"Our Father" Sermon Manuscript, 6/21

Scripture: Matthew 10:24-33

24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

We celebrate Father’s Day today, and we lift up our own earthly fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and those who have been like fathers to us.

So I want to share a story with you for my Dad, a story I think he will appreciate because this story is the very epitome of what he would have done if he and I were in this situation, and also, he’s a fisherman through-and-through, and so, I know he’ll enjoy this fish tale!

This is a true story. There was a boy, about 16, jumping over waves at a sandbar at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. He was about 25 feet from the beach, when his father heard him screaming. He was being attacked by a shark!

The father sprang into action, raced out to his boy, who had a shark’s jaws clamped tight into his thigh and not letting go. The father began to punch and kick the shark, and the shark finally let go when the brave dad kicked it in the nose. Thanks to his father’s quick intervention, the boy has 40 teeth marks on his thigh and required 17 stitches, and the father had to be treated for injuries to his hand.

This very well could have been me growing up- out playing in the ocean, not paying attention to what was going on, having a good old time, and then BAM! Shark attack! I know though that my own Dad would have done the very same thing- he would have come running and Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked that shark right in the nose!

(Maybe not today, though, maybe today as a big old 40-year-old dope, Dad might have gotten his cellphone out to video and laughed at me as the shark had a snack. He might have put it online, maybe. But then I’m sure he would have come and punched it out for me.)

I praise God that God blessed me with a tremendous man to be my father. I wasn’t aware of it growing up, though. I didn’t realize at the time that a man who remained dedicated to his wife in love, who worked himself to the bone to provide for his family, a Godly man who kept his family in church- I had no idea that I had won the parenting lottery. I have to say the same too for my mother, but we already celebrated Mother’s Day, right? Love you, Mom! I have two wonderful parents who love me despite myself and despite my shortcomings and despite my wrongs and despite my sin, just like God.

My father loves me like any good father should love his son- He puts up with the wrong, stupid stuff I do, he gives advice when I need it, he provides help however he can, he loves me unconditionally. He forgives me and I know he will always be there whenever I need him.

This is the message of Jesus today. Jesus tells us to have no fear, to fear nothing except Almighty God, because God is our Father, and God loves us and has made us part of God’s own household.

What do we have to fear today? We’re only halfway through 2020, so that’s a little bit of a loaded question. Bushfires burned millions of acres in Australia, we almost had World War III, Prince Harry and Megan Markle left the U.K., then the U.K. left the European Union, and then the Coronavirus made its way around the world and we’re still in the midst of dealing with the effects of the pandemic (but even better, we’ve now in the U.S. made following healthcare advice a political issue), there were murder hornets at some point,  we can’t have the Olympics this year, wow.  That says nothing of the fact that we as a nation watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered for 8 minutes and 43 seconds by a Seattle police officer, and finally, our nation is beginning to discuss history and our part in the abuse of African Americans for centuries. It’s only June. We have six more months to go.

But then we come to Jesus, our Savior. Jesus, our Messiah. Jesus, our Lord and our God. Jesus says to us here, “Have no fear.” And Jesus says, “You belong to your Father in Heaven.” And finally, Jesus says, “You are worth more to God than all God ever created.”

Jesus was fully human. So Jesus knew fully well that all of us would experience times of fear, times of doubt, times of depression, times of loss, times of longing, and so, Jesus reminds us here today: we are worth more than the birds of the air, who do not fall to the ground but by God’s own command, and God loves us so much, God knows us so well, God has even numbered the hairs on our head, which seem to be fewer and fewer and grayer and grayer the older I get.

Jesus knew we would worry, we would experience anxiety, we would encounter times in our lives when answers were not easy, and solutions were slow to present themselves. So, then, Jesus gives us both the best and most difficult advice of all: “Have no fear.”

Jesus tells us, even as He has proclaimed, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself,” He says to us, “Shout this from the rooftops! Let everyone know how great, how deep, how grand, how marvelous God’s love is for you as your Father in Heaven.”

Then how do we do that? One of those things we generally try to do is please our parents, no matter what age we reach, and no one could argue that God, our Father, is not our ultimate Parent, loving us limitlessly, blessing us with grace and mercy and peace day after day. Jesus says, “You don’t have to try to be above God. It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher.” What does that mean for us, here and now, here in the midst of the chaos and calamity we find ourselves right smack in the middle of 2020?

Jesus also had advice for this. He said, “Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” That means, for us, to love like God loves- without limits, without bounds. That means for us to recognize and give grace to all of those around us, especially to those closest to us, remembering that sometimes we, too, can be unlovable- ask my wife about me this week (I’ve been more than a bear!), and yet, we also have to love and forgive ourselves because this is love. God’s love allows us to transcend our human emotions, our interactions and reactions to pain and desperation and loneliness and anxiety. Jesus calls us to have no fear, to love like Jesus does- fully and completely and extravagantly.

So as we celebrate this Father’s Day and we send love out to all our fathers and fathers-in-law and uncles and grandfathers and great-grandfathers and those who have been father figures to us throughout the years, let us also celebrate our Father in Heaven who loves us despite ourselves, in spite of our shortcomings. Let us celebrate and lift up the name of Almighty God, Jehovah, God-with-us. Let us celebrate God’s own love for us which was so great, even when we did all we could to separate ourselves from God’s love, God sent Jesus to the earth to take on flesh, become human, and give Himself as a sacrifice on the cross for our sin, forever paying a debt we could never resolve ourselves, just because God loves us that much, that God wants to live with us and love on us forever and ever, just as God created life to be from the very beginning.

I thank God this day for my own father, Carl West, a man who suffered my own shortcomings with patience and grace, who tried to instill in me a love for nature and creation through long days on the river fishing, through many hours serving as an apprentice to his woodworking, who dealt with my inattention and greater attraction to video games, who always shows up when I need him, but who also kept me in church,  who raised me in the paths I should go, so that I would not depart from them as I grew older, who nurtured and directed me in the faith, and guided me always, through all things towards the love of Almighty God.

Likewise, I thank God this day for God and God’s own love for me, a love so great that for even me, for even my weakness and sin and worthlessness and unrighteousness that God saw fit to send Christ to die on the cross to pay my debts of sin. I thank God for a love so great that Jesus is preparing a place for me there in Heaven where someday I will join God and I will be reunited with all my family there, and for the hope God provides that indeed, one day, I will see my Lord and my God face-to-face, that I will see and feel and experience God’s love for myself.

Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect. Have no fear. God loves you more than the birds of the air and has numbered the very hairs upon your head, Jesus tells us today. Let us go ever forth to love one another like God loves- completely, absolutely, without reserve, without judgement, and without limit.

This is our mission, from our Father in Heaven: to love God with all we are, to love one another just like God loves us, and to tell all the world of the great love of Jesus.

Let us end on this Father’s Day by praying the prayer which Jesus taught us together. Would you join me?

Our Father, who Art in Heaven

Hallowed be Thy name

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done

On earth as it is in Heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

Lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil

And thine be the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory

Forever and ever.

Amen.

"Hope!" Sermon Manuscript, 6 14

Scripture: Romans 5:1-8

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

With everything we’ve faced over the last few months, it would be understandable if you admitted that you were running on empty, that just maybe, perhaps, your internal fire has burned down to its very embers, and even those coals are barely glowing, and about to extinguish.

And why not? 2020 has not been a kind year, even as Scripture tells us explicitly, “Look carefully how you walk, for the days are evil.” We’ve endured months of sheltering in place amidst stay-at-home orders and adapted to working at home virtually and having groceries delivered and trying to decide whether or not a late-night craving for ice cream is really an essential reason to go to the store. 114,000 deaths from COVID-19. Then we all watched as George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight, and we mourned and grieved, and then saw a glimpse of perhaps justice being born as protesters took to streets to demand it, and then we used our energy to argue whether black lives matter or blue lives matter or all lives matter (sidenote: if you’re arguing about this, you missed the point, go check your thinking), and complain about NASCAR removing the Confederate flag from venues and watched everyday to see which corporations issued half-hearted statements and whether or not they were sincere and working towards change.

And it’s only June, folks. We’ve got six more months to go!

Why wouldn’t we be running on empty? Why wouldn’t our fires be burned down to embers, smoldering, as we attempt to regroup, refocus, gain perspective on ourselves and learn how to reconcile and work towards justice for our brothers and sisters of color, all while navigating whether or not to wear masks in public in 90 degree weather?

But—we have hope.

Getting to hope isn’t an easy road. The Apostle Paul tells as much here in our text today.

We start with some excellent points of clarification: first, we are justified by our faith in Jesus that we have peace with God. A wonderful commentary I read reminds us of this- We have peace with God, not peace with the world, not peace with Satan, but peace WITH God. This means God is on our side. Our fight is with evil and injustice and racism and bigotry and poverty and corrupted systems- the world, Satan. Our hope here is the truth that we fight oppression created from the very systems we created out of sin and we fight that fight with the God of All Creation on our side.

And then Paul here tells us something contrary to human experience. He says, “We rejoice in our sufferings.”

Really? We’re supposed to rejoice in the midst of suffering?

But Paul makes an excellent argument here. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, so simple arithmetic says suffering ends with hope.

Suffering in and of itself is not joy-inducing. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Boy oh boy, what kind of wonderful suffering am I going to endure today? What joy there will be in misery!” And yet, our communities of color have suffered for centuries- black people, brown people, the same sins of the past continue today wrapped in different packages: slavery and genocide have been replaced with over policing, generational poverty, and well, genocide hasn’t changed so much. We’re still killing people of color indiscriminately, and those we haven’t killed yet, we’ve rounded up and delegated to border containment centers, the industrial prison complex, and reservations. That’s right now in 2020. If any of this makes you uncomfortable to hear or think about, guess what? You’re not the one suffering from it.

But that’s not to say this is the only suffering alive and about in the world. Poverty affects everyone from the bottom to the top. Socioeconomic status research shows that people in poverty are most concerned with relationships, because through relationships, people can endure together. If that’s not the Gospel for you, something Jesus said about loving your neighbor, well, I’m not sure what is. Middle class folks, research says, are more concerned with things, with stuff, “Keeping up with the Joneses,” and Upper class folks are more concerned with maintaining wealth. Middle and upper class people suffer, too, to be sure, but they don’t suffer with decisions like whether to pay the light bill or the phone bill because both are two months late and we still need something to eat this week.

Let’s not forget, too, those people who are suffering with physical illnesses, prolonged battles with cancer, that terrible dragon which prowls and destroys at will, or autoimmune diseases (like my mother and sister in law who have lupus and fibromyalgia, and my wife, who has Hashimoto’s, who look ‘normal’ and are wrecked with pain nearly all the time), or any number of other protracted diseases which can be managed but never cured, like diabetes, or COPD, and let’s not even get started on the suffering from Alzheimer’s, which destroys the patient and the caretaker, slowly, bit by bit.

And Paul tells us, “We rejoice in our suffering.” This is because in our suffering, in our extended battles with the suffering we experience daily, we are made stronger by it. We find endurance to maintain ourselves in whatever conditions we face.

We have heard many medical leaders tell us about our current pandemic, “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” (It feels like we’ve been sprinting for the past few months, though, doesn’t it?) and suffering is the very same. Suffering is a marathon, and endurance for us is that ability to keep on walking when you can’t run anymore, when your muscles are screaming out and cramping, when your entire body is weak with dehydration, when your feet are bloody and you feel like there’s just not another step in you. That’s endurance. Winston Churchill, for better or worse, said, “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” That’s endurance. Seeing no certain end to the suffering you’ve endured and saying, “I can’t stop now. We’re not there yet. We’re not done.” That’s endurance.

Endurance, Paul tells us, produces character. Suffering without endurance or character is misery and pain. Suffering with endurance grants character, the ability to engage our endurance. Character is our ability to see that hope ahead of us, because we’ve seen the past, we’ve seen how bad things have been in our suffering, and we are assured through the character which is developed of hope. Character produced through the crucible of suffering and enduring that suffering leads us ultimately to hope.

Character is the endurance gained in the suffering which allows voices to gather in the streets and cry out for justice. Character is the endurance gained through the suffering which rises and burns and says we will study war no more. Character is the endurance gained in the middle of suffering which leads us all to stand together and say we oppose racism- we desire and will build something greater from the ashes of oppression- something called love.

Character leads us to that great hope- maybe our suffering doesn’t get better. Maybe we lose the fight, ultimately. Maybe God looks down and says, “All right, my good and faithful servant, you’ve finished the course, you’ve run the race, and now it is time to come home and receive your just reward in Paradise with me.” Character produces that hope that even if we have to endure suffering all our lives, that hope that says once life on earth is over, we will be perfected and live our lives wholly and completely in the light and love of God Almighty.

Paul tells us suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope.

Now, I don’t want you to miss this: the hope we have, produced through our suffering does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit living within us.

Remember we talked about our fires earlier? About where we were with our strength and our energy and our own endurance these days? About how maybe, just maybe, our fires which had been hopefully been burning bright (or at least brighter) before, our fires were burned down to embers?

It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, and Paul tells us here it’s nothing to have shame over. I want you to see this in a palpable way. The Hebrew word for ‘Spirit’ is ‘ruach’ which means “breath” or “wind.” This is the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

So instead of having fear of our burning out, of our embers ever being extinguished by the suffering so ever-present in the world today, we have the Holy Spirit, God’s own breath breathing life, breathing wind into those embers, reigniting them, causing those smoldering coals to burst forth within us, to roar back to life into consuming flames of God’s love. God breathes God’s own breath into us when our own breath is taken, when we can’t breathe, and that Holy fire burning within us is the very same which steels us against the suffering that we might endure, or barring thus, is that Holy flame which carries us to Heaven.

Our great hope is the hope of Jesus. Through His blood, through His death and resurrection we have been purchased. Our debt of sin has been paid in full, and we are made whole, but even Jesus never promised us following Him would be easy or painless or free from suffering- no, Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily, and follow me.”

When we can no longer depend on our own strength and endurance and character to endure the suffering, we have our Lord God Almighty on our side, propping us up, carrying us with love and breath and fire through the danger ahead. We have God’s own hope living within us, that someday soon, we will be reunited with our Maker, that we will look on God’s own face, that our tears might be wiped away forever, and we are greeted with open arms and a full banquet table, Jesus Himself saying, “Welcome home, my good and faithful servant.”

In closing here, Paul also said this about hope- “These three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” In our faith, we are justified through Christ Jesus. In our hope, we are guided and supported by the Holy Spirit, ever stoking our fires to keep us burning, to ignite us for action. And our faith and our hope both lead us to love, which is why God created us and is all God asks of us, to love God with everything we are, even when our fires burn low, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, particularly when their suffering looks and feels different than our own.

This is endurance, this is character, this is hope- that we know when all is said and done and we’ve committed our level best to love God and love neighbor, that the Kingdom of God awaits us, one day.

"On a Mission from God" Sermon Manuscript, 6/7

My wife shared a video with me this week that has stuck with me. There’s a lot going on in the world right now and news agencies are covering it all 24-7, and I hope you’re all staying abreast of what our local, state, and national leaders are saying and more importantly, watching what they’re doing as our country faces the truth of a history of systemic racism and oppression of people of color.

The protests continue, the outrage continues, and we are confronted with a desperate need for change, here in our country, and all throughout the world, because black lives matter.

But I want to tell you about this video Misty shared with me. It was brief, maybe about 10 seconds or so, and the first time she played it, all I heard was the audio- a man speaking said in a hasty voice, “I’d like to take a minute to talk to you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

She laughed, and showed me the video, and I laughed too. It was nice to have a brief moment of levity. In the video, there is a man dressed in a suit, chasing a duck down the sidewalk in a park, and he says to the duck as it speeds away from him, him chasing the duck faster and faster, “I’d like to take a minute to talk to you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!”

Obviously, it’s a little far-fetched that a man would attempt to share faith in Jesus with a duck, but we have the example of St. Francis of Assisi who famously would go out into the woods and preach to the birds and the rabbits and fish and wolves, and as the stories are told, the animals would listen as St. Francis preached, and then leave happily, chirping or barking or whatever noise it is rabbits make cheerfully. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve told our dogs that Jesus loves them, and from time to time while we’re outside together, we all pray together.

Jesus gave us the Great Commission, our text for today- “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” This is our mission as followers of Jesus. Go into the world, make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the Holy Trinity of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, and teach these new disciples to observe all that Jesus told us, namely and chiefly to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

So there’s our mission: tell the world about Jesus. Go tell all the world about Jesus’ love and grace for us, a love so great that Jesus came from Heaven and took on human flesh and gave His own life on the cross for the sins of all humanity, even those sins we continue to see committed day after day on our TV screens. Jesus died and rose again for everyone, for all of God’s Creation.

Then we get to the bigger question. How? How do we live lives that preach the Gospel of Jesus? How do we begin the process of carrying out Jesus’ Great Commission to us to make disciples?

If we look at Jesus as the ultimate example, which Jesus certainly is, Jesus always developed relationships with people, particularly before He began to explain to them about the Kingdom of God. Jesus poured Himself into the disciples for three years as He prepared them to go into the world and make disciples. When a huge, hungry crowd approached to hear Jesus speak, Jesus met their needs by providing a meal from two fish and five loaves of bread for thousands of people. Jesus developed a relationship with the Samaritan woman at the well before He offered her His living water.

Preaching the Gospel of Jesus, telling others about Christ’s love for everyone, explaining how faith is such a crucial and integral part of our lives is something that can happen without building relationships first, but like the man chasing the duck in the video earlier, that truth will fall on deaf ears.

I certainly don’t want to take anything away from anyone who would preach the Gospel, but we see examples of people who do this very thing- preach Jesus without first establishing some sort of relationship- in people who stand at street corners and tell passersby they are sinners and going to Hell without Jesus. Sure, this is true, but who wants to be told by a random stranger screaming at them they’re wrong, without having any conversation first to see where they are in their faith journey? This kind of action, like handing out or leaving tracts that explain the Gospel surely isn’t what Jesus had in mind because He said so Himself.

We cannot speak about what we do not know, therefore, we must know the love of God, the salvation of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ourselves, wholly and completely, before we can ever begin to make disciples and tell others about Jesus.

Making disciples of Jesus doesn’t stop with preaching the Gospel. The next step Jesus gives us in the text here from the Gospel according to Matthew is to baptize  them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and once that happens, then Jesus implores us to teach them: “Teach them to observe all I have commanded you.”

Running after ducks to preach the Gospel to them is silly. That video made me laugh because it was ridiculous, but isn’t that what we do when we tell people we don’t know or haven’t taken time to get to know, “You need Jesus,” and nothing more?

I will be frank. Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen and heard many people who are quick to pass judgement or offer their own opinions about all that is happening, with the coronavirus closures and sheltering in place, with the tragic death of George Floyd and the protests for justice which continue, and I’ve heard and seen a lot of negative comments. It’s easier for us to say, “Well, protests are fine, but people shouldn’t be looting.” Or, “All lives matter.” Or, “There are good and bad on all sides.”

Judgement, Scripture tells us, is reserved for Christ and Christ alone. George Floyd said in a video, “One day it’s just going to be you and God.” Hebrews 9 tells us this much- “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgement.” Once we die, we will stand before Christ with the Book of Life opened to our page, and if our name is covered with the blood of Jesus, if we are found to be believers and followers of Christ, we will enter into paradise with our God. If not, then our lot falls to the lake of fire. Only Christ may judge, because only Christ died for the world.

Not us. None of us died and rose again so we can post what we think on Facebook. None of us died and rose again so we can oppress other people. None of us died and rose again so we can be racist or embrace hatred or espouse ideologies which elevate some and devaluate others.

The Gospel of Jesus is for all the world because Jesus died for the sins of humanity. The Great Commission, our mission from God, is for anyone who deigns to follow Jesus. We have been told by the Messiah Himself to love God with all we are, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and to make disciples. This involves building relationships with people. This involves meeting people where they are. This involves denying ourselves the ease of passing judgement on someone else as a first response before we know anything more about their situation.

We are reluctant. We have a reluctance, a great hesitance, to live outside of our comfort zone. Just like we enjoy air conditioning when it’s 90 degrees outside and heat when it’s 30 degrees outside, people generally tend to stick to what they know, what is safe. This is why our churches for the most part all look the same on Sunday mornings at 11:00 A.M. This is why we have such a great racial divide in our country. Reluctance to get to know one another; reluctance to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, this is the sin which we face and must overcome if we are to truly live our lives as followers of Jesus.

Jesus said, “I have not come to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved.” Even Jesus, who has the authority to judge, refrains from judgement until that final day when our race on earth is finished and we stand before Him. That means wherever we are now, as long as we have breath in our lungs, we have the ability to follow Jesus with our whole lives.

Following Jesus means loving God with all we are- our hearts and our minds and way down in our soul, and with all our strength, physically and mentally and emotionally. Following Jesus means loving our neighbors just like we love ourselves- without passing judgement, getting to know them intimately, building relationships with them. And following Jesus means we make disciples of Jesus- once we build and form relationships with others, we share the love of Jesus with them through hearing and sharing stories, and also through our deeds- through meeting needs and sharing love through our actions to come alongside and help where help is needed.

We must defeat our reluctance to change, our reluctance to reach out to those who are different from us and embrace the beauty God created in the world together.

For this reason, Jesus came to the world, died, and rose again.

We are on a mission from God here. Let’s not make it any harder than it needs to be!