YEAR B EASTER 5 2012
Acts 8:26-40
I John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Living in Christ
One of the most often used and least understood phrases in Christian life is the expression “in Christ.” What does this mean? What is it like? How does one find oneself living in Christ?
We say we live in Vermont and we mean a geographic location. We may say that we are really into the music of some musician and we mean that the music truly speaks to us at some deep level or that we just like the music a lot. We may say that we were in a good mood and we mean that our inner life seems to be a peace, joyful, and happy, rather than filled with cares and fears. We say this as though we were living in a pleasant space emotionally. Sometimes we speak of someone being in trouble when we mean that they have gotten themselves or been thrust into bad circumstances. But what does it mean to be in Christ?
If we fail to grasp this central reality of our faith, we will be unable to enjoy the greatest experiences one can have in this life—and to give the greatest of gifts to others. So, let us press into this key to our faith experience.
Jesus teaches us with the metaphor of the vine and branch. These are not that familiar to many people today, but let’s try. Grape vines can live for many many years if well tended. They grow up and branches come out that are very fruitful. But the vinedresser comes along and prunes away the parts of the branch that are not in production, so that the fruit gets all the power and nutrients of the vine. But when a vinedresser finds a branch that may be long and leafy yet without plentiful grapes, this branch is cut off completely. In this way the fruitfulness of the vine is maintained. Those who garden know about this practice with some vegetables and fruits.
We belong to God, so we are of the vine. The question Jesus asks is whether we are fruitful or not? And Jesus tells us what makes for fruitfulness—the very body and blood of Christ. Salvation is not simply saying we like Jesus and want to add him to our collection of important people. Salvation means allowing ourselves to be so engrafted into Christ that we become his living body, redeemed and forgiven by his blood, which flows within us daily making us a new creation from our self-made selves of the past.
But how does this happen in practical terms? In verses 9-10 of John 15, Jesus gives a simple answer: “As the Father has loved me, so have I love you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” Jesus links obedience with love—agape love. If one remains open to the love of God and then seeks to allow that love to fill one’s daily life, one is obedient.
The agape love of God is the key, the nourishment, the strength and the power of a transformed life. If we love God, we do so because God has loved us first. But loving God in return, opens up the channels of divine love so that we are changed from within and bear fruit in the world through love.
The doctrine of perfection or holiness or sanctification, as it is variously named, is not something strange and unattainable by ordinary people. The doctrine as set out by John Wesley based on Scripture is nothing more than this: A justified person, who intentionally submits to the grace of God and accountability with others will grow in love for God, so that this person fills with God’s love to the point that the person lives wholly for God because of love and through love. This doesn’t mean we do not have faults and errors. But it means that we have come to live in Christ very truly.
So, living in Christ is a very real thing. It is experienced through agape love—the love of God for us, as we allow that love to fill and overflow from us. It is what we refer to as the Way of Salvation from being saved to being regenerated into a holy and living sacrifice for God–A person who dies to the old self in order to be filled with Christ daily.
Are you moving on the way of salvation? Are you growing in holiness? Are you seeking to live because of God’s love and for God daily? Are you open to the experience of this love and to sharing with others? Are you really committed to live in obedience to the commandments of love? ……
Do not be afraid. Do not draw away because the way is unfamiliar. Come toward whatever love you have known from God. If you cannot recall that, then ponder and pray about who Jesus is and what he has done for you. Read the Scripture and see his life and death and resurrection in your own story and you in his. Enter into the reality of Christ through your imagination, and you will stay there because of your conviction. Amen

YEAR B EASTER 1 2012
Acts 10:34-43
I Cor.15:1-11
John 20:1-18

I Have Seen the Lord!
Mary of Magdala gets that best experience of anyone—she can say with joy that defies all understanding: “I have seen the Lord!” She was able to see a real victory when everything said defeat. She was able to announce to the world that Jesus was not dead, but alive!
How much better than the very best last minute touchdown or field goal that changes the championship game! This event has changed all of our lives beyond what we can imagine. Let the celebrations begin!
As Americans, we like to cheer the winners. Don’t you? That’s why a lot of New Englanders have two favorite baseball teams—the Red Sox and anyone playing the Yankees. There is even a phenomenon in elections where the polls show one candidate well ahead and lots of people decide to vote for that candidate for that reason alone. As Americans, we have enjoyed many victories and successes in our short history, and we turn even losses like Pearl Harbor into victory marches. We don’t like to dwell on failures and problems and troubles too long. It is almost a constitutional inability to look at failure and mistakes that governs our ways.
So, here we are at Easter Sunday, for the big celebration, preceded in some houses with a lot of sugar and chocolate, and followed with a bigger than average dinner in many places—including right here. It is right that we should celebrate the greatest achievement of all human history: Jesus of Nazareth, God and Christ, has risen from the dead. What we call the mystery of faith makes this the very center of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again. God has defeated the eternity of human death and the slavery of sin in human life—there is nothing greater than this! Alleluia!
But the ham will be finished off today or in the weeks ahead, the chocolates will disappear, if they haven’t been smashed into the carpet or upholstery, and we will be back to whatever we call normal all too soon. The party will end; the joy will grow distant, and the power of this event will grow meaningless to our daily lives. The church has long held a 40 day celebration of Easter, starting today, but throughout America, next Sunday will be the lowest attendance Sunday of the year in most churches.
I am not here to harass anyone about that. I am glad to see you today. I am glad you are here to celebrate the most holy of events in the Christian faith. I am glad this matters to you. But, I am saddened that so many Christians don’t get more joy from the Resurrection—more love, more peace, more hope and more delight!
So, for a few minutes, I would like to give you a taste of what more is in store for those who believe in the Resurrection. The first thing is the experience of Christ that convinces us that the Resurrection is true for us. For those who believe and open themselves to the presence of God, the Holy Spirit is already poured out to speak to our hearts –in silence, feelings, words, or simply a shift in our attitudes—so that we cannot deny Christ lives, even if we do not have scientific proof. What a great gift of God that satisfies our deep longings to know God and be loved by God.
The second point I would like share with you about the power of the Resurrection for those who believe is that this one event is that assures our afterlife with God. Being nice and proper people does not accomplish this; only the love of Christ and his resurrection as promised. A lot of folks believe in a nice life after death, but they have no foundation for that belief other than wishful thinking. We who believe in Christ, dead, buried and risen, confirmed in our own experience, the words of Scripture, and a great line of believers of the past, have a solid hope that no one can deny us. Thank God for the Resurrection.
Thirdly, not only does the power of the Resurrection pop into our lives when we physically die, but this power is available to us right now to transform our daily existence so that we live and move and experience life in the power of God. Because of the Resurrection, the Kingdom of heaven has been opened up to us who still live in this world—we can live with Christ enthroned in our hearts, guiding our lives, healing our wounds and making sense where there seems to be none. We can live knowing the Christ truly knows us and loves us. We can count on that love above all the bad stuff the world can throw our way. As we do this, we can allow the Holy Spirit to renew us, transform us and enable us to live differently from the ways of our past that —well—have not always been that helpful to us and others. We can experience inner freedom, peace, joy and a personal groundedness that we may never have known before.
Over the coming Sundays of April and May, we will be exploring how this happens; how we can open ourselves to the power of Christ, and discover deeper joy, faith, love and life that gives us spiritual fruitfulness—-a life that gives life to others, too. I hope you will join together in these coming days to continue the celebration and to discover the richer and more powerful life that God wants you to experience when you say: “I have seen the Lord!” Amen

YEAR B EASTER 2 2012
Acts 4:32-35
I John 1:1—2:2
John 20:19-31
Complete Joy can be ours!
What are the consequences of really accepting Christ, resurrected for us and living in us?
We have plenty of ways of thinking about consequences for our conduct. Many children are warned about consequences of behavior and then given the opportunity to experience those consequences—usually unpleasant ones. We have beliefs about the consequences of our conduct: work hard, and enjoy relative financial ease; drive safely and get lower premiums on your auto insurance; treat others well, and they will treat you well; vote for a certain candidate, and certain things will happen if the candidate wins; and so many more expectations—some true and some not so true.
What are your expectations about the future? Good, bad, mixed, uncertain? What are the consequences of how you are living that you expect to experience? That your money will get you through? That life will just get harder? That you will outlive the older generations? That younger folks will have a better chance in the world than your generation? That things will be pretty much the same, just a bit more technologically advanced? What do you expect ahead?
The sad truth is that a lot of expectations we had 10, 20, 40 years ago are just not coming true. Global economies have replaced local ones; economics have radically altered where we spend money, and on what we buy as well as how we buy things. Social dynamics have changed so that families rarely stay together after children mature, and neighborhoods are often now filled with strangers. Schools that used to teach the 3Rs, now must offer a complete social service agency of programs. Our love of automobiles now faces a crisis as gasoline prices go through the roof.
So too, our expectations of the Christian faith have changed. The consequences of belonging to a church are very different today than in 1952. Today, being a church member is not socially expected, given much respect, or even understood by most folks—it is treated as just another club in a country where club membership has become increasingly uninteresting to the younger generations. So, if social status is no longer part of the equation in church membership, what is? We have tried across America to offer programs to compete with sports and secular activities—but even these do not seem to keep up with the changing culture. So why be a Christian, anyway?
The Bible tells us that being a Christian—a follower of Jesus has some great consequences; great enough for generations to follow, in the face of persecution and troubles from the rest of the world. In the early post resurrection experience of the disciples, they are gathered in a locked upper room, afraid for their own lives, when Jesus shows up in their midst. He shares with them an overwhelming peace and an amazing joy, as he breathed into them the power of the Holy Spirit, through which they were given the power to forgiven sins and to be forgiven. St Luke shows us in the Acts that this was not a one-time deal—these graces remained in strength in the gathering of followers.
Could it be that we are offered these consequences for our faith in Jesus? Jesus promised this to his followers even before his crucifixion, death and resurrection. Do you remember that he told us that: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” JN15:9-10
What is complete joy? Perhaps, it is a sort of pleasure that involves the whole of our being—a gladness that sings from the depths of our bodies, souls and spirits. The word “complete” in the Greek means filled to overflowing. Would you like to experience this kind of joy?
I can only compare it to the joy of getting married, holding a child for the first time, seeing a loved one recover from the brink of death. Do you sense the power of joy here? Do you want it? Would you want to live in that joy day after day? This is what Christ promises to those who believe in the resurrection!
When was the last time you experienced this deep joy? Have you given up on having it again? Are you resigned to a relatively joyless life? Is it enough to live without this kind of joy?
This joy is the sign of our freedom from slavery to sin and death. What is more, it is a sign that God is prepared to pour out the power of the Holy Spirit upon us, to forgive us and to enable us to forgive others, so that we participate in helping the world to reconcile with God. This power is far beyond our understanding; it is more than we even imagine. God is giving us the means to live in union with God and with one another as we have never done before—in deep peace, mutuality, love, and super abundant grace.
Consider the early church where we read that the believers were of “one heart and mind.” Those folks were experiencing a human spiritual intimacy and mutuality that is not humanly possible without God’s grace—a unity that cuts across all of our excuses for disunity. Consider how amazing that would be—if even a small group of people, a couple, a family, a church—were able to live in such a unity that they were of one heart and mind. The conflicts of normal human affairs would fade out of our experience and we would live in Christ together!
And the people shared their resources as need required. All would work as needed and able, that all might have what was needed—without resentment, jealousy, laziness, gluttony or avarice. How truly different from what we see today in the world this would be! Of course, we write this off as a silly socialist ideal, but it wasn’t and isn’t that. The unity of heart and mind comes first, so that the sharing of resources is a natural consequence of that unity, not some ideological doctrine imposed on people. When we give to others from the depths of our own experience of God’s love and grace, we are getting close to this, and some here know about that. This is the power of Christ offered to us today!
The joy that comes from our unity with Christ connects us with the Father, and through the working of the Holy Spirit in us, enables us to find a like unity with one another in faith. This, my brothers and sisters is the very doorway to the Kingdom of God.
Standing at the doorway daily, it is ours as a free gift of God, if we will trust Christ and the promises of faith. Then we might just dare to expect the consequences of faith that Scripture attests—and, in fact, the lives of great Christians before us attest. If we take Scripture seriously about the Resurrection, then we really should take this set of consequences seriously, too. At least, give them a try!
The early church stood in the faith and expected amazing things from God. They, in fact, saw the amazing, experienced the unparalleled joy and unity, and gave themselves over to it for a lifetime. These folks entered Kingdom life!
Down through the centuries, there have been other Christians who have done the same, including the early Methodists. Our heritage from the first days of the church to the growth of our little branch of the faith in Britain and North America is filled with Kingdom living people. We too can experience this life of overflowing joy, unity, and service to the cause of bringing all creation into reconciliation with God. Will we ask for it, yearn for the consequences of earnest faith, and live as though it were true, until we experience it?

YEAR B EASTER 6 2012
Acts 10:44-48
I John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
Spiritual Fruitfulness
Living in Vermont, it is fairly difficult to miss the signs of nature in each passing season. Most of us have seen the budding of the trees and the growth of their fruits. Some are tasty, like apples; some are not. Some are produced in cones; others in fruit; some in pods and still others in nuts. And perhaps you have noticed that some years, certain trees produce in abundance, while in other years they barely produce at all.
I am told that conifers tend to have lots more cones after especially cold winters. Apples tend to produce better fruit when the branches are kept properly pruned. Some trees will not bear fruit or nuts unless both male and female trees are within pollinating distance of one another. Some trees need the protection of lots of surrounding trees to grow tall and bear well, while other trees grow so slowly that they exude toxins from their roots to keep competitor trees away. Some trees can send roots to the best water sources, while others will die if there is too much mulch put around their bases. Some trees even require a forest fire for their seeds to open and germinate, while others need just the right moisture, of the help of birds to carry the seeds to new places.
In all this, we can see that the fruitfulness of trees is variable—it depends on species, environment, and opportunities to be fruitful. Still, there is some mystery in how this cycles—we just don’t know all the factors in play, unless we are tree experts.
So, what about spiritual fruitfulness? Do we have any idea what that might look like? How it comes about? What strengthens it and what impedes it?
In the Gospel according to St John, Jesus tells us that he has chosen us and appointed us “to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” I rather doubt he means tomatoes and pears. What does Jesus mean?
We know that St Paul has listed “fruit of the Spirit” for us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Gal. 5:22) By the presence of these, we can know that we are submitted to the Holy Spirit and guided by the Spirit. In their absence, we are not a Spirit guided people.
But this is not what Jesus was talking about when he told his disciples to go and bear fruit. The fruit of the Spirit show us that we are healthy Christians, but Jesus wants us to not only be healthy spiritually, but to be generative—to produce fruit for the Kingdom of God. Simply put, Jesus appoints us to go and make disciples of Christ for the transformation of the world, as he is quoted saying at the very end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
The history of the early church reveals the dynamic of this appointment. The Holy Spirit goes forth and finds people who are ready to receive Christ as their Lord. We are sent to them to love them, pray for them and lead them in the Way of Jesus, through the waters of baptism and on to eternal life. Consider the radical fact that within 300 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, there were Christians from China and India, to Ethiopia and Tunisia, to Spain and France—enough Christians that they were recognized by the Roman Emperor. And these people became Christians at the risk of their very lives if discovered!
After that, the church entered a time of domination by the political powers of the world. While many became nominal Christians, the faith became weaker and diluted for many. Still, there were those who held fast to the ancient faith of the apostles.
Now, the faith is spreading like wildfire through Africa and Asia. But in Europe and North America, the church is shrinking and disappearing. We are entering into a new period much like that of the first 300 years, when the faith is not reflected in the society at large. The urgency of Christ’s command to go and make disciples is now compelling.
So, let us get serious about it! This is no longer about a social convention of church memberships. It is about the raw command of Christ: We are to be about going out and making disciples.
Over the past few years we have taken in some wonderful members here—some of whom were not previously Christians. Now, Christ is looking for us to be ready for the Spirit to multiply this number significantly. We are appointed by Christ to go and make disciples by the power of the Spirit. This church is way ahead of many. The average UMC person invites someone new to worship once in 38 years! Not so here!
In addition to our joy in inviting folks, we have been tackling aspects of our life together that provide opportunities to be more the Christians and Church that Christ calls us to be, so that God can do the heavy lifting of bringing persons to himself through us. As some of you know, we have been engaged in a process called Natural Church Development. In this process, we take the pulse of the church and then work on areas that are behind others. The areas we are checking are:
1. empowering leadership; 2. gift based ministry; 3. passionate spirituality; 4. effective structures; 5. Inspiring worship; 6. holistic small groups; 7. need oriented evangelism, and 8. loving relationships.
Over the past two years, we have done work to build up our leadership, to focus more on spiritual gifts in selecting folks for ministry, increased the numbers in small groups, and done some streamlining of our structures. Because of our work in small groups and our work in building up adult bible studies, we have seen improvements in spiritual maturity. Most importantly, we have taken the task of inspiring worship very much to heart, and experienced more spirit-filled worship over the past seven months. This is on-going.
But now, we will be focusing on improving the quality of loving relationships in our congregation. This will pick up on the great work we are doing in our prayer ministries, fellowship dinners and other meals. The Congregational Health Team will be guiding us forward soon.
We expect that within a year or so, this church will start growing by the power of the Holy Spirit in ways that we have not dared to even hope for in the past, because we will have taken on the characteristics of the church that allow God to multiply his disciples among us. This is what NCD is leading us toward.
I challenge each of you here to prepare yourself for fruitfulness. Seek ways to grow in loving relationships with one another, to really welcome and celebrate the Spirit in worship, to participate in small groups and bible study so that your heart grows more passionate for Christ, and your hands more ready to serve Christ in the world.
Seek out new folks in our assembly and grow your heart toward them—find new ways to share agape love with new people. Then begin making a list of folks who are not churched—people you are related to, store clerks, co-workers and others you meet by chance. See that you get at least ten names. And then begin to pray for these folks daily. Pray that God will touch them and bless them with divine love, and that God will use you to reach them and walk with them in the journey of faith.
If we do this, then surely we will see great fruitfulness—given us by God’s grace and love. You see, only by loving God and others do we open up the arteries of our hearts to allow the Spirit passage through us for the glory of God the Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ. Love hard, friends and see this glory! Amen.

YEAR B EASTER 3 2012
Acts 3:12-19
I John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36-48
Faith Triumphs with Christ
In human lives, there are moments when an event unleashes a sweeping set of changes in all aspects of our lives. The birth of a child, marriage, death of a spouse or child, adoption, being let go from your job or retiring, having a major illness or injury, entering the military—all these can be pivotal moments in our lives. Have you experienced any of these? Do you remember how radical the sense of change that occurred seemed to be? Good events and the not so good can shift our lives right out of our old range of expectations into something totally unexpected.
Has any moment in your faith life ever had this sort of transforming effect on you? Or, has it dawned on you after a deepening of your faith life that you were very much changed, redirected or different? The sad truth is that many Christians—even those who claim to have had a born again experience—actually have not had their lives transformed by their faith in Christ Jesus. I wonder why?
Even people who give up bad habits after finding faith, sometimes do not seem to have been transformed—just cleaned up a bit and made more presentable. Why is this ?
Why is this, when the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead had such a transforming effect on his followers 2000 years ago? Has God gone out of the transforming business?—I think not. Have we just become so sophisticated that we don’t notice changes like this anymore?—I doubt it.
More particularly, how about you—what is it in your life that keeps you from experiencing the radical transforming effect of the resurrection every day? Could it be that we are still overcome with fear and doubt; that we have grown hardened so that we find repentance and forgiveness to be too much for us? Have we just lost a sense of the awesomeness of God, making God a rather tame little deity who doesn’t bother us or with us much?
Let’s look at the early encounters with the Resurrected Jesus for some clues here. Luke tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples still hiding out. The first thing he does is he announces the peace of God to them, which begins to end their fear and doubts. They fill up with joy and amazement instead. All this is the power of the Holy Spirit drawing us into the peace of God. Do we allow the Resurrection to do this for us or do we hold on to our fears and doubts instead?
Then Jesus does something we might skip over as unimportant: Jesus eats food with them. This is not what spirits do. This is what living humans do. Jesus—in the flesh—fully incarnated God in man is right in their midst. They cannot deny his reality—the concrete events prevent it. Have you ever been faced with a reality like this that has simply convinced you beyond a shadow of a doubt? Is this not what the communion meal does for those who believe in this reality?
This is an unmistakable mystery that defies our logic, and yet it is the bedrock of our faith. Though we do not understand, we believe what is right before us. Have you ever had such a belief?
It is this belief that allows Christ to then open the minds of the disciples so that they can see how his life, death and resurrection are the fulfillment of Scripture—all of it. All the preconceptions that they and we have had about the Bible and its stories are turned to a new perspective in which we see Christ resonating with the light of truth in every page. Has your mind been opened like this?
Only after this occurs does Christ give the disciples their marching orders: Preach repentance and forgiveness in Jesus’ Name to all nations as witnesses of the truth. The disciples become a living message—announcement of God with us, God incarnated, so that the resurrection stands as a fundamental fact—despite how illogical it seems and as we believe so do others who see the key to our lives in Christ.
But we often prefer to rely on our own self importance and assumed goodness. We prefer to claim our purpose in our selves, rather than in Christ—so much more believable, we think, to those around us. But when Peter proclaims the reality of the resurrection at the Temple he says that faith in the Name of Jesus produces strength in the believer and power that flows through the believer to produce radical healing in the world. He is not claiming his own power, but that of Christ Risen. Do we live this proclamation? Do we live because he lives? Do we experience all life through Christ’s amazing love?
So often we have just missed it. We forget how lavish God’s love is for us. We forget that God has made us divine children who enjoy his protection, inheritance and special love like no others. And St John explains to us that “no one who lives in” Christ Jesus keeps on sinning. Our forgetfulness is what allows us to slip back into the grip of sin, even thought Christ has freed us already. We forget the gift we have been given and so we do not live in Christ, but on our own. We live in denial of the Resurrection!
But we have a choice every moment of every day. We can receive God’s peace, let go of our fears and doubts, trust in the reality of the Resurrection and allow ourselves to live in Christ daily knowing that we exist and live because Christ loves us beyond our imagining. If we allow that to happen within us, then we find ourselves living in Christ, alive in the Kingdom of God, transformed by the resurrection into living bearers of the light of Christ in the world.
Then we see the triumph of faith through the power of Christ working in us! May we each live in that triumph always. Amen

YEAR B EASTER 4 2012
Acts 4:5-12
I John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18
How to Love One Another
Why do we find love such a difficult topic and an even more difficult practice to embrace? Why is it that we have images that come to us that suggest we ought to doubt love as a supreme value in our lives, and put our trust in other things?
Could it be that we have been wounded by what purported to be love? Could it be that our parents loved us so imperfectly that we have a hard time just thinking about love without those old wounds rising up in memories and attitudes? And then we have our failed romantic relationships, in which the unhealthiest aspects of our so-called friends ate holes in our hearts and hardened us against any love.
We have our economic and political attitudes as well. We may tend to equate loving others as reckless and foolish—sharing with people who seem ungrateful and perhaps lazy or greedy. We may think of this social love as an ideology of the 1960s that ultimately lacked common sense and effectiveness in transforming lives.
We may have been traumatized by abusive relationships or abused by the traumatized all for no apparent good. We may have looked at the sacrifices of war and asked how can this be love of country to die for a hard to accept cause, or live forever with the effects of PTSD, misunderstood and miserable.
And then there is the way in which our language has cheapened love to the point that we either think that it is about sex alone or some hyper-emotional drama, rather than a full human life in relationship with another. The public media has taken over love and left us with a hollow shell of superficial attractions and appetites.
In the life of the church, love has become a code word for theological liberalism and social justice. It has come to mean sharing with the needy and poor, inclusiveness for all, and tolerance of anything anyone wants to advocate. It has been seen by some as the opposite of the truth, justice, rationality, common sense, personal responsibility, and holiness of living. This has been the track of love in the 20th century church. No wonder we are skeptical and confused!
What does the word love mean to you?….
As Christians, we must trace our understanding of love from the life of Christ. We can start by recalling that in Greek there are several different sorts of love with different names: Eros—romantic embodied love; Philos—brotherly/sisterly or friendship love; Philostorge—family love, love of belonging together, and Agape—the God love which is discerning, faithful, sacrificial, self-giving, strong and enduring beyond death, unconditional, runs to each person, and is laid down by God for our relationship with God and one another.
I believe that these four types of love will begin to help us unravel our twisted notions of love. Eros love is what is popularly the meaning of love—the kind that is all about our passions, appetites and a lot of our drama. God doesn’t condemn this love, but God does want it to be an outgrowth of Agape love.
Philos and philostorge loves are the sort that relate most specifically to our social relationships and social obligations. We can see how they are distorted and abused to manipulate and control and corrupt real love, push us away from the truth and even common sense. How we treat one another has been distorted by government programs, social attitudes, prejudices and bias. We may really feel as though this sort of love is not a good thing.
But this is not necessarily correct. These forms of social love, if framed within Agape-God love take a new shape, character and movement in which they draw together social truth and compassion, pity and responsibility, sharing and mutuality. If we hold fast to our old notions about love, we will entirely miss what Jesus taught and the early church practiced. We must start with Agape love in order for the other sorts to reveal the Christly Kingdom.
The Letters of John were written to help the church understand the nature of Christian love at another time when love was being misunderstood. St John teaches us about Agape love, not one of the other sorts of love. He makes clear that we truly know we belong to the truth and how we experience rest in our hearts in the presence of God when we live in Agape love. St John shows us that love and truth are not opposites, but one in Christ and one in the life of the Christian. We must actually live in this love by our actions and our truthfulness, as well as what we say. This is not optional, but the command of Christ.
It is not sufficient that we tell about Jesus with our mouths. We must live as Jesus lived to reveal him to the world and to obey his commandment. For this, we must, it seems grasp “what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
But St John is not content to simply say this in the abstract. He gets very clear and concrete: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him how can the love of God be in him?” This question is a nice translation of the Greek expression meaning “has no pity” which is more literally to shut one’s bowels toward another. Perhaps we can interpret this as having ignored the normal gut reaction to suffering of others, so that one can remain inactive in its face. If we remember that the guts are the place from which comes the energy of action. St. John seems to be admonishing us to follow through with sacrificial action as an essential part of what it means to have Agape love.

Christ has shown us what true Agape love is all about—self-sacrificing care for others. And yet, we do not follow through on this for countless reasons and excuses. Instead of inaction, we are commanded to act in ways that truly share this love. It is not enough to say that someone is suffering of their own doing—we are commanded to act in ways that reduce the suffering and assist that person to live a better life
For it is in this way that Christ is revealed in the world. Just as Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit brought healing to an infirm beggar as an act of goodness or kindness, so too he revealed and witnessed to Christ in this act and then the words he spoke to the authorities. Doing what God commands by way of Agape love reveals Christ and gives us reason to speak of Christ in action.
Action and words must be as one movement of the Holy Spirit within us. How is that happening for you? How are you at integrating action and verbal witness to Christ in your daily life? Will they know of Christ because you have acted and spoken or not? Will they see Agape love in your life or not? Live for Christ in word and deed for the glory of God. Amen.

October 2, 2011 Sermon

Genesis 3:1-24

In our video this morning, we saw some funny examples of common sins: anger, gluttony, lust, judgmentalism, legalism, denial, deceit, pride, sloth, envy.  Can anyone give simple definition or example of …..?

So, based on these sorts of sins, what do we say the meaning of “sin” really is?………

Let’s look at the bible to see what sin has meant from the very beginning.

• It certainly is not a problem of eating apples, right?
• Is it simply being disobedient—not following God’s rules?  Yes plus something more perhaps.
• What is the decision that Adam and Eve made here?  What did they want to get?…….the ability to make choices between right and wrong without God—to be like God in saying what is right and wrong!

So, how many of us have never taken it upon ourselves to decide

right from wrong on our own?  How many of us do not think that this is what being a grown up is all about?

I can remember as a child begging to get to make my own choices and I know that my children have done the same.  This is something that seems hardwired into us, doesn’t it?  “Let me choose, please!” is a regular refrain among children and adults alike.

As Americans, we have elevated this to nearly a constitutional right of first importance.  We can choose whatever we want, when we want, how we want, unless it is illegal—no matter how damaging it is to us and others around us.  As long as I don’t drive or go outside, I can drink as much as I want, even if it destroys my family.  I can spend all day long watching junk on a screen and never work a minute.  I can tell anyone off if I please, unless I threaten them with bodily injury.  I can be mean, unfriendly and nasty in a lot of places.  I can be a pig and consume anything I want, while others starve.  I can lie to anyone, as long as I don’t do it on my taxes or to a judge or police officer.  We have a right to do whatever we want, sort of…

But we don’t think of it this way, do we?  We just want to choose what we think is best for ourselves, and we try to do a good job choosing. I want to choose chocolate ice cream, because I like it better that vanilla.  I want to choose soccer, because I like it better than baseball.  What do you want to choose?……….

Do you notice that we are choosing between two good things or a whole range of good things?  There is nothing wrong, we say, with vanilla or baseball or……  And that is basically true when we are dealing with simple things.

But what happens when the choices we make actually lead to bad results?  I could choose to wear leather bottom shoes to school, and then slip and fall on some wet or icy spot.  I could go off to school with no jacket, and catch cold when the day gets chilly in the afternoon.  I could eat Halloween candy—lots of it because it tastes good, and then get an upset stomach or worse.  Good things can lead to bad results.

So, what do we do about these choices that seem to go wrong?….

• Make rules?   Pass laws?
• Be careful and think things through?
• Ask for help from others in making decisions?
• Try not to make choices at all?
• …….

None of these things really work very well do they?

The problem is that we can’t get out of the problem of making bad decisions that hurt us, others and the world.  We are not as smart as God, so we will always make partially correct decisions, even as we try to act like God.  Even if we follow all the laws, have huge government regulatory bodies that try to gather all the facts, we will still make big mistakes.

Of course, we hope that we personally don’t have to pay for the mistakes.  We want others to pay the price.  If I build a huge tower and it falls over, I don’t want to pay for the damage.  If I pollute the air, I don’t want to pay to clean it up.  If I dump trash in the river, I hope some do-gooding kids will clean it up next spring.

Consider this: over in India and China, there are children no older than many of you here, who work 12-16 hours every single day making the clothes that we are wearing here, and they don’t get paid enough to buy healthy food and shoes of their own.  We get to choose the clothes we like at Walmart or Pennys and we don’t have to even care about the people who suffered making those clothes.  We like our choices!

Sin is making choices without consulting God and letting God guide us in those choices—something we all do, most of the time.  And God told Adam and Eve what would happen because of this:  we would be frustrated, over worked, and suffer.  Our relationships with each other would be messed up and lead us into pain.  This is not because God was angry, but because our choosing by ourselves will always produce this result.

Does anyone have an idea about what God is doing to help us out of this mess?……

When we decide to trust Jesus more than ourselves, and allow Jesus to put the Holy Spirit inside us, then the Spirit can guide us, help us and lead us to make a different sort of decision—a decision that helps to make things a little better for us, for others and the world.  We still have problems—plenty of them, but God is beginning to put the broken pieces of the world back where they belong through our choices!  And we can really sense that we are growing closer to God and more like what God wants for us.  So, if we want to make really good decisions, what do we need to do?….

Trust Jesus and let the Holy Spirit guide us in the little decisions we make—if we do that, then the big decisions we begin to change for the better too! Amen.

September 25, 2011

Genesis 2:4-22

Our video informs us that the Hebrew words in the story of the creation of humans carry rich meaning about who we are—earth beings filled with life and set in a garden of delight by God. But we read last week that God created humans in God’s own image, both man and woman are created in God’s image.  And we learn that God wanted humans to live in unity and community with one another—that we were made to live in this way.

But ask yourself—what is my image of God?  How would I describe God?  Is God a bearded old grandfather sort?  Or maybe God is some spirit with no image at all?  Or perhaps, we think of God and we are reminded of some relative of ours—mother, grandma, grandpa, great uncle Harry?

And we can ask what our image of God is doing.  Is this image judging us, wagging a finger, scowling?  Is this image laughing, smiling and gentle?  Is the image angry or delighted?  A warrior or a lover?

Maybe you don’t want to let an image of God form in your head, because you are a little afraid of what it might be?  Anyone—what is your image of God—the one that comes before you think about it a lot?

………………

Do these images actually seem to be like the God who created earth beings with life and put them in a garden of delight to live in unity and joy?  Probably not!  But why are our images of God so different from what the Bible says?

Could it be that instead of looking for the God of Eden, we look for the shapes of people and emotions and troubles that we know so much more easily?  Could we be making masks and putting them on God, instead of allowing ourselves to see God to look lovingly at us.

Let’s learn about what the word “idol” really means.  We probably think of stone or wooden statues—and those can be idols.  But really, an idol is anything that we view as God other than the true God.  It Is like looking at a foot and calling that God, or a rock or mountain or a king and calling one of those a God.  But it can also be making in our hearts and minds an image of God that is less that who God really is.

So an image of God that looks like great uncle Harry is really an idol, if we think that is who God is.   So, is any image of God an idol?

Long ago, Christians had this debate, but their prayers led them to a different conclusion.  The Bible says that Jesus is the perfect image of God the Father, and Jesus is a person—an earth being with life, but also God.

The early church discovered that God wants us to look at the creation and look through it to see God.  We are never to say that a plant or animal is god, but we can look through the wonderful creation and get a sense of the awesomeness of God.  We can also look at people and see through the outward person to see an image of God—something in persons that points toward God and invites us to see more of who God really is.

So, take a look around at all the people here: young and old, black and white, Asian and European, African and lots of mixed backgrounds, men and women, boys and girls.  We look different—but each of us is made in the image of God.

But, of course, we are all a bit messed up too.  We can see it when we look at ourselves in the mirror.  We can see it when we get to know other people too.  Most of us look at ourselves and other people and see the messed up parts, not the image of God.

That is normal, because God didn’t make us messed up.  Somehow, along the way, we people stopped showing the image of God.  We’re going to talk about that next week.  But for today, we need to remember that if we look for Jesus in any person, we will start to see the image of God.  As the persons allow Jesus to live in their hearts and guide them along, Jesus becomes more and more visible to us, and people begin to show the image of God to the world.

This is what an icon does—it is an image that opens the viewer up to the reality of God who created all things.  We get to experience God through the icon, even though the icon is not God and we never can completely understand God—but we get to live with God even here on earth.

Our job as Christians is to so love Jesus and allow Jesus to live in us that we show the world Jesus—the perfect image of God.  That helps people have hope, know that they are loved and that they can be with God through a relationship with Jesus.  That is our job as Christians!

So, look around and see if you can look into another person and catch a glimpse of Jesus looking lovingly back at you.  ……………  If you could look in many faces here today, you would see Jesus.   He might be pretty hidden, but say something to Jesus to encourage the person you are with.  Jesus loves you.  Jesus cares about you.  Jesus wants to go to work with you. ……

As a Christian, you want to be a good icon for Christ; someone in whom others can experience Christ alive.  How can you be a better image of Christ?……….

Let’s pray for the grace to be icons bearing the image of God….

YEAR A ORDINARY 15 2011

Genesis 25:19-34

Romans 8:1-11

MT13:1-9,18-23

In American football, imagine if your favorite team had the best quarterback of all time– a guy who could run the ball and pass with near perfection; a guy who could read the field, find openings, and who had an instinct for winning moves.  Then suppose that your team had great players in every position, except that no one could catch the ball.  Wide receivers could get right where they should be, but they would drop the ball every time, running backs just couldn’t get their fingers around the ball.  So, as long as the quarterback would run the ball, he would move toward the goal, but the other teams quickly firgured out that this was his only sort of play, so the concentrated on preventing this.  Your favorite team would be a miserable failure, right?

Or consider this:  you have baked a really great cake, but as you turn it out of the pan, it slips onto the floor; or you order the perfect outfit for a wedding, but you do not receive it in time to use it at that wedding.  These and countless other moments point to the critical importance of receiving.  All too often, our hopes and dreams are lost in the mails, spilled out on the floor or fumbled.  All of our strengths, talents, efforts and work seem to turn to nothing—and our dreams fall with them.

In recent years, people send emails or leave phone messages, but I haven’t retrieved them before they ask me my response.  They reached out and yet nothing comes of it because there was no reception.  And fairly frequently, someone will send you something on email that you can’t open, because your software doesn’t recognize the format—there it is on your computer, but you can’t read it.  If you use a cell phone on the highway, you can loose bars and the person on the other end is just talking to himself, because you hear nothing.  And consider the HDTV change over we went through in recent years.  If you didn’t have cable or buy a little converter box, your TV became useless when the transition was completed—all because you couldn’t receive the new format.

When I was a kid, people used to call the part of a telephone that you picked up with your hand a receiver—which I think dated back to the time when you held a small speaker to your ear while you talked into the front of the phone.  Without that receiver, it didn’t matter what the other party said—you weren’t going to get the message.

But how does this work with God.  God is pouring out God’s own self, the Holy Spirit to each of us all the time in wave upon wave of love, but we don’t seem to receive much of it.  We fumble the ball, drop the connection, forget to check the mail, go into hard to reach places and generally stop receiving from God.  People say, then, I am just not experiencing God much now, or they complain that there is no God or that God does not care about us.  It is hard to get what God is giving us, when we have messed up the receiver!

This happens as easily has Essau dispising his birthright because he was hungry.  It happens as easily as  blocking out the Spirit by running after our compulsive desires – over eating, over drinking, smoking, pornography, shopping til we drop or what some call retail therapy.  It can be doping ourselves on TV or focusing completely on how we look on the outside, or by become the  social police making sure everybody follows all the little social rules.  It can happen when we grow lazy, or judgmental, or perfectionistic or deceitful or gluttonous, envious or lustful; when we are prideful or hoarding—it is soooo easy to drop the call with God!
But we know all this—far better than we want.  How is it that can become good receivers of God?   St Paul offers us a stark reminder that either we serve the Spirit of Christ or we serve those things that pull us down into our most animalistic ways.  But what is not clear from the English translations of our bible is how we can better serve Christ and live in the Spirit of God.  The Greek word used again and again by St Paul to describe our receiving of the Spirit and allowing the Spirit to rule within us is “oikos,”  and its variants—the very root word from which we get the word economics.  This word speaks of the indwelling of the Spirit—when the Spirit of God takes up housekeeping within us—God comes to live with us in our home and rearranges all the ways of the household when this happens.  It is the presence of the Spirit within us that allows us to live in relationship to Christ and to wholly serve him, because the whole economy of our lives has been changed to become a great receiver of God and server of God.  Has God been welcomed into your house?   Do you allow the Spirit to set the rules in your life?  Is your home, truly a godly place?  More to the point, is your heart indwelt by the Spirit, or do you bar the doors?

The grace of God is always and everywhere coming knocking on the doors of our hearts asking for permission to come in and set up housekeeping, but so often nothing happens because we make no home for this grace.  Can you imagine what it must be like for God when there is this constant offer to help us and we consistently refuse, and we blame God for all the bad things in the world!  Thank God for a love beyond understanding that forgives us and keeps on coming!

In the parable of the sower, Jesus gets down to the nitty gritty of how we are to receive this grace.  Do not harden the heart so that nothing can penetrate.  Do not receive God only superficially while keeping at the same old ways.  Do not choke out the grace of God by constant focus on the money and worries of the world. But let yourself be deep rich soil, into which the roots of grace can grow and the fullness of the Spirit spring up within us to the point of bearing great quantities of fruit.   In simple terms, Jesus tells us—listen, pay attention, allow this grace to come to full understanding and to take hold of your mind, heart and soul, so that you become a blessing to others and glory to God.

Today, the church in America has turned in and tuned in to itself.  We have just stopped listening for God’s grace in the voices of street children, the hungry, the chronically poor, the sick and addicted.  We have not been paying attention to where God is communicating to us and the ways God is seeking to set up housekeeping within us.  We have not tried to receive the wisdom God offers us.  We have become incompetent receivers.  Because of this, the whole church in America has been declining and becoming weaker and less relevant year by year for decades.

But something new is at hand—a great awakening of the Spirit is at hand.  We are opening up our hearts and minds to receive this new grace and power, because we are paying attention, listening, and becoming obedient to the Spirit.  The Spirit is being welcomed here.

So, I invite you to share briefly how you have experienced the indwelling of the Spirit—the new power of God living in this house and our hearts.  Share with us how you listened, paid attention and allowed God’s grace to work and the fruit of the Spirit you now experience.

Prayer.

YEAR A ORDINARY 18 2011

Genesis 32:22-31

Romans 9:1-5

MT 14:13-21

The dawn is breaking on Hedding.  The dawn is breaking in.  The dawn started with that faint light on the eastern horizon some time ago, and some of us have picked up on that light with joy the morning is with us—even as the darkness still keeps it hold over so much of the landscape.  Others have stayed in bed or awakened in fear of the shadows of the early dawn—fear of change and fear of troubles ready to emerge from the darkness.  Are you coming with joy or fear today?

Oh yes, there is much that seems broken here.  But in the dawn, much lies lifeless and inactive.  Only when the dawn sun rises higher does the life seem to return and the activity begin.  But just now, listen to the morning bird chorus—that wonderful cacophony of sound that must be an echo of the dawn of life itself.  Will we join in the song of all creation in praise of our God?  Will we join the joy of breaking dawn?

We have had a long night time.  50 years of declining vitality have left us feeling tired, worn out, just wanting a bit of peace and shrinking our expectations. We had to wrestle with our own self delusions.  Like Jacob who cheated his brother out of his inheritance and prominence of place, we benefited because of societal changes in the first half of the 20^th century and then road the wave of that development for 40+ years, all the while claiming that we were doing just fine exactly as we were doing things.

And like Jacob, we went looking for a bride and prosperity again and again in the society around us, only to be tricked into years of labor.  And we were afraid to come home to our true identity in Christ Jesus—true disciples living the holy life to which Christ and our heritage call us.  We were afraid to hold one another accountable; to discipline ourselves, and to make the sacrifices that come with holiness.  But we are chastened by the absence of this life that led to power games, inward focus, squabbles and a culture of insufficiency and shrinkage.

But now, like Jacob, we are ready to return to our discipleship and to the sacrifices and accountability that our heritage requires.  We are ready to assume leadership for a future whose pathway only God knows.  This is the work of the Holy Spirit among us, like the first light of dawn before the sunrise.  Imperceptibly, the Spirit has changed our hearts and minds, our culture and our outlook.  Even before the bright light of the rising sun appears, we are being formed by God for holy service.  Have you sensed this?  Have you felt the Spirit at work? Have you wrestled with your resistance and God’s calling?

We all resist God—that is part of our fallen nature.  But by the work of the Spirit and our gradual cooperation with the Spirit, we allow God to move us forward any way!  Putting our trust in Christ Jesus rather than our own self help systems takes us step by step to new ground into which the light of Christ pours.  We duck into the shadows to hide, but we know we must come forward for Christ.

Among us are many who have keenly felt this resistance and God’s tugging Spirit—folks who love the Lord and the church.  If you are one of these, I say thank you, for you have braved the way out of the fear and shadows into unknown lands, embraced the liberating power of the Spirit, while working on your own resistance.  I praise God for you.  Where we once lived in the shadows, we now come together seeking the dawn’s early light and the rising sun of the Spirit.

You have wrestled with God in the night time, alone but courageously.  You have pressed your own strength to the limit—the strength of your minds, hearts, habits, ideas, ways of handling stress and challenges.  You tried to do life the old way to the max, but  now have moved past these resisting bonds and powers, as God has pressed you with supernatural truth and power.

The truth that is Jesus Christ has wrestled with you, and you have not cut and run.  You have stayed throughout the night time engaged with truth that is far more than we can comprehend; power that is far more vast than any we can imagine, love more real and complete than we have ever experienced in human ways.

Don’t know what I am talking about here?  Have you been wrestling with old ways of worship, music, images of God, attitudes about the church, patterns of church behavior, perspectives on outsiders, especially those who are different?  Who among you who have been here more than 7 years has not wrestled?  And who else has not wrestled with some of these?  The challenge of change is huge and hard and daunting.

The challenge of change cuts through every sacred cow we have.  Just as Abraham killed and split the cattle carcasses for God to seal his promises by coming as a swinging pot of fire right down the middle, so have you sacrificed the sacred cows of the church and our own hearts and minds so that the Holy Spirit might come through to us with fire and the new light of a dawning day.  We feel the sacrifice of our old selves, the ripping apart of the old self and reality of the death that is already in those old selves.  Yes, we hurt from the battle of the night.

Like Jacob, we will forever have a limp where these wounds of God have touched us.  We will remember the battle and the struggle.  We will remember the old self that has been lost, but we will embrace the One who has held us in this battle of the night time, Christ Jesus!

There is pain in loosing familiar songs, familiar worship patterns, familiar places to rehearse and meet.  There is pain as our old reverence for spaces and habits through which we were once touched by God yield to the new day that dawns.  But this pain keeps us humble before the amazing power of our God to bring a new dawn into our lives.

And when we feel far afield from our familiar ways and places, we have but to ask and Christ pours out for our needs—feeds us from sources we cannot see, gives us life from the very fountain of life, and leaves no one hungry who seeks him.

Like the 5000 families that Jesus fed miraculously in a remote pasture, we are hungry for what deeply satisfies the heart, mind and body.  We want the spiritual nourishment that comes from looking to Christ for our sustenance.   Our lives sting with the pains of losses great and small, brokenness that afflicts our culture and society as well as our families and relationships.  But Jesus brings the balm of healing that feeds our weakened lives.

Like those descended from Abraham who have been so blessed with glory, covenants, law, great temple worship, history and holy promises, we yearn for more, but resist it for fear of loosing what we have.  We are confused, too, that God seems to be offering divine blessing to those we do not like or respect.  We are troubled that in all our orderliness, we are not really vitally alive.  But still we resist.

Even so, Christ has died for us, suffered for us and returned to life to give us forgiveness and new life—a life as yet not fully revealed and experienced, but true indeed.  Do you know this Jesus?  Do you surrender your pride, ideas, history, position and power to Christ?  Do you offer that you will allow Christ to lead you wherever he may send you?

And have you experienced the dawning moments when the light of Christ is guiding you through what seems too dark to enter toward a new dawning?  Are you ready to join hands and give Christ this opportunity to lead us all in holiness and sacrifice?

As the full dawn breaks in upon us, we must know that our future lies in the love and power of Christ—and our own commitment to sacrificial service to Christ.  Through this cleft in the mountains on our horizon will flow the light of a new day—a day in which Christ will swing us open like the great doors of heaven to serve in the world and welcome in his name.

Swung into the world by Christ, we must rely upon divine love and power, as we embrace those who live in the wounded world—folks who are ready to admit that they are not “just fine,” but standing in the need of God and the disciples of Christ.  We will recognize that it is not about us and our likes and dislikes, our preferences and habits, viewpoints and attitudes—it is about Jesus and his love for everyone.  We will discover that everyone matters to Christ, and allow the remaining walls we support to fall away, so that we become truly transparent vessels of Christ, doors through which others may come to life in Christ.

So now is the dawning day, when our Congregational Health Team will be leading us forward into the dawn of a new way of living in and through Christ.  Watch, engage, join in the chorus of praise for God’s amazing love and power—join in the challenge of change and the trust in Christ that it takes to love others and serve Christ as a true disciple.  Amen.