life. Off she goes. Same husband. Same home. New attitude. New job. New sense of who she is and what she wants to do with her life.
     
     
     3. She does not say, God gave me cancer as as sign.
     
     
     4. She does say, my battle with cancer was a sign that God had something else for me to do.
     
     
     b. Deuteronomy.
     
     
     1. While in the wilderness, the people are being reminded of these incredible events that took place back in Egypt.
     
     
     2. Remember those plagues – the locusts swarming the crops for example; or the death few the first born Egyptian sons; those were signs from God that Pharaoh ignored.
     
     
     3. But we are going to remember these signs.
     
     
     4. they will continue to speak to us.
     
     
     5. In fact, when we think about why we should obey God, these signs inform us.

100. You may not be looking for signs from God, but when you reflect critically on your life through the lens of faith, you can often find signs from God.

Move 3: Signs can be interpreted differently.

a. This, of course, is what making reading the signs so difficult.

1. One person's sign from God is another person's explainable event.

2. The plagues mentioned in Deuteronomy? Surely Pharaoh's advisers were arguing that they were just natural phenomena.

3. To the Israelites, they were signs from God.

b. Worked one summer in Port Aransas, TX at a presbytery camp. We worked all day cooking, life guarding and doing maintenance work. Most nights we had free after dinner, so we would ride bikes around town. Go down and watch the local softball league. There was a place that was part pool hall, part arcade with several pinball machines.

1. In the middle of the night, it burned down. It made the front page of the newspaper. In fact, the photos of the fire covered the front page. It was the biggest story of the summer.

2. Until the next week, when the story on the front page was the arrest of the owner of the pool hall for arson. It seems that the night before the fire he had a dream, a sign from God he said, that told him to move everything out that had value.

3. One person's sign from God; another person's clue in an arson investigation.

Reading the signs is not easy.

Move 4: Signs point to Christ crucified.

a. In some ways, Paul dismisses looking for signs.

1. Jews demands signs, he writes.

2. He compares them to Greeks who seek wisdom.

3. then he suggests that these new Christians do not need signs or wisdom; they need only took at the cross and see Christ crucified.

4. I do not believe that Paul is suggesting that God no longer will send signs.

5. But, he provides the litmus test for how we interpret signs from God.
   
   
   b. If the sign from God points you in the direction of Christ crucified, then it may, in fact, be a sign from God. If not, then you might want to rethink whether that is a sign from God.

1. Think about the Israelites – the signs they saw while in Egypt lead them out of slavery and into a new way of life. That means they fit as signs from God.

2. This, of course, challenges us to avoid the trap of deciding God has sent sign that leads us to a decision or place where the only benefit is ourselves and our own selfish interests.

3. I am always suspicious when the sign from God leads someone to make a decision that only benefits that person.

b. Paul also frees us to see “foolish” signs.

1. That crazy idea for ministry that grew out of some silly sign.

2. Or looking back at a battle with cancer and seeing in it a sign from God.

3. the foolishness of the gospel to which Paul points us allows us to explore signs we might otherwise dismiss.

Conclusion: I suspect you might have liked this sermon better if yo had been left with specific guidelines for knowing what is a sign form God and what is not. Or knowing where to look to see a sign from God.

Sorry. A life of faith is not that simple. But, into the complexity of our lives, God sends signs, signs that lead us to the Cruficied One. Keep looking.

"Reading the Signs" Deuteronomy 6: 20-25; I Corinthians 1: 17-31

This sermon grew out of my listening to people this summer share their faith journey and how God had called them at different times to different tasks.  That's sounds great when I hear people tell their stories, but then I puzzle over how to read the signs to know when God is sending me a sign.  Or I talk with people who have had an event occur and wonder if that is a sign from God.

The passage in Deuteronomy builds into the Israelite story the belief that what God did against Egypt and Pharaoh were signs from God.  I find it interesting that this conversation is tied to the statutes and ordinances they were supposed to obey.  The message seems to be, "You remember those signs (the plagues, etc.), well you better obey God or those signs will come again!"  Not sure that's what God would have had in mind.

Paul's letter to the Corinthians describes people looking for signs, and then directs them to Christ crucified.  As if to say, "The cross is your sign."  Somehow I think most of us need more than that, but it provides a wonderful  reminder that the signs ought to lead us to the crucified one.

Do you find yourself looking for signs?  

Have you had experiences in your life when you saw a sign from God that informed what you were doing?

Please read those as questions seeking answers, not merely rhetorical questions!  I would love to hear from you.  If you have a story that I can share in the sermon, please let me know. I'll not identify you if you give me permission to share the story.  Others might benefit from your experience at reading the signs.

Peace,

Richard

Reflections on "A Changed Life" John 12: 20-26; Acts 9: 36-43

I am one of those people who has never known what it is like to be outside the church (although I have certainly had moments where I wondered about God), so I have always been fascinated with stories like Zamperini's.  One of the challenges of using a story like his becomes making it meaningful for a congregation where most people who gather already have made a commitment to Christ.  On the other hand, maybe even committed Christians need to be reminded of how inspiring believing can be.

The Acts passage was a late addition, but then it hit me that the phrase, "The believed," or a synonymous phrase is often used in Acts to describe how some powerful event is received by those watching or hearing the story told later.  If I preached the sermon again, I might spend more time on what it takes to make us believe.

A fundamental issue with the sermon was the implicit linking of belief in Christ with being involved in church -  I'm not sure that Zamperini's story of believing in Christ and the last person's story of becoming involved in church are comparing apples to apples.  yet, for the gathered congregation the belief in Christ is identified by the living it out in the context of the church community.  I know that there are distinctions that I glossed over between those two responses.

I really enjoyed preaching this sermon.  I've been trying to figure out if there is a pattern to why I like a sermon and why I don't particularly like it, but I haven't reached any conclusions yet.

“A Changed Life” January 8, 2012; FPC, Troy John 12: 20-26; Luke 9: 36-43

Introduction: In her book Unbroken, author Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of Lt. Louis Zamperini, whose plane went down in the Pacific during WWII. He survived the crash, along with two others, and floated in the Pacific for almost two months before landing on a Japanese occupied island. Then, he was held captive and tortured in a Japanese prison camp.

He survives both brutal experiences and returns home after WWII. He marries and is working, but his life is slowly falling apart. The nightmares will not stop, and they are dominated by images of the most brutal of the Japanese prison guards. Zamperini turns to drinking.

When things had gotten so bad there seemed to be no hope, a Billy Graham crusade came to CA. Zamperini's wife and friends begged him to go to hear Billy Graham. He finally relents and sits on the back row of the tent and listen to Graham's sermon. Then, when Graham moves to prayer and a chance to give your life to Christ, Zamperini gets up and flees from the tent. He is full of anger and rehearsing his life and all the awful experiences he has had.

His wife wants him to go back to hear Billy Graham again. She pesters him until he agrees to go. But he only agrees to stay for the sermon. He tells her he will leave when they get to the prayer part with the silence and the invitation to give their lives to Christ.

Again, the sermon evokes all sorts of thoughts and lots of anger in Zamperini. The sermon ends and Graham invites them into a time of pray and commitment.

Zamperini gets up to leave. Graham notices the movement and announces that no one should leave at this point. They need quiet and stillness while they pray.

This causes Zamperini to hurriedly push his way down the row to flee. He gets to the aisle and before he can leave, something overtakes him. He has a flashback to his time on the raft when he promised God that if God would help him survive, he will live his life for God forever.

In that moment, he changes. He lays claim to the love Christ has for him that Graham had just preached to them. He sees himself not as a the broken person who had had been beaten down by fighting for survival on a raft or by the Japanese prison guards. He suddenly sees himself as someone Christ loves.

He goes home and empties all the alcohol from his liquor cabinet. He never has another nightmare again. Within a year, he is traveling the United States telling his story and inviting people to know Christ. (This part of the story is found on pages 370-376 of Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand, NY:Random House, 2010).

A changed life.

Move 1: A changed life is what Christ desires.

a. I have always been fascinated by this passage from the gospel of John.

1. The Greeks want to meet Jesus.

2. They think something can happen if they can meet him.
3. They come to Philip, one of Jesus' disciples and ask for an introduction.
   
   
   b. Philip does not know what to do.

1. Maybe he is thrown off by them because they are Greeks.

2. Outsides, Gentiles, they are not like these others who follow Christ.

               3. So he takes them to Andrew.

100. Andrew is a probably the perfect person to ask what to do.
     
     
     1. after all, Andrew is the one who earlier had been out looking for the Messiah.
     
     
     2. He had been trying to find the one who would change his life.
     
     
     3. And when he found Christ, he immediately recognized him as the Messiah and began to follow him.
     
     
     d. Andrew's solution for the Greeks is rather simple.
     
     
     1. Take them to meet Christ.
     
     
     2. They are seeking something; Christ has something to offer; let's get them together.
     
     
     e. Jesus has a fascinating response to hearing that Greeks want to meet him.
     
     
     1. He turns this from a simple instance of people wanting to meet him to a sign.
     
     
     2. the arrival of the Greeks indicate that Christ's message is moving on to the Gentiles and the rest of the world.

2. Anyone who wants to be changed, whether they be Jew or Gentile, Aramaic or Greek, Jesus welcomes them.
   
   
3. Jesus then describes what it means to be changes. The challenges involved in discipleship.

4. The power to be changed when people who need something more meet the one who desires that their lives be changed.

f. But I also wonder what happened to the Greeks.

1. Were they like Zamperini? Changed forever.

2. Or was it like a New Year's resolution that is made and then quickly forgotten?

We do not know what happened to the Greeks, but we know that the one they sought is the one who seeks to change our lives.

Move 2: What does it take to make you believe and how have you been changed by an encounter with Christ?

a. The passage we read in Acts notes that after the miracle performed by Peter, many believed.

1. We read that phrase in several places in Acts.
   
   
2. It gives the impression that people were looking for something and that when they saw what Jesus' followers were doing, they believed they had found what they were looking for in Christ.
   
   
3. This story immediately follows the story of Saul.
   
   
4. Remember Saul, the persecutor of Christians who is struck blind on the road to Damascus and hears the voice of the Lord. And then gives his life to following Christ and becomes Paul, the great church leader.
   
   
   5. It's not clear he was looking for Christ, but when he found him, he was changed.
   
   
   b. Did you have a single moment in which you encountered Christ that changed you?

100. Over the years I have heard people share their stories of growing up in the faith.

1. Not really knowing what it was like to not be a Christian.

2. And yet often their faith story includes an event or several events over the course of their lives in which their faith in Christ is confirmed.

500. I also wonder what how long these people who believed in Acts continued to believe?
     
     
     1. how did that change in their lives get lived out?

2. How does your belief in Christ get lived out in your ongoing life?
   
   
   Conclusion: it was Easter morning at the church I served in KY. I had been serving there for a couple of years.
   As I expected, the sanctuary was packed. Lots of people that were not usually there. Most of them I knew – either as members of the congregation who did not make it to church very often or people from around the town.
   But over on the left side of the sanctuary was a younger man and woman with two young girls. Presumably husband and wife. I did not know them, nor did I recognize them. That caught my attention, I suppose, as well as the fact that their youngest daughter looked just a year or two older than my young child Caitlin.

As they leave, the man introduces himself, his wife and his two daughters to me. Then, he looks me in the eye and says quite sincerely, “It's time we started going to church. We'll see you next week.”

I said something like, “That will be great.”

what I really wanted to say was, “Yeah right.” It had not taken me too Easter services to hear the promises to return, all the while knowing that the next Sunday would arrive as the one of the poorest attended Sundays of the year.

but, lo and behold, a week later he and his family were there.

And the week after that, they were there.

And I suspect that over the next four years or so that I served that congregation that family was in worship as many weeks, if not more.

I wish I could say it was the sermon that Easter morning that inspired them to change their Sunday morning habits, but I suspect it was not.

Maybe it was hearing the story of Christ's resurrection and desiring to connect to the power of the living Christ.

I never did find out the rest of the story.

I did ask him a few times. In fact, this summer when I saw him and I asked him again.

He always has the same smile and the same answer, “it was time.”

It was time for the desire for something more to meet the power of Christ to change lives.

Amen.

"A Changed Life" John 12: 20-26; Acts 9: 36-43

For the next few weeks, I am picking up some sermon ideas that I had while on Clergy Renewal.  This sermon grew out of reading Unbroken, the story of Lt. Louis Zamperini, who floated in the Pacific after his plane crash-landed and then was a prisoner in Japanese prison camps during WWII.  After surviving both brutal experiences, he is married and working, but his life is in shambles.  At that point, he wanders in to hear a Billy Graham sermon during a crusade, and his life was changed in that moment.

I am fascinated with the idea that in an instant a life is suddenly changed by an encounter with the Good news.  I also struggle with how to keep that change alive on a continual basis.  in other words, what does it mean to be changed by discovering Christ and what does that look like or how is it maintained in our lives?

I would be curious if any of you have stories of how your life has been changed by coming to know Jesus Christ.  Or how that stays alive in your lives.

the John passage invites us to wonder about the Greeks and what happened to them.  It also has Andrew in the story, and Andrew's life was certainly changed in an instant when he meet Christ (see earlier in the John).

I was struck in the Acts passage about how those who saw and heard about the miracle believed.  How long did they believe?  Can you believe without seeing the miracle?

Peace,

Richard

Reflections on "Eight Days In" Luke 2: 21-40

Another sermon that had a good insight, but maybe could have been developed better.  I also free-lanced quite a bit, so these notes are not as close to what was preached as is often the case.

This sermon represents a new thought on my part.  A thought not supported by the scholars I read on this passage, I might add.  As I read the text, I had this desire to shout, "No," to Jesus' parents as they immediately submitted him to the status quo and its rules and regulations.  Not sure if that response was led by the Holy Spirit, something going on in me, or if it true to the text.  Once it was in my mind, however, I could not get away from it.

“Eight Day's In” FPC, Troy, OH; January 1, 2012; Luke 2: 21-40; Galatians 4: 4-7

Move 1: Eight days ago, on Christmas Eve, we told the story of Christ being born.

a. As we tell the story with glorious music and candles to light the night, we can easily forget how radically God departed from the status quo in the coming of Christ.

1. Consider how the religious and secular powers in that time responded to what God was doing.
2. Before Jesus' birth, the priest Zechariah, part of the religious hierarchy, is told that his wife is going to bear a son named John who would prepare the way for the coming Messiah, Zechariah refuses to believe. As you may recall, Zechariah is struck mute, unable to speak, throughout his wife's pregnancy.
3. A priest, one of the officials who probably had preached the coming of the Messiah, cannot believe what God is doing.
4. King Herod, the secular power, is so threatened by this outsider that he decrees the death of all the new born baby boys.
5. The secular ruler may not understand what God is doing, but he wants nothing to do with anything the departs from the status quo that keeps the kin in power.
6. . Why are we surprised at these examples of the institutional authority figures not welcoming the Christ=-child into the world?
   b. Look at how Jesus comes into the world.
   1. his parents had so much stature in the status quo, they could not even sequester a room to spend the night or to have the baby.
   2. Born to a young woman, who had no standing and no power in the religious or secular circles.
   3. First people to admire the baby are shepherds, who apparently came straight from their fields.
   4. if Jesus had been the darling of the religious community or the secular authorities, you can bet he would have made a better entrance and bigger splash.

c. So we recognize in the circumstances of Jesus' birth, that his coming is unexpected and surprising. A sign that things are going to be different.

Move 2: But then, eight days later, Jesus' parents start following the rules.

a. Jesus is circumcised, just like the he is supposed to be.

1. He is named, just like he is supposed to be.
2. He is presented for baptism, just like he is supposed to be Just like it's supposed to happen.

1. Mary and Joseph present their child, just like they are supposed to do.

4. They make a sacrifice, just like they are supposed to do.

5. Eight days into his life, this unexpected, surprising child is following all the rules and being tied into the status quo.

b. We can make the point, as scholars have through the years that these acts show the Christ comes to fulfill the law.

1. Later, when he will speak out against the law, they can look back and note that he really actually wanted to make the changes from within the religious structure.

2. Or, one day people can argue that the tension Jesus will create between the old and the new is about the poor interpretation of the law, not the law itself.

100. And if we look closely, we can see glimpses of Christ's subversive nature in this story.
     
     
     1. Old man and old widowed woman.

2.  marginalized.

3. Simeon's announcement that Jesus will be opposed .

But, it still hits me that eight days in, Jesus has already been co-opted by the religious status quo.

Move 3: too easy to tame Christ.

a. I suspect most of us tend to like things neat and orderly (we are Presbyterian, after all).

1. We sort of like the rules, especially if we are the ones who make and enforce them.

2. Resist the temptation to figure out how Jesus fulfills our expectation, and work on seeing how Jesus calls us to redefine our expectations.

3. Instead of quickly noting how Jesus confirms our beliefs, look for our Jesus might critique our beliefs and call us to new understandings.

4.  Instead of folding Jesus into the status quo, discover the new places to where Jesus calls us.

b. New Year's resolutions.

1. Commitment to make us better.

2.  I bet many of our resolutions help us fit into the status qou better.

3.  One wish for New Year's resolution – include something unexpected and surprising.

4.  something that pushes us outside the parameters we set and leads us closer to the radical nature of Christ's birth.

Conclusion: Family tradition that began when my mother and father spend new Year's eve with the grandchildren.
1. Through the years, that has happened quite often.
2. My mom had the grand kids write up their New Year's resolutions, and then shortly into the New Year, the grand kids receive a nice, type-written, set of their New year's resolutions from their grandmother.
3. There is a lot to like about that tradition.
4. In years when the kids dare not with my parents, they still her their resolutions, and she types them up

This year maybe free hand drawing. Or a picture out of crayons.

A resolution for 2012 that pushes us to follow baby Jesus, instead of making him part of our status quo.