What's Your Why?

I'm starting over.

This past year, for many of us, would rather be forgotten.  It was a year of turmoil and upheaval, and I found myself getting further and further away from many of the healthy habits that I had formed.  I found myself getting into some very unhealthy habits and routines.  

It took me a while, but I eventually accepted that much of my personal life was beginning to spiral out of control.  That scared me, and at first I didn't know how to handle it, but instead of retreating further, I allowed something in myself to wake up, as if God was shaking me out of sleep but I had kept on hitting the snooze button and rolling over to go back to sleep.   

I began to get excited again, even though I didn't realize that was something that I had stopped doing.  I began to want more for myself again, even though I had been telling myself all along that I couldn't wait to: get back into the gym, get back to my studies, do this, do that.  

The fact was, I was entirely un-motivated to do any of those things.  

I just didn't want to.  Not really.  I thought I did, but I didn't have the energy to pursue any of those things.  And the things that I did have the energy, the drive, to pursue, were not the best for me.  

However, that all began to change recently.  

Now, there has been a period of guilt as I re-visit certain aspects of my life that I had walked away from, like this blog, for example.  It's been nearly 3 years since my last post!!!  I'm not saying that I'll become a super blogger overnight once again, but posting this is today is my way of rummaging through my psychiatric closet and picking out activities and disciplines that brought me joy, and trying them on again.  

One of those activities is an online exercise program that I once adhered to rather faithfully.  In it, the fitness instructor starts out with a simple question, which she then re-visits from time to time.  

"What's your why?"  

She says that the answer to that question might change, and that's okay.  Your 'why' for today doesn't have to be the same 'why' tomorrow.  

But it is important to have a 'why'.

Why am I doing this?  Why do I want to continue?  Why does it bring me joy?  Why is it important to me?

My why (for now) is to forgive myself for last year's shortfalls, and to find a new beginning.  Now I must say I feel very blessed, and very grateful, in that I have been able to do this without professional help, but I certainly was headed in that direction.  

So my why for writing this on a public website is that perhaps someone may read this one day who may need a little help forgiving themselves for choices that should never define them.  Perhaps someone will read this someday who just needs a little cheering on to make that healthy choice that they've been contemplating for a while, but hasn't found their 'why.'  

At the end of the day, I think I would tell that person: do it because you are worth it.  

In fact, I think I'll tell myself that.  

I am worth it.  

I'm worth being better tomorrow than I am today.  Even if it is only a very tiny amount better.  

Improve something in your life every day.  

"Your inmost being must be renewed, and you must put on the new man" -Ephesians 4:23-24

What is God?: a reflection for Trinity Sunday from 1 John

Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is the only Festival, or Feast Day, in the church year that doesn’t focus on an event in the life of Christ.  This special day for the Trinity was created by the Church as a direct response to the Arian heresy in the 4th Century.  Arius was a bishop who caused a great deal of trouble in the ancient Christian world by spreading the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but is not equal to God the Father.  Arius argued that Jesus is God’s offspring, so he is subordinate to God.  So there was this huge debate at the highest levels of the Church about the nature of the Trinity, which is referred to, but not explained in the Bible.

God is One and Three - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Each is equal to, yet separate from, the others.  What exactly does that mean?  We call it a holy mystery.  God in Three Persons.  Someday we can all ask Him, and He will explain it to us, but for now, it is beyond us.

So instead of putting you all to sleep each year with a lecture on what the Trinity is, I find it to be much more productive to talk about what the Trinity does.  To put it briefly, we could say that the Holy Spirit is the presence of God in all of us, calling us, renewing or regenerating us so that we are able to reach out to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, the mediator of the covenant (to be technical), between humanity and God the Father, who is the Creator and our Sovereign Lord.  But, as my own father pointed out to me several years ago, that makes God sound like a committee.  He’s really not Presbyterian!

So another point to consider is that if God is One in Three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that means He is in community with himself.  And, without trying to understand how that works, we need to look at it for what it means for us as His children, for those who, as the Book of Genesis states in the very beginning, were created “in the image of God.”

If you create something in your image, what would it look like?  What would its job be?  What would it say about you to others?  What aspects of you, of your character would you choose to reveal through your creation?

We can only really understand the nature of God by referring to our understanding of the world and of humanity.  Typically we look at the best aspects of human nature - love and compassion and things like that - and say, that’s what God like!  So our understanding of God is limited by our understanding of the world.

The Apostle John uses this to relate God’s nature to us, in words that are not complicated, and which evoke images and ideas that go far beyond even our need for explanation, because they are so basic to our understanding of the world.

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

Our world is a dark place.  John talks about those who walk in the darkness without knowing where they are going because the darkness has blinded their eyes.  Think about that.

The darkness of sin causes us to lose our way.  The darkness of ignorance causes others to stumble.  Jesus is the light, the one who opens our eyes to the truth of a better reality, a higher calling.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 

The Bible talks about many different kinds of love, but here is used only one kind of love: agape.  Agape is love that is self-giving, self-sacrificing.  Agape loves to love.  Agape needs to love.  It is this kind of selfless love that the love of God was made manifest among us, “that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”  So that we might love, agape, through him.

 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ. 

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” 

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ.

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.

The Revolution Begins: an Easter Sermon on Is. 25:6-9 and Acts 10:34-43

The Revolution Begins Video

This is my first time attempting to include video on this blog, so if it doesn't work, the text of the sermon is below.  The sermon was preached by me on Easter Sunday and was video recorded by my stepson.

What makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? Why does it matter? Our world is mostly post-Christian, it is more secular all the time. People don’t feel the need to go to church any more. Why not? What is the point of continuing to proclaim the Gospel in a world that has largely made up its mind that Jesus Christ, if he even existed at all, was a good teacher and a role model and all that, but wasn’t God.

In fact, what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ? He forgave all my sins. He died so I don’t have to. He told us that God loves everyone and wants us all to go to heaven when we die. Great! So what? What is point? What is it all for?

I’ve learned that many people, when asked what is the goal of Christian living, what is the point of following Jesus, their response is, “so that I may go to heaven when I die.” That’s okay, but to someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus, who doesn’t really believe in a cosmic intelligence behind the formation of all of time and space, which we call “God,” it’s not very much to go on. They need more.

Because what if there were no heaven? Now, I’m not suggesting that there isn’t, because I believe that heaven is a real, physical place about which Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would not have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you.” But keep in mind that, for many people, maybe some in your own families, maybe even some of you here today, heaven is just not very believable, and more importantly, the idea of going somewhere after we die that is beyond anything we can describe doesn’t really matter when life is happening now.

So what makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? Why does it matter? What is so important about that cross?

We find part of the answer to that in our reading from Isaiah, “On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine….and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples...and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth.”

This is not language about the heaven to which we will someday go if we are all good boys and girls. On this mountain? All the earth? This is about here, this is about now. This is about the Kingdom of God.

In the Book of Acts, the Apostle Peter describes Jesus’ ministry, and he says that Jesus is the one appointed by God to judge the living and the dead, but he describes the anointing that Jesus received from the Holy Spirit to go and heal, to preach good news of peace. And then Peter says that he and the other apostles have been commanded to go and do what? The same thing!

He didn’t say to tell everyone that is sick that it’s okay, because they will die someday and be healed in heaven. He didn’t say to tell everyone that they will find peace in heaven, he said that they were commanded to proclaim the very same good news that Jesus proclaimed, to spread that same peace and we know, from the rest of the New Testament, that they were sent out with the same power to heal and to reconcile people to God.

So maybe what Isaiah prophecied about the Kingdom of God coming here is what Jesus himself proclaimed and displayed by his ministry of healing and of reconciliation. Maybe, by dying on the cross and rising from the grave, Jesus broke the power that sin has over us here on this earth. Maybe our sins aren’t just forgiven so that we can live in heaven someday, maybe they are forgiven so we can create heaven around us on this mountain, so that the reproach of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about now. It is about what the world can become through Christ, it is about who we can be in Christ, and about what Christ can do through us. And all this stuff that we read and hear about in church about heaven is described to us in this way, in this kind of metaphorical language, because it is the only adequate way to express the significance of what Jesus did and is continuing to do on this earth.

Jesus began a revolution. He doesn’t just want us to go to heaven to be with him someday, he wants heaven to be here! It’s not enough for Jesus, the Son of God, to have walked among us and ministered to us and to go through torture and crucifixion and resurrection just to give us all a free pass.

He did it for more than that. So what makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to the world today? The same reason that it did 2,000 years ago. Our world is broken and in darkness. The good news of Jesus Christ is light and it is hope, it is a message that proclaims freedom to the captive, those captive to their sins as well as those in prison. It gives sight to the blind by the light of truth, and to give hope to the hopeless, by transforming us into a community that is united in fellowship with one another, working together so that we might, within our own lifetimes even (!) see the sort of kingdom of heaven on earth that the Prophet Isaiah describes.

Imagine a feast laid out for all the people of the earth. People of all races and your neighbor that you might not like very much, and the guy down the street who is addicted to heroin. The best food, the best drinks. All of us together. You know, one of the best ways to break the ice with someone and get to know them is to share a meal with them. Somehow it actually creates fellowship. So what if Isaiah’s prophecy was to actually come true? Because we can do that.

Maybe that is the miracle of Easter. That Jesus’ resurrection only began something that is continuing to unfold around us today; this is the revolution, and Jesus is calling us, he is inviting you to be a part of it, to be a part of the story of the salvation of the world!



Don’t you want to be a part of that story? It can be your story too.

Sacrifice

The following is a reproduction of an article I published in The Paddle, my church's monthly newsletter:

“The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?” says the Lord.  “I have more than enough of burnt offerings…Stop bringing meaningless offerings!  Your incense is detestable to me…Wash and make yourself clean.  Take your evil deeds out of my sight.  Stop doing wrong, learn to do right.  Seek justice.  Encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless.  Plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:11-17)

When I was in Israel, I met a man named Moshe Shorashim, in a little bookshop in Jerusalem.  Moshe was Orthodox Jewish, but he explained to me one of the best descriptions of Christian discipleship that I have ever heard.  He talked about how, for him, his devotion to following God’s Law was not based on a sense of obligation in order to receive God’s blessings and go to heaven someday, but it was precisely because he had received God’s blessings.  His devotion to following God’s Law was borne precisely out of his understanding that God had chosen him to be blessed, to go to heaven.  In short, the more Moshe contemplated God’s love for him, the more joy and gratitude he felt, which motivated him to respond with acts of service and devotion to the God who had saved him, as a means to express his own love for the God who first loved him.

This is what it means to be a Christian.  God has chosen us.  God has first loved us. 

“We love Him because He first loved us,” said the Apostle John (1 John 4:19).

But in the Old Testament, there are prescriptions for making sacrifices and offerings to God, and today in the Christian Church, many people believe and preach that our status before God depends very much on how we live our lives.  In other words, in order to be saved, we must be good.

The Bible does not say this.

What the Bible says, is that we are chosen by God.  This is first and foremost, and independent of anything we can or will do in order to be acceptable before him, because there is nothing that we can do to be acceptable or righteous before him.

Then the Bible says that we are called – called to live lives of holiness, called to follow the example of Jesus Christ, God’s perfect Son, who is with us by the presence of God the Holy Spirit, who gives us faith to empower us to good works of devotion and service. 

But it all begins and ends with the love of God.  With the grace of God.  Doing good deeds, being righteous, being faithful, etc.  means living lives of discipleship and obeying God’s Law out of gratitude and love for what He has already done for us – chosen us in Jesus Christ to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

So the life we live as disciples is to be a gift to the One who first gave to us, and it is another Orthodox Jew, a Rabbi no less, who explains this very beautifully to us:

“The greatest gift a parent can give a child is the dignity of being able to give.  It is not that the parent lacks anything or that the child has genuinely given something he owns.  Its significance is that it is a gesture of love – of acknowledgment and thanksgiving and reciprocity.  The child knows that he has nothing of his own to give, yet he seeks to answer love with love.  For a parent to give a child that possibility is a monumental act of humility.  It is this gesture that is at the heart of the biblical sacrifices.” – Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness. Pp. 65-66.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we all go out and start burning animal sacrifices on altars to God.  Rather, let us consider the words of Isaiah, quoted above, and Malachi, who wrote, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Malachi 6:8, emphasis mine); and Paul, who wrote, “What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  By no means!  How can we who died to sin still live in it?  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” (Romans 6:1-2, 13).

The concept of sacrifice in the biblical perspective means “to bring close,” and so the Christian concept of discipleship is that we present ourselves to God as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1).”  Rabbi Sacks says that sacrifice is a “process of opening ourselves to God by renouncing something of ourselves (Leviticus, p. 68).” 

This is how we are to live every day of our lives as Spirit-filled Christians.  This is what we were chosen for, called to be, as the Bible says both in reference to Israel and to the Christian Church, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (Exodus 22:31; Leviticus 19:2; Deuteronomy 7:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9;  Revelation 1:6, 5:10; and several other places).

So if you have answered the call of God in your lives and place your faith in Jesus Christ as your only Savior and Lord, I encourage you to work towards the fulfillment of that calling, knowing that God has already secured for you a place at his heavenly banquet table.  May that assurance of salvation motivate you to a greater love and joyful service.

My Light and My Salvation

“There is no greater cowardice than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of Scripture.”  This was from a statement made by NAACP President Cornell Brooks.  

Predictable as always, the country is now engaged in a debate over what kind of hate crime the attacks were on Wednesday in Charleston.  Were they motivated by race or religion?  Why does it matter?  

On Wednesday evening a young man entered Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shot and killed the pastor and 8 other people who were engaged in a bible study and prayer meeting, human beings who had come seeking the shelter of the Lord, “and to inquire in his temple,” as the Psalmist says.  

Our psalm for today is a bit more hopeful than last week’s psalm 69, this is a psalm written during a time of crisis, but it is not a crisis of faith or a cry to a God who may or may not even be listening, it is a psalm of trust.

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” he says.  And so he comes into the Temple, the house of the Lord, to find God.  The place of meeting in a church is called a sanctuary for a very specific reason.  It is a place of refuge, it is a place to come and find rest, to gain strength for the journey of life.  It is a place to meet God, a place to worship and celebrate our faith, and to welcome all who seek newness of life.  

It has also become a target.  Personally, I believe that Wednesday’s shooting was not about either race or religion...it was about both.  What more of an unsuspecting, naively trusting group of people are you going to find than in a church sanctuary during a Bible study or a church service?  

I don’t say that to scare anyone, but the truth is often frightening.  I say this, actually for a different reason?  Where do we go to find God?  Is God really in this building?  Of course He is, but this is not the only place to find him.  

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret (Mt. 6:6).”  Now Jesus wasn’t encouraging anyone to skip church, but in the Jewish religion, God’s house was the tabernacle, later the Temple.  He literally resided in the place where the ark of the covenant was kept, and only the priest could open the curtain and enter into that Most Holy Place.  Only the priest could actually enter into the very presence of the living God.  

And so as King David wrote this psalm, that is where he was going, whether physically or, more likely, in his mind, he was entering the Temple, he was going into the very House of God, a little piece of heaven on earth.  The temple was like an embassy for heaven.  When a government sets up an embassy in a foreign country, they actually purchase the ground that it sits on, so if were to visit the U.S. Embassy in another country, we would actually be on U.S. soil.

That was what the temple was to the Jews.  That was where David was looking to for his place of refuge.  And the enemies of Israel, they were terrified of it.  The Old Testament histories recall the Israelites actually carrying the ark of the covenant into battle with them, and Israel’s enemies shook with fear, because they knew that the Lord of Israel himself was leading those men into battle against them.  

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  said David, and in another psalm (118:6) it says, “the Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

David knew full well what man can do to us.  He spent a good chunk of his life running for his life, yet he writes, with hopefulness and trust, “though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.”  

A Christian new commentator wrote about the shooting on Wednesday, and pointed out that whenever God is at work, Satan is at work too.  Between 2003 and 2010, terrorist attacks against Christians escalated by 309%!!  In the past fifteen years, more Muslims have converted to Christianity than in the past fifteen centuries, and look at what Satan is doing with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.  

In China, much of the church has been forced underground, to meet in secret, because the government is shutting down and destroying churches all over, yet the Christian movement in China is growing more rapidly and gaining more strength than their government can handle.  

And when Jesus finally gained national attention and fame, what did Satan do but turn his own disciple, Judas, against him.  

Rabbi Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, said to his colleagues, “leave them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail;  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them (Acts 5:38b-39)!”  

In the world of King David, the people needed symbols, they needed arks and tabernacles and temples in order to assure them of the presence of the Lord in their midst, but when David wrote these words, “He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent (or tabernacle),” he didn’t mean that he was going to hide out inside the temple as the disciples did after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, cowering in fear behind locked doors, waiting for their enemies to come and find them.  

No, where does David go to find his refuge and shelter?  Where do we go to seek sanctuary and rest?  We go to the Lord.  

The congregation of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston have experienced persecution before.  In 1822 that church was burned to the ground, and the people were forced to worship in secret until after the Civil War.  Today the church is without its pastor, but they will continue to enter the sanctuary of the Lord, because our sanctuary is not a place that can be taken from us by a man with a gun.  Amen.

Feeding 5,000: A Sermon on Mt. 14.13-33

John the Baptist has just been put to death by King Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great, who was king when Jesus was born.  John had been preaching against the immorality of Herod’s marriage to his half-brother’s wife Herodias.  Both of them had divorced their spouses and married each other.  John the Baptist spoke against that, and Herodias asked her new husband for his head, and the story goes that he presented it to her on a platter.  

John’s disciples buried him, and went and told Jesus about it, and immediately afterward the gospel narrative reads that Jesus, who had been preaching in Nazareth, withdrew from there and went off to be alone.  John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, he was and evangelist for Christ, a herald of the Messiah.  Some believed that he was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah, and for preaching the truth, he was put to death.

It’s understandable that Jesus needed time to grieve, but he was not given that opportunity.  His intent was to be alone, but crowds of people followed him.  However, instead of getting back into his boat and shoving off again in order to find the much-needed rest that escapes him, Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick,” says the text.

Jesus returned to his ministry of compassion, even in the midst of his own grief and loss.  

Now, I think that we can read too much into this text.  After all, this is Jesus we are talking about, it’s not a metaphor or an analogy about how we ought to put everyone else ahead of us all the time.  As Christians, there will always be times when we need to set aside our own worries and respond to the needs of others, but there are also times when “life” just needs to be put on hold for a while and we need to run to Jesus and be fed by him.  

But this story is about us as well.  Maybe you are one of the 5,000 who comes to Jesus to be fed, or maybe you are one of the disciples, trying to do what is right by Him.  Either way, the need was somewhat the same.

What happened when evening came and the people had been with Jesus throughout the day?  As the disciples observed, there was nothing for the people to eat, and nowhere for them to stay.  And so they suggested that Jesus disperse the crowds so that they could see to their needs.  But Jesus said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

Jesus is tired, he has received terrible news about John the Baptist, was denied a chance to grieve, and pursued by crowds of people, all of whom had very real and immediate needs that he could not ignore.  And now they have another need, but now Jesus delegates.  

“You give them something to eat.  You feed them.”  Do we expect to only sit around while Jesus does all the work?  Do we just go to church to be filled and then go home again without any intention of actually doing the things that we hear just commanding us to do when we are at church?  Why are we disciples at all, if not to learn to become apostles, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, servants who reach out to bring Christ to the world around us?  

Now is the time to put faith into action, now is the time to feed the hungry with the same word that has fed us.  “You give them something to eat,” says Jesus.

But Jesus, the disciples said to him, “we have only five loaves and two fish.”  Basically what they are saying is that they have nothing.  How can we feed so many people with so little?  That’s the problem of ministry.  We really don’t have much to give.  We have nothing.  How can I, who have nothing worth bringing, possibly make a difference in a world that needs so much?  How can I feed a world that is hungry for the truth, hungry for the gospel, when I am still hungry myself?  

This is the point where much of the so-called hope that the world offers us begins to fail.  Food runs out, it fails to satisfy.  

But Jesus does something very different.  He says to his disciples, “Bring them here to me.”  Bring me your five loaves of bread and two fish, bring me your inadequacy, bring me your nothingness, and through it, I will feed the hungry.  Of course the disciples cannot do what it is that Jesus expects of them, but Jesus takes their nothing and transforms it, he makes something out of nothing.  

This is what God does for us.  In the beginning, there was nothing, and God spoke and the whole universe came into being.  He created us out of nothing, and without Him we are nothing.  Jesus Christ gives us substance, he gives us meaning, and only He can fill us when there is nothing else.  But He does it through our ministry to one another.  

Consider the second story.  Again Jesus attempts to withdraw.  He sends his disciples back across the Sea of Galilee while he disperses the crowd and hopes to get some time to himself.  Again that doesn’t happen.  A storm picks up, and the disciples are stranded in the middle of the sea.  Jesus walks out to them, to give them hope, to give them courage and strength.  

And at first, they react out of fear, then Peter jumps out of the boat with a sort of reckless faith that isn’t really faith at all, and finally, as he is sinking into the water, probably terrified out of his mind and feeling like a complete fool because of what he has gotten himself into, Peter calls out to Jesus, “Lord save me.”  

Immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and took ahold of Peter.  The disciples had nothing, Peter had nothing, not as it compared to the enormity of the troubles that were facing them.  They could not face the storm alone.  Peter could not walk on water!  They had nothing to bring, nothing to give.  

So often in life, we forget that we are not alone, we forget to cry out to Jesus, “Lord save me!  Lord I don’t have enough to give, not if I want to make any sort of difference.  There is no way that I can do this on my own.”  But we are not alone, ultimately of course, it is Jesus who feeds the hungry, it is Jesus who calms the storms that threaten to overwhelm us and destroy us.  

Jesus takes our nothingness, he takes our brokenness, and He transforms it.  Sometimes we just need to hold on to Him in order to keep from drowning, and sometimes we are faced with 5,000 people who have no food to eat, and they are looking to us to feed them.  

What do we have to save us, what do we have to give?  Not nothing.  We have Jesus Christ.  We are not alone, we do not have to go away hungry.  We do not have to fight the storms on our own.  But we do need to cry out, “Lord, save me!”  in order to remember that He is already here, offering us His hand.  

I love how Jesus has this way of both scolding Peter for his lack of faith, and also encouraging him at the same time.  He allows Peter, and the disciples, to grasp the impossibility of the situations that they are in, and in so doing they learn the lesson that they need to learn, but He does it lovingly, without snapping at them, “Well, you should’ve known that in the first place!”  

Jesus never gives up on us.  May we never give up on ourselves.  In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Stories: A Sermon for Christmas

The other day a news story came out that Pope Francis was blasting the Vatican with a list of spiritual ailments.  One of them was about humor.  I understood him to say that we misunderstand what it means to be serious.  Serious doesn’t mean to be stern and severe, but to seriously express the joy of being found in Jesus Christ.  He said to keep a healthy dose of humor.  And translated from the Italian, Francis called it the Disease of Funeral Face.  I hope it’s not catching.

So here you go, Pope Francis.  Little Eddie went to his grandfather’s church on Christmas Eve, and while he was waiting for the service to start, he looked at all the announcements in the bulletin, and he saw all these pictures of young men in uniform.  So he asked his grandfather who all these men were, and his grandfather said to him, “Well, those pictures are there to remind us to be thankful at Christmas of the great gift that they freely gave us.  These are all our boys who died in the service.”  

Little Eddie then got very serious, and he gulped and said, “Grandpa, which service was that?  The Christmas Eve service or Sunday morning?”

We love stories.  We love to hear about adventures that take us out of the moment to far away lands and about things that we don’t believe we would ever be able to do ourselves.  We love to hear stories that make us feel good, we love stories that scare us, stories that inspire us, stories that challenge us.  

I heard a story just the other day from a young woman who called into K-Love radio to tell a miraculous story about herself.  She said that she was a cutter, someone who cut on herself.  She was, basically, suicidal, and one day she took a box cutter to her wrist and she sliced and sliced and pressed that blade as hard as she could because she had had enough and just wanted to end it all, but nothing happend.  The blade didn’t even scratch her arm.  

Of course she was discovered and an intervention was made and so she was actually calling the radio station from inside the hospital.  What was so miraculous, she said, was that later her father took that same blade and tested it on a piece of copper wire, and it sliced cleanly through it, but it hadn’t even scratched her soft flesh!

It changed her life.  She knew that God himself had saved her, and so she gave herself to him there in that hospital.

It’s an amazing story, but the story doesn’t end there.  This isn’t about making a bad choice and getting over it and moving on.  This young woman recognized that this is her unique story, and that she needs to allow her story to become a part of her, not to simply put it behind her and pretend it never happened, but to allow it to change her in ways that are unique to her and in ways that can bring healing to others as she herself has found healing.  

So she said that she now has a dream to someday open a Christian cutter’s hospital.  In our misguided and depressed society, cutting on oneself is really not that uncommon, but it’s a symptom of a much deeper psychological condition that this young woman is in a unique position to help other people find healing from.  

Her story can help other people to find hope.  Her story gives her a unique gift that not many other people have.  It gives her a unique credibility as a witness to the power of healing.  What I mean is that, I can tell people that there is freedom from depression.  I can say that all I want, but I’ve never experienced clinical depression, so my credibility is not the same as one who has walked that road and understands the pain and the fear and the feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness that are depression, which people face day after exhausting day.

That’s not a part of my story.  So I wouldn’t be as effective as a depression counselor as this young woman who can identify with debilitating depression and so make real connections with other people who experience this terrible condition.

But we all have a story that makes us who we are.  

These past five Sundays, we’ve been talking about the stories of many of the different characters that are found in the birth narrative of Jesus.  We talked about Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who didn’t believe the testimony of the angel who said to him that he will become the father of the one who goes in the spirit of the Prophet Elijah to prepare the way for the coming of Messiah, Jesus Christ.  

Zechariah didn’t believe him, he and his wife were too old to have children, and so as punishment, he was stricken deaf and dumb, but this only made his story more credible, but then when John was born, he began to hear and speak praises to God, proclaiming the prophecies that the Angel had foretold to him.  Zechariah’s story of disobedience ended up giving him a unique credibility because of his witness to the power of God working in the world.

We heard the stories of the shepherds, simple men of the country who were not educated, not well-paid, and probably thought of as hillbillies.  But the angels came to tell them the good news of Jesus’ birth in the manger in Bethlehem, so that they went to see for themselves.  Shepherds had a unique place in society.  They were watchers, it was their job to keep very careful watch over their flocks so as to protect them, because there was no one else around, so when shepherds came to town and had news of something they saw, it was usually taken seriously.  Shepherds don’t care about gossip, they only told what they saw, and they were often a reliable source of news in an age without telephones or mail.

And so when they witnessed the baby Jesus in the manger, they went out into the streets shouting the good news to anyone who would listen about what the angels had said to them about this baby boy.  The shepherds’ story gave them a unique credibility, it put them in a unique position to be trustworthy as the very first evangelists of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We read all these and other stories in the bible, and we think that they are all about Jesus being born, about the miracle of God coming down from heaven, but they’re not.  These are stories about us, about people just like you and me.  The miracle is not that God came down from heaven, you can look into just about any religion in the world and find stories like that.  The miracle is that God’s coming into the world can shape our own stories.  

Our own, personal, gospel message grows out of our own, unique story, the story of our lives.  I’m not saying that we should be glad that some bad, horrible thing happened to us years ago, but I am saying that we need to stop being defeated by that bad thing, and recognize how Jesus can use it to turn our story of bad news into a story of good news.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ for that young woman is that a lost, depressed, suicidal girl became a disciple of the Lord with a vision to help other people in ways that only she can, because Christ gave her the power to defeat a disease which would have otherwise defeated her.

Jesus Christ was born into a world very much like our own.  The people we read about in the Bible are very much like you and me.  Just people.  They did things they regretted, they struggled through life just as we do.

Which is why God became one of us.  God became a human being.  He did it for us, so that we might see in Him the credibility that we look for in one who has been there, who understands our pain and our struggles.  

That is Good News.

May you learn to see the light of Jesus Christ in the dark places of life.  May you not be defeated by the shared suffering of this life, but May God show you how to harness the power of your unique story for His glory.  

In the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.