WORSHIP HIM (PASSIONATELY)

Sermon Summary (9/18/16), “Worship Him.” Isaiah 6:1-8

I began going to church when I was five.  I remember where I sat in the congregation.  I knew the numbers to all the old hymns.  I even remember a sermon or two.  There is no doubt that worship has shaped me, formed me, had much to do with whom I am today.

We’re in the midst of a news sermon series, “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations,” those practices so critical to a congregation’s mission that failure to perform them in an exemplary way leads to congregational deterioration and decline—Bishop Robert Schnase.

Last week, Radical Hospitality that invites, welcomes, receives, and cares for the stranger; and this week, Passionate Worship that gives the stranger something to take away.  Worship changes us.  It “describes those times we deliberately gather seeking to encounter God…. We don’t seek to squeeze God into our lives.  We seek to meld our lives into God’s.”—Schnase.

When we worship, when we really worship, we encounter God in all the elements of worship.  How is your worship?  When we lift our voices in praise and song, do we encounter him?  When we lift our hearts in prayer, do we encounter him?  When we hear Scripture read and the word proclaimed, do we encounter him?  And on communion Sunday, as we gather around the table, do we encounter him?

And if so, do we hear a call on our lives?  And so doing, leave this place changed?  When we seek God in worship, He changes us.

Worship has been part of the plan from the beginning.  Cain, Abel, Noah and Abraham brought offerings.  God told Moses to tell Pharaoh “to let my people go so that they can worship me.”  The book of Psalms is the worship book of the people.  Isaiah encountered God in the Temple and responded, “Here I am, send me.”  Jesus began his ministry in worship, Luke tells us “as was his custom.”

We worship to fulfill the commandment to Love God with all our heart, mind soul and strength.  But God wants us to love him not to be revered but to gain access to his grace such that he can mold us into the people he calls us to be.  He calls us to worship him so that he can pardon us.  So that he can restore our relationship to him and one another.  And we gather together so that he can mold us together into the body of Christ.

Physically we are shaped over a lifetime.  We are formed spiritually the same.  We need worship repetitively, weekly, to be pardoned, restored, shaped, formed.  I need that.  We need that.  We need that passionately.  “Here I am to worship.  Here I am to bow down.  Here I am to say that you’re my God.”  We need worship.

BEING RADICAL (ABOUT HOSPITALITY)

Sermon Summary (9/11/16), “Being Radical.” Romans 15:7

We begin a new sermon series.  It is important from time to time for us to look at ourselves as a congregation to remind us who we are and what we are called to do: We are to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  New Disciples; when Jesus commissioned us, there were no “old” disciples.  We are called to make “new” followers of Jesus.  How are we doing?  The mainline churches are having difficulties because we are not replacing the old generation with the new.

With inspired and spiritual leadership, the Missouri Conference has done better than most, but still has lost attendance year over year.  To aid us, our Bishop guided us with a common language of “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations” that he says are so critical to our congregations that failure to perform them in an exemplary manner leads to congregational deterioration and decline. 

Today we look at the first practice, Radical Hospitality.  Hospitality is a biblical theme from Genesis to Jesus.  Jesus opened his hands to the common people and to the outcasts.  He welcome sinners and ate with them.  He invited the woman at the well, a hated Samaritan, to new life.  He touched lepers, the demon-possessed, those cast aside.  There was no one to whom Jesus did not offer his hand.

There is no other theme or practice that is as fundamental to our faith as hospitality unless it is love.  Yet I would argue that hospitality is an act of love.  It values people, it makes them feel worthy, it builds them up.  Hospitality is an act of love.

“Christian hospitality refers to the active desire to invite, welcome, receive, and care for those who are strangers so that they find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ.”—Bishop Robert Schnase.

Hospitality  is not just a matter of being friendly, as Bishop Bob Farr has said it, “Every church is friendly.  What the congregation’s goal must be is make them believe the church is a place where they can make friends.”  How is it that we receive a person such that they believe they are truly welcome and want to return to be with friends? 

Welcoming is important, receiving is important, caring is important if the stranger is going to find a spiritual home and discover the unending richness of life in Christ.

And it begins with an invitation. You don’t have to be a theologian to invite, you don’t have to be an evangelist.  All you have to do is be able to say, “I go to church; church is important to me; church makes a difference in my life.  Won’t you join me this Sunday.”  And then welcome them, receive them, care for them.  Give them something to take away.

SUSTAINED BY GRACE

Sermon Summary (9/4/16), “Sustained by Grace.” Job excerpts

We’re concluding a sermon series looking at “grace” in the Old Testament.  As Methodists we believe that grace permeates our relationship with God.  He nudges before we know it (prevenient grace), he saves us (justifying grace), and he makes us grow in love of God and one another (sanctifying grace).  There are an infinite number of ways grace moves us and they are intermingled.  We are continually nudged, continually returned to a saving relationship, continually growing.  Grace is also there to sustain us.  And that is the Old Testament story of Job.

We have been or have seen those sustained by grace.  We say, “There but the grace of God go I”; and we marvel at how some get through life, but they do.  Sustained by grace.  The question in our mind becomes, “How can God let bad things happen to good people?”

Portions of Job are the oldest written passages of the Bible making the question of unfairness in life the oldest dilemma in the human condition.  The question predates the Psalmist who lamented “Why do the wicked prosper.”  It predated Moses who in Deuteronomy might lead us to believe that only the bad suffer.  It predated Abraham.  We find Job predates the Hebrew race.  Why do good people suffer?

The story: Satan tells God his faithful servant Job would not be so if his possessions (a good person rewarded with good things) and his health were taken from him.  God gives Satan permission to test him, “but spare his life.”  Job’s friends insist he has sinned, or has sinned and doesn’t know it, or his children have sinned.  “Confess and repent.”  Job insists in his integrity.  He is blameless and upright, always fearing God and turning from evil.  He says, “If I could only face God I could make my case.”

God appears to him with glorious language seeming to answer no questions at all except creation is a mystery, and Job relents, “Things too wonderful for me.  Things I did not understand.”  Then an amazing thing happens.  God says Job is right!  Bad things do happen to good people!  We come to understand that God has been sustaining Job’s faith all along.

As Christians we come to understand that freewill (God gave Satan permission to exercise his freewill as he does all his creatures including us) permits evil and chaos in this world.  The Almighty God has relinquished a part of his power to us, but he has replaced it with grace.

But when bad things happen to good people, in steps grace, sustaining grace.  In place of all our flaws, God sustains us.  And he gives us friends to walk along side us, to be sustaining grace too.  That’s us.

SHOW-ME GRACE

Sermon Summary (8/28/16), “Show-Me Grace.” Hosea 11:1-9

We often reject God for convenience.  Whenever our urges arise, God gets in the way.  We set him aside.  Another Boone County arrest for child pornography..  Where had he placed God in his life?  Entanglements that threaten marriages.  My guess that God was inconvenient and was set aside.  Drug addictions and alcoholism.  When choices could have been made, God was inconvenient and set aside. 

Oh, we make other excuses: “I reject the wrathful God of the Old Testament.  I want a God who care about me, not the God of the Old Testament.  I want a God who loves me, a God that forgives me even when I don’t deserve it.”  Let me tell you about the God of Hosea!

When God spoke to Hosea, he told him to not only to speak for God (that’s what prophets do), but “I want you to show them my grace.”  He told Hosea to take as a wife a woman of Il repute, and have children with her.  Hosea married Gomer and after having children, Gomer left Hosea to return to her life of sin (Just like the Children of Israel leaving God for other small g gods).  But God told Hosea to bring her back, redeem her, “love a woman who is an adulteress.”  Just as God loves Israel and calls her back, redeems her even when she is undeserving, Hosea, the “Show-me Prophet”, shows us the grace of a God who cares for us, loves us, forgives us even when we do not deserve it.

But the verses that truly show the grace of God are from Hosea 11:

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
    and out of Egypt I called my son.
² The more I called them,
    the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
    and offering incense to idols.

³ Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
    I took them up in my arms;
    but they did not know that I healed them.
⁴ I led them with cords of human kindness,
    with bands of love.
I was to them like those
    who lift infants to their cheeks.
    I bent down to them and fed them.

I love these verses.  Here’s the deal.  Everyone of us has someone that needs to be shown grace. God asked Hosea then.  He asks us now.

OLD TIME RELIGION

Sermon Summary, “Old Time Religion,” Psalm 103:8-14, Aug 21, 2016

I recall the first time my pastor in Connecticut asked me to liturgist.  For me it was a sacred duty.  I remember the words of assurance that were to be said, “⁸ The Lord is merciful and gracious… ¹¹ For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love for those who fear him; ¹² as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”   (Ps 103: 8a-11,12)  By the way, verses 11 and 12 are your verse memorization assignment for this week.  

Too many of us think of the Old Testament God as a wrathful God, yet here is God’s self description from Ex 34:6 repeated by the Psalmist, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger , and abounding in steadfast love…”  Is your Old Testament God a harsh God?  Or is he a forgiving God?  A merciful God?  A God giving assurance?

We know from the attribution at the top of the Psalm that King David wrote Psalm 103, but we don’t know the occasion.  Ellsworth Kalas conjectures, but there is no evidence of it, that it was a follow up to Psalm 51, David’s Psalm of penitence. 

You remember the story of David’s fall from grace with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, her husband as a follow up.  Even then he was oblivious until the Prophet Nathan declared “You are the man.”  (See 2 Samuel 11 and 12).  Psalm 51 tells us the occasion was “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”  Innocuous words aren’t they?  Anyway, Kalas points out that for all its wonderful words of penitence, there are no words of assurance, that at the time he wrote it, David may not have been able to feel God lift his burden from him.  Some time later, he wrote our verses for today: “The Lord is merciful and gracious… so far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us.” Assurance. Assurance.

The Old Testament God is a God of grace!  How is it that we should respond?  With repentance.  Jesus begins his ministry by saying, “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.”  Repent, not just confess, but turn around, change, start a new life, take a new path.

Change is hard.  John Wesley knew that.  He gathered his followers in groups and had the leaders ask every week: “What sins have you committed since our last meeting?”  Now, we might not want to go to that kind of meeting, but we must at least ask the question of ourselves an if we do, we may give ourselves pause each week.  And by the way, we have a God who is merciful and gracious.  David was glad.  We are too.  Our response to grace?  Repent, turn around with assurance. 

PARABLE OF THE PARTY

Sermon Summary, “Parables of Jesus: “Parable of the Party” Mt 21:1-14; Col 3:10;12;14, Aug 14, 2016

A few years ago, the DS asked that I give the message at the District Conference.  I asked that I preach on Evangelism.  The  selected passage for that Sunday was ours for today which includes “Go out onto the highways and byways, the streets and the lanes and invite everyone you can find to the wedding.”  I told him that we were going to South Dakota but that we would be back for the Conference.  I didn’t tell him the purpose of the trip.  We were going to see Justin.  Justin had not received an invitation.  He had found life too difficult and had taken his own life.  No one had invited him to the party.

Have you every been invited to a party and “just didn’t have anything to wear?”  So you skipped and found it had been a great party?  Can you imagine God throwing a party and we choose to not go?  That’s the story.  God sends so many a personal invitation and we find excuses.  We’ve bought a vacation home and need to visit it.  We’ve bought a new car or motorcycle and we need to try it out.  Or maybe we’re are just not ready.  (Jesus told a story about that too, the 10 virgins only five of whom had oil for their lamps.  The other five weren’t ready.)

Do you have of Justin’s and Justine’s in your lives who need invitation?  Might their lives be different if a kind person, one who strived to build them up came along side of them, who just wanted a relationship with them because of whom they are?  Might their story be different?

Luke ends his version of the story there with an invitation on the streets and the lanes that filled the hall with both good and bad.  Matthew continues with the King finding a guest without a wedding garment and casts him out.  What is this garment?  I believe it is and active faith.  When we put on an active faith, we dress up like Christ.  We may not have all the garment, all the faith.  But if we start with new shoes for walking, new gloves for holding on, and we stick with it, soon we will find ourselves fully dressed.

Dressing up, putting on clothing is a common biblical theme.  Paul in Colossians 3 tells us to cloth ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  And above all put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  So clothed, we can walk along side those who need lifting up, who need to know they are persons of worth, of value.  And when the day comes when their needs cannot be satisfied with things, that they need more, you, so clothed, can come along side them and make all the difference in their lives.  Amen.

PARABLES OF PRAYER

Sermon Summary, “Parables of Jesus: Prayer” Luke 11:1;5-13: 18:1-8, July 24, 2016

I remember my Mom teaching me to to pray.  I was three or four.  “And take special care of Uncle Dean.”  I was too young to know who God was and as I read these parables, I wonder if it is more important to know how to pray or to know the nature of the God to whom we are praying?  How or who?  As it turns out, Jesus did both.  “Our Father..” Then he teaches us the nature of God.

In the first parable (space necessitates leaving the reading to you), a man knocks on the door of a friend at midnight, begging for bread to show hospitality to a guest and is rebuffed until the friend finally gives in because of his persistence.  In the second, a reluctant secular judge finally gives a poor widow justice, not because of he was just, but because she was a pest.  William Barclay calls these parables of contrast.  God is NOT like that.  In verse Luke 11:13, Jesus says, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

Holy Spirit.  This is the key.  We do not always get what we ask for and in retrospect, we know how often that would have been harmful to us or to others.  But we always, always receive the presence of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.  It is the nature of God to be present with us, to be available for conversation with every breath we take and every step we make.  For Jesus, prayer was part of him, with every breath.  With every breath we take and every step we make.

God answers our petitions with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  I picture my life as a series of forks in the road, paths that I must choose.  I know this, if I ask the Holy Spirit, I am far more likely to choose the correct path.  Sometimes I’m wrong and end up on the wrong path because of my free will.  Sometimes I end up on the wrong path because of the free will of others (remember he story of Joseph being thrown into prison because of Potiphar’s wife?).  Even on the wrong path, God is with us and will allow us to make the best of it.  Constant communication with every breath we take and every step we make.  I guess that’s what Paul meant when he said, “All things work for Good for those who love God..”  God has given us his Holy Spirit for the asking.

Before finishing, “Uncle Dean,” prayer of intercession, really a prayer of “Thy kingdom come..”  My Uncle Dean could only be safe if the kingdom is breaking through where he is, where he and others around him and creation are within the will of God.  “Thy kingdom come..” is no small prayer.