First Sunday of Advent at First Christian Church

Children talk about the meaning of the Chrismons, Christian symbols

Children show the Chrismons they have made

Everyone comes forward to put a Chrismon on the tree

Children decorate the tree with the remaining Chrismons

What Are We Expecting from God?

John Turner's sermon from the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2010

Lamentations 3:21-33

These are dark times. They must be. Everyone keeps saying so. But then, there have been many such times in history, and some much worse. Nevertheless, I understand the tendency to bemoan the present times. Judy recently called to my attention an article that claimed the present generation is not interested in anything the church has been doing in the past: Sunday school, worship services, fellowship activities, mission projects, and the like. They are so pressured and busy that they don’t have time for all that. They are only interested in experiences and relationships, especially the kinds of things that can be conveyed on Face Book, Twitter, cell phone texting, and the like. Any content of the faith must be reduced to sound bites. And those sound bites need to be completely non-authoritarian, non-judgmental, non-demanding, never claiming that there is such a thing as absolute truth or absolute morality. How does one convey the content of our faith in a cultural setting like that? Yes, I can get down about that.

Okay, so Jesus and the apostles did not have it easy either. Their culture was not exactly predisposed to accept that there was only one God, one Lord, one Spirit, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one church. But God gave the handful of the first Christians powerful ways to capture people’s attention, to open people’s minds, and to demonstrate alternative ways of living. The first century church grew in leaps and bounds by counter-programing in a dark, hostile environment. God did it. God can do it again.

I am not here to preach a reactionary sermon about how awful our culture is. I am not here to curse the darkness. In the spirit of the Advent season, I am here to light a metaphorical candle.

The time period surrounding Jesus’ birth was a very dark time in the history of Israel. Rome had ruled for nearly sixty years. By the time of Jesus’ birth, Herod the Great, half Idumean (translate hated Edomite), had been for over thirty years the tyrannical, cruel, insanely paranoid, but still shrewd and effective, puppet king, appointed by Rome to govern unruly Israel. To find a time period much darker than that, more lacking in hope, we might go back more than six, nearly seven, centuries to the time when the Babylonians crushed Jerusalem, destroyed its temple, and either killed or carried off into exile the citizens who failed to escape.

It was in that previous dark period that the book of Lamentations was written. The bulk of the book is indeed filled with bitter lament, but right at the structural center of this book of gloom, are these words of hope:

Lamentations 3:21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him (waiting, even waiting quietly does not mean being passive; it means not turning away from the Lord and the Lord’s ways; it means not panicking and grasping after straws). 26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. 27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. 28 Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; 29 let him put his mouth in the dust—there may yet be hope; 30 let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. 31 For the Lord will not cast off forever, 32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; 33 for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.

The Lamentations passage draws its picture of God from the past, from a passage originating shortly after the exodus nearly a millennium before the exile. This too was a dark time. God through Moses had led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to the foot of Mount Sinai. God had called Israel to be a royal priesthood and a holy nation, meaning that they were to represent God’s character to the nations. In exchange, the Israelites had promised to obey God’s covenant laws, including the Ten Commandments. No sooner had Moses gone up the mountain to spend forty days receiving the stone tablets and other laws from god, than Israel at the foot of the mountain made and worshiped a golden calf, with fertility cult practices included. God and Moses were both very angry with the Israelites, but God led Moses to intercede for them, and Moses agreed to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land if God would promise to go with them. Moses also asked God to show him his glory. God agreed to reveal as much of his glory as Moses could stand.

The Exodus passage describes the qualities that God revealed when he hid Moses in the cleft of a rock on Mount Sinai, covered him there with his hand because Moses could not have stood a face-to-face viewing of God’s holiness, and the Lord passed before Moses, proclaiming the meaning of his name, the heart of his identity: “Yahweh, Yahweh (which translates, The Lord, the Lord, or I Am That I Am, I Am That I Am,), a God merciful and gracious (or compassionate), slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness….” Do you hear these words from Exodus echoing in Lamentations? Steadfast love, mercy, faithfulness, compassion… this is who God is; this is what God's name, the Lord, Yahweh, is to convey to us. God may be absolutely, perfectly holy, unable to put up with wrong, and absolutely Sovereign, sufficiently powerful to do whatever he wants, but he will always exercise his holy, sovereign freedom in consistency with his steadfast love, faithfulness, mercy, grace, and compassion.

In the name and character of this God is hope even for the darkest time. Lamentations, written in bitterly dark times, amongst the slain corpses of Jerusalem and the ruins of its temple, finds one brightly shining ray of hope. The one hope, even in dark times, is that the character of God has not changed, that the light of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, mercy, grace, and compassion, is steady, reliable, and available. Please hear: this is the one hope. There is no other.

If we are to avail ourselves of the one hope, then we must set our hearts and minds on that hope and no other. What must we do to claim this one hope? We must make sure that our expectations in life, the solutions we pursue in life, are God-given, God-shaped, and God-sized.

The Hope That Is God-Given The hope of which I speak is a firm expectation based on revealed truth that has been proven by the tests of many centuries. The revealed truth in which we hope runs from Genesis through Revelation and is centered in Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, Immanuel, God with us in human flesh.

The name Jesus, Joshua, Yeshua, Yehoshua, However you want to say it, says this, “The Lord saves,” or, “The Lord delivers.” Jesus is the one who puts God’s holiness, steadfast love, faithfulness, grace, mercy, and compassion most tangibly before us. This God appears throughout the Bible, but when we want to bring our vision of God into the sharpest possible focus, we look to Jesus. Specifically, we look toward what Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were divinely inspired to tell us about Jesus.

Mark, writing first, tells us that Jesus is the Royal Son of God who came to demonstrate God’s reigning love and power, that he is the Suffering Servant who came to give his life as a ransom for our sins, and that he is the Divine Son of Man who will prevail in the end.

Matthew adds that Jesus is the fulfillment of the entirety of the Old Testament and that he is the ultimate teacher who clarifies for us God’s perfect will for all his children, Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus instructs, purifies, and empowers his followers so that they can carry his message to the whole world, baptizing new believers into Jesus and teaching them to obey his commandments.

Luke adds that Jesus is a new Adam founding a new creation, lifting up the lowly and bringing down those who think they are really something, transforming and empowering his followers with the Holy Spirit so that they can live in ways that overturn how the world runs and instead make it run by God’s redeeming love.

John adds that Jesus is the Divine Word made flesh, tabernacling amongst us, at last going away so that he can send his Spirit to live in us, enabling us to do the kinds of things he did, and greater things yet. John especially wants us to understand that Jesus is fully human, subject to all the limitations of a human body (exhaustion, hunger, thirst, tears, pain, getting dirty), willing to assume the humble duties of practically caring for the physical needs of his fellow human beings, and that, at the same time, Jesus is fully divine, able to convey to all who believe in him the power to become freed, delivered, reborn children of God.

Put the four Gospels together and you get a fully orbed picture of the Creator of the universe and of his saving love. In Jesus, God has fully revealed himself. Our hope is in the God so revealed. Our hope is God-given.

The Hope That Is God-Shaped If God is fully holy and fully loving, then he must be moving his creation toward a perfection that is characterized by God’s kind of love, a self-giving, redeeming, reconciling love, a love focused on new life. God wants to reshape us in his image. If we want to find hope in a dark world, then we must be opening ourselves as fully as possible to God’s reshaping work in our lives. We must let his reshaping work set our goals in life and direct our energies and resources in life. Yes, we will always in this life fall short, but what counts is the divine source, direction, and motivation of our progress, bringing us degree by degree along to the next stage in our development. A hope that is not God-shaped is fool’s gold. It will disappoint us in the end. If our hope is focused on money, fame, power, sex or romance, and the like, we will end up disappointed, ultimately miserable. But if our goal is to love more and more in accord with the truth of Jesus, and we are letting the Holy Spirit moves us in that direction, our hope will not disappoint us. A God-shaped hope may go through some dark valleys, but never disappoints in the end.

The Hope That Is God-Sized There is a bit of a mystery in how our hope can be God-sized. If our hopes are grandiose, God may force us to refocus on smaller size hopes until we master those. If our hopes are so small as not to match God’s purposes for our lives, then God may force us far beyond our comfort zones into bigger fields of endeavor. How does one know what size our hopes should be in order to be God-sized? The key is that if our hope is focused on what we can do by our own strength and resources, then our hope is the wrong size, either too big or too small. God-sized hopes do not leave us in control, but call us beyond ourselves to be agents of God. In the end, what we have to say is that a God-sized hope, whether big or little, is one that only God can do. That is the kind of hope that God wants to accomplish through us. If we don’t open ourselves to something that only God can do, we may never see beyond the darkness.

What are we expecting from God? Is it God-given, revealed in the Bible and especially through Jesus Christ? Is it God-shaped, aimed at God’s purposes for his creation and for our lives? Is it God-sized, something that only God can do? If so, we will not be disappointed in the end.

The Table of the Cross-Shaped Life

John Turner's sermon from Thanksgiving Sunday, November 21, 2010

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Old Corinth had been destroyed, but because Rome needed a city in this strategic transportation and commerce hub, they had sent freed slaves to found a new city. There were opportunities for rapid advancement, and several generations into the development of the new city, self-made stature was the great emphasis of Corinthian culture. Social life was designed to display economic and social advancement. Prosperous homes typically had dining rooms that could serve 9 to 12 people and a courtyard that could handle another 30 to 60. For large banquets, those of highest status were invited to the dining room. Others had to make do in the courtyard. The quality and quantity of food and wine was much greater in the dining room than in the courtyard. Some gorged and got drunk in the dining room while others observing from the courtyard had less or even nothing. There are a number of complaints about this practice in the Greco-Roman literature of the time.

The practices and the attitudes of the culture crept over into the church. Corinthian house church worship meetings tended to resemble secular banquets, complete with status distinctions and unequal provisioning of the guests; this was true even of the Lord’s Supper. Paul saw that this was completely contrary to Jesus’ purposes for his world, for his church, and for this table.

The Bible does not say how often the early church celebrated the Lord’s Supper. Where fellowship meals were a daily affair, as may have been the case in Jerusalem, some scholars believe that they opened each meal with the bread representing Jesus’ body and closed it with the cup representing his blood. Probably in Corinth and most mission churches, the Lord’s Supper was observe d at least on the evening of the first day of each week. However often it was celebrated, and by whatever means, Paul wanted to talk about the right attitude in which to celebrate it.

1. Paul understood that this meal is a Thanksgiving meal, a table of gratitude for the blessings that are ours in Christ. Our high church Christian friends have long called this meal the eucharist, which is simply a form of the Greek word eucharistia meaning thanksgiving. Right at the center of that word is the Greek word charis, meaning grace or unearned gift. This is the table where we receive and make grateful response to the unearned gift that is ours through Jesus Christ, the gift of his incarnation, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection, his ascension, his coming again, and his eternal new creation; AND the gift to us of forgiveness, of being clothed in his righteousness, of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, of being called and gifted as children and servants of God, of being assured that we are co-heirs with Christ of the new heaven and new earth. We have abundant reasons to give thanks at this table.

2. Paul asserted that this is a meal of proclamation. He said that, whenever we come to this table, we are proclaiming a message about the significance of Jesus’ death, and, by implication, the subsequent resurrection, ascension, and coming again. That fits with Paul’s overall message in the entire First Letter to the Corinthians where, focusing on Christ’s self-giving love on the cross, Paul then draws out theological, moral, spiritual, social, and missional implications for the church. Because our salvation is rooted in an incredible act of costly grace displayed by God the Father through God the Son, every part of our lives is to show our deep appreciation of this fact. On the basis of his message of the cross, Paul says to us, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” In other words, let everything in your life be a proclamation of the amazing grace we know through Jesus Christ. That proclamation is in focus at this table.

3. At the heart of Paul’s thinking was that the meal offered at this table defines a covenant community of those whose lives have been and continue to be primarily shaped by the gracious, saving, self-giving love of Jesus Christ. When we were baptized, we were symbolically and sacramentally dying with Christ to the power of sin to dominate our lives and coming alive with Christ to the power of the Holy Spirit to renew our lives in the image of God. That was our start on the Christian life, but that business of dying to sin and coming alive to God needs regular maintenance. Here at the table we are invited to check up on whether we are letting any wrong attitudes and practices, things not consistent with our baptism into Christ, creep into our hearts and minds. If we find things that don’t fit with being shaped by the cross of Christ, we repent, we get our signals straight and head in a new and better direction. We are in covenant with all who have been baptized into Christ, with all who share this supper with us, a covenant that together we are on a journey of renewal in self-giving love through our relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Since this table defines a covenant community, we need to recognize that our intentionally choosing to treat each other as beloved fellow pilgrims toward the cross-shaped, Christ-like life is a key test of whether we are ourselves on the path of renewal for which this table provides the spiritual food.

4. In writing to the Corinthian Christians, Paul was teaching them that status distinctions were to be left at the foot of the cross, that each believer’s significance in the church was to be measured by their moving toward Christ-like character and by their mutual loving service to one another. Nowhere should this be more evident than in their covenant meal which proclaimed the self-giving love of Jesus Christ on the cross as the foundation of their community life.

Paul’s message is not about the obligation of the prosperous to be tolerant and generous to the poor. The message is that the actions of the church should indicate that all believers were together on an adventure in cross-shaped living, that they were to help one another on that journey. The message is about mutuality, learning from one another, helping one another. Paul himself knew that he had a ways to go on his own journey. Paul later wrote to the Philippians about his goal of becoming like Jesus in his self-giving, loving death, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” And he thanked the Philippians for the ways they helped him on his journey and in his calling. We are a covenant community of people on the journey toward the cross-shaped life. Not one of us is yet perfected. Every one of us is in need of the help of our faithful friends. We must learn to treat one another as beloved fellow pilgrims and covenant partners. We help one another with the understanding that one day, indeed at any moment, any help we offer will be returned many times over.

But the Corinthian Christians were unthinkingly carrying worldly status into their Christian gatherings. Paul said, “When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.” Why not? They had the right elements. They said the right words. It was not the Lord’s Supper because it was not advancing the cause for which the Lord died. It was not the Lord’s Supper; it was a meal upholding the cultural traditions and social rankings within their community rather than supporting the redeeming mission of their Lord.

5. Paul asserted that it is dangerous to partake of this meal without submitting to its life-changing force. Paul tells the Corinthians, “When you come together, it is not for the better but for the worse.” And again, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.” That is pretty strong language. How are we to understand it?

Paul’s warning does not mean that you have to hold to the right sacramental theory, whether transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or real presence. Paul taught that we really are participating in Christ’s body and blood through our participation in this meal, but there is no evidence that he insisted on any one theory about how that worked.

Paul’s warning does not mean that, if you are not sufficiently gloomy about the suffering Jesus did for you, if you are not acting like you are mourning at Jesus’ funeral, you will be punished. The Paul who said, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, Rejoice!” would hardly commend gloominess!

Paul’s warning does not mean that, if you fail to make yourself worthy before coming to the table, then you may be punished for your presumption. Paul did not believe that even one of us is worthy or that we can make ourselves so. Paul did not say, “You have to be worthy to take the Supper.” Paul did say, in effect, “You have to receive it in a worthy manner.” That is very different. Receiving it in a worthy manner is precisely receiving it with full awareness that we are not worthy, that it is indeed amazing grace at the heart of what is represented at this table.

Paul’s warning did not say that everyone who receives it unworthily will become ill and die. He did not say that those who receive it worthily will never become ill or die. Paul himself had some persistent affliction which was not removed through his earnest prayers, and he certainly expected that, if Jesus did not return sooner, he would one day die.

Paul’s warning does, however, mean that there is a built-in divine judgment when we fail to receive the benefits God offers us, and that sometimes we will experience, in the area of our physical health, the consequences of our failure to line our lives up with Jesus. If we think that our lives are all about us, our desires, our feelings, our agendas, then we will suffer the consequences of our improper, out-of-balance living, sometimes in our health. If we are hypocrites when we come to this table, not coming for the right reasons of deepening our cross-shaped, Christ-like living, then our coming will place an extra burden on our lives; double-mindedness is a stress factor that ultimately wears us down. If we will not allow Jesus to deepen our spiritual roots, then our lives will not unfold as they were designed to unfold. It is only by following Jesus that we will eventually become all that we were created to be. Basically, I believe that Paul meant, “If your life is not being a shaped by the self-giving love of the cross, then you are missing the vital benefit of this meal. You will miss the transforming, vitalizing power of the gospel. Your life will be out of balance, and you will suffer in every area of your life. In that case, this meal will be of no benefit to you and may actually deepen your problems, including physical problems.”

The good news—and this is very important--is that every one of us can partake worthily:

1. coming with thanksgiving for the grace we know through our Lord Jesus Christ

2. proclaiming the death, resurrection and ultimate victory of Jesus Christ and seeking to live the cross-shaped life,

3. knowing that we are part of a covenant community of pilgrims journeying together toward our Christ-like destiny,

4. understanding that, with the support of our faithful friends, we can gradually learn to recognize and repent of any values and practices that are not compatible with Jesus’ saving, transforming purposes,

5. approaching this table with hearts sincerely and humbly open to what Christ would do this day to move us forward on our journey.

This church is a fellowship of this table, a covenant community of faith in Jesus Christ, being transformed from one degree of glory to another into his likeness. If that sounds like a good deal to you, receive it, share it, show it.

The Holy Spirit Lives at FCC Berryvlle

by Ken Hale

Have you ever thought how great it would be to have a vibrant youth group at our church?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have our church building look as active as a beehive on Wednesday nights?

Have you ever marveled at the work that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can do when presented by two dynamic youth leaders?

If you said yes to any of the above questions you need to step inside our church building on Wednesday nights and see for yourself what the Holy Spirit can do.

We have a vibrant youth group (with many adults attending).

We have a church building that is alive and inviting.

We have two dynamic leaders. Scott and Amanda Frame present the Gospel each week and make it come to life for those in attendance.

We started with four or five youth some two years ago and now have a regular Wednesday night attendance of 60+ persons. It is awesome to see the spiritual growth that the youth exhibit. It is awesome to see how hungry everyone is for the presence of the Holy Spirit in the worship. Lives are being saved for the kingdom of Jesus Christ each week. Lives are being changed forever by the biblical truths being taught.

If you too are anxious for another opportunity to worship through the week come see what’s happening on Wednesday nights at First Christian Church Berryville.

Going Forward with Faith & Love

The Apostle James by Rembrandt

In Sunday School Loretta Tanner led us through a discussion about the Apostle James’ letter that encourages people to behave in loving and temperate ways toward one another. In it, James also talks about the importance of working in productively Christian ways.


Apparently, James’ letters have caused some controversy. Martin Luther, a hero of the Reformation, referred to it as a “straw epistle’ because it did not emphasize the primacy of faith over work. In some respects, Luther may have been right: work is only work unless it is imbued with faith and performed for good reasons.


That was our consensus at Sunday School. Faith is sometimes hard but always primary, and work is just work unless it is done because of our faith in God, and in fulfillment of the grand command to love Him, and others.


James’ letter seems terrifically timely just now. We’ve completed a congregational meeting agreeing to the installation of a new Church Board, recruited Ministry Team Leaders, and will create a 2011 budget that is a practical expression of our faith in the future. These are the actions of people of faith and works. However difficult the circumstances of the world surrounding First Christian Church may be, that future seems bright to us, and we can feel confident that people will ‘know we are Christians by our love.”


Thus, this is a good time to thank our Board of Directors, our Elders and Deacons, our Ministry Team Leaders, and each and all of our Members for your faithfulness and hard work in making our church a Community of Hope. Thank you for your faithfulness, and for your very hard work.

Sermon Nov.14, 2010

BUT GOD MEANT IT FOR GOOD
Sermon by Judy Turner
Genesis 50:19-21

The Bible tells the stories of many people, and how God was in their lives, through good and terrible circumstances, so we can know how God will be for us, as we go through all the days of our lives. Let’s consider this morning one of the most intriguing characters of the Bible. I’ll start describing him, and you see when you recognize who I’m talking about. He started life with a lot going for him, the favorite son of a doting father. He knew he was destined to be a leader, and was perceived by those around him as an arrogant braggart. He experienced a great reversal early in his life, at the age of 17, an unspeakable tragedy. He was captured by his jealous brothers, thrown into a pit, and sold to some slave traders passing by. And it seemed to go from bad to worse. He was taken to Egypt, and bought by an Egyptian officer, but was falsely accused of sexual misconduct and ended up in jail. You probably know by now that I’m talking about Joseph, whose amazing story is told in Genesis chapters 37- 50. I read the story again in preparing for this sermon, and was still utterly taken with it, with tears in my eyes at the most tender, touching moments of the story. Read the details. You will be blessed.

But we’ll give a quick summary this morning. A line repeated throughout the hard years of Joseph’s life in slavery and prison was, “The Lord was with Joseph.” And his Egyptian master and the warden of the prison saw Joseph’s abilities and his integrity. And he was given responsibility. In prison, he was put in charge of the other prisoners. God gave Joseph the ability to interpret dreams, and he told two of the prisoners what their dreams meant. His interpretation proved to be right, and later, when the Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt had a dream, Joseph was brought from prison to interpret the meaning. Joseph said, “Pharaoh, this is what the dream means. There will be 7 years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt, then the land will be ravaged by 7 years of famine. And this is what you should do. You should put a wise and discerning man in charge of storing grain during the good years, so there will be plenty to keep the people alive when the famine comes.” Pharoah says, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom the spirit of God dwells?” And Pharoah made Joseph second in command in all the land, and put him in charge of this system of storing and then distributing the grain. Talk about a reversal! But still there had to be an empty, aching place in Joseph’s heart. He was separated from his family, not knowing even if his beloved father Jacob was still alive.

The seven good years came, then the bad years. The story then switches back to the land of Canaan, with Jacob and his family. Those years of famine affected a much wider geographic area than just Egypt, and people in other countries were going to Egypt to buy food. Things were getting desperate for Jacob’s family, so he sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain, and who did they encounter? None other than their brother, Joseph, who years earlier they had sold into slavery. Joseph immediately recognized his brothers, but they didn’t recognize him. He decided to test whether they had changed through the years, a test that involved bringing their little brother Benjamin to Egypt. When the brothers demonstrated that they would lay down their lives for their little brother rather than abandon him or sell him out, as they had Joseph, Joseph was convinced of their change of heart. In one of the most touching scenes in all human history, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and then arranges for his father and the whole extended family to move to Egypt so they can live. There is another very moving scene when Joseph is reunited with his father, Jacob. So the family prospers in Egypt, and Jacob dies there. Then the brothers become afraid again. Has Joseph only been kind to them as long as the old man was alive, and now he would get revenge for the evil they had done to him years ago?

Our text this morning is what Joseph says in response to their fear: (Genesis 50:19-21
19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

This is certainly the story of an amazing man named Joseph, but it is more the story of an amazing God. As John Claypool says in God The Ingennious Alchemist, God can take the bad choices made in human freedom and somehow transmute them into experiences of growth and blessing. The book of Genesis begins with God, the being of ultimate goodness, love, and joy creating the world and everything that lives to share the sheer abundance of that goodness with those He created. But the Creator wanted children who could choose to love Him back and walk in His ways, rather than puppets. So he put in His human creatures the freedom to choose. Claypool says, “It is ultimate absurdity, but, tragically, this is the response that the earliest humans made to God’s primal generosity. They proceeded to unmake creation. God started with nothing and moved through chaos to form and beauty, but ungrateful creatures reversed that process and turned form and beauty back into chaos, toward the nothingness from which it all came.” This is how the book of Genesis begins, with creation, and then sin entering the world. But the book of Genesis ends with the story of Joseph. And Joseph saying to his brothers, “You chose evil, but God meant it for good. And all this has resulted in fulfilling God’s purpose of saving many lives.” So the book of Genesis ends with a powerful story of redemption, a marker along the way to what God was ultimately going to do in Jesus.

What an amazing God! Without robbing human beings of freedom, God has within God’s being the ability to take bad things or events and resourcefully bring good out of them. So what does this mean for us? It means first of all, that there is nothing bad that we have done and nothing bad that has been done to us that is beyond the power of God to redeem and somehow bring good. Of course, to personally experience that good, we need to repent of the evil we have done and forgive the evil done to us. Joseph had to repent of being the spoiled, arrogant child, and be willing to grow and change through the hard experiences. God was with him through it all, but Joseph had to choose each day in that prison to walk with God. His brothers had to repent of their wrong response to their father’s favoritism, and their brother’s annoying self-centeredness (both of which were wrong, but so was their response of resentment, and letting that resentment grow into taking action to destroy the favored one and then lie to their father about it.) Joseph’s brother’s had to repent of their wrong response to the evil done to them, and instead grow into people of Godly character who could love their father, even with his imperfections, and lay down their lives for their favored younger brother Benjamin. And Joseph had to choose to forgive, to let go of any desire to retaliate or get vengeance or harm the brothers who had harmed him. I think his reaction in first encountering them again after all those years said that he had forgiven them in his heart. He didn’t want to hurt them. That is forgiveness, to drop the charge we have against someone. We can always forgive, even if the other person has not changed. But, if they had changed, Joseph knew he could move beyond forgiveness to reconciliation, reestablishing relationship. He had already forgiven. He wished them no harm, only good. But he set up the tests to know if they had changed. And, by the grace of God, he saw they had changed. And God redeemed and healed the broken relationships in this family, making them better and stronger than ever before.

What we must do if we want to see how our amazing God can redeem absolutely anything? At any point in time, no matter how bleak things seem is never lose hope in God, never give in to despair. This must have been a choice Joseph made every day, even when there was nothing visible, nothing he could see on the horizon to give him hope. Claypool quotes a rabbi who says, "Despair is presumptuous. It is saying something about the future that we have no right to say. If God can make the things that are out of the things that are not, and can make dead things come to life again, who are we to set limits on what that kind of power might yet do with what we have done?" The scriptures invite us to get to know this Holy One who in the worst of times can do the best of things.

Gert Behanna lived a life of deepening despair. Although she was the daughter of a successful, wealthy man, and had lots of money, she had nothing to guide her life. She married three times, only to have each marriage end up in divorce. She had two sons, whom she had no idea how to handle and who wound up causing her all sorts of problems. In the midst of all this pain, she became increasingly dependent on alcohol until, finally, her life became so unworkable that she said, “I cannot stand it any longer.” One night she took a massive overdose of sleeping pills. Imagine her dismay when, eight hours later, she woke up in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital and had to face that fact that she was such an inept failure that she could not even succeed in ending her life. She lay alone in the darkness of the night and the dark despair of her soul. She looked up at the ceiling and stammered out, “God, I don’t even know whether you exist. I have never had anything to do with you, but if you do exist, and if you can help me, please, please come. I am absolutely at the end of my rope.” A warm light began to move toward her, enveloping her in a sense of love that she had never experienced before from anyone. She was given a sense that her life somehow mattered to the Source behind all reality and that there was a meaningful future for her in spite of her past. This healing embrace lasted for several minutes and, when the intensity began to subside, even though it was by then the middle of the night, she picked up her phone and called her business manager and said breathlessly, “Bring me a copy of the Holy Bible as quickly as you can!” Her manager knew her quite well and could not contain his shock. He blurted out, “My God, Gert, what has happened to you?” To which she replied, “My God has happened to me.”

At any point in our lives, especially when we come to the end of ourselves, our God can happen to us. And we discover a goodness much bigger than all the badness in this complicated world. And knowing this God and walking with Him day by day, we move from a life of fear and despair to a life of courage and hope.
May this amazing God who can redeem absolutely anything happen to us today!

His House Children, Nov. 2010

Children acting out the story of David showing kindness to Mephibosheth during the morning worship service

Helping with worship by offering a drama

Rehearsing a song for the Christmas Cantata

Singing with the angels and celebrating the Lord's birth!

Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

Sermon from November 7, 2010

Luke 10:25-37; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18, 33-36

The Bible has a great deal to say about how we are to extend godliness to the social order by living out our human calling to be the image of God, representing God’s nature and purposes to the world. For instance, the central theme of the book of Leviticus is how God’s people are to live a holy life. The structural center of Leviticus’ message is in Chapter 19. The theme statement is expressed in 19:2, “Speak to all the congregation of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’” Peter applies this theme to the church in 1 Peter 1:14-16, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, ¹⁵but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, ¹⁶since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

A surprising number of the laws in Leviticus 19 are about relating helpfully and not harmfully to the poor, the weak, the day laborer, the deaf, the blind, the elderly, the foreign sojourner, the person accused of a crime, the neighbor who sins (possibly against you), and the neighbor with whom you do business.

The central teaching of Leviticus 19 is verse 18, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” If you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer turns out to be broader than “the sons of your own people.” Verses 33-34 say, "When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. ³⁴ You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

In Luke 10:25-37, a religious legal expert asks Jesus what is necessary to inherit eternal life. Jesus invites the man to summarize what the law says. The man combines Deuteronomy 6:5 which requires total love for God with Leviticus 19:18 which requires loving our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus affirms the answer. The expert, wanting to limit the potewntial neighbors he was thereby obligated to love, asks for a definition of neighbor. Jesus offers a parable about two self-concerned religious experts who pass without helping a man who had been beaten and left for dead along the roadside. In contrast, a Samaritan, stereotyped by the experts as spiritually and morally impure, goes to extraordinary lengths at his own risk and expense to help the man. On the neighbor test, the religious experts failed the neighbor test by passing the beaten man, while the man from impure Samaria passed the neighbor test by helping the beaten man. The expert had asked Jesus whom he was obligated to help. Jesus essentially told him that he would be better off asking whom he had the opportunity to help.

In Mark 12:28-34,when a religious expert asks Jesus to summarize the law, he gives the same answer that the earlier expert had given him, Deuteronomy 6:5 plus Leviticus 19:18 calling for our loving God and neighbor. When this second expert agrees emphatically, Jesus tells him that he is not far from the kingdom of God. Jesus specifically affirmed and taught that these verses are central for the lives of his followers.

There is another occasion when Jesus took the matter of our obligation to love others even further than with the parable of the Samaritan. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:43-48, he challenged us to include our enemies on the list of those we hav the opportunity to love: ⁴³“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

“You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” is just a restatement of the Leviticus theme, “You must be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Jesus said that we may have heard, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” From where might we have heard that we should hate our enemy? Not from Leviticus 19. Indeed, the command in Leviticus to love our neighbor is given in the context of not taking vengeance or bearing a grudge against someone who has done us wrong. In essence, it is a command to love our neighbor who has just acted as our enemy. The passage says that we are to confront our neighbor about his or her sin, but nonetheless to love our neighbor. Love here does not mean to feel all warm and fuzzy about our neighbor, but to seek the best for our neighbor just as we seek for ourselves.

So where might we have heard the message to hate our enemy? From people who do not understand the true nature of the holiness of God. Some people think that being holy means being very angry against all sinners, so angry that we want to punish them, to do harm against them. Leviticus says that this is not right. Jesus says that this is not right.

We need to work our way through this carefully. Scripture is clear that we are not to condone idolatry, adultery, or other sins. Paul says that the church is not to partner in its internal fellowship which exists to represent Christ with blatant, unrepentant sinners. But not partnering with them in our church’s mission is quite different from withdrawing from all contact or of becoming hostile toward blatant, unrepentant sinners. How might the blatant sinner come to see the amazing redeeming and transforming love of God if Christians do not have friendly, helpful contact with them?

Now I would not suggest that the new Christian recently rescued from alcoholism be assigned to bar ministry. Nor would I suggest that the church in its eagerness to reach sinners adopt manners that appear to take sin lightly; the apostles explicitly forbid that in our Scriptures.

Jewish people were forbidden to marry pagans because of the difference in moral and spiritual values. Christians are similarly instructed regarding not marrying unbelievers. Marrying is one thing. Treating people with fairness and helpfulness is another.

Who were the foreign sojourners in ancient Israel? Probably many of them were from the nations and tribes that Israel had to fight on the way into the Promised Land, that the judges had to fight in the days of the settlement of the promised Land, that their kings had to fight in the days of possessing the Promised Land, the nations and exiles that taunted the Israelites in the days of their exile. In short, they were long-time enemies. But Leviticus commands Israelites to remember that their ancestors were once slaves in a foreign land and to treat foreigners living among them with fairness and hospitable helpfulness.

Jesus similarly continually shocks people with his open dealings with Samaritans, such as the Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. Jesus did not condone sin, but he did not shun sinners. Who would have guessed that the Samaritan woman at the well would have moved more quickly into becoming an effective evangelist than Jesus’ own traveling companion disciples? Yet that is exactly what happened.

Somehow, we have to get it through our heads and into our hearts that our purpose in life is to represent the holy character of God, and that the holy character of God includes as a main feature steadfast, redeeming love even for foreign sojourners, hostile enemies, and blatant sinners.

I am not saying that we are to toss aside all discernment. I am not saying that we are to walk around with a “kick me” sign taped to our back. I am not saying that we become punching bags for abusers. I am not saying that we become foolish enablers of manipulative users.

I am saying that we are to represent the steadfast, redeeming love of God, that we are to support efforts that offer opportunities for people to salvage their broken lives and begin to live as children of God, that we are to offer such opportunities even to our enemies.

At the most basic level, this challenges us to strip all remnants of hate and fear speech from our conversation, all hateful and fearful actions from our lives. We do not have to agree with people in order to be kind and fair and helpful to them. We can understand that what certain people have done is not in accord with God’s standards without beginning to hate them. How many of us have said something about African Americans or Hispanics or Muslims or gay people that we would cringe in shame if we knew that Jesus overheard us? Guess what? Our actions have already been entered into our eternal records, and we had better repent of them, not just regret them, but also change the underlying thinking that led to them, and the sooner the better, so that Jesus can erase them from our book.

We live in a culture that is in serious trouble. Human brokenness is mounting. The social resources to cope with that brokenness are declining. The solutions that are being offered from our secular culture are about as effective as applying a band-aid to a cannon ball wound. Voices of fear, hatred, and resentment are spewing forth into our minds. They will only make matters worse. It is time to turn off the hate and turn on creative approaches.

I am convinced that real solutions must be spiritual, moral, and relational. They are the kinds of solutions that can be found only in living communities of faith, communities where believers are committed to living out the character of the God we know through Jesus Christ. We have lots of churches, but only a small minority of them are focused on their calling to put human flesh on the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ, offering personal, caring alternatives to the mammoth impersonal institutions of our day.

What we have done is that we have, for the sake of elusive material benefits, sold out to a large, impersonal culture that has no ability to deliver on its promises. We have become producers, consumers, and clients managed by big, impersonal institutions. Jesus during his earthly life did not try to control those kinds of institutions. He simply laid the foundation for building something new outside those big institutions, an alternative way of living in community that has real, spiritual, God-given values. That is essentially what his followers did in the first century Roman empire. That is what his followers did again with Celtic-style monasteries that spread out from Ireland from the 5^th through the 10^th centuries, creating centers of hospitality, scholarship, arts, and evangelism that may well have saved civilization. That is what the evangelical pietists did in places like Germany, the British Isles, and North America in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, creating faith-based missionary societies, Bible societies, hospitals, orphanages, schools, self-help groups, improving the status of women, equipping freed slaves, elevating the moral climate that was so damaging to women and children, and on and on.

In each of these movements, much of the strength of the movement rested in building voluntary, faith-centered, Bible-based, prayer-powered, spiritual communities and networks outside the dominant social institutions of their day, networks of relationships that changed the world of their day.

I suggest that it is high time for Christians to do it once more. You may ask, “How?” I do not know the details. The details will not emerge until we catch the vision and join ourselves in study, prayer, and mutual encouragement. But God is faithful. God has done it before when Christians have sought him. He can and will do it again if we will persistently seek him.

We cannot do it all at once. We must reach out to invite others to come alongside us, but together we can begin to reclaim our lives right here in this community of hope, faith, and love. This is where the real action is because God is here and ready to act as soon as we join him in our readiness. Let’s get ourselves spiritually prepared.