Preacher's Post

1/29: Prayer as Love

All significant relationships boil down to one thing - Love.  Matt Woodley puts it this way:  “The Christian life all boils down to love…God is love.  That’s also a good summary for our prayer lives.  God is love.  Prayer connects us with God.  As we connect with God, God teaches us to love others.  Love moves us to pray for others, and praying for others is the best way to love them.  When I don’t pray for others, I am failing at love.” 

Whoa.  That’s not the way I think.  Too often my prayers for others come almost as an afterthought.  Real love means doing something, and prayer isn’t in the “doing something” column.  Loving my neighbor is a “good Samaritan” thing.  I do something to help the one who needs help.  I can come over with a meal if there’s a crisis.  If a piece of furniture is broken, I can often help with a repair.  I can give you a ride to where you need to go.  If throwing some money in a pot to help is what’s needed, I’ll dig into my pocket.  But pray?  Seems at best an afterthought.

I sit with a woman dying of lung cancer at least once a week.  It’s a powerless feeling.  Nothing is going to change the outcome.  This isn’t fixable.  We sit together and talk.  We hold hands.  Then we pray.  We pray with our eyes open and talk with God about the situation and what we need, even though we acknowledge that what we really want is to make all the pain and suffering go away.  Prayer feels like so little and hardly worth the effort.  I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something there.  Since we can never get ahold of God, maybe what I sense is the presence of God mediated through our sharing prayer together…that elusive sense there is something bigger than we are present and doing something we can’t quite grasp.

Prayer opens our hearts to the presence and possibilities of God, and when that happens, everything changes.  With gritted teeth I prayed through an incident in our cycling community that thoroughly irritated me, filling me with resentment.  Knowing resentments are the kiss of death for a recovering alcoholic, I reluctantly started to “pray” it through.  I ended up making a conciliatory phone call that I wouldn’t have thought possible even yesterday.  God can and will do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, and the key to that truth is prayer.

Love God—love my neighbor as myself.  Only through prayer is this even remotely possible in my experience.  Maybe others can pull it off on their own, but I can’t. 

I’ve always been moved by Paul’s prayer for the Philippian Christians.  It is a prayer of love and hope.  It is a prayer that recognizes and embraces the good work God is doing in us.  This is the passage I want read at my funeral…it’s that important to me.

Philippians 1:3-11 (NKJV):  I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace. For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Now for what’s on my desk…

For those of you who missed last Sunday’s message, you missed something important.  Tracy proclaimed God’s word to us in a powerful and compelling message we all need to hear.  Go to www.andrewpres.org and hit the audio sermon button.  It’s worth taking the time. 

Now you know what I know.

1/15: Prayer as a Dangerous Activity

I don’t trust a relationship to be true until we’ve weathered a good argument.  The surprise of the biblical story of people praying is arguing with God is part of the deal.  God isn’t looking for a phony relationship with us, He is seeking the real thing, and real relationships have space for disagreements and arguments.

The two most notable examples of prayer as a good argument involved Abraham and Moses.  In Genesis 18:16-32 God and Abraham go toe to toe over Sodom.  God essentially tells Abraham to stand back, He’s decided that it was time to obliterate this wicked town from the map.  Their wickedness was so profound as to invite such a draconian response.  But Abraham took up the cause of those who were potentially innocent and challenged God’s plan.  He started with challenging God to spare Sodom if there were fifty innocent people.  Then forty-five innocent people.  Forty.  Thirty.  Twenty.  And finally ten.  Abraham was not a by-stander in the relationship, he got right in there and mixed it up with God.

1/8: Prayer as Groaning

I wonder how many Stanford fans were praying last night (Monday, January 2 during the Fiesta Bowl), and their prayers went unanswered.  Jordan Williamson missed three field goals, the most heart breaking one being the hooked kick that would have won the game in the final seconds of regulation time.  So were the cowboy’s prayers answered when Quinn Sharp made both his field goal attempts?  Is prayer all about getting what we want, then it’s understandable why prayer is so much in evidence during sporting events, especially football games. 

Too many of us have matured physically and maybe even emotionally, but remain spiritually stunted, especially when it comes to prayer.  Prayer for us is still calling in our orders much like I pick up the phone and order Chinese food.  That is one aspect of prayer, for God really does want us to check in with what’s on our hearts and minds, and is concerned about every aspect of our lives, no matter how trivial.  But if that is all prayer is in our lives, we’re living as spiritual paupers.  That would be akin to thinking that making a grocery list with Lorna constituted a marriage relationship.  There is so much more.

12?18: Surprising People

God is the God of surprises. But then, that shouldn’t surprise us.  God declared through Isaiah 55:8, "I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work.”  Over and over again in the biblical narrative, God reaches out and uses the most unlikely people for His purposes.  They become part of the redemptive story by sheer grace.   There wasn’t anything that caused them to stand out in terms of skill or natural ability.  What is common to all is their availability and willingness to respond to the invitation to join in on what God is doing in that moment.

That’s why, of all the characters who become part of the Christmas story, the shepherds are my favorites.  By sheer grace they become the recipients of the greatest news imaginable.  Here’s how Luke tells the story to Theophilus, and through Theophilus, you and I.  Luke 2:8-20:

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.” Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.

Mary responded to the angel’s astonishing announcement that she was to be the mother of the Christ child by asking that it be as the angel said it would be.  When the wise men saw the star in the East, they saddled up.  Joseph did exactly as the angel had instructed.  The Shepherds heard the angelic declaration that the child had been born that night in Bethlehem, so they hurried to the manger. 

To be part of God’s story has never required ability, but it has always demanded availability.  Our willingness to be responsive to the divine interruption, that signals God is up to something we don’t want to miss, has always and will always be the key for the life lived in alignment with God’s activity.  This is why “hurry” is so dangerous to our spiritual connection with God.  Hurried people aren’t sensitive to the signs that God is “in the room.”   When we’re too busy with our plans which lead to our “to do” lists, we neglect to pay attention to God’s plan for us.  While doing good, we miss the best.

I want to point our attention to not only the shepherds as unlikely stars in God’s story, but others more recently who paid attention and when God showed up, they were available.  I’ve had a wonderful time reading about three ordinary women who lived and played extraordinary parts in God’s on-going story.  I’m encouraged by their example that God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things isn’t an abstract concept, it’s the way things are in God’s kingdom.  My personal little Hall of Fame include Mary Slessor, Elizabeth Fry, and Corrie ten Boom.  What sets these women apart is their willingness to entertain God’s interruptions and God’s opportunities to participate in the story that ultimately counts.

Now for what’s on my desk…

Below is our schedule for the month of December.  Remember to invite your friends and neighbors to join us - 

Sunday, December 18: 

    9:00 AM / 10:45 AM—Annual Children’s Christmas Pageant

    2:00 PM / 7:00 PM—18th Annual Christmas Concert for La Luz – "News of Great Joy”

Friday, December 23

    7:00 PM—Blue Christmas Service:  Feeling down and blue and not in the Christmas spirit?  This is a service that celebrates the hope, but recognizes the struggle.  It is a candlelight service with communion.

 

Saturday, December 24 - Christmas Eve

All of our Christmas Eve Services are preceded by a very special “living nativity” complete with animals!

 4:00 PM / 5:30 PM—Family Christmas Eve Service with Live Nativity

 7:00 PM—Christmas Eve Candlelight Communion Service

Sunday, December 25 - Christmas Day

10:00 AM - One service only:  There will be no childcare or Sunday School this morning

 

Now you know what I know.

12/11: Surprising Circumstances

Following God’s way is easy, without pain and suffering.  Right?  Wrong!  There was a reason Moses argued with God and begged him to find someone else for the job of leading the people.  Jeremiah?  He claimed to be too young for such a hard job.  Joseph joined so many before and after him in following the road less traveled—the road that seeks God’s will and not our own. 

But somewhere along the way, there has grown up in the American church a theology that promises a softer easier life for those who seek God's way.  Everything just goes better with Jesus.  We get happier families, better jobs, nicer houses, healing when we’re sick, and then we die an easy death and we show up at the pearly gates ready for the live to come.  That’s not what Jesus promised, nor is it what God’s people have experienced down through the centuries.  Quite the contrary.  Struggle and suffering have been the norm for those living God’s way.   When Jesus had concluded his remarks in the upper room the night he was betrayed, he made a promise:  “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)  That for me says it all.  There is a very deep sense of peace when we’re in synch with God’s will and ways, and it’s that peace that sustains us through the trials and tribulations.  For as Scott Peck said so well in the opening line of The Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.”  And so it is.

12/4: Zechariah: God's Surprising Plan

I make plans.  I’ve always made plans.  If I’m asked to do something or I’m going somewhere, then I’ve got a plan.  If I’m going to be responsible for anything, I’ll make a plan.  As I’ve grown older and hopefully a bit wiser (hopefully), I still make plans, but I know now that plans are what I do until the real action starts, and from that moment on, plans are always changing and what I end up with is rarely anything like what I thought it would be when I made my initial plan.  What I’ve had to learn, often the hard way, is the old joke is true:  “If you want to make God laugh—tell Him your plans.”  But then that shouldn’t surprise me for way back in Isaiah’s time, God declared:

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.  (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Eugene Peterson translates God’s message this way:  "I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." (Isaiah 55:8)  

11/27: Advent Thoughts From The Magi

The Christmas season has officially started.  It’s Black Friday and the rush is on.  Oops.  It’s not the Christmas season anymore.  It’s the Holiday season.  The change of moniker further indicates the erosion of the traditional Christian cues which gave us a sense we lived in a land friendly to our faith.  As Christians, we don’t feel that way anymore, so I know what’s next.  I’m going to start getting the inflammatory emails sent by well-meaning and usually loving people…emails that express outrage over the loss of our beloved cultural cues and advocate less than love for the people we hold responsible for our disorienting experience. 

I get it that Jesus and the things of God have been shoved to the side of our culture.  I tried to find an advent calendar for our grandchildren and discovered that most of the advent calendars available today are secular in nature.  I did find the Lego Star Wars Advent calendar, but I’ve searched in vain for references in Matthew or Luke which indicate any Star War characters were involved in the first Christmas.  So that one is a mystery to me.

11/20: Patches of Green

I love listening to Garrison Keillor’s Tale of Lake Wobegon…a place where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."   As Keillor weaves his story, there is always a hint of grace, and the scent of goodness, even in the most awkward or difficult situations.  I guess what keeps me glued to my radio is there is the glimmer of hope in this mythical town that somehow translates into hope as I turn the radio off and turn my attention to the world as it is, not as I would want it to be.

Hope looks for what is good.  Hope seeks the patches of green which sprout up in the most unlikely places.  Yancy cites the amazing patches of green that appeared after the devastating Mt. St. Helen’s blast in 1980.  I remember that event well, as I’d spent time around this majestic mountain that had been compared to Mt. Fuji, but had actually made the trek to the summit.  With that unbelievable blast, all that changed as the east side of the mountain blew out leaving what looked more like a moonscape than the verdant green which had surrounded the mountain before.  By the next growing season, patches of green appeared and spread. 

11/13: Serpent Wisdom

The other night I was listening to a panel of bright and successful citizens from all walks of life talk about what is wrong with our nation.  One of the panelists said, “We can’t take care of everybody.  In a capitalist system, there has to be winners and losers.”  Yes?  Maybe?  It was one of those comments that just seemed to leap out at me from the discussion taking place.  In life, there are winners and losers.  This is Darwinian economics 101, and there is no mistaking that from a purely utilitarian perspective, unfettered capitalism is very efficient.  But how do I reconcile that gentleman’s comment with my faith?  If the kingdom of God is where God’s reign is being experienced, so it is not so much a place as it is a state of being.  And if that state of being will involve following Jesus so that I’m living more and more like him, so that my life is characterized by a growing love of God, and my neighbor as myself…then how shall I then live in this world so that I not only have one foot in this life, but the other is firmly planted in the kingdom of God? 

I don’t have answers, but these are the kind of questions Christians have pondered before me when they were confronted by a world whose values clashed with the values of being a Jesus follower.  If we believe we truly answer to a “higher authority” rather than the powers and principalities of this world, there are inevitably going to be value conflicts.  If there aren’t, something is wrong.

Grace-ful living is at some point going to have to wrestle with the issues raised when love requires justice, the kind of biblical justice that means that we put love to work in real life situations and do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.  The prophet Isaiah captured the tension that must be present along with grace.  As we said last week, grace does not free us to do wrong.  Grace frees us to do what is right.

11/6: Loopholes

This is how Eugene Peterson translated Paul’s argument against “cheap grace” in Romans 6:1-8:

So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country. Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.  

There’s always someone looking for a loophole so they can leverage the system to their advantage.  The whole idea behind loopholes is there is a system to beat.  I had a good laugh with my friend Jim when we stopped in at a North Lake Tahoe casino a number of years ago and he promised me he had a “system” for beating the house at blackjack.  So I gave him $20—he put in $20—and in five minutes we left the blackjack table $40 dollars lighter in the pocket.  He laughed and said, “There’s my system…I put my money down and they take it.”