Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

August 28, 2016

Acts 16:16-24

In the sixteenth chapter of Acts, there are two stories of women encountering the power of Christ.  The first was Lydia.  We learned about her two weeks ago.  It’s kind of ironic that although Asian, she’s the first named convert on European soil.  She heard the testimony of Paul, Silas and Timothy while the Lord worked in her heart and she’s changed.  Her encounter with Christ is more traditional than the young girl we’ll hear about today.  This is a story not only about her, but about her owners and what happens when the work of the gospel goes against the financial interests of others.  Twice, in Acts, we learn that Paul’s teachings had a negative impact on the economic well-being of Gentiles, which resulted in his persecution.[1] There’s a lot for us to ponder in this reading.  Read Acts 16:16-24.

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A church in Kentucky called a new pastor fresh out of theological seminary.  He was on-fire for the Lord and ready to straighten up the congregation and clean up the town.  For his first sermon, he attacked drinking.  He laid out all the evils of liquor and reminded his congregation how drunkenness leads to debauchery. [2] A number of men in the congregation ignored him after the service and left by the side door.  That afternoon, the Clerk of Session stopped by his house and informed him that many families in the congregation were involved in Kentucky’s distillery business and they all enjoyed a good bourbon in the evening.  The fledging pastor understood and promised not to discuss the evils of alcohol again.

The next Sunday, he stepped into the pulpit and preached a sermon on the evils of gambling.  “Don’t be like the Roman soldiers who executed Jesus and gambled for his clothes,” he said as if that was the greatest of the sins committed that Friday morning.[3]  “Stay away from casinos and the racetrack,” he thundered.  Again, there were those who avoided him at the door after the service and that afternoon the Clerk of Session was back at his house.  “Pastor,” he said, “there are many people in the church who are involved with the Kentucky Derby.  Horses and betting are a way of life for us.”  Again, he nodded in agreement and said he’d avoid talking about gambling.

Seven days later he’s back in the pulpit, railing against the Confederate battle flags that he’d seen flying around town and how, to a certain segment of the population, this was offensive. He thought it was a great message but again there were those who avoided him and the Clerk showed up at his house to tell him that many his congregation were descendants of soldiers who fought under that flag.  He shook his head, and said, “Okay, okay, I get the message.”

The very next Sunday, he stepped up into the pulpit and began to discuss how dancing can lead to ever more serious sin.  Again, there were those who avoided him after the service and that afternoon, the Clerk of Session was again at this door.  “Pastor, there are many of us here who love to dance and the Armstrong family owns the local dancehall.”  The pastor listened, but this time something snapped.  Instead of agreeing or promising to avoid talking about dancing, he tore into the Clerk.  “You tell me I can’t talk about the evils of liquor, gambling, an old flag, and dancing.  What can I preach about?”

The Clerk thought for a moment… “How about the Chinese?”

Aren’t we like that?  If we want to talk about sin, let’s concentrate on the sins of others.  We don’t like admitting our own failures or our need of being remade in the likeness of Christ.  If we have a business interest in what is being questioned, then it’s not preaching, it’s meddling.  Woe to the meddler…

Unlike the new pastor in Kentucky, who had his own problems, we need to be a more accepting of everyone while realize we all have logs in our own eyes which distort how we view the world.[4]  Certainly this is the case in Philippi when an occasion for celebration (the girl’s deliverance from demonic possession) led to the persecution of Paul and Silas.

Let’s consider what happened.  We have a slave constantly interrupting the missionaries as they try to tell others about Jesus.  Now, English versions generally indicate she was a troubled psychic, but a more literal reading of the Greek shows she had the spirit of Python.  This connected her to the Oracle of Delphi.[5]  There may even be deeper symbolism here as a python is a snake and we remember what the snake said back at the garden.[6]  People assume her utterances are the voice of a god, which makes her valuable to her owner.  People pay money to her owners for her to tell their fortunes.

This woman, who is a slave, points out that these missionaries are also slaves, but slaves to the one true God.  Essentially she’s saying their God that is above all gods.[7]  Although Paul and company are teaching that there is only one God, her words allow those who listen, who come from a Greek mindset, to understand Paul and company’s God is greater than anything they worshipped.[8]

There are two interesting things about this.  First of all, she’s supporting Paul’s message.  Secondly, she’s obviously emotionally disturbed.  But Paul isn’t interested in her validation of his message nor does he seem to have any concern for her condition.  He’s just annoyed.  Here, we see a very human side of Paul.  It’s not out of compassion that he invokes the name of Jesus to cast out this demon, it’s because he’s lost patience.  But it works.  The girl is saved from this awful burden of which she’d endured.   Sadly, we don’t hear anything more about her, but the text isn’t about her or even about Paul, it’s about God’s power and work to spread the message of Jesus.[9]

What we learn next, as I joked about in the beginning, is that Paul’s good deed hurt the profit of others.  With the girl freed of the demon, she can no longer earn money for her owners.  For this reason, they haul Paul and Silas off to the authorities, but instead of talking about what they’d done (freed the girl of her bondage), they trump up charges.  There is a bit of racism here.  They point out that they are Jews, Jewish agitators[10], who are disturbing the peace.  “These guys are not one of us,” they protest.  “They’re outsiders!”  Blaming our problems on outsiders is a safe thing to do, and sadly such excuses often find sympatric ears.  It’s also the type of rhetoric that often leads to witch-hunts.  Hitler did it to the Jews.  The labels we apply to others can be damaging.  It can result in injustice.  When we are suspicious, truth is easily overlooked.  Paul and Silas are beaten and then led off to jail.

You’ve heard the old phrase, I’m sure, that “they should be put under the jail house.”  Well, that’s what happened to these two.  They are placed in the innermost cell where their legs are locked in iron.  The stage is set for next week’s story, but first we should look at what we might learn from this passage.

The main thing we must realize is that God’s hand is behind all this.  Paul might have invoked Jesus’ name to get the girl off his back, but she’s healed!  God’s purposes of freeing an enslaved humanity is fulfilled.  People are encountering Jesus.  The slave girl in Philippi stands in contrast to Lydia, the first convert of the city.   Lydia sells her purple cloth and enjoys the profits of her labor while the slave girl is burdened and disturbed and her owners use her to make themselves a profit.  In a way, Lydia was in control of her destiny while the slave girl was under the thumb of her owners.  But both experience a newfound freedom in what God can do in Jesus Christ.  Although we don’t know what happened to the slave girl after this passage, and we must assume she was still a slave, at least she is no longer deranged. That’s good news!

Secondly, we see an example of human behavior at its worst in this passage.  The owners of this slave aren’t benevolent masters.  They don’t care about the girl, or her mental health, only the income they can obtain through her. When she can no longer perform, they are mad at Paul and Silas.  They weren’t honest.  They couldn’t admit they’d made a bad investment.  Instead, they blame others.  It’s the easy way out.  It’s a way to get the crowd on your side.

It used to be in our society, you label someone a Communist and everyone’s suspicions were immediately raised.  Today, it’s terrorist, a Muslim, a gang member or an illegal alien.  When we slap on such labels as a means to divert attention from the real issue, we’re not being honest.  Today, with social media on the internet, it’s easy and tempting to “like” or “share” mean-spirited messages of others, but are we then reflecting the face of Jesus?  Is this what one who encourages us love and not to judge and to be honest in our dealings do?

Finally, this passage is a warning of how, in the pursuit of money, we can be exploitive.  In our world today, we’re often far removed from the problems of production.  There are blood diamonds that come from Africa, dug by those who live essentially as slaves and the money made off them used to fund warlords in places like Angola and Sierra Leone.  But because of them, we have less expensive jewelry.  Or think of oil production in places like Nigeria and Venezuela and the corruption it funds, yet we have cheap fuel.  There are people living and working in horrible conditions in Asia and South America, but we have cheap clothing.  We depend on dangerous chemicals, which threaten the lives of those living around where they are produced, but it’s far away so we don’t worry about it.

I’m sorry.  I’m unable to offer any easy answers to these problems.  And I would warn you against accepting easy answers, because they are probably not easy nor a true solution.  But as Christians, as followers of Jesus, we must open our eyes to the problems of the world.  We must do what we can to alleviate suffering and improve the lives of others.  We must be the conscious of the world.  We must be concerned for the needs of all of God’s children, especially the “least of these” which would include the slave girl of Philippi.  God loves the world and all the people within it, and so should we.  Amen.

[1] See Acts 19:23ff.

[2] This is actually in scripture.  See Ephesians 5:18

[3] All four gospels indicated that the soldier’s “casts lots” (a game of chance who I loosely interpret as gambling).  See Matthew 27:34, Mark 14:24, Luke 23:34 and John 19:24

[4] Matthew 7:3.

[5]F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 332

[6] See Genesis 3.

[7] The reference of God being above all gods is common in the Psalter.  See Psalm 82:1, 84:7, 86:8, 95;3, 96;4-5, 97:6 and 136.2.

[8]Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abington, 2003), 238

[9] Gaventa, 238-239.

[10] The Message translation uses “Jewish agitators”

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

August 7, 2016

Acts 16:1-9

This week we begin Paul’s second missionary journey.  The sixteenth chapter of Acts is another turning point in this book.  Paul heads into Europe.  The story Luke tells in Acts focuses here on out on Paul and his companions.  Barnabas and Peter and others fall to the side.  This doesn’t mean they stopped their missionary activity, but just that Luke, the author of Acts, centers his story on Paul.  Read Acts 16:1-9.

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I have mentioned many times as we’ve worked through the book we know as “Acts of the Apostles,” that it should be called “The Acts of God through the Apostles.”  The Apostles often don’t act until they are prodded to do so by God.  God’s Spirit is that motivating power.  As I have continued to study the Book of Acts, I have decided that another subtitle could be: “Acts: The beginning of the church’s 2000 year resistance to change.”  Often, the Apostles not only didn’t act until they received a kick in the pants, they also tried to slow down the work of the Spirit.  It’s natural.   We don’t like change and we want to do things our way.  But times change.  People change and so too must the church.  Of course, the gospel doesn’t change.  We still worship the same God, but how we worship, how we share the faith, and how we live out the gospel changes because the culture in which we live changes.  This makes us uncomfortable.  We see this often these days as the church tries to find its voice in this rapidly changing world.   We want to turn back time.  But that’s not an option.

You know, as much as we don’t like change, we like to accumulate stuff.  That’s true in our homes as it is in our churches.  When I was in my first church, I remember working with a group of people going through a bunch of old Christian Education materials.  It was 1990 and there were still those who wanted to hold on to old filmstrips of Bible stories.  We didn’t even have a working filmstrip projector and they were no longer being made.  We also had chalk boards and felt boards still up on the walls, which was being replaced by whiteboards by this time.  Now, could a child still learn on a chalk board or via a filmstrip?  Certainly. Many of us here had learned the gospel stories in such a manner, but new technology was coming along.  VHS tapes and CDs had come into vogue in 1980s.  Now, they’re all part of the past as we learned just last week that the last manufacturer of VHS players is ending production by the end of the month.  Of course, now there are new newer ways to record and even DVDs are becoming out of date.  As Bob Dillon sang back in the 60s, the times are a changing.

Which makes me wonder why Paul decided to have Timothy circumcised.  We just got through the Council of Jerusalem, in which the question of circumcision seemed to be settled for the second time in the Book of Acts.[1] Those who were Gentiles did not have to undergo such surgery in order to become Christians. Paul had been arguing for this change.  He took this as good news, yet here he has one of his assistants go under the knife.  Why?  It seems Paul, in the case of Timothy, compromised.  But why?  From what we might gleam from the text, it appears Paul felt that by having Timothy circumcised, he would be more acceptable to the Jewish population.  Timothy had a Jewish mother, but his father was Greek.  Today, in Judaism, the line generally passes down through the mother, but there is some question about that during the first century.[2]

Having not been circumcised, while claiming to be a Jewish Christian, would have made Timothy suspect to the Jews of Asia and Europe that they were trying to reach with the Gospel.  So while Paul didn’t expect Gentiles to be circumcised, he felt it was a good thing for Timothy.  Paul was willing to compromise this principal for the sake of the gospel.  In Galatians, Paul tells us that circumcision carries no weight with Christ.  However, in his first letter to the Corinthians, he speaks of being all things to all people in order to win them over to Christ.  It appears this is what Paul is doing here by making Timothy more acceptable to the Jews.[3]

Now Paul is traveling with at least two companions: Timothy and Silas.  He may have been traveling with three, for beginning in verse 10, Luke the author of Acts, shifts from the third person plural (they) to the first person plural (we).   Does this mean Luke was along as an eye-witness?  Scholars have argued it both ways and it’s an interesting idea, but doesn’t matter much as to what Luke tells us.[4]

Now let’s go back a few verses.  Starting in verse six, we learn of the paths Paul and company take through Asia.  There seems to be a problem.  Doors are closing. The Holy Spirit hinders their ability to share the gospel.  The Spirit of Jesus, which we assume means the same thing, keeps them from even going into new and fertile territory.  They’ve headed off on this missionary journey but they find themselves unable to do the work they’ve set out to do.  What gives?  How did the Spirit hinder them?  Were they given a bad case of laryngitis?  How did the Spirit keep them from heading to go to Bithynia?  Did the Spirit station an angel by the road with a fiery sword as the Cherubim stood at the east gate to the Eden?[5]  We don’t know, but sometimes God closes doors in front of us in order to redirect our lives.[6]  God, not Paul and friends, is in control.[7]

The third movement of this passage comes in a dream.  Paul must have been frustrated by his inability to do the work to which he felt called.  Then one night he has a vision, I am assume, in sleep.  Ironically, in the darkness, the path forward becomes clear.  Instead of working across Asia, Paul is being called into Europe.  He sees a Macedonian man pleading with his for help.  How he knew he was Macedonian, we don’t know.  Maybe he was waving the Macedonian flag as if he was at the Olympics. Paul now realizes where he is to go and, according to the text, all are in agreement.  In the morning they arrange passage to Europe.

There are several things we can take from this passage and apply to our lives and to our work as Jesus’ ambassadors in the world.  First of all, at times it is necessary to compromise in order to be accepted by others.  Timothy was circumcised.  A few weeks ago, I mentioned Jared Currie in a sermon, who took his family to an eastern island in Indonesia where they are living among tribal people in primitive circumstances.  Going there and building a house with your own hands was a way to enter into that community.  Sometimes it takes such efforts to gain enough trust to share the gospel with others.  What’s important isn’t our own desires, but what is best for the other.  It’s just another way of living out one of Jesus most frequent themes, “if you want to be first, you have to go to the end of the line” and if you want to be great you have to be willing to be a servant.[8]  What are we willing to give up to help spread the gospel?  Are we willing to serve others?

A second theme we see here is how God opens and closes doors, which force our missionaries to strike out for Europe.  Sometimes what we take as misfortunes can be God leading us to a new opportunity.  In a way, as I’ve shared before, this is certainly how I came to be here in Savannah.  When I turned down a call to the Finger Lakes area of New York, I was hurt, disappointed and angry and commented about how felt as if I was a pawn in some chess match God was playing.  I was wisely told that I should get used to it, after all I was a Calvinist.  We, who believe in God’s providential control, are able at times to look back and see God’s hand leading us forward.  Sadly, however, when we look ahead, we’re like these missionaries.  We don’t see the hand, only closed doors.  But there are times those closed doors leads us to open doors where our skills and abilities and insights can be of use.

A final theme, which goes with the second one, is that we must follow God and accept the growth he provides.  For Paul and company, that meant to go to Macedonia, to Europe, at the pleading of the man in the vision.  Where and to whom is God calling us to minister?  Where have we been placed?  We need to look around and see how we can be useful to God’s kingdom.  We should be thankful for those who are here and do what we can to minister in the ways of Christ.  God doesn’t call all churches to be all things to all people.  Paul learned he wasn’t called to spend the rest of his ministry in Asia, but there were other missionaries that were called to go there.  If we are faithful, God will have a place for us to be involved in his ministry.

I’ve probably mentioned it before, for it was one of those lightbulb moments in my life, but when I was a seminary student the leader of World Vision spoke to our class.  Several of the students, conservatives and liberals, tried to pin him down on some of the key theological and social issues of the day.  “What was his thoughts about abortion or liberation theology?” they asked.  Refusing the bait, he insisted his call was to help feed and care for hungry people.  He trusted God would call others to take care of those issues.  There is a wisdom in going in the direction God is calling.  For this man it meant focusing on hunger issues.  In Paul’s case, it meant leaving behind what’s familiar in Asia and heading off to Europe.  What about us?

Three things: Seek God’s direction.  Trust God’s providence.  And don’t let the little things interfere with God’s mission.  Amen.

©2016

[1] See Acts 11:18 and 15:19-20.

[2] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 232.

[3] Galatians 5:6, 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.

[4] F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts: The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986 reprint) argues in favor Luke joining up with Paul, Silas and Timothy.  See pages 327-328.  William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation, a Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1988) while not discrediting that Luke could have been along, gives two other explanations and then suggests that the use of “we” gives the rest of Acts “a sense of drama and immediacy.”  (See pages 135-136).

[5] Cf, Genesis 3:24.

[6] See Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts (Drower’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1976).

[7] Gaventa, 234.

[8] Matthew 19:30, 20;16, 20:27; Mark 9:35, 10:37, 10:44; and Luke 13:30.

Jeff Garrison
Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church  

July 31, 2016

Acts 15:22-40

Two weeks ago, we began our look at the fifteenth chapter of Acts, in which we learned about the Council of Jerusalem.  As I suggested then, this council was important for the early church.  The question was “who belonged in the church.”  Some wanted to limit membership to those who were Jews or who had undergone the conversion process of becoming a Jew.  These people were disturbed as Paul began to reach Gentiles for Christ.  Change is always hard.  Soon there’d be more Gentiles than Jews within the church.  So the Council was convened and after much debate, James spoke for the Council and pronounced that Gentiles would not have to become Jews in order to become a part of the church.   For those of us who are not Jews, this is good news.

Council could have just sent the letter they’d written to the Gentiles and be done with things, but that’s not what happens.  This is such an important decision that they send a delegation back to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.  This is where our reading today begins.  Read Acts 15:22-40.

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Words are important.  There are a lot of things we can learn from books.  (At least I hope that’s true as I have enough of them.) But there are times when face-to-face connections are more conducive to achieving positive results.  I hope you understand how the presence of another person with knowledge can help us grasp information in a way we can never learn from reading.  It’s mentoring, which is important for us as we mature within the Christian faith as well as well as in industry and business.

When I was a kid, magazines used to have a number of advertisements for correspondence courses.  You could take a correspondence course to be a locksmith.  That didn’t sound interesting to me.  You could sign up for a course in shorthand, but that really didn’t sound interesting. But you could also take such a course to learn about radios and electronics.  That was something I was interested in even though my parents said these courses were a waste of money.  But then a man at church learned of my interest in radio.

Mr. Conaway invited my brother and me to come over to his house one evening.  He was an amateur radio operator and when we went into his radio shack, our tongues were drooling.  He fired up his radio and we were soon chatting with people across the country.  And then he made us an offer.  If we were interested and willing to work and study, he’d help us earn our license.  Over the next year, we learned Morse code and radio theory and a host of rules and regulations—a lot of stuff for a seventh grader.  We took the FCC exam and passed.  We stripped out an old TV for a transformer and certain tubes and built a CW or Morse code transmitter.  He came over and helped us rig a long-wire dipole antennas above our house.  Soon we had our own radio outfit in our bedroom.  For the next few years, much of my life centered on that radio.  I eventually got interested in other things, but I can assure you, if I had taken that correspondence course, I would have not learned nearly what I did from Mr. Conaway.

In our text today, we see the importance of personal connections.  The Jerusalem Council could have just sent a letter to Gentile believers, but they went one step further.  They sent mentors, ambassadors!    In verse 24, they mention those whom we learned of earlier, who came to Antioch from Judea and questioned the validity of the salvation of Gentiles.  The Jerusalem Council wants to make it clear that those rebel rousers were acting on their own.

In the letter, they list those they are sending with the news as a way to give them authority.  The group included both Paul and Barnabas, along with Silas and a guy named Judas.[1]  We’re going to hear more about Silas, starting next week, but this Judas (who had the misfortune of being named for the traitor) is only mentioned here.  These four are chosen by the consent of the whole church and have the authority to back up what’s said in the letter.  The Gentiles are free from the Jewish law, although they are to avoid that which might connect them with pagan idolatry.

In verse 30, we learn that this delegation is well received in Antioch and that they stay for some period of time encouraging and strengthening the believers.  After a while, Silas and Judas return to Jerusalem, while Paul and Barnabas stick around.  But their feet are getting itchy and after a few days, they decide it is time to head off and check on the fledging churches they’d organized in Cyprus and what we now know as Central Turkey.  Again, they could have just written them a letter, checking in on them and offering encouragement, but as it was with the Council of Jerusalem, they see value in personally visiting the congregations.  Face-to-face is always better than a letter (or a phone call, a text or an email).

However, this good and noble idea of Paul’s leads to a conflict.  Barnabas wants to take along his cousin Mark, but Paul remembers how he had deserted them on their earlier trip[2] and refuses.  Luke tells us that this argument became so heated that eventually Paul and Barnabas split up and go their separate ways.[3]  Barnabas takes Mark and heads off to Cyprus, while Paul sends for Silas.  Poor Silas, he’d just gotten back home in Jerusalem and was probably rubbing his tired feet when he receives to call to hasten back to Antioch so he can join Paul on what will become his second missionary journey.  The good news is that God was able to work through this conflict to double the missionary efforts of Paul and Barnabas![4] 

This passage reminds us of our role in carrying out the important Christian doctrine of the incarnation.  We think of the incarnation at Christmas, with God coming to us in as a child.  The word implies a person who embodies the deity.  Jesus is the incarnation of God, but we who are followers of Jesus also embody God as we carry the message to others.  This is why presence is important, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Just as the Council of Jerusalem sent the Gentiles a letter of what they should do, God reached out to Israel, giving her a “letter” of what to do on Mount Sinai.  We know it as the Law.  But sadly, the Law became impossible to follow and so God, in his divine plan, does some totally remarkable.  God comes to us!  And God then, in Jesus Christ, sends us out into the world.  Just as those in Jerusalem went to Antioch, and Paul and Barnabas and company visit the outlying churches, being involved in God’s incarnational ministry means we reach out to others.

There’s a lot we can do today with computers, the internet, social media, new technologies, but our physical presence hasn’t become obsolete and it won’t.  Showing up like the group from Jerusalem did in Antioch says a lot more than a letter—it showed that they care about the new Gentile believers.  Visiting the new churches in person showed them that they are not abandoned to flounder around, but that Paul and Barnabas cared for them.  And for us, when we visit someone in the hospital and lay hands on their shoulders, we show both our concern and God’s concern for we become Christ’s hands and feet.  Remember what Jesus said: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”[5]

We are to reach out and listen.  We may not be able to fix everyone’s problems, but we show empathy and remind them of God’s presence.  There is a movement called the “Free Listening Project” that encourages listening.[6]  When people are listened to, they feel loved.  You get it!  When someone like John Vergoz goes into the prison and sits down beside men who have been incarnation for long, he shows that he cares and they are still valued as a human being.  While I was away last week, I got reports from Dave Dawson and Don Holck on how Ed Stewart was doing in the hospital.  Such visits reflect the face of Jesus!  The same goes for those of you who sign up with Marcia Dodd’s call to take communion to shut-ins or for folks like Lori Harris who serve children and families with her volunteering with CASA.  There are those of you who volunteer in struggling schools, who work at Bethesda, and who work with Faith and Practice in Guatemala.    This is a part of who we are as followers of Jesus.

Human contact is important.  It is how we show Christ to the world.  Many years ago there was an advertising group that developed a series of ads local churches could buy for a low price and use in print media.  One of the advertisements had a clergyperson in robes extended from a TV set (this was before flat screens) with a chalice and loaf of bread.  The caption asked, “When was the last time you received communion from a TV preacher?  I felt it was an effective ad.  Jesus knows the importance for us to be in community which is why he promises to be where two or more have gathered.[7]  Jesus never set us up to be lone ranger Christians.  We live out our faith in community.

How might you further Christ’s work through this community known as Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church and through your network of friends and acquaintances?  Is there someone you can reach out to that needs a helping hand? Are there those who could benefit from your concern during an illness?  Is there someone in need of an encouraging word?  A smile?  A listening ear?  Reaching out in the name of Christ is what discipleship is all about.  Let’s do this.  Amen.

©2016

[1] F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts: NICNT  (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 315.

[2] Acts 13:3.  Mark is also known as John Mark and John.   As for a cousin of Barnabas, see Colossians 4:10.

[3] Galatians hints that Paul may have had a theological argument with Barnabas.  See Galatians 2:11-13.

[4] Bruce, 318-319;  Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 231.

[5] John 20:21.

[6] See http://urbanconfessional.org/#listen-partner.

[7] Matthew 18:20.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

July 10, 2016

Acts 14:19-28

What a week: shootings in Minnesota, Louisiana and Texas, all on the heels of Orlando.  At times it appears our world is coming apart at the seams.  We struggle with race relations.  As white Americans, most of us don’t understand the trauma some of our fellow citizens face.  And now we have five dead and a seven wounded police officers in Dallas.  What are we to think about this?  How are we to respond as Christians, as followers of the Prince of Peace?

This week we’re looking at the end of Paul’s first missionary journey.  We left Paul and Barnabas two weeks ago in the town of Lystra, where the priest of Zeus through they were gods and wanted to offer a sacrifice to them.  The two quickly tried to get this thinking out of the people’s heads, which is where I ended the sermon.  But as had happened in earlier cities, after having been received positively, opposition rises and soon they’re stoning Paul. The events unfold quickly.  At the end of our morning reading, Paul and Barnabas are back where they’d set out from two years earlier.[1]  Although their missionary efforts are successful, it also takes its toll.  Few things worthwhile are ever easy.  It always been that way because we live in a fallen world, but we (like Paul and Barnabas) are working to further God’s kingdom as we long for the redemption of the world.[2]  Read Acts 14:19-28.

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I’ve always enjoyed hearing missionaries talk.  As a child, we were blessed to have an interim pastor who had grown up as a child of missionaries in China.  He himself became a missionary and served in China for ten years or so, until 1949, when the Communist expelled all missionaries.  Even though I was only eleven years old, and his work in China was several decades earlier, I listened in awe at some of his stories from a bygone era.

A few years later (at this point I was in high school), we had a missionary from the Congo. This was when Mr. Jennings was our minister.  He was one of the most pastoral pastors I’ve known, and was by far the most prompt. I was amazed at how Mr. Jennings always got us out at noon.  You could have set your watch by his benediction.   Church started at 11 AM and when the big and little hands of clock at the back of the church pointed straight up, he was raising his hands to bless us.  Of course, this meant sometimes he seemed to say the same thing over and over again in the sermon (to make up time).  On other occasions, it seemed as if he cut out chunks of the sermon.  But he always ended right at 12 o’clock.  Then came this guy from the Congo, who lived without in a world without watches and held services in open air churches out in the bush.

On this Sunday, the missionary to the Congo was on a roll.  He told stories about his life and work which he wove into his sermon.  I was on the edge of my seat for the longest time, with visions of Ernest Hemingway and Robert Raurk.  Then I looked at my watch and realized it was 12:20.  He didn’t appear to be anywhere close to wrapping things up.  I started to hear stomachs of fellows parishioners rumble.  A few people got up and left.  My mother commented that afternoon about how problematic this could have been for those who had roasts cooking in their ovens.  He finished at 12:40 PM; there was much grumbling at the coffee hour.

The next missionary I remember was a young woman working in Brazil.  Not to risk going overtime on Sunday morning, they had her talk at an evening potluck.  She spoke about her work in education among homeless children in a Brazilian slum.  One of the elders of our church, Deacon Jones, had the corner on the mobile home market in Southeastern North Carolina.  He listened intently to the plight of the homeless in Brazil and then offer his rather self-serving solution: affordable mobile homes.  It was all I could do to avoid bursting out in laughter.  I admired the gracefulness of how she handled the situation.

Recently, thanks to Facebook, I’ve been keeping up with Jared and Melinda Currie, who are missionaries on a far eastern island in Indonesia.  Jared is the son of the former Baptist pastor in Hastings, Michigan.  When I was in Indonesia five years ago, I spent a couple of days with him and his family at the New Tribe’s missionary training center where they were learning languages.  Upon graduation, two couples were sent to an island where they are living among native people known as “the Dem.”  A lot of Indonesia is Muslim, but on this island which is close to New Guinea the people’s religion is mostly animistic.  They still live in what we’d considered very tribal and primitive ways.  When they get to where they have internet access, the Curries update their Facebook page with stories of their adventures.[3]            The Curries have enjoyed some incredible feasts on this remote island in Eastern Indonesia—eating wild pigs that have been hunted down with bows and arrows and then roasted in large pits.  A couple months ago, at one such gathering, things erupted into a huge fight.  An argument had started. Before long, they had separated into two large groups, each shouting insults at the other.  Then they began to throw stones.  The men pulled out their machetes and swung them around as if preparing to charge while others grabbed their bows and begin to draw back arrows.  Jared and another missionary ran between the two groups calling for calm.  They finally got everyone to put down their stones and weapons but not before Jared had tripped while dodging stones and hurt his leg.  I think Jared could relate, at least more than we can, to what the Paul and Barnabas endured during their missionary journey. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus says.  It’s good for them to be blessed for peacemaking can be dangerous business.  Jared experienced this as did those officers in Dallas who were there to keep peace in the rally on Thursday night.  “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”[4]  And we know what happened to God’s son.  Living as a Christian, as a child of God, is not always easy.

When we left Paul and Barnabas in Lystra two weeks ago, they were being hailed as gods.  But things change.  In verse 19, we learn that some of the Jews who had opposed the two in Iconium and Antioch, traveled to Lystra and won over the crowds.  Paul and Barnabas went from being heroes to villains.  Paul was stoned, dragged out of the city, and left for dead.  But he wasn’t.  Some disciples helped him up.  It appears odd that a stoning that left Paul so close to death is just barely mentioned by Luke, the author, who devotes only a sentence to this event.  But Luke’s goal is to focus on the gospel.  God is working even through Paul’s suffering to spread the good news.[5]

After the stoning, Paul and Barnabas take off to southeast, to Derbe.  There, we’re told, they preached and made many disciples.

Then (get this), they head back the same way they came.  Back to Lystra, where Paul had been stoned.  Back to Iconium and Antioch, where the crowds rose up against them.   Kind of like the police officers in Dallas who woke up on Friday and had to go back to work, Paul and Barnabas go back to where they had been mistreated.  The truth of the gospel is too important to be neglected.  Sometimes, standing up for the Truth is dangerous.  It’s no different today.  To use this week’s examples, police must be held accountable for racial attitudes that result in careless shootings just as they must also be willing to protect and serve those who are calling on such accountability.  And as followers of the Prince of Peace, we must be emphatic to both groups: the police and people of other racial and ethnic groups who seek justice.

It appears that the purpose of Paul’s and Barnabas’ return trip wasn’t so much as to preach as it was to strengthen the believers. They helped form on-going communities with elders to watch over the churches.

In verse 22, they remind those who believe that there will be persecution.  Doing right doesn’t mean things will go peacefully.  God never promised us a rose garden.  Jesus made it clear that we may be hated because of his name.[6]  The promise isn’t that all will be well, but that God’s presence will abide with us even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.[7]

Our passage ends with Paul and Barnabas sailing back to the other Antioch (the one in Syria) where they tell everyone at the church there about their experiences.  We can image them gathering to listen and being enthralled at their suffering for the gospel.  I’m sure a roast or two may have burned that day.  Church probably ran late, as the two missionaries told of their stories.  The “visual” for the day was Paul showing bruises from the stones.  People got to laugh at Barnabas being mistaken for Zeus.  But most importantly, they gave thanks to God that the gospel is spreading.

What are we to take from this passage?  We should remember and hold our missionaries in prayer, for they are called to dangerous work.  But we should also remember there are others doing dangerous work—whether they are striving for civil rights, as with those who were marching; trying to stop a battle between family groups as Jared did; or working to protect the public as with the police do.  We should give thanks for all, as well as respect the lives of all.  We should be gracious, understanding that we live in a fallen world and people do make mistakes.  Yes, there should be accountability, but even it should be done lovingly.  We should live as Paul encouraged the Corinthians:  “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.  Let all that you do be done in love.”[8]

I read an article this week by Trevin Wax titled “Christians who Feel Marginalized Should Go Local.”  He wrote about many people feel so powerless against the forces of change that are sweeping through our churches, nation and Western Civilization. Drawing on the book, The Fractured Republic, Wax reminds us that the church is to be more than a gathering of people whose primary identity (be it political, social, economic, or racial) is found elsewhere.  Our allegiance is to Christ and that transcends everything else.  He concludes:

Christians belong to the Church. We are a community, not a constituency. Why go local? Because life-changing things don’t just happen in Washington, D.C. The Spirit of the living God is in your local congregation.[9]

With that in mind, what can we do to make a difference in our community?  How can we share the face of Jesus to our neighbors?  How can we help bring people together?  How can we relate to those who are different?  How can we model graciousness?  Amen.

©2016

[1] Paul’s first missionary journey is often dated from 47-48 CE or 46-48 CE.

[2] See Romans 8:22-27.

[3] For the Curries “New Tribes” page, see https://usa.ntm.org/missionaries/jared-and-melanie-currie

[4] Matthew 5:9.

[5] William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (1988, Louisville: John Knox Press, 2010), 127.

[6] Luke 21:17.

[7] Psalm 23:4.

[8] 1 Corinthians 16:13-14.

[9] https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/trevinwax/2016/07/05/christians-who-feel-marginalized-should-go-local/

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

June 26, 2016

Acts 14:1-18

For those of you not here last week, we’re back to the book of Acts, picking up where I left last fall.  My goal this year is to cover Paul’s first two missionary journeys.  Last week, we looked at how he was first accepted in the synagogue in Antioch, by both Jews and Gentiles.  But then, opposition from some of the Jews arose and eventually he was driven from town.  This pattern plays out during much of his early missionary journeys, as we are going to see today when we look at his work in a couple of other towns in what is now central Turkey.[1]  There are those who are excited about Paul’s message but there are also those threatened by it.  The latter group heap all sort of roadblocks in Paul and Barnabas’ way, even following him from one city to another to arouse the crowds against them.  But the message gets out and there are new converts.  The church is beginning to grow as people in a new land learn of God’s grace and love.  Read Acts 14:1-18.

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          Do you remember the movie, “Dreamer” staring Dakota Fanning?  It came out in 2005.  It’s based on a true story, about Cale Crane, a young girl who rehabilitates a race horse that had broken its leg.  It was the feel good movie of that fall and in the film, Dakota Fanning looked a lot like my daughter, Caroline.  At this time, she was seven years old.

That December, Caroline had a day off from school and I took the day off from work.  The two of us drove up to Grand Rapids to do some shopping.  Twice, as we headed into stores, people stopped and asked if she was Dakota Fanning…  She shrugged it off, although I think it bothered her a bit that people were seeing her for someone else.  After a morning in the mall, we had lunch at Red Lobster.  Caroline loved their biscuits and I was able to eat fish.  We were seated in a booth and soon a waitress appeared.  Looking at Caroline, she got all excited.  “Oh my, it’s Dakota Fanning.”   Caroline shook her head; I grinned.  “Why don’t you sign a napkin,” I suggested, handing her a pen.  To her credit, Caroline took the high moral ground and refused!

I did have a boss once who looked a lot like Steve Garvey, the professional baseball player.  Sitting in a restaurant in Atlanta, Don was right in front of a table of guys who were speculating if he, in fact, was Garvey.  At this time, Garvey was playing for the Padres and they happened to be in town to play the Braves.   My boss, who didn’t take the high moral ground, signed a menu and quietly dropped it by the table behind him as he headed out the door…  Thankfully, no one has confused me for anyone else…

In our reading today, we learn of the troubles Paul and Barnabas experienced during their first missionary journey.  But not all was bad.  The Word spread and there were people who believed. But the two traveling missionaries had to keep on the move in an attempt to stay ahead of those who would mistreat them.  Yet they continued to preach and do good works.  In Iconium, the same thing happened as in Antioch as we saw last week. They were first well received, but then as they become popular, jealously arose among the Jews and they were mistreated.  So they moved on.

In Lystra something different, and humorous, happens.  After God, through Paul, heals a man who had been handicapped and unable to walk his entire life, people are amazed and assume these two missionaries are gods!

Now, we shouldn’t be too hard on the good folks of Lystra.  First of all, they are working from their own experiences.  It doesn’t appear as if there were Jews in Lystra for they, like Paul and Barnabas, would have been horrified at such a sacrifice.  These pagan villagers assume that if someone is doing something so amazing, they must have divine powers.

Do you know the Kipling short story, “The Man Who Would Be King?”  John Huston made it into a move in the mid-70s, which started Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Christopher Plumber.  It’s a story about two rouge 19^th Century British soldiers in India who decide to make them something of themselves in the land we know of as Afghanistan.  When one of them survives being shot by an arrow, they assume he is a god.  The two become very powerful in this strange land, but before they grab all the loot and leave, the newly minted “god” has his eyes focused on a lovely young woman.  She, however, doesn’t want to marry him.  There is this belief it would be fatal for a human to be with a god.  At the wedding, she bites him and he bleeds, exposing the hoax.  It’s a good movie and one of the many morals of it is don’t ever let anyone make you out to be a god because sooner or later they’ll discover the truth.

Unlike Kipling’s characters, Paul and Barnabas, couldn’t let this misrepresentation continue.  They are working for the Most High God, who is striving to bring the world under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  They tear their clothes in a way to humble themselves and rush out into the crowd, trying to convince people that they, too, are mortal.  It took some convincing for people still wanted to sacrifice to them, but finally they get it through the people’s head that they are not gods.

Our text informs us that those in Lystra were speaking in their own language, instead of using Greek.  By this point, most of the eastern portion of the Empire spoke Greek, but Lystra is culturally isolated (in the backwaters, so to speak) so they still speak their native language.[2]  Furthermore, there were legends circulating about the gods visiting people as if they were travelers.[3]  When the disguised gods were treated with hospitality, blessings were bestowed.  These legends encourage hospitality to strangers, kind of like the writer of the book of Hebrews does when he speaks of those showing hospitality to strangers have entertained angels unaware.[4] With the miracle of this man’s cure, those in the neighborhood want to make sure that they show hospitality to Paul and Barnabas.  They, too, might be blessed, they hope.

One thing odd about the text is why Paul was considered to be Hermes and Barnabas (who took a backseat to Paul) was thought to be Zeus, the head of the Greek pantheon of gods.  One possible answer is that Zeus was generally above speaking, and would have another speak for him.  Therefore, since Paul was doing most of the talking, he was cast not as the top god but a lesser god!  It’s interesting to speculate, but the important thing is that Paul and Barnabas are able to use this event to teach what God is up to in the world through Jesus Christ.  Their mission was not to draw people to themselves but to make disciples of Jesus.  By the way, that’s our mission, too, regardless of what the General Assembly might say.

I was going to try to ignore the General Assembly that met this week in Portland and not say anything about that body that often shots itself in the foot, but I can’t help myself.  I was shocked to learn that by a handful of votes they failed to affirm the church’s longstanding commitment to evangelism.[5]  At least that is my interpretation of what happened based on what I read and heard from friends who were there.  One of the commenters on this passage, as if he was responding to the news I heard on Friday, had this to say about our role of making disciples:

Luke would not know what to make of a church no longer in the business of making more disciples. While the mission of the church is more than growth, it is not something other than growth![6]

Paul and Barnabas wanted to draw people to Christ, not themselves, and our goal should be the same.

There are people today who might look at doctors and surgeons as gods (with a little g).  Some physicians may even look at themselves in that way, but most I think realize their own limitations.  The effectiveness of their medicines and the skill of their hands can do wonderful things, such as fixing a snapped tendon as I experienced this winter.  But those who have such gifts, just like Paul and Barnabas, need to realize that healing is also an opportunity to teach about the source of all healing.

When I was serving a church in Utah, Martha, a parishioner, was in the hospital.  Her cancer had returned and they had just found a tumor that was life-threatening.  They were in the process of transferring her to another hospital where she could be better treated.  Her doctor, who was a man of faith, a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, came in.  He admitted that he didn’t know what more could be done for her.  He asked if we, those of us in the room, would pray with him.  This doctor knew his own limitations and was placing her care, not just in the hands of the doctor in another hospital, but in God’s hands.  A day later, the tumor he’d found was not to be seen.   She lived for another five years.  Yet, as is true for all us who are mortal, she has since died.  God gives us skills and abilities, but we must be humble enough, like Paul and Barnabas and this doctor, to realize our limitations and point people to the one who does have the power…

I imagine Paul and Barnabas, as they aged, looked back and laughed about how people thought they were gods.  Sometimes, when trying to take the gospel into a foreign setting, confusion and misunderstandings occur.  But such opportunities also allow an occasion to teach and to point people to a God whose love for this world is so immense that he sent his own Son.  From this story, we should be encouraged to risk doing the work of Christ and if we find ourselves in such a situation, remember that we are not to take credit, but to give credit to our Lord.  It is his name we are to glorify and praise.  Amen.

©2016

[1] See Johannes Munch, Acts of the Apostles (New York: Doubleday/Anchor Bible, 1967), 129.

[2] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 206.

[3] F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 1986), 223-224.

[4] Hebrews 13:2

[5] The Assembly disapproved an overture from Tampa Presbytery (06-02) that would require evangelism training for Teaching Elders.  It also voted down (by 6 votes) an amendment by Rev. Gale Watkins that would have continued lifting up a call to evangelism (from 1991)0 and encouraging seminaries to offer evangelism training

[6] William Willimon, Acts: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1988), 127.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

June 19, 2016

Acts 13:13-52

Starting a few weeks before Pentecost 2015 and running through last fall, I preached on the Book of Acts.  That series ended at the beginning of Chapter 13.  Paul and Barnabas had just been commissioned for their first missionary journey.  Today, I want to resume working through this book as we explore this summer (through September), Paul’s first two missionary journeys.  Acts describes the struggle of the early church to make the gospel known to a culture that was either in opposition or unfamiliar to it.  In a way, we’re back at that point today.  In the Western World, it seems as if the church is on hard times and in decline, and to a degree that’s true.  But the church is not dead, for we worship a God of resurrection.  And besides, even though we may struggle here, there are places in the world, especially in Africa and Asia, where the church is booming.

If you remember, last year I emphasized that the book we know as “Acts of the Apostles” should be called “The Acts of God through the Apostles.  Over and over again in these pages we see God working to reach more and more people with the good news of Jesus Christ.  We’re going to hear more about this in today’s sermon.  God is active in the world.  Will we accept God’s invitation to participate in his work?

I’ve broken up the reading for today’s sermon.  I didn’t want you to go to sleep.  This is a very long text, but it’s one unit.   You’ve already heard the meat of the passage, which is Paul’s first recorded sermon in Acts.  Prior to this sermon, we’ve heard of Paul speaking but none of his messages were recorded.  Here, we have a deeper insight into Paul’s thinking and homiletic style.  Now granted, what we have here is probably just a summary of Paul’s preaching, not a verbatim text, but the detail is far more than we’ve seen so far.

You may want to keep your Bibles open as I read the text this morning and then refer to both what I’ve read and what was read earlier in the service.  Read Acts 13:13-16, 42-52.

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Imagine starting out on a train trip, but you’re not really sure you want to go.  Perhaps you are worried if you turned off the stove or unplugged the iron.   Or maybe you can’t remember if you told your spouse and children that they’re loved?  You wonder, “Do I really want to board this train?  Do I really need to make this trip?  You stand on the platform, trying to decide.  You hear the whistle of the train as it comes closer and finally, it makes the last turn and all a sudden the engines rush by.  You feel the heat of the locomotives from the gust of wind from the rushing train.  The wheels squeal as the train stops.  The car attendants are at the door.  As soon as the train is at a complete stop, they step out, place a stool in front of the door and turn to help those getting off.  Then they help those climbing aboard, offering a hand, handing up their luggage.  The conductor, with this funny little hat observes the passengers as he keeps glancing at his pocket watch.  Soon he shouts, “All Aboard,” and gives a command on the radio.  You got just seconds to make up your mind if you’re going to board.  The conductor steps back on the train as the attendants pick up their stools.  The engineer hits two toots on the horn and the train lugs forward as the doors close.  If you’ve not on the train, it’s now too late.  The wheels turn faster.  The train pulls out of the station and disappears down the line.  You’ve been left behind.  Your indecision resulted in a decision…

Paul, in our passage today, calls for a decision.   Although trains weren’t around in those days, to use the metaphor of a journey, he’s the conductor yelling, “All Aboard” before it’s too late.   Soon, the engineer will hit the horn twice and push forward the throttle.  Soon, Paul and Barnabas will move on to a new town.  It’s time to decide.

Paul and Barnabas have made their way from Cyprus over to Antioch of Pisida.  Luke, in Acts, has to clarify which Antioch he’s writing about.  If you remember, it was in Antioch of Syria that Paul and Barnabas were commissioned as missionaries, right before heading out for this trip.   Having traveled through Cyprus, they are now in the center of the country we know as Turkey.  There, on the Sabbath, the two missionaries go the local synagogue.  It is a typical Sabbath service, including readings of the scriptures (the law and the prophets).  Afterwards, the two are asked if they would like to speak.  The setting reminds us of Jesus, speaking in the synagogue in Nazareth, after the reading from the prophets. [1]  Paul steps forward.

Paul begins addressing his audience, as recorded in verse 16, as “You Israelites and others who fear God.”  It appears that the crowd in the synagogue are not just Jews, but also Gentiles who are perhaps curious about the Jewish faith and if it for them.  In the opening part of the speech, Paul goes back to the exodus experience for Israel and shows God’s hand in giving the Hebrew people the Promised Land.  Next he jumps to the beginning of the kings, mentioning Saul but focusing on David.  Paul links David’s lineage to Jesus due to God’s work.  He also points out the preaching of John the Baptist, again focusing on how John points to Jesus’ coming.  Paul, by going back into the history of Israel, attempts to show how Jesus is a part of God’s long history of working through Israel.  For Paul, you can’t just throw what we call the Old Testament out; it’s all a part of God’s story of working within the world to bring salvation to a fallen race.  The climax of God’s activity is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul’s speech can be divided into three parts, each which begins with a direct address.  The second part begins in verse 26 where he addresses his brothers, “descendants of Abraham’s family and others who fear God.”  Again, we realize this isn’t just a family affair.  There are Jews and Gentiles listening.   The second part deals with the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Paul strives to make sure his audience understands that Jesus was innocent, yet executed.  Those in Jerusalem who called for his death did not understand the prophets, yet in calling for his crucifixion, they fulfilled the prophecies.  Unlike David, who died and was buried with his ancestors and turned to dust, Jesus died but was resurrected and lives.

The final section begins in verse 38, where Paul speaks of the implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  It’s through this event, the resurrection, that we can be set free from our sin.  For Paul, the resurrection is the central event in human history.  As important and as good as the law is, it can’t free us from sin.  Only belief in Jesus can.  Paul is crying, “All aboard,” to the gathered congregation.  Believe in Jesus Christ and become a part of this new movement of God within the world.

An interesting thing about this sermon is that it is the only one mentioned in Acts that Paul was able give his message without being interrupted.[2]  People listened and they invite him back on the next Sabbath, where we’re told that even a larger crowd gathers to hear both Paul and Barnabas preach.   The large crowd troubles the Jews, who feel they are God’s special people.  God’s word first came to them, Paul says, but it’s destined for everyone else.  Quoting Isaiah, in verse 47, Paul reminds them of their unique position to be a light for the Gentiles.[3] This makes the Gentiles happy, but many of the Jews want to hold on to their special position.  They only see their own special interest through narrow blinders and feel that the gospel is a threat.  They don’t like the sound of the dying of the old so that the new can resurrect, so they persecute Paul and Barnabas, driving them out of the city.

In a final act at the edge of town, the two missionaries shake the dust off the heels of their sandals and move on to new territory.  This is to symbolize that the persecution is not the final word.[4]  There is judgment to come.  Yet, the missionaries are not discouraged; they are fill with God’s spirit as they head to a new town.

Paul’s sermon reminds us of the decision we all must make of whether or not we accept what God is doing in Jesus Christ.  We have to decide if we’re going to get on board and go to where God is leading.  God wants to embrace the world and too often, like the Jews in Antioch, we want to just hold on to what we’ve got.  We want to look after our own, take care of things at home.  Keep things the same. But that’s not how God works…  God’s vision, God’s mission is that the grace of Jesus Christ be spread through the world.  It’s important to proclaim the message even though not everyone will accept it.  It is necessary to reflect Jesus’ face to the world by offering hope that exists in Christ.  Some will get it; others won’t.  But we shouldn’t get discouraged for we belong to a God who can take what is dead and bring it to life!

We see in Antioch that some listened.  They were excited about what God was doing and accepted Jesus, proud to be a part of this new movement.  But others didn’t listen or, if they did, didn’t like the implications of the message and closed their ears, eyes, and minds to God’s vision for the world.  Where do we find ourselves?  Do we want to hop up on this train that is calling passengers from all over the world, from all stages of life, from all economic, ethnic and societal groups?  Do we want to help spread that kind of message, one of hope for in need?  Our world is filled with violence and hate, as we saw last Sunday in Orlando.  It is a world longing for hope and God’s hope for the world is in Jesus.  It’s time to step aboard, if you believe.  As the old Southern gospel song goes, “This train is bound for glory.”  It’s a journey we don’t fully know where we will be taken, but we know that God hand is on the throttle.  We place our trust in him.  Hold on, for we’re in for an amazing journey.  Let us pray:

Holy God, our Father in Heaven, we give you thanks for the good news of Jesus Christ and pray that you will help all here make a decision to follow him.  May we reflect his hopeful face to the world and work to further your kingdom. Amen.

[1] Luke 4:16ff.

[2] Beverly Roberts Gaventa Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 196.

[3] Isaiah 49;6.

[4] Gaventa, 203.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

1 Kings 17:1-16

June 5, 2016

For this morning’s passage we’re going back into the Old Testament and explore an Elijah story.  Elijah was perhaps Israel’s greatest prophet even though he never got around to writing a book.  God used Elijah to confront idolatry.  His message took a harsh tone a harsh tone after King Ahab married Jezebel.  She was a foreigner and brought with her the worship of her own gods.  The battle between Elijah and the king and queen was one for Israel’s soul.

In order to please his wife, Ahab built a temple for Baal, her god, in Samaria.  This sin was so offensive that the writer of this book says that Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord than all the other kings of Israel before him put together.[1]  Our passage begins with Elijah pronouncing a drought.

This passage reminds us that God’s way may not be ours.  But we are to remain faithful and to trust.  This is a good message for our graduates to take with them in their journey through life.  READ I Kings 17:1-16.

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Times were tough.  Israel, an oasis in the desert, was in the midst of an extended drought.  Not only did they not have rain, we’re told there was no dew.  Crops wilted, animals died, everyone suffered.  Rain, or the lack thereof, was all anyone talked about.  Every morning, before the farmers gathered for coffee, they scanned the horizon for clouds.  In the evening, before retiring, they again scanned the sky.  No clouds appear.  Fields turn brown and the wind blew away precious topsoil.  Desperation sets in.

Things are not supposed to be this way.  Weather in Palestine generally alternate between a wet season and a dry season, a cycle that figures into Baal mythology.  According to those who believed in Baal, the storm god is responsible for bringing life giving rain to the region.  Then, after the rainy season, the ground dries up, but the storm god then returns with rain.  The cycle repeats itself.  When Elijah confronts Ahab after the introduction of the Baal cult into Israel, he demonstrates that the God of Israel has power over the weather.  The worship of Baal is in vain.  The Lord Almighty only has such abilities, and he’s granted his servant Elijah the proxy power to make this point.

Although everyone focuses on the drought, the problem in Israel is a drought in the word of God.  The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is ignored.  Instead, usurping God’s place is a foreign deity—the god of Jezebel.

Elijah feels alone as he challenges the king on the dangerous path he’s traveling.  “There will be no rain,” he says, “until I say so.”  Baal is not in control.  The prophet will prove it.  The heavens dry up.  Elijah is not very popular, so God leads him out into the wilderness for protection.

With the recent rains, we are certainly not facing any droughts, but most of us are no longer farmers.  Looking at the larger economy (our fields), with the disappointing numbers of jobs created last month (a gain but less than expected), we’re still doing fairly well.  Most, not all but most, Americans have enough to eat.  We can continue to live our gluttonous lives without too much discomfort.  But I wonder if deep down we’re not a lot like the Israelites.  In our affluence, have we replaced the God of creation with a god made in the image of our own desires?  Have we turned away from God’s Word?  Are we traveling down dangerous paths?  Instead of feeling gratitude, do we worry about losing what we have or think we’re worse off than we are?  And, do we run after a new savior, forgetting that we already have one?

It took a three-year drought to wake Israel up.  They had to be shown that Baal did not control the rain clouds.  But they were so self-assured.  Are we not also self-assured?  We live in the most powerful country in the world and worry.  Individually, we seek our security with insurance and savings and, just in case, a concealed weapon permit.  None of this is wrong, except for the fact that the only true security we can have is in God, the creator of the universe, the one who through Jesus Christ redeems a sinful race.  If we’re not on God’s side, all our other preparations are in vain.

According to Jezebel and Ahab, Elijah is a prophet for a washed up God.  Baal is the way of the future. Baal is the answer for Israel.  Baal has brought prosperity for Israel’s neighbors.  Now Israel will benefit.  With a nice new temple in Samaria, they can’t go wrong.  Or so they think.

Elijah has his work cut out for him.  As the prophet of the true living God, he has to convince the king and the Hebrews that they are on a downward slope.  So he orders the rains to stop and then, listening to God, heads off across the Jordan and into the wilderness.  And there, God cares for him in some pretty unique ways.  First of all, God positions Elijah in a wadi, a dry wash that might have water in it for just a brief period during the year.  Yet the water keeps flowing for a while.  And ravens brings Elijah bread and meat.  Water in an unlikely place, food from an improbable source, God has a unique way of taking care of his people.  The rest of Israel is dry, but here in the most unlike place is water and substance. Something strange is going on.

And it gets more bizarre.  When the water in the gully finally dries up, Elijah is led into Gentile territory and told to seek refuge with a poor widow.  Widows had it tough in the ancient world. This widow has a son and she’s down to the last of her provisions.  She’s planning one final meal and then they’ll both starve to death.  There’s nothing else for her to do.  There’s a drought in the land and no one has extra food.  If ever there was an unlikely candidate for Elijah to panhandle, this widow’s it.  By human standards, she doesn’t have anything to give.  As a godly man, Elijah should be taking care of her.   Of course, in a roundabout way, that’s what happens.  But before we get to the never ending bag of flour, we have to realize her situation.

Further complicating the situation is that fact that this woman is not a Hebrew.   Most likely she, as did her neighbors, worshipped Baal.  She acknowledges the difference in their belief when she informs Elijah as to her impoverished condition.  “As the Lord your God lives,” she says.  She doesn’t say, “as the Lord our God, or my God, but your God.   Normally, the children of Abraham wouldn’t have eaten with a gentile, but Elijah knows God wants him to seek food from this woman. He insistent she uses what little oil and meal she has to make him some bread.  God has also given this woman the faith she needs to trust Elijah.  She follows his instructions and a strange thing happens. The meal and oil never run out.  As with the ravens, God provides for Elijah and this woman in a unique fashion.

We have a marvelous God who cares of our needs. Just think of it; a poor gentile widow with a never ending bag of flour.   Sometimes we don’t see it clearly.  In our abundance, it’s too easy to confuse wants and needs.  God never says he’ll give us all that we want; instead we’re told we’ll be given what we need.  Elijah would have probably preferred God to make different provisions for him.  He could have been staying in a desert spa and being fed grapes by a masseuse instead of sleeping in a ditch while being nourished by a bunch of black birds.  Likewise, he’d probably preferred God to have him a found a widow for him to munch off in Israel.  Jesus suggests that there were plenty of widows there God could have chosen, yet God picked this one?[2]  Why?

These two stories show how God’s care for us often takes surprising twist and turns.  If it was one of us, we’d worried about such sources of nourishment.  We need to be willing to listen to God and understand that God’s ways are different from ours.  God can do the impossible; God can nourish us in the midst of a famine.

Leonard Sweet, in his book Soul Café, suggests there are two ways of praying:  We either pray ourselves in or we pray ourselves out.  The most popular prayer, according to Dr. Sweet, is the second, praying ourselves out of whatever situation in which we’ve found ourselves.  We pray ourselves out when we rush to an appointment for which we’re already late and don’t notice the traffic cop.  Or when we walk into a math class and realize the test we thought was tomorrow is, in fact, today.  Or when we get a letter for the IRS, or our company decides to downsize, or our spouse confronts us with the possibility of divorce, or the doctor has bad news…

But there is another way of praying. As we mature as Christ-followers, we begin to pray in a way that will bring us into God’s will.  Our prayers become less focused on “Save me” and more on “Show me your ways.” [3]

Do you see the difference?  Elijah prays himself into God’s will and is able to see God’s direction, as he’s led into the wilderness and through a strange land.  Our lives will be much richer and more authentic if we can look at the possibilities before us from God’s eyes.  But it’s not easy, yet it is a challenge that I offer to our graduates and to all who are here.  Before you pray, ask yourself if your prayer is just about you, or are you praying yourself into God’s will?  Amen.

©2016

[1] 1 Kings 16:33.

[2] Jesus recalls this story to show God’s freedom.  See Luke 4:25-26

[3] Leonard Sweet, A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café, (Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1998), 76-77.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

May 22, 2016

Romans 5:1-11

Today is Trinity Sunday. It’s one of a few “Church days” that doesn’t recall an event like Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. Instead, Trinity Sunday celebrates the nature of our God. The danger of a Sunday like this is that I could try to sound intelligent and attempt to explain the Trinity, which a mystery, or I could show you a video and let a few Irish Lutherans explain it.

Show video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw

It is hard for us, as mortals to grasp the nature of God. One of the attributes ascribed to God in the Westminster Larger Catechism is ‘incomprehensible.”[1] As mortals, created by God, we can never fully understand the Almighty, which is humbling and makes me wonder sometimes what I’m doing up here.  It’s an impossible task, but thankfully God helps out.  For you see, although there will always be a mysterious aspect of God, we know enough through revelation to understand that we have a God who desires a relationship with his Creation and especially with humankind. God the Father continually reaches out through Creation, through the sending of his Son, and the sending of the Spirit. One God who is revealed to us in three persons.

Today’s scripture is from the fifth chapter of Romans.  Here, Paul refers to the work of all three persons of the Trinity, showing us that we worship a God of mercy. God loves us and reaches out to everyone.  Read Romans 5:1-11.

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Paul sets up this passage in a way to repeat, build upon, and re-emphasis his first statement – “We have peace in God.” Our text is a salvation hymn to the God who loves you and me so much, the God who became a man in the life of Jesus and died for us…  God, the Creator, the Father: God the Savior, the Son: God whose presence, the Spirit, loves us and reaches out to us even when we are evil and sinful!

Today, the Sunday after Pentecost, is Trinity Sunday.  As we’ve already seen in that silly video, trying to explain the Trinity can get us into heresy real quick.  The working of the Triune God is a mystery and on this Sunday, we’re to be reminded of the mysterious ways of God who we know as Father, Son and Spirit.  In this passage, which is a summary of our Christian faith, Paul speaks of all three persons of the Trinity.  God, our Creator, loves us, as shown in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  God’s love for us is poured into our lives by the Spirit, who provides the foundation for our happiness, our peace, and our salvation.  Explaining the Trinity, which is a mystery and beyond our comprehension, is hard enough so I’m going to spend the sermon discussing what it means to have peace with God?  This too isn’t exactly easy to understand, but since peace has a lot to do with our response toward God, it’s something we have some bit of control over.

In the gospels we have the account of Jesus asking, “Do you think I came to bring peace to the world?” followed by his answer, “No, not peace, but division.”[2]  The history of Christianity has been one of division and even warfare.  This seems to stand in contrast to Paul’s statement that says we can have peace in God.  This is where the skeptics’ challenge of our faith is the strongest. Worldly evidence does not point to Christianity, on a whole, as a path to peace…  So what does Paul mean?

Let’s look at the first three verses again.  In the first verse Paul sets up his hypothesis. The passage reads, “Since we are justified by faith.”  Romans begins with Paul telling us how bad we are and then how we are justified, not by doing good deeds to wipe away our sin, but through faith in what Jesus has done for us. “We have peace in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  There are three parts to this verse: 1. Justified by faith; 2. Peace in God; 3. and it’s all through Jesus Christ.

Paul reminds us that God’s standard for judging is not righteousness but faith.  Faith is the reason we can have peace. But to achieve this we must believe and trust in something other than ourselves. Paul has already reminded us in Romans, over and over, that we are not capable of doing much as humans. Our peace and salvation must come from outside the self. It can only come from God as revealed through Jesus Christ.

Paul doesn’t go into much detail as to what this peace will be like…  If we like, we can allow our imaginations run wild and create all kinds of fantasy worlds.  We’ve all have heard these before.  Maybe we have even thought of them ourselves:  “Have faith in God and you will become rich or successful.” “If you only have faith you will be healed.”  “If you truly believe and think positive thoughts, all your problems will go away.”  I think most everyone here has seen enough of life to know that we do not live in such a fantasy world.

So what does Paul mean by this peace?  We have to read further. In the second verse he says we now find that God has “already thrown open his door for us.”  I believe what Paul implies here is that we have peace with God, but we have not yet received the full benefit of it because, as he points out in the third verse, “we continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles.”[3] Trouble and peace are not analogous terms!  So Paul is talking about a different kind of peace than what we would generally think.

Peace for the Christian means more than the absence of war.  Actually, we should be able to be at peace even in the midst of war—whether it’s a guns and bombs war or an internal spiritual war.  And we know there will be both types of war.  Although the victory over evil is already won on the cross, we’ll continue to experience war until our Savior returns.[4] Peace means wholeness; it means accepting ourselves for what we are and knowing that God accepts us in His mercy and grace when we repent. Peace means knowing that at the end of history, through Jesus Christ, we’ll be shown righteous and redeemed.  But we’re not there yet. Having peace now, in this life, allows us to know the Good Shepherd is beside us, even as we travel through the valley of the shadow of death. Having peace means we don’t have to impress God.  Being at peace means we have resigned ourselves to the fact that we cannot impress God with our goodness.

Of course, this does not mean we should give up striving to be good.  The great German reformer, Martin Luther, once wrote: “Temptations cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.”[5] Instead of giving up on being good, we are to give up on trying to please God and present ourselves before God as sinners who believe in Jesus Christ.

John Calvin, the theological father of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches, believed strongly in total depravity. He once said the human heart is so smeared with the poison of sin that it can only give off a foul stench.  We may be tempted to rise up in defense of our race and insist that we’re not that bad, but Calvin reminds us we need not a defense attorney but a physician.[6] God, the source of goodness, has sent Jesus Christ to us as a physician to help heal us from sin. And as we trust in a doctor when our bodies are sick, we must also trust in our Savior to heal us from the sickness of sin.

The peace Paul refers to comes from surrendering ourselves to God. Surrendering sounds so “un-American.” It sounds like defeat. We want to take on the world, to be optimistic. That’s okay, but we must remember we’re still human and are unable to control everything. If we think we can always have things under our control, we’re going to work ourselves to death and be unhappy and sooner or later fail. To obtain the peace Paul speaks of, we have to be willing to give up our quest for obtain happiness and security through mortal and material means, and accept the grace God offers freely. We have peace when God alone is revered and exalted and nothing else obscures God’s majesty within our lives.

Jeff Manion in his book, Satisfied describes what is called here as “peace” as “contentment.” Listen to how he describes this:

Contentment is the cultivation of a satisfied heart.  It is the discipline of being fully alive to God and to others whatever our material circumstances. Contentment is not achieved through getting everything we want but by training the heart to experience full joy and deep peace even when we don’t have what we want.[7]

Doesn’t that sound good? Of course, it is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, God’s love is there; yes, God’s grace and forgiveness is free. All we have to do is accept it, but when we do we better be ready to also accept the consequences. Christ, as a man, had peace with God and look where it got him… Paul realizes that everyone is self-centered. He acknowledges this when he writes that seldom will anyone give up his or her life to save a righteous person…  Yet Christ gave up his life to save the unrighteous…  This knowledge allows Paul to trust God so thoroughly that he was able to write the Philippians while in chains, “Rejoice in the Lord, always.  Again, I will say, rejoice.”[8]

Peace with God comes from surrendering our lives to God’s will. It’s not easy. It’s a decision which requires trust and prayer….  It’s a decision that breaks with the ways of the world which calls us to look out for ourselves. Instead, surrendering ourselves to God allows see the world through Christ-lens and to realize the needs around us and to respond with love. If you want to experience true peace, real contentment, you must be willing to accept your own limitations and to place your trust in God’s hands.  For you see, God the Creator has entrusted to us a wonderful world. But God does not leave us alone.  God sent his Son, our Savior, the second person of the Trinity, to atone for our sins and to show us the way back to the Father.  And through the Holy Spirit, God continues to be there with us. The Trinity, as well as this passage from Romans, reminds us of the relational nature of our God, who longs to reconnect with us. The world may throw us out, but God invites us in.[9] Do we accept the invitation? The decision is now in our hands. Let us pray, first silently:

Almighty God, the wonders of your creation surround us. We are humbled. The love you’ve shown in Jesus Christ is amazing.  We are grateful. Your ever-giving Spirit is present during our darkest hours. We are thankful. You know our sins. Accept us and set us free to do your will in the world.  Amen.

©2016

[1]Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 7.

[2] Luke 12:51

[3] Quote from The Message translation.

[4] Matthew 24:6, Mark 13:7, Luke 21:9

[5] Quote from Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton (Nashville: Abington, 1950), 176.

[6] B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 47. Quotes by John Calvin from the, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559 edition), 2.5.18 and 2.5.19.

[7] Jeff Manion Satisfied: Discovering Contentment in a World of Consumption, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 26.

[8] Philippians 4:4

[9] Manion, 93.

Sailing on the Wilmington River just outside of the Landings Marina

 A Prayer at the Dedication of the Docks at Landing’s Marina

Jeff Garrison

May 14, 2016

Almighty God, whose Spirit swept over the face of the waters at creation, separating the ocean from the land, we turn our attention to you on this day as we dedicate these docks and this harbor.  May this harbor provide tranquility, a safe haven, when the sea roar and foam, protecting the vessels and sailors who gather here.  May those who sail from this place, heading out into the vastness of the waters, go with your blessings and enjoy the benefits of your Creation.   For those seeking peace and solace, grant gentle waves and sunny days.  For those seeking fish, grant a good harvest.  For those seeking adventure, give wisdom and grant safety.  For those embarking on a trip, grant a steady breeze and a safe passage.

And Lord, when the day is done or when the weather threatens, grant all those upon the water a safe return to these docks.  When the boats are secured, may we enjoy good fellowship whether watching the golden light fade from the marsh or the approach of a summer storm.  God of providence, you’ve created us in your image and we’re told you watch over us.  May we display this same concern for others in need and offer a hand, whether on the water or here at the docks, that all might enjoy this facility in safety.  And when the light has drained from the sky, and the winds have died, and peace have fallen upon the earth and the waters, help us to look out from these docks and image your hand in the creation of the stars that twinkle above.  And when we look across the waters, help us to recall your guidance as we observe the navigation lights in the channel or the light shining across the marsh from Tybee.  Continue to guide us and to keep us safe and in your hands, that we might have many more adventures that begin upon these docks.  This we pray, Amen.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

May 2, 2016

John 5:1-18

A Scotchman goes into a bar with a broken arm.  Standing at one end, laying his arm in a cast up on the bar, he calls for a shot of Glen Livet to ease his pain.  As the bartender reaches for the bottle, the Scotchman looks down at the other end and sees someone familiar.  “Is that Jesus down there?” he asks the bartender.  “Yep, that’s Jesus,” the bartender confirms.  “Give him a shot, too!”

The next man to come in is French.  He’s on crutches, nursing a broken leg.  He asks for a glass of burgundy to help with his pain.  The bartender pours his glass as the Frenchman looks around the bar and sees someone who looks familiar.  “Is that Jesus down at the other end,” he asks?  Yep, that’s Jesus.” “Give him a glass on me,” the Frenchman orders.

A little bit later, Billy Bob limps in.  “Give me a tall cool one,” he orders, “to help with my back.”  As the bartender pours him a draft, Billy Bob hooks his thumbs into his suspenders and cases the joint out.  Seeing someone familiar, he calls the bartender over and says, “Say, is that God’s boy down there?”  “Yep, that’s Jesus.”  “Well, give him a cool one on me, okay?”

A little bit later, Jesus gets up and heads toward the door.  Pausing as he comes to the Scotchman, he places his hands on his shoulders and thanks him for his kindness and gives him a blessing.  His arm is healed.  Next, he moves over to the Frenchman and does the same.  His leg is better.  As he steps toward the end of the bar, Billy Bob backs up against the bar and shouts, “Don’t you touch me Jesus; I’m drawing disability.”

Now before getting upset with me about the joke with Jesus in a bar, remember the type of places that Jesus went and the people with whom he hung out.   Even though this story is made-up, considering the stories we have in the gospel, it’s not farfetched.  Jesus, it appears, enjoyed being around people, even those who were a bit shady and especially those who were in need.  And I wonder if Billy Bob isn’t a direct descendant of the man by the pool in the fifth chapter of John’s gospel.  Does the guy in our gospel reading really want to get well?  And what about us?  Do we want to be made well?

There is a lot in this text I’m about to read.  I’m planning to use it today and next Sunday.  Today, we’ll concentrate on the man who was healed.  Next Sunday, we’ll look at the reaction to this healing.   Read John 5:1-18.

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The universal lament of the human race starts out with a variation of the phrase, “If only I had…”

If only I’d caught that fly ball…

If only I’d made that lay-up…

If only I could have gone to a different college…

If only I’d have studied harder…

If only I could have gotten that job…

If only I’d married so and so…

If only I’d spent more time with my children…

We’re good at lamenting lost opportunities.  We’re good at enlisting pity from others.  Such was the case with the man at the pool.  “If only I could get into that water, I’d be fine.”  The man has been telling himself that for decades – 38 years he’s laid there beside the pool, hoping to get into the water at just the right moment so that he might be healed.  But sometime in those decades, he lost his desire to get better.  Maybe he even forgot why he was there.  After all, it was a good place to beg.  There were a lot of religious folks there, all going to the temple.  These guys all had a bit of guilt that made them especially generous, so the man was assured of sustenance to live on.  He could live, but his dreams died.  He no longer had hope of getting into the water.  He just sat there, waiting for his next handout.

I don’t know what the problem was with the man at the pool. I’m going to give him the benefit of doubt.  At one point in his life, he probably wanted to get better.  When he first started coming to the pool, he had high hopes.  But he got use to his infirmities.  He’d given up hope of ever making it into the water, of ever being healed.  His dreams had all died.  He continued to go to the pool, without any hope of getting better, but in order to beg and to live off the kindness of others.   His dream for normality was replaced with the desire to get by, to eat for another day.  The idea of abundant life was about as foreign to this guy’s psyche as becoming the king of England is to mine.

And then Jesus comes along.  Seeing the man lying there, Jesus’ knows right away he’s been there a long time.  Interestingly, we’re not told here, as in some of the other accounts of Jesus’ healing, that Jesus took pity on the man.[1] Instead, Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?”  It’s an interesting question.  But even more telling than the question is the man’s answer.  We’d expect a smile to break across his face as he shouts, “heck yeah!”  Instead he mumbles, “No one is here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred.  Nobody is here to help me; I’m not able to be healed.”  Instead of answering Jesus’ questions, he makes excuses for his situation.  “If only I had, if only I could… if only someone would…”

Jesus doesn’t have time for excuses.  He commands the man stand up, take his mat, and walk.  Surprisingly, the man does what he’s told!  We’re not told how this happens.  John doesn’t say anything about the man’s faith playing a role in his restore ability to walk.  In fact, from reading this story, it doesn’t sound like the man had any faith at all. [2]   Jesus heals this man.  He isn’t expecting it.  He doesn’t ask for it.  He may not even want to be healed.  He’s a man content to be where he’s at, satisfied to live in his world of shattered dreams and to draw on the pity of others.  He will now have to make it on his own.

Later on, Jesus encounters the man later, in the temple.  He tells the guy not to sin because something worse could happen to him.  We’re not exactly sure what this means.  Had the man sinned before he became an invalid?  We don’t know.  Perhaps Jesus knew the condition of the man’s heart: that he wasn’t very grateful and that he took blessings as an entitlement.  Certainly by his actions, as recorded by John, we don’t get any sense he felt his life or even his healing was something for which he should give thanks to God.  But, once again, we can’t be sure.  We’re not given an explanation for this second encounter between the man and Jesus—instead the encounter seems to just allow the man discover who it was that healed him. But what does this former invalid do with this information?  He tattles on Jesus, points the finger at Jesus and blaming him for his breaking the Sabbath.  Talk about a lack of gratitude!

Think of this guy as a high school student whose parents lend him a car for a Saturday night date.  Driving fast, trying to impress his girlfriend, blue lights appear in his rearview mirror.  Do you think the police officer is going to be swayed if the kid says, “It’s my dad’s fault; he’s the one who lent me the car?”

What does this story have to do with us?  I’d suggest we are a lot like the man in the story in several ways.  First of all, we’re scared of the future God offers us through Jesus Christ.  We’re comfortable with the familiar even though we miss out on abundant life.  Life wasn’t what it was supposed to be for the guy at the pool, but it had become easy.  We often forget this: God doesn’t call us to an easy life.  Our purpose isn’t to take the easy road.  When we stick to our laments: “if only I had…, If only I could have…, If only I would have…” we forget Jesus’ promises.

Next, like the man in the story, God often gives us what we need, not what we want.  As I’ve tried to make it clear, I’m not sure this guy wanted to get better.  Sometimes we don’t know what we’re asking for, but God knows and gives us what we need.[3]

Finally, like the man who was healed even though he didn’t deserve to get better, Jesus also forgives us, even when we don’t deserve it.  After all, that’s what grace is all about.  God forgives us even though we should be condemned.  Having been forgiven, having been offered a new lease on life (like our friend by the pool), we often lack gratitude.  Remember, we aren’t cheap; we’re precious in God’s eyes for we’ve been brought through the blood of Jesus Christ!  This passage reminds us of the danger we face when we live without gratitude towards God.

In Jesus Christ, God forgives us.  God calls us.  God tells us to pick up our mats and walk.  God doesn’t want to hear our excuses.  Instead, God wants us to embrace the lives he gives.  Pick up your mat, stand tall and walk proudly, giving God the glory.  Amen.

[1] See Matthew 20:34 and Luke 7:13.

[2] For examples see John 4:50 and Mark 5:34.

[3] See Matthew 7:10-11.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

April 17, 2016

Revelation 7:9-17

 Take out your Bibles or a pew Bible out and turn the book of Revelation.  It’s in the back of the book.  I want to point something out to you.  Revelation often uses contrasting visions.   Thumb over to the fifth and seventh chapters.  Here, we have grand views of heavenly worship focused on the throne.  In the fifth chapter, we have the words that came from the hymn we just sang.  In the seventh chapter, we hear of a multitude praising God.  Both of these visions are in heaven.   But in between these two chapters, we are on earth as six of the seven seals are opened.  Each seal unleashes troubles upon the world.  That chapter ends with the people of the earth in so much turmoil that they call for the mountains to fall upon them.  “Who is able to stand,” John, the author of Revelation, asks.  But at that point, the vision goes from the trouble on earth to the worship in the heavens.  We’re first told of the 144,000 gathered around the throne.  That’s a lot of people, but not when you consider the numbers of people on earth.  So that vision is followed by one of a greater multitude, more people than anyone can count.  It’s from this passage that our reading this morning comes.  Follow along as I read…   Read Revelation 7:9-17

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I always enjoy checking out churches and listening to other preachers when I travel. In the late 90s, when I was working on a doctorate, I spent long periods of time taking classes at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Being absent from the pulpit for six weeks or so allowed me an opportunity to worship in many different settings. One of the churches I attended was Glide Memorial United Methodist Church.  It’s located on the edge of the Tenderloin, in the Mission District, one of the seediest sections of the City by the Bay. It’s an older church built out of heavy stones and bricks.  I assume it was built right after the great earthquake and fire in 1906, as much of that part of town was devastated. Cecil Williams, an African-American, had been their pastor since the early-60s. He was getting near retirement.  He would retire in 2000.  Several of us knew it might be our only chance to hear him, so we carpooled together and drove over.

We’d been warned to expect crowds and advised to park in a parking deck several blocks away and to walk to the church. This we did. As we got to the church, we were surprised to see a long line of worshippers waiting to get in. They had three services on Sunday morning, all were packed, and those lined up on the sidewalk to get in were waiting for one service to end. We saw that the church had valet parking. Here in this seedy part of the city, young men, mostly African-American, in white gloves were taking the keys of church attendees, many of whom were driving BMWs and Mercedes’, and parking them in adjacent lots.

When the church was cleared from the previous service, they packed us in. I guess this church sat seven or eight hundred people and that there were a few hundred more than that in attendance. As I said, it was an older building, constructed with thick walls so that each stained glass window had about a three foot bench in front of it. In each of the widows, they’d be two or three kids sitting and swinging their feet as if they knew they were at home. The place was packed.

As I looked around, I thought that this wasn’t like any other church I’d ever attended. There were men in suits and women in nice dresses with matching hats and gloves sitting beside folks who were obviously homeless and hadn’t taken a bath in a week. There were women who appeared to be working the street, there were people who looked like they’d been burned out by drugs in the 60s and were barely hanging on.  There were men and women who were obviously gay. And they were sitting by others who appeared to be high priced attorneys or managers within the financial community. Some people were wearing their best, others dressed casually, as if they were headed for a picnic on the beach, and others were dressed as if they’d spent the night behind a dumpster.  Some probably had. In addition to the great collection of folks from all stratus of society, all races were present. Red, yellow, black and white, as the song goes, they were all there.

Worship was lively, with a choir of probably a 100, including many of San Francisco’s finest musicians. There were plenty of “Amens.” There was lots of noise and movement. It was hot inside the building, but no one seemed to mind, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I was with several other “preachers” and afterwards, at lunch, we discussed the sermon.  Most of us were a little disappointed.  Although a charismatic leader, his message paled to the one we’d heard the week before from J. Alfred Smith, a pastor of an African-American Church in the inner city of Oakland. And there were things I disagreed with that he said.  Some of the stands Glide Memorial has made during his tenure, such as working with the Symbionese Liberation Army, have been quite controversial, as you can imagine. But one thing that impressed me, and in this area the pastor was right, was his vision.  The church is to serve those around them.  Glide Memorial is one of the largest agencies serving the needs of the city.  Listen to how Williams describes his congregation’s mission:

Being seen as perfect, good or respectable is not my concern.  My concern is to create an open and honest community where it is safe to tell the truth. That is what people of all races and classes want today. Whether they’re executives or homeless people, all people want to know, ‘Who will care about me?[1]

Who will care for me?  That question still rings true, nearly two decades later.  This diverse crowd singing and praising God and having fun, seemed to be a glimpse of what heaven is to be all about. Of course, if we were to reach out in such a fashion on Skidaway Island, we’d never have the rainbow of colors found in Glide Memorial.  But what would we look like if we were able to reach out into Chatham County, bring people of different races, economic levels, and backgrounds into our fellowship?  Bringing in new faces will change us, yet isn’t that what Jesus calls us to do, to reach out to others?   To care for one another?  To accept everyone as a sinner loved by Jesus?

John, the author of Revelation, is given this vision of a multitude too large to count. They’re from every nation and tribe. All peoples and languages are represented. They wave palm branches and cry out, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne.” Joining these in their worship are all the angels and elders and these four winged creatures who fall on their faces as they sing praises. When John asks from where these people come, he’s told that they’ve all come through the great tribulation and now live with God in a paradise setting with climate control (there’s no scorching heat), filling food and refreshing drinks (there’s no hunger or thirst), and eternal comfort (God himself wipes away tears).  The tribulation experienced on earth in the sixth chapter of this book is answered in the 7^th.   There is a reward for those who endure and this heavenly church is going to be unlike anything we’ve seen on earth.

If one of our purposes as a church is to exhibit God’s kingdom, what can we learn from this passage? First of all, we’re reminded that the church is made up of all people and that not everyone at God’s throne will look like us. If that was the case, heaven would be boring.  And probably most of us, with European backgrounds, wouldn’t be there. Paul could have stopped his preaching in Asia Minor.[2]  But you see, Jesus came to break that mold which taught that God was just interested in one group of people. In the life of Jesus we see that although he reached out to everyone, he was especially concerned for those who were neglected and sidelined. If we want to truly exhibit the kingdom as well as live up to our vision statement to reflect the face of Jesus, we have to be welcoming of everyone.  We have to reach out to all ages as well as find ways to serve those in need, including those who might feel uncomfortable around us or we might feel uncomfortable around them.[3] This vision of John’s is what we’re to shoot for—a church encompassing all of God’s children.

A second vision we have of that kingdom is of God taking care of the needs of his people. Here on earth, we are God’s hands and feet and we demonstrate God’s kingdom when we help others. Whether it is providing food or money for local shelters, Christmas gifts for those who go without, or a comforting presence for someone in grief.  We do all this in Jesus’ name because that’s what he wants us to do.

Now let me turn this around to you. How can you help make this place a community that demonstrates God’s kingdom? How can you help bring a more Christ-like attitude to our fellowship? What role can you play that will further our vision of being a church for all ages? This isn’t something I can do; it’s something that requires all our efforts. If you are committed to Jesus Christ and to this fellowship he’s called you to action.

Think about this for a moment. It might be going out of your way to greet visitors.  If you are healthy, one simple thing might be parking on the far side of our lot in order to free up closer spaces for those who are new to our church as well as those who have physical limitations.  It might be inviting someone who has lost a loved one over the past year to attend service with you, or reaching out to a new family in your neighborhood and inviting them to be your guest at a church service or a meal at our church.  We have a picnic coming up next month.  It would be a nice and informal opportunity to bring in a new neighbor and introduce them to our community.  Or maybe we’re called to the ministry of reconciliation.  It’s our role to build bridges with those who used to be friends but for some reason the friendship ties have been broken. And then, what about us corporately? Many of you are involved in making this community a better place, but what can our church do other than give money?  Is there a way we can become more involved, making a difference in Savannah?  Talk to one another and share your ideas with the elders.  What will we do to “reflect the face of Jesus?”  Amen.

©2016

[1] Quote from Don Shewey, “SPIRIT WILLING: Glide Memorial Church”

[2] See Acts 16:6ff.

[3] Paul says he becomes all things to all people so some might be saved.  1 Corinthians 9:22.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunday 2016

Luke 24:1-12

The journey to Easter is exhausting.  A lot has happened since last Sunday.  Seven days that seem like seven ages, each pulling on our emotions as we recall the events that led up to the crucifixion of our Lord on Friday.  And mixed in it all is another terrorist attack, this one in Brussels.  And that was just one set of attacks.  There were terrorist attacks in the Congo, Iraq, Syria, the West Bank, the Philippians, Afghanistan, Mali, Yemen, Burundi, Turkey and Somalia.[1]

We live in an age of anxiety.  We live in an age of worry and fear, but we are Christians, followers of Jesus, who defeated death with death.  But before we can get to this point of celebrating victory, we have to remember there was, between the Friday we call good and this morning, an awful silence.  It all seemed lost.  The disciples had given up and the women took the responsibility for doing what was needed, preparing the body for the grave.  But, as the Psalmist proclaims, weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.[2]  Thankfully, our fears are not the final word.  Only God’s word is eternal.   Our help is in the name of the Lord![3]  Thanks be to God.   Let’s read today’s passage, and see if we remember this story of joy…

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Then they remembered…  I love that line.  The women remembered.  Perhaps we, too, will remember.  And when we do, rejoice.  Death and the grave is not the final word.

Those of you who attended my lecture, “About the Funeral” heard this story, but I’m going to tell part of it again.  My first encounter with death was that of my great-grandma McKenzie.  I was seven years old and we were living at the time in Petersburg, Virginia.  My great-grandma lived on land that had been in the McKenzie family since the middle of the 18^th Century.  She had a stroke in the out in the garden.  My great-grandfather was with her and he had to run to call for help-there were no cell phones in rural Moore County in those days, only party lines.  The help that came was too late.  The next day, kind of like the women in our story, we made our preparations and headed out early for the trip to North Carolina.

My great-grandma is to the left. I’m being held by my great-grandfather. Beside him is my father and grandmother. The other child in the front is my uncle, Larry.

That evening we went to the funeral home in Carthage, the county seat for Moore County.  It was a big old house that looked haunted.  It was a hot humid summer evening.  Out in the yard there were men dressed up, having forgone the overalls of the tobacco fields.  They were all clean and dressed in dark pants, white shirts and narrow ties with a tie clip.  They clustered in groups of two or four, smoking and talking.  Women were sitting on the porch that wrapped around the home.  Mom and dad ushered us up the steps and inside to a dimly lighted room.  My great-grandfather was sitting there with tears in his eyes beside the casket contained the remains of my great-grandmother, his wife for nearly sixty years.

As my father talked to his granddad, my mother ushered us kids up to the casket.  She looked like great-grandma, but then she didn’t.  She was dead.  Mom then did something that I’ll never forget and it was a wonderful gift.  She pointed out my great-grandma’s hands.  They were wrinkled and there were liver spots. The only jewelry was a small wedding band on her ring finger.  Mom asked, “I wonder how many apples those hands peeled?  Do you remember her apple pies?”  Of course we remembered her pies, baked in Jugtown pottery.  That question drew my focus from the lifeless body of my great-grandmother and caused me to remember.

We had lived next to my great-grandparents on Dobb’s Chapel Road before moving from Moore County to Virginia a year and a half earlier.  I had fond memories of running through the woods over to their home and being warned not to stray off the path as my great-grandfather had beehives between the path and the road.  I had seen my great-grandfather harvest honey, wearing a suit that covered his body with a screen over his head and a can that produced smoke to flush the bees while stealing their honey.  Although he was no longer actively farming, they still raised much of their food.  There were gardens and chickens, along with apple and pecan trees around the homestead.  Once, I remember helping my great-grandfather gather the wood he’s split and take inside for the wood burning range in the kitchen.  My great-grandma had two stoves in the kitchen: a wood burning stove and a gas stove.  She preferred the former and on Saturdays, in preparation for Sunday dinner, there would be pies cooling in their pottery pans out on the back porch that had been baked in the wood-fired stove.  The smell was heavenly.

That evening in the funeral home I realized I would never again enjoy her cooking.  There’s something sad about that, but not completely.  For you see, when we remember, we shouldn’t only be caught up in the past.  We should remember, as the preacher proclaimed the next day at the funeral, that our lives are in God’s hand and that we know the future will be bright.

The type of memory the women had at the tomb was one based on nostalgia.  That’s the type of memory Adam probably had when he recalled Paradise and the Garden of Eden after his expulsion.[4]  Nostalgic memory makes us sad.  We can’t go back. The type of memory the women experienced at the grave was different.  It was remembering things to come.  They recalled Jesus’ promises of the future, and although we didn’t know what would happen next, they were reassured of Jesus’ continued presence.

Easter is a time of remembering.  Yes, there is a lot of trouble in this world.  We’ve witnessed another terror attack this week, we’ve buried good friends this month, perhaps you’ve heard the news of another friend who is sick.  Despite it all, and Easter doesn’t deny the heart-aches we experience, Easter is a time to remember that in Jesus Christ, death and evil have been defeated.

Let’s look at our text.  Luke begins this day early in the morning.  It’s dark.  The evening before, after the sun had set which signified the end of the Sabbath, the women gathered spices which were to be used to prepare Jesus’ body for the grave.  They wait until early the next morning to finish this task.  It’s the right thing to do.  There’s a death and something needs to be done with the body and in their culture this includes washing it and putting on spices to cover the odor before wrapping it up and placing it into this final place.  But, we’re told in the third verse, there’s no body.  This perplexed them.

Having no body doesn’t mean Jesus had risen from the dead.  After all, someone could have stolen it.  Perhaps they wanted a body to cut up in order to learn the secrets of how it’s knitted together.  After all, there were not medical text books back then. So stealing the body wasn’t out of the question, but before the women could comprehend that, they encounter angels, heavenly messengers. As the angels informed the shepherds of Jesus’ birth, now they tell of his resurrection.  They recap what’s happened over the past few days, things that Jesus had already told them would happen. He’d be handed over to the authorities, would be crucified, would die and then on the third day would rise.  Before the cross, this made no sense.  Now they remember!

Leaving the tomb, forgetting all about the spices, they find the eleven remaining disciples and tell them.  But the disciples don’t believe.  “It must be an idle tale,” they think.  I don’t think it’s because the witnesses are women that the disciples dismiss their story—they wouldn’t have believed anyone.[5]  They’d seen people die on the cross.  You don’t survive such an experience; you’re a lot worse for the wear.

But Peter isn’t so sure.  Peter, the rock upon whom Jesus will build his church,[6] runs to the tomb and he, like the women, is amazed.  I am sure Peter remembered a lot that morning, at the moment he stuck his head into the tomb.  He remember not only Christ’s words and promises, but also his own failing having denied his Lord three times the night before the crucifixion.  Yet, such failing is quickly forgotten when one considers the hope that has come through the empty tomb.  Such failings are washed away with Jesus’ blood.  And now Jesus is back, as Peter will later experience.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”[7] Paul goes on to say, we have victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What does all this mean to us?  The gospel, the good news, is that we worship a God who has control over life and death, a God who has the world in his hands.  Yes, we are waiting for the kingdom to be fully realized, but we know it’s coming.  We don’t have to worry for we are forgiven and freed from guilt and sin.  We’re not to worry for we are freed to live eternally, with Christ.

Georgia’s own, Ferrol Sams, a physician turned author, has a short story about the agape love between himself, a Georgian family physician, and a neurologist from Lebanon who worked at Emory.   The story takes the form of a letter to the man’s children.  He tells about a trip their father took them on, in the 80s, to Lebanon so that their grandfather could meet and hold his grandchildren.  Sams had tried to talk his friend out of the journey, saying that his “Carolina wife” and kids would not be safe. At the time the country was torn apart in a terrible Civil War.  But he insisted on going.  Sams then tells the man’s children in this letter that he frequently prayed during those three weeks, but that he did not worry.  Attempting to impart his faith on these children, he went on to add, “I prayed but I did not worry, since there is absolutely no logic of a Christian doing both.”[8]  He remembered!

And how about you?  Do you remember?  When you are deep in trouble, do you remember?  When someone disappoints you, do you remember?  When your friends betray you, do you remember?  When it seems your body is falling apart, do you remember?  When your dreams die, do you remember?  When the world is crashing in all around us and threatening to overwhelm us, do you remember?  Do we remember?

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shalt not want… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.[9]  Remember and believe.   Remember and trust the Lord.  Amen.

©2016

[1] Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_January%E2%80%93June_2016

[2] Psalm 30:5

[3] Psalm 124:8

[4] Inspiration from this thought came from a line used by Wendell Berry in Remembering: A Novel (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 24.

[5] Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 283.

[6] Matthew 16:18

[7] 1 Corinthians 15:55.

[8]Ferrol Sams, The Widow’s Mite and Other Stories (New York: Penguin, 1987), 121.

[9] Psalm 23 is attributed to David.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Philippians 2:1-11

March 20, 2016

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday.  The title of the day causes us to recall the pomp and circumstance of Jesus entering Jerusalem as a victorious king.  Yet, there are subtle questions raised with this celebration.  Jesus isn’t riding a handsome stallion, worthy of leading an army into battle.  One that rises up on two legs as the commander orders his troops to charge. Nor does Jesus ride an elephant as did Hannibal’s army, capable of travelling miles and miles with heavy equipment.  Nor does Jesus ride a fleet-footed camel known to make long treks quietly across the desert, allowing his mount to sneak up on his enemy.  Instead, Jesus comes into town riding a lowly donkey, like a lonely prospector.  Yet the crowds greet him with cheers and palm branches.  Are they serious or just acting a part?  Maybe they are looking for entertainment?  After all, before the week is over, the crowds will be calling for Jesus’ crucifixion.  And what about us?  Are we serious about our worship of Jesus?  And will we be willing to stick with him when the going gets tough?  Or will we join the crowd and cry out for his death?

Today’s text for the sermon comes from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  Read Philippians 2:1-11.

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Timothy Keller, in his book Counterfeit God’s writes:  “One of the ironies of sin is that when human beings try to become more than human beings, to be as gods, they fall to become lower than human beings.  To be your own God and live for your own glory and power leads to the most bestial and cruel kind of behavior.  Pride makes you a predator, not a person.”[1]

That’s a pretty strong statement…  “Pride makes you a predator.”  Yet, we encourage our children to be proud, we are proud of our schools, our team, our community, our race, our ethnicity, our country, even our churches.  In school we went to pep-rallies in which pride would be instilled.  As adults, we go to tailgate parties to beef-up the pride before a big game, or to political rally where there is a lot of flag waving and speeches calling on our pride.

In scripture, we’re told that pride comes before the fall.  We’ve seen examples of that of the past couple of days as the NCAA finals get underway.  In Scripture, Lucifer’s pride was so great that he fell from heaven.[2]  But is all pride bad?  It is obvious, I believe, that there can be good which comes from pride.  Taking pride in oneself encourages us to strive to be better, as an individual or within a community.  Where is the line that we cross that makes pride so dangerous?  Certainly, with pride, like a lot of things, too much of a good thing is not only dangerous but destructive.

Of all his letters, Paul correspondence with the Philippians is one of his warmest.  You get the sense Paul has close connections with this church that he had founded in his first European excursion.[3]  Reading this letter, you come away with the idea the Philippians also had a good relationship with Paul.  After all, Paul was in prison when he received a visitor from the Christians in Philippi, who came with a gift.[4]  Paul is writing this letter to thank them and to impart some wisdom about how they are to live the Christian life—especially how they can rejoice in all things.  Considering Paul’s condition, being in chains, such advice carries weight! Unlike some of his other letters (especially to Corinth), the church in Philippi appears to be in relatively good shape.  People are mostly getting alone, but that doesn’t mean there is no dissension.  In the fourth chapter, Paul lifts out two individuals specifically to whom he admonishes.[5]  Once again, we see there are no perfect churches.  But in the New Testament, the church in Philippi is better than most.

The second chapter, from where our reading began, focuses on this unity that Paul encourages all his churches to maintain.  The focus for Paul is always, not on ourselves and what we need, but on the needs of others.  However, on a simple reading of the opening of this passage, we might think that Paul is saying one thing and doing another.  Paul concludes the first sentence (in the second verse) with the plea “make my joy complete.”  It’s as if Paul is saying, “be nice to one another, it’ll make me happy.”  Mom’s say that to kids: “Play nice, it’ll make me happy.”  What it really means is that mom will have some peace.

But Paul isn’t really concerned for his own happiness here.  As one commentator writes, Paul was completely identified both with Christ and the church that his joy was not to be his alone…”[6]  “Think about others, those who are around you,” Paul says.  This is good advice for marriages, for people in business, and for anyone living in a community.  If we can get everyone focusing outwardly, on others, the world would be so much better.  The joy won’t only be Paul’s but that of Christ and his church!

You’ve probably heard the story of the management professor in a university giving his students a final exam.  The students spent hours cramming for the exam, trying to review all the theories they’d learned throughout the term.  They were all anxious when they got to their seats and the professor handed out the exams.  When the order was given, they opened the exam and found one question, “What is the name of the woman who cleans this building?”  They were stunned, shocked, and most failed the exam.  But they learned an important lesson.  Our success in life depends on others and, as Paul says, we are to honor them.  “In humility regard others as better than yourselves!  Don’t look out for your own interests, but to the interests of others!”

Paul then, beginning in verse 5, lifts up Christ as the supreme example.  In verses 6 through 11, he recites what may be the first Christian hymn.  These verses contain important Christological and theological insights, yet Paul doesn’t cite it in order to provide doctrinal proofs.  His motive is ethical.[7]  Jesus spoke of the last being first, and those who want to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their life for Christ’s sake with save them.[8]  Likewise, Paul emphasizes that the surest way up is to step down, the way to gain is to give up.[9]

There are three movements in the Christ-hymn that correspond to the life of Jesus Christ: pre-existence, existence, and post-existence.[10]  In verse 6, we are reminded of Christ’s divine nature, in the form of God.  But this wasn’t something that Christ exploited for he willingly humbled himself down to our level.  Actually Christ goes even lower than our level.  He becomes a slave.  At this time, the idea of a god becoming a king or emperor or Caesar wasn’t far-fetched.  But the idea that a god would come as a regular Joe was crazy.   Christ, however, takes on the lowest of roles, that of a slave, and is willing even to die with and like a criminal.  That’s not what people considered “god-like” in the first century.  Yet, it is because of Christ’s willingness to be so humbled, according to Paul, that death wasn’t the final word for Christ or for us.  Instead, he was lifted up to glory and when the kingdom is fully fulfilled, everyone will give him glory.  A three-fold movement: Christ leaving his divine throne in order to be with us.  Christ dying and because of his faithfulness being raised.  Therefore, Christ will reign through eternity.

On the day we recall the events of the first Palm Sunday, we remember how the crowds became all excited upon Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  They were praising him, but they were doing it either out of fun or because they were thinking that Jesus was going to be something else—an earthly ruler to challenge the Romans.  They wanted him to be an earthly king.  The honor that Jesus received on that road into Jerusalem was the façade of true power.  True power comes from the hard-fought ways of death and the resurrection.  Verse 8 emphasizes that Jesus’ death was real and total and horrific: “death—even death on a cross.”  Jesus surrenders and faces the uncertainty of death, like all of us will, eventually.  But in verse nine there is a shift, as God the Father steps in not only to raise Jesus, but to exalt him.

There is an old hymn that goes, “All to Jesus, I surrender all.”  Jesus paves the way by surrendering it all for us!  A life of faith is one of surrendering to Christ.

John Calvin, writing on this passage, notes there are two clauses here.  In the first, Paul “persuades us to imitate Christ, because this is the rule of life: in the second, he invites us to it, as being the road by which we attain true glory.”[11]  There is something paradoxical about all this—being humbled and obtaining glory—but that is what our faith is about.

Remember, although Paul provides insight into Christ’s nature, he’s writing to encourage the Philippians to live in a way that will produce a Christ-like community.  It’s in such a community that Jesus’ message flourishes and we’re enabled to live out our calling to be disciples.  Again, as we find throughout the Scriptures, the message boils down to “it ain’t about us.”  The Christian life isn’t to be about us—it is to be about others.  And the Christian message isn’t about us—it’s about God.  A God who has power over death as we witness in Jesus Christ, who died and who lives.

Back to the Keller quote that I began with.  If we live as if we are a god (with a little g), we will be disappointed for that is not the way of the real God, the creator of the world, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we want to live like the real God, we must serve and remember that humility is a virtue, not a liability.  And for my question earlier about the limits of pride, anytime it we become more important than anyone else, we’re skating on thin ice.

So live your lives of faith by following Jesus’ example.  Go into the Jerusalems of your lives, where people may at one moment praise you and the next stab you in the back.  Go into such settings, wishing no one ill and encouraging everyone, trusting the present and the future to an all-powerful God who holds all things in his hand.  Amen.

[1]Timothy Keller, Counterfeit God’s: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters, (New York: Dutton, 2009), 121.

[2] Proverbs 16:18 and Isaiah 14:12-13.

[3] Acts 16:6-15.

[4] Philippians 4:18

[5] Philippians 4:2-3

[6] See Philippians 1:7, 8.  Fred B. Craddock, Philippians: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 36.

[7] Gerald F. Hawthorne, Philippians: Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 43), (Waco, TX: Word Publishing, 1983), 79.

[8] Last/first:  Matthew 19:20, 20:8, 20:16; Mark 9:35, 10:31; Luke 13:30.  Save life/losing: Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24.

[9] Hawthrone, 95.

[10] Craddock, 40.

[11] John Calvin, Commentary on Philippians 2:5.  T. H. L. Parker, translator.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church 

John 12:1-8

March 13, 2016

There is a Peanut’s comic strip where Charlie Brown approaches Lucy about the problem of world hunger.  Lucy shrugs her shoulder in implied indifference.  Charlie Brown then goes to other friends and asks them their thoughts on world hunger.  He receives essentially the same reply.  Finally, Charlie Brown explodes and yells at his friends, “I least I feel guilty about it.[1]

“At least I feel guilty about it.”  Guilt can be a great motivator and perhaps parents are its best practitioners and worse offenders.  When I was a kid, my parents would say, “Eat your green beans, don’t you care about the starving children in China?”  I did and would have gladly given them my green beans.

There is another Peanut comic strip that illustrates how parents are masters of motivation by guilt.  Linus is eating lunch on the playground.  As he opens the bag packed by his mom, he finds a letter.  It reads:

Dear Son, I hope you enjoy and also appreciate the lunch I made for you today.  Did you have a nice morning?  Did you volunteer in class as I suggested?  Teachers are always impressed by students who volunteer.  It is a sure way to better grades.  Remember, better grades now will mean a better college later on.  Did you eat your carrots?  Proper nutrition is essential to good sight.  Are you sitting in the sun?  I hope so for a little is good as long as you don’t overdo it.  Perhaps ten minutes a day this time of the year is just about right…

At this point in his letter, Charlie Brown comes over and joins Linus on his bench.  “What’s for lunch, Linus?” he asks.  “Carrots, Peanut Butter and Guilt!”[2]

Guilt is a productive yet terrible motivator.  If you’re feeling guilty about the poor and need an excuse to relieve your conscience, Jesus gives you one in our morning reading.  “You will always have the poor with you,” he says.  I’ve heard people use this passage as a way to justify doing nothing about poverty.      However, Jesus was and still is concerned about the poor.  In the parable of the judgment of the nations, when Jesus speaks of separating the sheep and goats, he informs us we better be concerned about those who are in need.[3] Let’s go to the Scriptures and see what this text is all about. Read John 12:1-8

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Why does Jesus dismiss Judas’ suggestion that the perfume be sold and given to the poor?  Why does he, the one who fed the multitudes, say something as crass as “You’ll always have the poor with you?”

Jesus, I believe, in this text is speaking about his upcoming crucifixion and not making any statement about God’s desire that there always be poor people.  If anything else was intended, he was affirming the truth of human sinfulness.  Jesus was paraphrasing a passage from Deuteronomy where the fact that there will always be those in need is tied to the need for Israel to always be generous.[4]

Let’s look at the characters in our story and see what we might learn.  First of all, there is Lazarus.  He and his sisters have invited Jesus (and we presume his disciples), over for a home cooked meal.  Lazarus doesn’t say much in this story.  He’s fresh out of the grave.  He’s probably still in a bit of daze.  He wonders what he missed out on during those days he was in the tomb.  The stench of death may even still linger a bit. Although Lazarus doesn’t participate in the dialogue, his presence is noteworthy for in John’s gospel his “resurrection” is the event that precipitates the authorities’ decision to have Jesus killed.

As long as Jesus was wandering around in Galilee, he was safe.  But when he enters Bethany, having heard of Lazarus’ illness, Jesus moves closer to Jerusalem, to the power center of the Jewish religion.  His disciples have warned him of impending trouble, but Jesus brushes off their concern.[5]  Then, to make matters worse, Jesus finds Lazarus dead.  Instead of quietly consoling the family, Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave.  When the word of Lazarus’ resurrection is received by the Jewish leaders, they call a meeting of council.  Their decision is that Jesus must go.[6]

The little dinner party at Lazarus’ home may have been to celebrate his return to the living and to thank Jesus for his role in the miracle.  Martha takes her familiar place in the kitchen, preparing the meal.  Unlike the other meal Jesus had with the sisters, Martha doesn’t complain about her work and Mary’s inattention to the task at hand.[7]  Obviously, she his glad for her brother’s return and does what she does best to honor Jesus.  While Martha cooks, Mary goes out and finds the Avon lady and purchases a bottle of wonderful perfume.  This is the good stuff, made from pure nard imported from Northern India, no artificial ingredients in this ointment.[8]  She, too, is thankful for her brother’s return and wants to do what she can to honor Jesus.

Mary comes into their home and to everyone’s surprise, pours out the perfume on Jesus’ feet, not exactly the behavior you’d except from a proper woman of Palestine.  The fragrance fills the room.  John uses our senses in retelling this story and the reader of the gospel is immediately reminded of a contrasting smell at Lazarus’ tomb. [9]  There, it was the stench of death.  Now, it’s the fragrance of heaven.

Following the anointing of Jesus, in what is one of the more sensual scenes in Scripture; Mary knells down in front of Jesus and soaks up the excess perfume with her hair.  I’m sure for a week or so, everyone knew what she’d done.  That scent would have lingered in her hair!

John only mentions one disciple being present, although the others may have also been present.  Judas, however, is the one who participates in the dialogue.  When Mary comes in and begins to pour the perfume on Jesus’ feet and then to wipe them with her hair, he has had enough.  Perhaps he’s jealous.  Perhaps the fragrance bothers his allergies.  But more likely Mary’s tenderness hardens his heart even more.  He shames Mary for wasting an expensive bottle of perfume, one that cost a year’s wages for a laborer. Had Mary been concerned about the poor, she could have sold the bottle and taken care of a working class family for a whole year!

Of course, John doesn’t let us get sucked into accepting Judas’ logic.  Right away he provides an editorial comment that shows Judas’ true intention.  Judas doesn’t really care about the poor.  In fact, Judas has been the stealing from the fund that was used to take care of those in need.  Perhaps Judas felt if he had been given those 300 coins, he could replace what he’d stolen and no one would have known.  Or maybe he just wanted more.  Whatever was his reason, Judas attempts to motivate Mary out of guilt.  He shames her in front of Jesus in an attempt to get Mary to respond in a way that he feels appropriate.

What is this passage about?  On one level it gives us a clue about what’s going to happen to Jesus.  Mary’s anointing of Jesus foretells his death.  Furthermore, Jesus himself announces that he’s not going to be around much longer and that what Mary did was an act of noble worship.  I think the passage has more to do with worship than with just being a sign of Jesus’ impending death.

As humans, we have a need to worship.  God created us with this need and hopes that when we realize all he’s done for us, we will, as Isaiah says, “declare his praise.”[10] Although God has given us this need, he doesn’t force us to worship him.  So quite often we inappropriately express our need to worship.  This is idolatry, a substitution of a god of our own making for the God that is the creator of all things seen and unseen.

As I said, this passage is really about worship.  As Christians, we are to offer our best to God and one of the primary means we do this is in worship.  In a way, worship is a performance; yet, quite often we are performing for the wrong audience.  Sometimes I come to worship hoping to impress you with my words and jokes, just as I’m sure musicians sometimes perform for your pleasure.  However, that’s now what this is about.  True worship is not directed at those of you in the pews.  Sorry to inform you, but you’re not that important!  True worship involves all of us: the preacher, the musicians, the ushers and you, the congregation.  All of us are in this grand drama of offering our best to God.  Instead of the one at the pulpit being an actor, we’re all actors and God is the audience.  At our best, the preacher and the musicians are prompters or stage directors.  We help focus the attention on God.  We come to worship out of gratitude for what God has done for us.  We offer God our best, just as Mary came to Jesus with a limited edition bottle of perfume.  She offered her best to her friend and Savior and we’re to do the same.

Now back to guilt.  We shouldn’t feel guilty about offering God our best because we can’t out give God.  And God doesn’t want us to try.  To do so would be to attempt to usurp God, which is idolatry.  Instead, when we realize what God has done for us and respond out of gratitude, the burden of guilt is lifted. Guilt has no place in worship or in a Christian service.  God doesn’t want us to offer or our best in worship or to give to the poor out of guilt. That would make us resentful of God and of those who are in need of our help.  Instead, we need to respond to God out of appreciation for what God, in Jesus Christ, has already done for us.  Mary’s gift of perfume and Martha’s wonderful home-cooked meal are examples of graciously responding to the love of Jesus Christ.

“How will we respond to the love of Jesus Christ?”  This is an important question. Take some time to ponder it this week.  How will you respond to the love Christ?  Amen.

©2016

[1] As told by Andrew Purves, The Search for Compassion: Spirituality and Ministry (Louisville: WJKP, 1989), 17.

[2] See Abraham J. Twerski, MD, When Do the Good Things Start (NY: Topper Books, 1987), 62.

[3] Matthew 25:31-46.

[4] See Deuteronomy 15:11 and Gerard Sloyan, John: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: JKP, 1988), 153.

[5] John 11:7

[6] John 11:45-54.

[7] Luke 10:38-42.

[8] Nard came from the root and spike (hair stem) of a plant known as “spikenard” which grew in the mountains of Northern India.  See Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 448, n.3

[9] Cf: Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 702.

[10] Isaiah 43:21

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

February 28, 2016

Isaiah 42:10-17

I’ve been working on puzzles a lot lately.  When living in Michigan, we put a lot of puzzles together.  This was generally a winter activity and they were often assembled on a table in front of the fireplace.  There is something about puzzles that suck you in.  Once you get the border completed, you start off slow, a piece here and there.   Then, soon a section comes together quickly, but then the hunting for pieces slows down a bit.  After a long periods where things go fast then slow, you finally get down to the last 50 or so pieces.  Then it goes very fast, as if it’s a race till completion.

Perhaps we could understand our life with God as a puzzle.  At times, we struggle to find the next piece.  But we’re in God’s hand.  We trust all the pieces are there.  We keep plugging along, knowing that the best ahead of us.  Actually when things look overwhelming, such as when there are a 1000 pieces dumped out on a table, that’s when God does his best work.  And maybe, instead of us seeing ourselves as the one putting the puzzle together with God’s help, we are the puzzles and God is wonderfully putting us together.  Just a thought…

Today, we’re going to dig into the book of Isaiah.  The middle section of Isaiah, which begins with Chapter 39 and often called “Second Isaiah” deals with punishment and pardon. This is the sweet and sour section of Isaiah.  The Hebrew people are punished by Babylon, yet even as the walls of Jerusalem are breached and the people led off into captivity, they’re reminded of God’s faithfulness.  God won’t forget them.  A remnant will return to Zion.  God is still with them and their sons and their daughters will experience God’s grace.  Today, I’ll read from Isaiah 42.  It begins with a hymn.  You can almost hear the people singing this ancient psalm.  Then, beginning in verse 13, the hymn is followed by a poem that reflects what God is doing.  Read Isaiah 42:10-17.

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I’ve heard it said that rock and roll is the “sound track of our lives,” (or maybe it’s just my generation’s life).  But there may be a point to this.  Many songs take me immediately back to a particular time or place.  Although it isn’t rock and roll, I seldom sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy” without thinking about being beside my granddaddy at Culdee Presbyterian Church.  Like me, he couldn’t sing a lick, but boy did he belt it out.  When I hear the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction,” come on the radio, its 1966 and I am back in my Uncle Larry’s bedroom and he’s dancing around like Keith Richards, using a broom as a guitar.  When Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” comes on the radio, I’m riding in the backseat of my parent’s car as we head to Atlanta for the first time, in 1970.  We’re excited about Six Flags and a Braves game.  Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” takes me back to high school.  The Pretender’s “Back on the Chain Gang” takes me to a rural highway in Bladen County and I’m on a way to meet a group of Scout leaders.  And if I listen to Enya, the Irish singing with a haunting voice, I’m driving over a pass in the Sierras where I first heard her music.  How about you?  Does music have a power to take you to a place you’ve been?  Sometimes it’s a good place, with good memories.  Other tunes might take us to a place we’d rather not recall. Then we need a new song!

Sing to the Lord a new song.  Even though I’m not known for my musical talent, I love this call.  Sing to the Lord a new song.  It’s a call we find not just in Isaiah, but also in the Book of Psalms.[1]   By the way, this particular genre used here by Isaiah is a psalm or a hymn (the psalms were Israel’s hymns). The call is for a new excitement for God and what God is doing in the world.  Our God is a God of creation and his on-going effort to create a people who are devoted to his mission in the world calls for a new song.  There’s excitement in the air.

But is there really excitement?  After all, things haven’t looked this bad for the Hebrew people since they were slaves in Egypt.  The northern kingdoms had fallen a century or so beforehand, and now the southern kingdoms along with the cherished city of Jerusalem have been destroyed.  Like today, many people weren’t up for new music.  Believe me, it’s an age-old problem.  Whenever we have a new song in worship, I’m likely to get a comment or two.  Why can’t we sing the old hymns?  The music wars are nothing new.

We like to hold on to the past, but at this time in Israel’s history, there are some who aren’t even open to singing.  “How could we sing a new song in a foreign land?” they ask in Psalm 137.  There was little excitement for singing, yet Isaiah comes on the scene encouraging everyone to “Sing!”  Music is to fill the world—from the coastlands to the deserts to the mountains—as everyone is called to praise God.

At this low point in the history of God’s people, there is a call for singing.  So much of our faith is counter-culture.  Paul, in chains, writes to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”[2] And to the church in Thessalonica, he says, “pray without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances.”[3]  But, let’s face it, we don’t always have such excitement, especially not when our lives are in turmoil.

“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news,” writes Frederick Beuchner.  “It is the news that [we’re] sinners…  That’s tragedy!  But it is also the news that [we] are loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for…[4]

Today, when many question the church’s relevance and whether or not we will have a future, singing a new song may sound to some as a crazy idea.  Let’s stick with the old tried and true songs, but they don’t seem to be working, either…  Yet, as bad as things may seem now, it was worse in Isaiah’s time.  Israel was not only defeated, but many of citizens were dragged off in exile.  Without a temple and without a homeland, they had no hope.  They could have just as easily been erased from human history, yet it is at such a dark period that the call goes out, “Sing a new song to the Lord, his praise from the end of the earth!”

And then there was that dark day after the crucifixion, when no one was singing.  But the next morning, the birds were up before dawn and before long the disciples were giving God thanks.  God seems to relish in surprising us.  That’s the message of the cross.  The temple leadership and the Romans in Jerusalem, along with the disciples and his followers, were certain on Friday evening that Jesus had been done in.  He was buried; that was the end of it.  But it wasn’t.  Nor was exile the end of Israel.  In fact, the Jewish faith grew stronger in exile and after they returned, they became even more devout.  They no longer were tempted as they had been to worship idols of their neighbors.  They’d learned their lesson.

When we remember God’s work in ages past, we are reminded of what God can do in the present and future.  Singing God’s praise reminds us of the hope we have in Jesus Christ, and how his death and resurrection is just one example of God turning things around, of taking what appeared to be lost and creating a victory to be savored.  Singing is counter-cultural, but we need to do it because we have hope not in what we can do, but in what God is doing.  We need to be calling all earth to praise God and realize that we’re not in this all alone.

Yesterday morning, the elders and members of the mission committee and some of the Saturday Men’s Bible Study, had the opportunity to meet Hunter Farrell, the director of World Missions for the Presbyterian Church.  Hunter, who started his mission work as a 22 year old in the Congo, told about how Christian Congolese families (and there are a couple of million Presbyterians in that country) gather in the evening and talk about how they have experience God throughout the day.  Then they say their prayers and go to bed.

We don’t do things like that, which is a shame, for we have lost some of our ability to perceive what God might be up to in our lives.   You know, we might not see God’s work in our own lives, but someone else might. That’s why such sharing is important.  This is a hymn of praise from a people who, despite the suffering, still believes that God is active in their lives.  They actively look for signs of God’s work.  Remember how I said last week, “what’s important is not my mission or even the church’s mission but God’s mission?”[5]  They want to see what God is doing so they can participate and experience God firsthand.

Our passage transitions from a hymn of praise to a poem about God’s work in the world.  “The Lord goes forth like a soldier,” it begins in verse 13.  Throughout scripture, God is often depicted as a warrior.[6] In verse 14, the text slips from a hymn about God to God speaking.  God is no longer holding his peace, but cries out like a woman in labor.  This contrasts with the previous image of God as a warrior.  We think of warriors bringing death, as with the Babylonian army.  But here God gives life.  God appears to battle nature, making the mountains and hill level and the waters that have hinder transportation become manageable and easy to cross.  Then, in verse 16, we have an image of God leading the blind down a road they do not know.  But God guides and turns the darkness into light, the rough places into level ground.  Those who have gone out into exile and think they have no hope will learn otherwise, when God leads them home on an easier path.

However, where there is redemption, there is also judgment. Not all of God’s people have remained faithful.  Some have succumb to the gods of Babylon and others gods, whom they believed were more powerful.  They will not experience redemption, they will be put to shame when they realize the impotence of the stone or metal in which they have trusted.

I started out talking about music as the soundtrack of our lives.  But we’re not called by God into the past but the future.  Maybe that is why we’re called to sing a new song in our praise of God.  Furthermore, many songs have the ability to make us smile, to change our attitude.  Think about Paul McCarthy’s “Silly Love Song.”  It was a new song in the mid-70s, making a shift from his past with the Beatles.

You’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, but I look around me and I see it isn’t so.  Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.  And what’s wrong with that?

Doesn’t  that  make you smile… that’s what the new song we’re to be singing should do.  We’re to look forward to a future with God.  Even when we are burdened down with troubles and grief, we’re to have hope that love might one day reign, that one day we might, as the old gospel favorite goes, “exchange our cross for a crown.”[7]  A new song that lifts up with God is doing in our lives and in our world is what we need.  For only God can bring us out of the darkness and into the light of Jesus.  Let’s be open to new songs of what God is doing.   Amen.

©2016

[1] See Psalms 96 & 98.

[2] Philippians 4:4.

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18.

[4] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale (HarpersSanFrancisco, 1977), 7.

[5] I was referring to a comment by  Alan Hirsch, as quoted by Stephen M. Franklin in a blog post titled, “The Mission has a Church” at the Pittsburgh Seminary Blog:  http://www.pts.edu/blog/pittsburgh-mission-conference/

[6] Deuteronomy 10:17, Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 24:8, 78:65, Exodus 15:3

[7] The line is from “The Old Rugged Cross”

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church 

Jeremiah 1:4-10

February 7, 2016

          I want to draw your attention to a quote at the top of the bulletin from Eugene Peterson.  You may know Peterson from The Message translation of Scripture.  In his memoir, The Pastor, he tells of his call to the ministry.  It started in his father’s butcher shop in Montana.  There, he learned important lessons from his father, which he applied to his view of the church once he became a Presbyterian minister.  Peterson envisions the church as a place “where we greet one another in Jesus Christ and where dignity is conferred.”[1]  I like his vision.  It means all of us have a calling to bring about this community.  We lift up one another.  We bestow dignity.

Speaking of calls, we’re looking at the call of Jeremiah in today.  Jeremiah’s call, dated by the kings of Israel, occurred around 627 BC.[2]  This was a turbulent time in history as the Assyrian empire was coming to an end as Babylon and its rivial Egypt gained power. Israel is caught in the middle. Jeremiah’s call is a lot like the call of Moses and Isaiah in that God calls a person to do something that they don’t think they’re capable or worthy of doing.  In his case, he’s young.  He’s probably younger than many of the Boy Scouts here today.   Read Jeremiah 1:4-10.

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Frederick Buechner wrote a lovely book titled Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. It’s a biographical dictionary with brief yet humorous biographies on most characters from the Bible.  This is how he starts Jeremiah’s entry:

The word jeremiad means a doleful and thunderous denunciation, and its derivation is no mystery.  There was nothing in need of denunciation that Jeremiah didn’t denounce.  He denounced the king and the clergy.  He denounced recreational sex and extramarital jamborees.  He denounced the rich for exploiting the poor, and he denounced the poor for deserving no better.  He denounced the way that Israel followed after every new god…

He even denounced God for saddling him with the job of trying to reform such a pack of hyenas, degenerate ninnies.  ‘You deceived me,’ he said, shaking his fist.  You are ‘like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail,” and God took it…  But the people didn’t…[3]

Jeremiah’s call was a burden. His role was to bring a message of judgment, something never popular.  In Jeremiah’s case, it got him in all kinds of trouble.  He was despised; he was thrown in jail and dropped in a cistern.  Luckily there was no water in cistern, but he couldn’t get out until an Ethiopian took pity on him.[4]  After many of the Israelites were hauled away to Babylon in exile, Jeremiah went with those who sought refuge in Egypt.  Legend has it they got tired of listening to his rant and stoned him to death.[5]  Whoever came up with the saying “no good deed goes unpunished” could have been thinking of Jeremiah’s life.

Think about this.  By our standards, Jeremiah was a failure.  People didn’t heed his voice; they didn’t listen to his warnings.  Instead, they saw to it that Jeremiah was abused.  Why?  Jeremiah was a whistleblower.  You know, whistleblowers are often abused, whether it is in private industry or government.  They are condemned for their lack of loyalty even though their loyalty is often to a higher principle.  Jeremiah highlighted the sin of the people.  They didn’t want to hear it any more than you don’t want to hear it.  But what’s important is that Jeremiah remained faithful to God.  Even though the people didn’t want to hear him, he kept preaching because he knew he had to answer to a higher power.

The reason Jeremiah endured is because he was so sure of his calling by God to be a prophet in a time when Israel struggled.  God’s call came early. Jeremiah is told God knew him all along, even before he was conceived.  He was born to be a prophet.  And his words are still being heard.  2600 years later, Jeremiah is still being read.  Being faithful brings results, but it often takes time for the results to be realized.

There is comfort when you think about God knowing us before we were born, before we were even a twinkle in our parents’ eyes.  This means God has plans for us.  Yes, that includes you scouts!  Few of us are called to be a prophet on the magnitude of Jeremiah (who some suggests was Israel’s greatest prophet), but God does have a plan for our lives.  From Jeremiah, we learn the importance of basing our life on Godly principles.  We ground ourselves not in what we think is important, but what God wants us to do.

However, many of us are like Jeremiah in his response to God’s call.  Or maybe it’s Moses we’re like, who made a similar case as why he shouldn’t be called by God.[6]  Or maybe like Isaiah who wondered if his calling by a holy God was to be his doom as he was a sinner.[7]  We often question God’s motives.  “I don’t know how to speak,” Jeremiah said, “I’m just a kid.”  Have you ever said anything like that?

• “I don’t know enough to teach Sunday School.”
• “I don’t know enough about music to join the choir.”
• “I’m not strong enough to stand up to the troop bully and demand that he treat every boy better.”
• “I’m too shy or too timid to get involved and to speak up for what’s right.”
• “I’m too scared to reach out to people who are different from me.”
• “Who am I to go on a mission trip?”

God has granted us all gifts and opportunities to make this world a better place.  It’s just that we also have plenty of excuses.  Understand this!  If God wants us to do something, we will be given the necessary skills.  We need to trust the Lord!

It’s generally thought that Jeremiah, like Samuel,[8] was really young when he was called. God tells the boy Jeremiah he’ll have the necessary words; he just needs to be bold and trust God.  Although Jeremiah is called early in life, it appears he’s an adult by the time God used him in a major way.  His work begins in earnest in 605 BC, twenty years or so after his call.[9]  There’s time to be prepared.

I remember well a dream I had the spring before I began seminary.  I was questioning what I was about to do.  Should I quit a job, sell a house and move to a strange city to go back to school.   During this time I was restless and had some strange dreams.  In one that I remember, I heard a voice and felt sure it was coming from God.  The voice told me to go to seminary and not to worry for I’d know what I was to do when I had finished school.  It answered a concern I had and that voice in that dream gave me the strength to make the break I needed to make and go back to school.

Jeremiah is also told not to be afraid. I’m sure he found himself wondering about this when he sat in a dirty jail cell or was stuck in the mud at the bottom of that cistern.  I am reminded of my childhood hero, Alfred E. Neuman, and his iconic line, “What, me worry?”  In case you don’t remember Neuman, he was a comic character for Mad Magazine.   It is only when we know we’re working on God’s side, even if we fail by human standards, that we can take comfort when told not to worry.  Jesus tells us not to worry about those who can kill the body, but not soul.[10]

After responding to Jeremiah’s excuses, God places a hand on Jeremiah’s mouth, kind of like the seraph touching Isaiah’s mouth with a coal from God’s altar to cleanse it,[11] and tells the prophet that his words are now in Jeremiah’s mouth.  And then Jeremiah is sent out with God’s power to do the work of the Lord.

We’re not told how this call came about.  Unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah doesn’t see God’s throne.  Unlike Moses, he doesn’t have a burning bush.  But somehow he hears God’s call.  Although at first he tries to weasel out of it, he accepts his lot and goes forth to do God’s work.  This comforting, for God’s call isn’t always dramatic.  Sometimes it is more subtle.  Furthermore, like Jeremiah, it’s okay to question God.  Actually, I think it is a part of the discerning process, for as we question we learn and are given encouragement that we’ll need if we find ourselves in the bottom of a cistern.  Hopefully that’s not a literal cistern, but lots of us have been there metaphorically.

What do we learn from Jeremiah’s call?  First, it’s not about us.  It’s about God who calls us to do his work!

What is God calling us to do or to be?  I can’t answer this question for you.  That’s between you and God.  But remember we’re all called to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.  God not only calls us individually but also calls us collectively, as his people, to certain tasks.  I believe our collective call is to live into the vision of the church as illustrated by Eugene Peterson at the top of the bulletin. God’s calling us to create a place void of labeling, a place without gossip and a place where tit-for-tat exchanges are absent.  God’s call is for us to create a safe place for people with questions.  God’s call is for us to create place where dignity is conferred on all people.  Don’t you want to be a part of this journey?  One of the Great Ends of the Church is to exhibit God’s kingdom to the world.[12]  What might we, as individuals, do to live into such a call?  What might we, as the church, do to bring about such a vision?  What can you do to make this world a better place?  Amen.

©2016

[1] Eugene Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 40.  The full quote:  [A] Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them.  A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged.  It must never be a place where a person is labeled.  It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated.  Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus’ name.  A place where dignity is conferred.

[2] Jack R. Lundbom, “Jeremiah,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Volume III, 686.

[3] Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 59-60.  Quote from Jeremiah 15:18

[4] Jeremiah 37:15, 38:6-13,

[5] Beuchner, 61.  Other legends have it that he lived out his days and died peacefully.

[6] Moses challenges God’s call numerous times.  See Exodus 3:11, 3:13, 4:1, and 4:10

[7] Isaiah 6:5

[8] 1 Samuel 3.

[9] Lundbom, III. 687.

[10] Matthew 10:28

[11] Isaiah 6:6

[12] Presbyterian Church USA, Book of Order, F-1.0304.

Jeff Garrison

First Presbyterian Church 

January 17, 2016

1 Corinthians 12:4-19

Throughout Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he frequently uses the metaphor of the body.  He writes about our individual bodies as temples for the Holy Spirit, but quickly moves from that point to the church, the body of Christ in the world.  In the twelfth chapter, he brings his discussion of the body as a metaphor for the church to the forefront as he writes about Spiritual gifts.  It is Paul’s longest homily within the Epistle.  Today, as I preach before you with crutches and a leg that don’t work, I stand as a living example of what Paul says about the importance of all parts of the body.  Read 1 Corinthians 12:4-19.

###

A couple of years ago, I visited Hartwick Pines State Park, which is just north of the Au Sable River in Michigan.  The place is unique in that it is, as far as I know, the last strand of virgin white pine in the lower peninsula of Michigan. At one time, these trees covered much of the state, but in the 19^th Century they were mostly cut for timber.  A lot of the logs and lumber were hauled across Lake Michigan to help build and then, after the great fire supposedly started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, rebuild Chicago.  By the early 20^th Century, most of the pines were gone (and the loggers then headed south and started sawing on our own longleaf pines).

I grew up in longleaf pine country, a tree that once boasted over 93 million acres of forest in the southeast, but today only a few millions acres remain.   A few years before visiting Hartwick Pines, I’d read a natural history of the longleaf and was surprised by how few acres remain since they were the tree  I grew up playing under in the backyards of my childhood.  While visiting Hartwick Pines, I struck up a conversation from the ranger and learned about the similarity of the white and longleaf pines.  Neither grow particularly well on their own or in mass plantings.  For this reason, as they’ve been harvested, they are often replaced with other types of pine, like red pine or slash pine in Michigan and loblolly pine down south.  Those pines grow better in plantations.

Under a canopy of trees, when an older tree dies, a younger white pine will shoot up toward the sky, dropping its limbs as it grows, until it is above the canopy where its branches will spread out and add to the canopy’s cover.  I love how these trees tower over the others, something that is easy to see from the water’s edge, where a white pine will stand ten or so feet taller than the surrounding trees.  These mature white pines are valuable timber because as they drop their branches, the wood becomes less knotty.  However, when the tree grows by itself, out from under the canopy, it spreads out wide with long branches that are susceptible to breaking off in ice storms and then to insect attacks.  Such trees are also less valuable as lumber.  But in a forest with multiple types of trees, they flourish while supporting other trees that grew under their canopy.

In listening to the ranger, I immediately began to think of ways these trees can serve as metaphors for our lives.  We are not, after all, lone rangers.  We benefit from the community of which we are a part, and we need one another.   Like the tree, by ourselves we are not as valuable and more prone to problems, such as the tree breaking up in an ice storm.  But within the community our potential is much greater and there is safety.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “A self-sufficient human being is subhuman…  God has made us so that we will need each other.”[1]  In that way, we’re a lot like trees.  As with everything else in God’s glorious creation, we’re interconnected.

Paul begins this section with a discussion of spiritual gifts.  These are not gifts for personal gain or even personal spiritual enrichment.  They are for the common good.  You may have remembered Paul saying: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.”[2]  Here, in reference to the Spiritual gifts, Paul uses the noun form of the same word he used back in the 6^th chapter which could be translated not only as helpful but “contributing to the common good.”[3]

So these spiritual gifts—wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment and tongues—are not for the individual, but for the community.  The blessings we have in this life are not just for us, individually—that would be a selfish misunderstanding of the gospel.  We are blessed by God with gifts and talents but we must not hoard them, but use them for the benefit of all.

Now, this section of 1^st Corinthians focuses on worship and the gifts Paul highlights here all have to do with strengthening the worship of the community.[4] But one gift is not better than another. Paul insists on their equality and on the fact that they all come from the same Spirit.  Whatever gift’s you’re given, use them for the glory of the God through building up the body of Christ.

To emphasize his point, the building up of the body of Christ, Paul follows the gifts of the Spirit with the analogy of the body: there are many members, but all are part of the same body.  Paul is trying to bring the Corinthian congregation—which consists of people from a variety of backgrounds—Jew and Gentile,, slave and free—together by reminding them of the common source of their unity, God’s Spirit.  Furthermore, Paul wants them to understand that their differences make them strong and whole.  Besides, if we were all the same, it would be a boring world.  Yet, there is this human tendency we have to keep people who are different from us at a distance.

The body represents a human community made up of all types of members.  Paul suggests that we all have different roles but we’re connected to one another and only when we are united and working together, will we fulfill God’s plan for us.  Kind of like me, if I want to walk normally, I need two legs that work together.  Otherwise, I limp along with a crutch.

Interestingly, Paul starts with the foot.  The foot in the Middle Eastern mind is dirty.  Even today, in Islamic countries, to point the soles of one’s feet toward someone is considered an offense and something to be avoided.  In 2011, when Egyptians rioted against Mubarak, President of Egypt at the time, one of the things the crowd did was to take off their shoes and shake the heels of their shoes toward him as a sign of contempt.  The words for foot and shoe are considered obscene in such a culture and must be used carefully to avoid offense.[5]

By starting with the foot, Paul begins with the “least-of-these” and lifts them up as worthy members of the community.  Those reading this letter in the ancient world would have quickly understood his point.  Slaves and women and others on the outside may have had little value in the larger society of the day, but according to Paul, they are an essential part of the Christian community.  The Spirit has given them essential gifts.  They have a role to play.  Within the church “everyone participates, each serves and all belong.”[6]  Furthermore, such acceptance into the community should make those within this group be grateful, just as everyone should feel gratitude for having been grafted into the body of Christ.

Paul shows the illogical view that many of us have of thinking higher of ourselves than others.  We need one another and everyone should be grateful for everyone else.  Because every one of us brings something unique to the community, when we look down on others, we risk diminishing ourselves and the community.  Everyone within God’s kingdom must be grateful of everyone else, partly because none of us can do everything by ourselves (as is being painfully brought to my attention in my current state).

A friend of mine wrote a book about his canoe journey down the Charles River in Eastern Massachusetts.  The river flows out through Boston harbor.  It’s not a long river and wouldn’t have been a very long book, except that he used his days on the water to ponder and share what was on his mind.  He had been bothered by the negativity within the environmental community and was wondering how we might develop a new environmental ethic.  To say that the world is being ruined and we must do something quickly can be overwhelming and leaves most of us paralyzed.  The solution the author proposed is that before people take on burdens of the environmental crisis, they experience the joy and the awe of nature.  His idea is only that which we love and that which has brought us joy can give us the strength to engage in the larger issues that are seemingly overwhelming.[7] Now, he wasn’t necessarily writing from a spiritual or a Christian perspective (although his sister is an ordained hospital chaplain), but I think he’s on to something.

When we feel the joy of having been endowed by God’s Spirit and grafted into the body of Christ, we should then want to respond in gratitude.  Gratitude, it’s the first principle of Christian stewardship.  It’s the first principle of a Christian life.  It helps us value all parts of the body that makes up the church.

Friends, if we are to be the body of Christ, we must embrace one another and realize that everyone here brings something unique to the table.  We need to value one another, encourage one another, pray for one another, and listen to one another.  If we do this, the body of Christ will be strengthened.  And if we embrace everyone, remembering that we are all sinners dependent on God’s grace in Jesus Christ, we will create a community so appealing others will want to join us as we strive together to bring God glory and, with the help of the Holy Spirit and those spiritual gifts endowed to us, further God’s kingdom.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: IVP 2011), 344.

[2] 1 Corinthians 6:12.

[3] Bailey, 336.

[4] I’m using Kenneth Bailey’s outline of First Corinthians which divide the main body of the Epistle into five essays:  1. Unity and the Cross (1:10-4:19).  2. Sexuality: men and women and the human family (4:17-7:40).  3. Christian and Pagan: freedom and responsibility (8:11-11:1).  4. Worship: Men and women in the church (11:2-14:40.  5. Resurrection (15:1-58)

[5] Bailey, 341.

[6] Bailey, 342.

[7] Davud Gesser, My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism (Milkweed, 2011), especially see 132-133.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

January 3, 2016

John 1:1-18

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the better known Christian martyrs of the 20^th Century, was killed by the Nazi’s days before the end of World War II.  Bonhoeffer spent most of his final two years in a Nazi prison, during which time some of his writings were smuggled out, including a poem titled “Christians and Pagans.”  Let me read it; there are three short sections:

Men go to God when they are sore bestead,

Pray to him for succor, for his peace, for bread,

For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;

All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he is sore bestead,

Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,

Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;

Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goes to every man when sore bestead,

Feeds body and spirit with his bread;

For Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead,

And both alike forgiving.[1]

Consider how Bonhoeffer structures this poem.  Christians are the ones standing by God in his hour of need.  As Matthew’s gospel informs us, this is what we do when we commit an act of kindness to “the least of these.”[2] But the heart of the poem is in the final verse; God comes to us when we are suffering.  God with us; it’s the incarnation; it’s what Christmas is all about.  Our passage on this the second and last week of Christmas is from the prelude to the Gospel of John.  READ JOHN 1:1-18

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Unlike Matthew and Luke, John’s gospel doesn’t give us the standard eyewitness account of the birth of our Savior.  John isn’t interested in mangers, stars, shepherds, angels, or wise men.  John begins his gospel with a theological or, more correctly, a Christological statement.  His words draw our minds back to Genesis, back to the creation.  Jesus Christ, the word of God, was present at the beginning.  Jesus Christ is responsible for life, and that life emits light to a darkened world.

Think back to Genesis 1, the story of the world’s creation.  Interestingly, the first act of creation was light.  On the first day, God brought light into the chaos and then separated light and darkness.  If you study that story, it’s interesting that the sun, that great heavenly body that gives us light during the daytime, is primarily reduced to a clock.  The sun isn’t created until the fourth day!  Genesis, like John’s gospel, opens with a theological statement, reminding us that life and light is from God – not from the sun.

This is exciting, but there is also a problem.  There’s darkness in the world.  Even though Jesus came into the world, and even though the world came into being through Him, the world does not know Him.  Through this darkness, the world is not even sure of its origin.  The world is lost.  Yet, piercing the darkness is the light of Christ.  And those who come to this light can be reborn a child of God, as John discusses in the third chapter.

By linking Jesus to the eternal word, John begins by emphasizing the co-existence of Christ and the Father, a unity responsible for creation and life.  As to the details of how all this came about, we’re not privy.  Genesis points to God as the creator, and John picks up that theme.  The problem that has occurred between Genesis 1 and John’s gospel is that sin established itself in the world, thereby keeping people from seeing God as the creator.  Sin creates the darkness that engulfs the world.

To put John’s esoteric language into equally esoteric theological wordage, we can no longer know the saving grace of God through Natural Theology.   Natural Theology is what we know about God without appealing to faith or revelation; in other words, what we can know about God from reason and experience.   John Calvin, early in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, discusses this; which he labels “natural endowment.”  Calvin understands there are some things we can know about God; however, we can’t discover the saving grace of God on our own.[3]  That knowledge is only available through revelation and Jesus Christ is the revelation of God.  Because the world has been corrupted, our ability to know God from our surroundings has been diminished, and we must wait for God to reveal himself to us.  This revelation, the incarnation, is necessary for us to experience salvation.

There was a boy to whom Santa gave a train on Christmas.  On that Christmas morning his house, like many of ours, looked like a disaster had struck.  Tossed across the floor were boxes and wrapping paper and bows, ribbons, and of course new toys.  But the boy was most interested in the train and loved racing it around and around, as fast as it would go.  But then, in the confusion, his younger sister kicked a discarded box on the tracks and the train crashed into it, creating a massive derailment.

Bending over the train, this young budding engineer kept trying to get the cars back on the tracks, but he couldn’t get the wheels to seat properly.  Finally, his father realized what was happening.  “You know, you can’t do that standing up above it,” he said.  “You have to get down beside it.”  The father then laid down beside the tracks with his son, and proceeded to show him how to seat the train back on the tracks.

This is a way we can think about the incarnation, the coming of God to us as a child.  The human race has been derailed by sin.  We need to be put back on the right track in life. But it can’t be done from above – God has to come down beside us in order to put us back on track.  And that’s what God does in Jesus Christ.

It all seems so harmless: God loving the world and coming into it to save it.  It seems like we should just rejoice and receive Christ with open arms, and be like the shepherds or wise men.  Yet, even there with the wise men, we learn of the opposition from Herod.[4]  Here in John’s gospel, we see this opposition manifest itself as darkness.  We know, looking back on the story from our perspective that the opposition will eventually lead to the crucifixion of the Messiah.

The world that we live in is in rebellion.  Our world doesn’t want to hear the message, which is why it was so easy to crucify Christ.  This hasn’t changed in the centuries and millenniums since Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into heaven.  For some reason, we find the light of Christ painful.  For some strange reason we prefer darkness.  Sin has such a shaming effect on us that we avoid light, lest we be shown for who we really are.  We prefer to live with lies rather than in the truth. We forget we can only find true freedom in the light, allowing God through Jesus Christ to point out our shortcomings, so that we might confess and repent.  We should rejoice that God hasn’t given up on us.  We should be thankful our God continues to reach out into a world that rebels against its Creator.

Ponder this morning what difference it make that God entered human history?  (This could make a good topic of conversation while enjoying coffee and fellowship afterwards.  Certainly, those of you who are Michigan State fans would prefer to discuss this than the Cotton Bowl!)

God’s coming gives meaning to life.  Without God, life itself would have no meaning and philosophically, we’d all be nihilists.[5]  But there is something inside of us, that which Calvin called Natural Endowment, which informs us there is something greater.  There is something beyond ourselves that demands our worship and reverence.  We have this desire to reach out and grasp it, which gets us into trouble because we can’t be God.  We tried, that’s the meaning behind the story of eating the forbidden fruit.[6]  We wanted to be like God, and as a result found ourselves even further away from the divine.  But all is not lost.  Even though we can’t fully grasp the glory and majesty of God, our Creator makes it easy for us by coming to us in a way we’ll understand.

What difference does it make?  If you believe, it makes all the difference in the world.  We have a God who cares and loves us.  And, as we come into God’s light, we too are called to care and love the world.  Life is not meaningless, for we are loved and we are to love.  Life is not hopeless for we have a God whose majesty engulfs the world, yet who understands the trials and tribulations we face daily because he’s been here.

As this Christmas season comes to a close, remember that life doesn’t have to be meaningless.  We can know God and of his love, and through God know that we are valued and loved and therefore should value and show love to others.  God has made himself known to us!  This week, though your kindness and gentleness, spread God’s love to those around you.  Reflect the face of Jesus to the world, it’ll make a difference in someone’s life.  Amen.

©2016

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayers from Prison (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1978), 26.

[2] Matthew 25:40.

[3] See John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.III.1 and 1.IV.1-4.

[4] Matthew 2:1-18.

[5] A philosophical belief that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.  It denies objective truth.  Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

[6] Genesis 3.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

December 20, 2015

Luke 1:39-56

Spring mornings in the Appalachian Mountains are special.  Just before dawn, an hour or so before the sun rises, birds began to sing.  It can be quite annoying if you’re trying to sleep and there is a bobwhite quail or a whip-o-will close by.  Whip-o-wills are the worst.  They’ve been known to chant their tunes at all hours of the night.  But songbirds wait until an hour or so before dawn to begin their music.  If you get over your need for sleep, you can lay in your sleeping bag and enjoy the concert as the winged choir members anticipate grand things for the upcoming day.  Together, they form a choir praising their creator.  Winter has passed and summer, the season in which they do not have to worry about food and the cold, is just around the corner. Eggs will hatch; there’ll be new life.  It’s as if the birds are singing in thanksgiving.

Luke’s gospel opens like the birds of Appalachia in the predawn hours of spring.  Everyone sings.  We’ll almost everyone, old Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, was at a loss for words.  But we can bet his heart was singing.  Joining in his song is his pregnant wife, Elizabeth, and Mary, pregnant with Jesus.  And after Jesus’ birth, angels join the chorus for they all understand that a new day is dawning, God’s promise is about to be fulfilled.

Over the past month in my sermons, I have referred to Advent as a time of “remembering the future.”  We saw this with John the Baptist.  John was the last of the prophets of the old age as he points the way to Jesus, the one who ushers in a new age.[1]  Everyone is excited for what is about to occur.  Today, our Scripture consists of two songs, Elizabeth’s and Mary’s.  Each give thanks to God for what is about to happen.  Read Luke 1:39-56.

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I have a confession to make.  I like to be in control.  Didn’t come as a surprise, did it?  I like to know what I’m doing and where I’m going and how I’m going to get there.  I don’t like things I can’t control, which is probably why I don’t get excited over cars.  I’m not impressed with how much horsepower is packed under the hood or the size of the tires.  I just want the contraption to get me where I’m going.

You see, with a car, you can be whizzing down the interstate at midnight with everything in order—cruise control set just a hair above the speed limit, the vehicle’s interior climate comfortable, and just the right tune blaring from the stereo, when all of a sudden a water pump breaks.  You’re sitting in the middle of nowhere and reminded once again that you’re not in control.  Some little mechanical gadget that can only be found in an auto-parts store three counties away shatters any allusion of control.  Moments before you were happy and content, now you’re cranky and angry.  Know the feeling?  (That said, I hope none of you have any car problems if you’re travelling for the holidays.)

The desire for control is something instilled into our culture.  We pull ourselves up by our bootlaces.  We take care of ourselves, or at least we are under the mistaken belief that we take care of ourselves.  But we didn’t build the car.  Nor did we build the highway, or refine the oil to make the car run.  We should keep in mind that we always depend on others and ultimately, we depend on God.  We need to get this control fantasy out of our heads.  We need to accept ourselves for who we are.  When we try to make ourselves out to be more than we are, we create an idol out of the self and set ourselves up for a fall.  The higher we elevate ourselves, the further we fall.[2]

Yet, control is a desire we all share.  But it is dangerous because it is incompatible with our faith in God.  We desire to be rich, famous, powerful, popular, the type of individual that is in control of his or her surroundings.  But it’s a myth.  As Christians, our desires should center on pleasing and fulfilling God’s will.  If you question this, consider Mary, the women whom God chose to work through to bring about salvation to the world.

Mary wasn’t rich or famous or powerful or popular.  According to worldly standards, she was the most unlikely candidate to be the mother of Jesus, the mother of God.  She was young and unmarried, probably poor, from a second rate town in an obscure corner of the world.  As far as we know, she had no education and there was no royalty within her blood.  She didn’t seek fame.  Instead, she was absolutely dependent.  She was dependent upon her father to find her a husband and then would be dependent upon him to provide for her and her children.  Later in life, she’d be dependent upon her children to take care of her.  She had no control over her life.  Absolutely none.  She was just a poor women, like 1000s of other poor women, in a dirt-poor town in an obscure providence of the Roman Empire.  She was just like 1000s of other women, except she was chosen to bear the Son of God.  It almost sounds like a fairy tale story, does it?  Except that Mary never inherits a castle.  Her story goes downhill.  She gives birth to her son in a stable, the family flees to Egypt where they live as political refugees, and three decades later she’s there by the cross watching her son die.[3]  She is a woman of sorrow, but despite this her song is one of the most beautiful found in scripture as she praises God for what he had done and is doing.

Mary realizes her position.  She’s a lowly servant and any honor she has is due to God’s action within her life.  Everything is God’s doing, not hers.  She is not the cause of redemption; she’s just a vessel God using to bring the Savior into the world.  Mary isn’t going around boasting of her accomplishments and lining up book deals; she isn’t saying, “look at me, I’m the mother of God.”  Instead, as Luke tells us at the end of the Christmas narrative, Mary ponders all that happens in her heart.[4]  She’s the model of true humility.  Her praise and her life are directed toward God.

Mary’s song gives us an insight into how God operates.  God chose her, an unlikely candidate, to be Jesus’ mother.  God lifts up the lowly while pronouncing judgment upon the powerful—upon those who think they are in control.  We Americans should take notice.  God’s blessings are given to those who understand they have no control in their lives; God’s blessings are for those who, in their humble state, fear the Lord.  At the same time, those who are not willing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty will not find salvation in Jesus Christ.  They’re too busy looking out for themselves and pretending their own resources will save them, they don’t realize they need a Savior.

Have you ever wondered why the poor appear to be special in Scripture?  Think of the verses: Blessed are the poor.”[5]  “It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.”[6]  Why is it easier for the poor to accept Christ and find salvation?  The poor are dependent.  Those without money must depend upon others for food.  Those without capital must depend upon others for jobs.  And this doesn’t just go for the economically poor.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”[7]  Those who are depressed must depend upon others to cheer them up. The poor are dependent on others, they are not in control, and those who acknowledge their dependence have an easier time accepting God’s grace.

All of us need to learn to depend upon God and, by doing so, we need to make Mary’s song our own.  Can we prescribe all our praise to God?  (Or, do we want to save a little for ourselves?)  Can we acknowledge God’s power and sovereignty in this world?  (Or, do we believe in our individual grandeur?)

Mary is in no position to help herself, yet she so totally trust God and sings his praises.  Mary accepts God’s call and gives God thanks for being chosen, which is why her song is remembered.

Mary’s song provides us a model of a prayer of thanksgiving.  If Mary, a woman of sorrow, can sing such a song, if the songbirds who struggle day after day for food and survival can sing such praise, why can’t we?  In all we do, we need to see how God is working in our lives and then give thanks.  We need to take Paul seriously when he says that we’re to be praying without ceasing.[8]   And our prayers need to mostly be prayers of thanksgiving, as we praise God for all that he has done for us.  When we search our lives for God’s blessings and realize just how blessed we are, we are humbled and made even more dependent upon the loving arms of the Almighty God.

During this festive season, don’t forget to give thanks.  Take time to count your blessings.  What has God given you to be thankful for?  First off, he’s given your life; God’s given you a chance.  Secondly, you’re redeemed in Jesus Christ.  That’s a lot!  And what has God done for our church for which we should be thankful.  He’s given us a rich heritage, a church that has served this community for nearly forty years, a congregation that’s free of debt and consists of faithful people who long to make a difference in the lives of others.  We’re a congregation of hard workers—just look at the various projects done in just the past few weeks: a totally redone library, new landscaping, beautiful decorations for the season, a new carillon bells to sing out to our community, and tons of gifts generously given for those less fortunate in our community.  We’re not perfect; for that we’ll have to wait for the Second Advent. We are blessed to be a part of Jesus’ family and such a community as this.

Of course, as the news reminds us daily, we live in a world of violence.  But so did Mary and Elizabeth.  They lived in a world where those who disagreed with the occupying army were crucified and where Roman soldiers enforced the will of Caesar by spear and sword.  And yet, they both praised God for what was happening.  Both knew what God had done in the past and understood that a new age was dawning.  Even John, in his mother’s womb, knew and was excited about what God was doing.  Today, we can be cynical, when considering the violence and injustice in our world.  Or we can realize the message of the cross, which is that violence and evil may have their day, but they are not the final answer.  Be thankful, for the powers of death could not overcome God’s love for the world.  Be thankful, for Jesus will return and establish his rule and every knee will bow in reverence and God will live among us in such an intimate way that he’ll wipe our tears from our cheeks.[9]

I encourage you in your prayers to be like Mary. Remember what God has done and what God is doing!  Paul tells us to rejoice always.  When we regularly give thanks to God, we’ll find that we live differently.  Our lives will be more positive.  We’ll be like the songbirds on a spring morning, reflecting Jesus’ face to a hurting world.  Come, Lord Jesus, Come!  Amen.

©2015

[1] Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: JKP, 1990), 29.

[2] See Isaiah 14:12-14 and Luke 10:18

[3] See John 19:26.

[4] Luke 2:19

[5] Luke 6:20

[6] Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25

[7] Matthew 5:3

[8] 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

[9] Romans 14:11, Philippians 2:10, Isaiah 25:8, and Romans 21:4

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Luke 3:1-6

December 6, 2015

Christ has come and Christ will come again.  This truth of the Christian faith is why on our Advent journey in which we remember the future (Christ’s coming), we find we must deal with that crazy man out in the wilderness, John the Baptist.  We’re going to spend two weeks with John, today and next Sunday.  John kind of reminds me John Brown, the fiery abolitionist, for neither of the two minced words.  John called it as they saw it, yet people were drawn to him.  It’s an interesting phenomenon that we still see—one who makes outrageous demands yet is still able to draw a crowd.  What’s that all about?  Perhaps it has to do with us knowing that, deep down, that is something rotten in us and we need to change.  John tells us to be ready, for one is coming who can help us make such changes.

Our reading today begins, through, not in the land by the Jordan in which John ministered, but in the halls of power as Luke tells us who was in charge in Rome and the various providences around Palestine and at the temple.  The halls of power stand in contrast to the voice crying in the wilderness.  Read Luke 3:1-6.

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Many of you, I’m sure have been to Las Vegas.  It’s a city that never sleeps.  If you are up at 4 AM, which you might be if you have just arrived due to the 3 hour time change, you can find the casinos still bright with the bells of slot machines ringing.  Deserts are usually dry, dark and sparsely populated places.  But Las Vegas is a city that defies the desert.  You’ll find magnificent fountains splashing water.  When I lived in Southern Utah and would drive to Las Vegas at night, it was always a sight to see as you traveled through the darkness with bright stars overhead, only to crest a ridge about twenty miles outside of Vegas and there before you was a valley lighted up Christmas regardless of the season.  And the crowds…

In contrast, deserts are quiet places, with the only sound being the wind blowing through a barren canyon or rattling dry yucca pods.  In Vegas the sound of a carnival fills the air, especially downtown and along the strip.  If you get out of Vegas, just twenty or so miles, you’re in a different world.  One of my favorite places to hike, on the times I was there in the winter, were the canyons that dissect the Black Canyon of the Colorado River basin south of Hoover Dam.  These waterways were mostly dry (and because of danger of flash floods you’d better stay out of them when rain is forecasted).  Deep inside one, you’d be more likely to come upon a desert bighorn sheep or a rattlesnake than another person (some of you can give thanks that I have taken photos of desert bighorns and not of snakes while hiking there).  For those like me, who sometimes need a break for the commotion of a place like Vegas, these canyons provide opportunities for solitude.  It’s hard to believe, when you are in such an isolated place that hundreds of thousands of folks are rushing around life just a dozen miles or so away, by the way the crow flies.

Luke, in our reading today, provides us with a similar contrast, as he shifts our focus from the busy places of politics to the wilderness.  This gospel writer is a stickler the details, providing us a historical settings, a who’s who of both the political and religious world. 

If I was to write the history of my ministry, using Luke’s model, I might tell the story of my ordination in Ellicottville New York in this manner:  George H. W. Bush was in the White House, Mario Cuomo was the governor of New York, Price H. Gwynn III was the moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly and the Reverend Eunice Poethig was executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Western New York.

By beginning with all the bigwigs of Rome and Jerusalem, which Luke inserts here as he also does in chapter two with the birth of Jesus,[1] we’re surprised to learn that God’s word doesn’t come to the city or to those in power.  Instead, it comes through a strange fire-breathing prophet living out in the Jordan River wilderness.  And his message is one of expectation, as he draws upon the ancient prophet Isaiah, emphasizing God’s on-going work of salvation.[2]  I like how Eugene Peterson translates John’s preaching in The Message:

Thunder in the desert!

Prepare God’s arrival!

Make the road smooth and straight!

Every ditch will be filled in,

every bump smoothed out

the detours straightened out

all the ruts paved over.

Everyone will be there to see

The parade of God’s salvation

There are some that think this passage draws from an ancient practice of clearing a path for a royal procession.  If a king traveled through his territories, there would be those who went ahead to smooth out the road so that the king could travel comfortably and speedily.[3]

It’s interesting to contemplate this passage in light of the never ending political season we’re in.  A friend, commenting on how Luke throws in the politics of the era into our text, wrote: “In the rarified circles of society where the Caesars dwell, folks don’t like to admit they have problems.  Politics is about solving other people’s problems, not about admitting to your own.”  To such people, who “live on the mountaintop, such a call to repent is frightening,” for they are to be made low.  But to those “living in the low lying margins of life, this great equalization, the mountains lowered as the valleys rise, is good news.”[4]   In a way, this appears to be just another example of that hard-to-comprehend truth found throughout Jesus’ teachings that the last will be first.  We must always remember that God’s ways are not our ways!  God loves the world and is looking out for everyone, especially those who are often overlooked

John’s message is that God, through Jesus Christ, is coming and people better get ready!  To the Jewish listener of John in the first century, the thought of encountering God face-to-face was terrifying.  They knew their own sinfulness, and that when compared to God’s holiness, it would lead to their demise.  So it was imperative that people prepare themselves by confessing their sins, just as we do early in every worship service.  Confession and repentance is necessary if we want to be able to stand before God without fear.

We all get that Advent is a season of preparation.  Many of us have begun decorating our homes with trees and lights.  The smells of sweets baking and cider mulling fill our homes.  Our homes seem warmer and brighter this season even as the weather is cooler and the nights longer.  Getting ready for Christmas, in this way, runs counter to the season.  We prepare with optimism, reminding ourselves of a change that’s coming, longer and warmer days.  But our preparations, the ones that are really needed, have nothing to do with us creating a home that could be featured in Southern Living.  We need to prepare our souls…

The preparation for Christ’s coming, whether it was his first coming, his second coming at the end of history, or just preparing to celebrate Christmas, must involve self-examinations.  Are our paths straight?  Are their bumps on the roads of our lives?  Are their mountains that we face or valleys we must cross?  What John wants us to do is to examine ourselves so that we might see what is keeping us from being in full-communion with God.   John’s role, by being out in the wilderness, is to drawn our attention away from the busyness of life and to refocus us on what is important.[5]  What crooked ways do we need to straighten, what obstacles do we need to have removed?

Now obviously, by ourselves, we can’t move mountains, but God can and if there is something like a metaphorical mountain that is blocking us from God, we need to confess and call out for help, trusting that God will hear our cries and respond with compassion.

This Advent season, take some time to go into the wilderness, at least metaphorically, and explore the rough places in your lives and see what might need to be done to make room for the coming of God, the coming of a Savior.  Are there dark places in your heart which needs to be brought to light and confessed to God in repentance?  Are their obstacles that keep you from accepting the gentle loving ways of Christ that need to be removed so that you can be filled with joy?

Before falling asleep at night, take time to examine your life using Jesus as an example and confess those sins that you realize, and in the spirit of the season, go out and apologize to those whom you may have harmed or offended.  And finally, repent too of those sins you may not uncover and need God’s help in weeding out from your heart.  Prepare, for not only has Christ come, he is coming again.  Are we ready to meet him?  Amen.

©2015

[1] Luke 2:1-2.

[2] Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation, A Bible-Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: JKP, 1990), 47.

[3] “To You Is The Song: The 2015 Advent Devotional” published by The Fellowship Community (Louisville, KY), 12.

[4] Scott Hoezee, “Remembering the Future,” Reformed Worship Vo. 57 (September 2000), 7.

[5] Norval Geldenhuys, The Gospel of Luke: The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 137.

My thanks to Andy Lohn who delivered this sermon on Sunday as I was in North Carolina with my father who had emergency surgery.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church 

Luke 21:25-36

November 29, 2015

Today we begin our Advent journey: four weeks of preparation for Christmas.  This year’s Advent them is “Remembering the Future.  Advent is about waiting and during this season we recall the centuries the Israelites spent waiting for a Messiah.  It is also a season in which we are reminded that we, too, wait the return of the Messiah at the end of history.  We wait in hope of what is to be.  During Advent, we remember the future as we celebrate Christ’s coming and his return.

We’re exploring a passage from Luke’s gospel today, from the 21^st chapter.  Let me give you some context.  Jesus is finishing up his earthly ministry in Jerusalem.  This passage falls between Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, and Good Friday, when he was crucified.  Jesus and the disciples are on the grounds of the temple.  The chapter opens with Jesus pointing out to the disciples the “widow giving her mite” to the temple treasury.  Then he begins to speak about the temple’s forthcoming destruction.  This would have been a shock for the structure was strong and had been built over the previous four decades, but approximately 30 years later when Rome puts down the Jewish Rebellion, the Empire destroys both Jerusalem and the temple.  After telling about the upcoming destruction, Jesus speaks of his return.

Our passage is an example of apocalyptic literature.  It’s futuristic and pessimistic. The themes of apocalyptic writing, which in Scripture is found mostly in the Book of Daniel and Revelation, focus on the evil of the world and how the world must be destroyed before God can reign in righteousness.  Such writings often use descriptions of supernatural events to announce God’s final victory, and that’s what we have in this passage.  Read Luke 21:25-36.

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People are always thinking now is the time; the end is at hand.  Today, the sign currently used as proof is ISIS or whatever name those fanatics who are bent on bringing about a global war between the West and Islam are called today.  But they stand in a long line of failed apocalyptic doomsday bearers.  A Cold War turning hot was one image of the end, Nazism and the fascist movements of the first half of the 20^th Century, the Russian Revolution, the Great War, the American Civil War, the economic depression in the late 1830s, all the way back to the Norman invasion of England in 1066.  Interestingly, it seems that when you are on the losing side, you are more prone to see events that run counter to what you’d like to be pointing to the end of the world.  In addition to political events, natural events such as volcanoes blowing their tops and comets in the sky have foretold the end.  And then there are the artificial events such as dates, which only have the meaning that we assign them, but that said certainly the turn of the last two millennia (the year 1000 and 2000) brought out the doomsayers.

A few years ago, the Mayan apocalypse was all big news.  I remember there was a Chevrolet Truck advertisement that was featured in the Superbowl.  The world as we know had crumbled and everything was destroyed.  Then, from beneath the rumble, there were the starting of engines and out pops Chevy trucks.  These guys who were friends all meet up and congratulate themselves for making it through.  Then someone asked about a friend and they all hang their heads and someone mumbles, “Don’t you remember, he drove a Ford.”  The apocalypse also sells…

Nothing lasts forever; even the earth and sky will pass away, Jesus tells us.  Only his words will survive.  Or to put it another way, only God is eternal.

But when will these things happen?  When you think about it, there are signs all around us.  Global warming, superstorms in the Pacific, heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought in others, and war that starts in the Middle East and spreads around the globe.  Are the things Jesus spoke of in this chapter happening?  Some will say yes, but as we’ve seen, that’s nothing new.  And is Jesus, who in other places is adamant that we not worry about the tomorrow[1] and that no one but the Father in Heaven knows when the world will end,[2] trying to give us a clue here?  I don’t think so.

Whenever things start to go bad, people begin predicting the world’s demise.  But so far, the world muddles along.  Barry McGuire sang about “The Eve of Destruction” in 1965 and with minor tweaks to the lyrics, the song would be just as relevant in 2015 as it was then:

The eastern world it is exploding

Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’

Your old enough to kill but not for votin’

You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’?

And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin.

But you tell me

Over and over and over again my friend

Ah, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction. 

Prophets come and go, but so far the world hasn’t ended. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it will, but as for when, we have no idea.

No, I don’t think Jesus wants us to worry about whether or not today will be the day.  After all, earlier in the chapter, Jesus warned the disciples not to run after those prophets who claim that the time is near.[3]  Instead, I think this passage is more pastoral.  How are we to live our lives in the middle of chaos?  Jesus begins with the cosmos (the heavens and the earth), then moves to the changing of the seasons, and concludes with words that speak to our hearts.  We’re to live knowing that things are in God’s hands and are under control.  So it doesn’t matter if the world ends today or a thousand years from today.  What matters is that God, who has a lot more power and compassion than us, has things under control.  We’re not left to fend for ourselves, but to take hope in the power of a loving God.

Let me tell you about a guy in my previous church.  When I was in Hastings, I became a friend of Bob, the mayor of the town and was privileged to help to encourage him to come back to church.  He’d been away since he went off to war in the mid-60s after high school.  Once he came back, he sat in the same seat in the back of the church and was there every Sunday that he could make it.  Bob was struggling with cancer; it eventually took his life back in 2012.  But before then, I think Bob did more ministering to me than I was ever able to do for him.  Now this might sound like a role-reversal, for it was Bob who was struggling with cancer and I was there to try to help him make sense of things and to remind him of God’s presence despite evidence to the contrary.  But as Bob began to accept what was going to happen, he told me on several occasions that although he desperately wanted to live and there was more stuff he wanted to do in our community, it no longer mattered because whatever happened, he was going to be okay.  “If I beat cancer, great!” he said.  “But if I don’t beat it, that’s alright too for I’ll be in Jesus’ hands.”  What an incredible testimony, yet Bob is not alone, I’ve heard others share similar feelings when death was near.

Bob had the kind of faith Jesus encourages in this passage.  Do not worry about these things—and at some point in our lives all of us will have such signs—instead live in the hope that the signs mean your redemption is near.  Only someone assured of his or her faith can have that kind of trust.

People have often tried to interpret when the end will be based on Jesus’ words, but that’s a misinterpretation of what our Savior taught.  Jesus taught us to not to worry about tomorrow, not to fear the end, but to live for today.

Yet people misuse apocalyptic texts within scripture to incite fear.  But that’s not the purpose of these texts; Jesus is not trying to make us afraid but to assure us when things look bad.  I remember a professor from seminary speaking about hell-fire sermons and I think the same warning should be made about preaching on apocalyptic texts.  He said that if we dangle the souls of our congregation over the fires of hell, we may cause more fear than salvation and may wind up hating evil more than we love good and the end result is not disciples who follow Jesus, but good haters who miss a lot of Jesus’ message.

Jesus tells us in this passage that when we see things happen which we can’t explain, we should raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near.  He doesn’t say to be afraid.  Of course, Jesus doesn’t exactly say when these things will happen, only that it will be getting closer!  Time marches on.

By being alert, but not being overly concerned, our hearts won’t be weighed down.  We accept today as a gift from God and rejoice in it, but we also realize that tomorrow will be a gift of God, whether the earth continues or dissolves and we’re called into account before the throne.  But we’re not to worry about that, we’re to be concerned for today and that we’re doing what we can to bring God glory in the presence, doing what we can do to reflect the face of Jesus to the world.

Let me ask one final question.  Take the question home with you and ponder it over the next week.  If God does come back today or in the next week, how do you want God to find you?  Do you want to be seen doing the work of a disciple, or living in fear of the future?   I think you know the answer.  Amen.

©2015

[1][1] Matthew 6:31-36

[2] Mark 13:32

[3] Luke 21:8

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

1 Chronicles 17:16-27

November 1, 2015

Today, I’m going to be talking about prayer and I would like to point out one thing done in Washington this week that I found encouraging. Don’t take this as a political endorsement, but as an example of how things should be. In addressing the House of Representatives after being elected Speaker, Paul Ryan asked this of the body: “Let’s pray for each other: Republicans for Democrats, and Democrats for Republicans. And I don’t mean pray for a conversion. Pray for a deeper understanding.”^[1] Although today I’m talking about prayer in relationship to stewardship, I don’t think you can get much better advice on prayer than that. We pray for understanding. We don’t pray to get our way. We pray for God’s will to be fulfilled.

Today, for the first time in since early May, we won’t be reading from the Book of Acts. Next Sunday, I’ll conclude my series on the first part of Acts as I preach on Paul’s commission. Today, I want us to go back into the Old Testament. King David had just come up with a bright idea. He was living in a fancy palace and the Ark of the Covenant, the visual reminder of God’s presence, was camped out in a tent. David thought it was time to change this arrangement and speaks to Nathan, a prophet and advisor, about his plans for a temple. Nathan agrees that this is a good idea, but that night he hears God telling him otherwise. The temple will not be built by David. So Nathan now has the unpleasant tasks to go back to the king and encourage him to change plans. David was a powerful man and could have done away with his advisor and gone on with the building of a temple, but he doesn’t. Instead, he listens, and then goes to God in prayer. I’ll base my sermon on this prayer. Read 1 Chronicles 17:16-27

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You probably all know that I love trains… I enjoy riding them and watching them but also enjoy learning about them. There is a company, RailEx, that’s taking an invocative approach to ship produce from the West Coast to the Eastern Markets. With hubs in California and Washington, they package up railcars for eastern markets and then make a unit train, much like you see with coal trains, which is delivered to their eastern warehouses in New York and Jacksonville, Florida. The trains run across Union Pacific and CSX tracks. These “Fresh Express” trains, because the trains are going to one destination, avoid the “hump yards” which delay shipments and where fragile produce can be harmed as cars bump into one another. Also, each car is able to be monitored for temperature compatible with the produce in such a car. Several times a week, trains of 55 reefers cars leave each western transit warehouse for an eastern distribution warehouse.

I have always like the metaphor of a railroad for the church and am certainly not the first to use it. It is a common metaphor as heard in gospel music for over a century with tunes like “The Gospel Train,” “Life is Like a Mountain Railroad,” and “This Train is bound for Glory.”   Long haul shipments is a good way to look at our role as disciples. The church is the train that is heading to glory, and we are the crew. But just like the engineers and conductors on one of the Fresh Express trains, our ride is limited. Railroad employees can only work so long, then they’re required to turn over the throttle as they take a break. Another engineer and conductor will take the train a little further down the line. We, too, have our stretch of track in which we’re to run and then turn over the throttle to a new generation. My question to us is this: “Are we doing the best we can to make sure that the next generation has what they need to successfully complete their run?”

David provides us with a model of how to be a disciple. The focus is not on us and on our needs, it is on God, our Creator, and what God wants from us. Too often we think we have to be overachievers: to have the biggest church, nicest facilities, largest youth group, but what is really important is that we do what we are called to do in a way that will reflect God’s love and grace. In a world overcome by numbers and accomplishments, we have to remember we’re following the shepherd who abandon the flock of 99 for the one, the teacher who proclaims that the first is going to be last.[2]

Although God did not allow David to build a temple (that honor would go to his son, Solomon), God promised great things for his descendants. David is humbled. As one commentator suggests, this is not a prayer of thanksgiving, but one of reconciliation.^[3] David accepts his insignificant position in relationship to the creator, but he’s thankful for the promises that God has made to him. And then, David says essentially, “You’ve promised all this, make it so!” David has acquiesced to God’s will, accepting that he won’t be building the temple, but takes hope in promises God has made to him.^[4] We don’t always get our way, but we need to realize that God wants the best for us.

In verse 23, David returns to talking about the building of a house, which he has envisioned earlier in the chapter, but there is a significant change. Instead of David building God a house, God promises to build David a house. Of course, this is not a house of stone and wood and adorned with gold and jewels. What’s being spoken of is a metaphorical house. This house, unlike those built with human hands, will last forever.   David thought he could do something great for God, now he finds that God is going to do something greater for him. He learns through his encounter the old saying, “We can’t out-give God.”

God has already given us more than we can imagine. We are blessed to have been born at a time in which there is much that we don’t have to fear because of medical successes. I recently saw an advertisement encouraging parents to vaccinate their children. It listed the various deaths and illnesses from all kinds of aliments from polo to small pox to mumps and chicken pox. Instead of having hundreds and even thousands of deaths and tens and hundreds of thousands children ill with each with these diseases, at the most, only a handful today contract or die from them.

We have been blessed to have been born in a part of the world in which we have both freedom and economic opportunity. If we’d been born in Africa, few of us would be here. Most of us would probably be living within sight of our parents’ home and if we did move on, there is a good chance it would be because we are a refugee, fleeing with our families to a new location of relative safety.   And none of us look like we’ve had to worry much about from where our next meal is coming.

We have been blessed to have the luxury to take time to enjoy a sunrise or sunset, to see a movie, to enjoy a good meal and many of the finer things in life that we take for granted but that many in the world would see as luxuries.

And finally, we have been blessed to be able to hear of the love of Jesus Christ, to have safe places to worship and to learn, study and to be in fellowship with one another.

As David learned, we can never out-give God. We should humbly accept that, along with accepting that God through Jesus Christ calls us to live in a manner that will further the kingdom and help those in need.   We must always remember that Jesus tells us that to those much is given, much is required.[5]

We have been very blessed; we should be a blessing to others! Our congregation is on a new tack. We now have a young new director of Youth and Family Ministries, over the past year we have had some incredible worship experiences, and this is a very generous congregation that supports a large number of missions. A new spirit seems to be rising. Let’s keep focused on God and his work, and we’ll be blessed and continue to be a blessing!

Last week I asked you to add this petition to your prayers from now through Consecration Sunday:

Loving God, we thank you for what you’ve done in Jesus Christ. We bow before you in humility and ask you to show us how we can further your work at Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church, in the community and throughout the world. Amen.

When we come before God in such a manner, like Speaker Ryan’s request for a prayer in the House of Representatives, we open ourselves up to be led by a God who can out-give us any day of the week. As you think about what kind of commitment you might make to God for use in our church’s ministry and mission, remember what God has given you and be humbled. Amen.

©2015

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/10/29/paul-ryan-set-to-be-elected-62nd-house-speaker/

[2] Luke 15:1-7; Matthew 19:30, 20:8, and 20:16; Mark 9:39 and 10:31; Luke 13:30

[3] Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), 336.

[4] Ibid, 336-337.

[5] Luke 12:48

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Acts 11:19-12:5

October 11, 2015

We continue our journey with the Apostles in Acts. There will only be two more sermons in this series. After Paul is commissioned (which happens at the beginning of Chapter 13), I will take a break from Acts. Perhaps we’ll come back and follow Paul around the Roman Empire and complete this book after Easter.

The focus of Acts changes greatly in our text as we are taken into Antioch, one of the great cities of the ancient world. It was the third largest city in the Roman Empire (after Rome and Alexandria). From now on, Antioch will become more prominent than Jerusalem and soon, Paul will eclipse the other Apostles as Luke continues to tell his story with the focus on the church moving throughout the known world.

In the early Church, Antioch and Alexandria became two of the great Christian centers and the faith thrived in both for centuries. The city is in what is known today as Syria, a little southeast of the city of Aleppo, which has been in the news a lot recently. There are still Christians there and they need our prayers and for us to speak out on their behalf.

Let me tell you a bit about Antioch. First of all, it was a common name for a city in the ancient world. There were many such cities created during the Hellenistic period following the conquest by Alexander the Great. And to make it even more confusing, two such cities play prominent roles in the New Testament, this city in Syria and another in what is south central Turkey.

This Antioch was a cosmopolitan city built along the banks of the Orontes River. Its location connected it to trade routes into Persia and on to the East. It was one of the ends of what would later be known as the Silk Road and they have even found Chinese pottery in the ruins at Antioch. There was a strong Jewish community there but also Romans, Greeks and Persians. During the New Testament era, a main thoroughfare cut through the city, lined with palaces, shops, temples and baths. The city was built in a beautiful location, but also on an active geological site with frequent earthquakes. The instability of the ground and the city’s conquest by Muslim armies led to its downfall.[1]

Let’s read about the early church as it continues spreading across the ancient world. Charles Dicken description of Paris at the beginning of the Tale of Two Cities could apply here: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

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It was the best of times. The church is growing, it’s spreading out throughout the empire; gentiles are becoming believers…

It was the worst of times. Persecution is driving Jewish Christians from their homes. There’s already been one martyr, Stephen, and now we hear of another, James the Brother of John. And the Apostle Peter is behind bars.

As I reflected on this passage this week and wondered what I was to say about it, I thought back to a favorite book of mine by Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts. Barnes begins his book with a discussion of losing our lives and finding them (remember, Jesus said something strangely similar). We can only leave behind a life that is “gone forever,” Barnes writes, by believing “in the ongoing creativity of God, who brings light and beauty to the dark chaos of our losses in life.”[2]

Although our experiences can make things seem like it is the worst of times, those can also be the times when we grow closer to God, learn to depend on our Heavenly Father, and to feel his presence which can also make such occasions the best of times. Do we choose to believe this?

Essentially, this is what’s happening in the First Century. Endings occur as new beginnings sprout. Paul heads out to persecute Christians, and he’s converted and sent on a mission. Others flee their homes in fear of their lives, but end up taking the gospel of Jesus to new communities. All these people are having their lives thrown into chaos. This isn’t something you’d ask for. But it works out because our God who, at creation, ruled over the chaos of the waters and brought about calm and a new world, ruled over the chaos of the lives of the early believers and used their displacement and witness to spread the message. God can also use us in a way that will bring him glory.

Let’s look at our text. As I hope you remember from last week, the eleventh chapter begins with a pow-wow in Jerusalem where Peter has been called up before the Council to explain his hobnobbing with Gentiles. At first, those back in Jerusalem are skeptical, but they come around to understanding that God is doing something new and exciting. That section ends with those in Jerusalem giving thanks to God because they understand that the grace of Jesus Christ extends to everyone. Luke, our author, follows this up with a reminder of how people have been scattered over the known world because of persecution. But this is not a bad thing, because their testimony results in converts among Jews of the diaspora. However, that’s changing, as we see in Antioch. The first batch of believers were Jews, and more will come to accept Jesus as the gospel continues to spread, but in Antioch, the first widespread conversion of Gentiles occurs.

There is a method to this madness. Just as Pentecost occurred when Jerusalem was having a festival and Jews from all over the empire were present, the evangelistic breakout in Antioch, a city that connects the eastern world to the Mediterranean, allows people from all over to hear the gospel and then to take the good news back to their homes.

Of course, those in Jerusalem are skeptical and want to be sure that what’s happening is of God. They send Barnabas. We met him back in chapter four where he sold a field and gave the money to the Apostles. Although Jewish and a Levite, a background that allows him to serve as a priest in the temple, he was also a native of Cyprus. This mixed background allows him blend in with those who do not know Jewish history and customs. He finds an active group of Gentiles praising God in Antioch and he joins them in their praise.

Barnabas must have realized something special is happening and that he needs some help, for he goes off to find Saul (the guy who will soon be known as Paul) so he can bring him to Antioch. This city will become a launching pad for Paul and Barnabas as they use the city as a base for their missionary journeys. The city is also important for it is there that followers of Jesus are given the name Christian, a name that we all claim.

To show the faithfulness of the Gentile believers, Luke tells us about a prophecy of an upcoming famine and that these Gentiles respond to the news by sending money to those suffering in Judea. What the text doesn’t say is that many of those suffering would have been Jewish Christians. Like Barnabas, the faithful in Antioch, respond to their newly discovered grace by making a significant offering to help others. Barnabas sold his land to benefit the poor and the Christians in Antioch give to a famine relief effort for those whom they do not know.

Again, as we’ve seen throughout the book of Acts, good deeds are often followed by persecution. Our reading ends with James, the brother of John, being killed by Herod while Peter is thrown into prison. God sees to it that good things are happening, but the Devil is trying his best to get his due by persecuting those who believe.

We see in our text that although God is still directing what’s happening, there is a need for a response by those who believe. Such a response results in Christians, who live up to their name, telling their story to others and giving to the welfare of those in need. God directs, but we are the actors, the ones who give and participate in the scene in which we find ourselves.

Today is ministry Sunday and I want to encourage you to find a way to be involved in strengthening our ministry at Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church. As followers of Jesus, we are to join with others by supporting mission and ministry opportunities with our gifts of money and time, skills and prayers. Take a few minutes today to talk to those involved in the ministries of our church and if you don’t already have a place or feel yourself being led to another ministry, seek out ways that you can become involved. God’s involvement in the church did not end in Acts 28. It continues on, even today. At times we may feel the church is not effective or that we are persecuted and are not able to do what we’d like. That’s nothing new! Look at the church in the first century and consider what they were able to do, empowered by God’s Spirit, in a much more difficult time. Imagine how much more God can do through us. Believe in God, trust in Jesus, and join with one another as we work for a better world. Amen.

[1] Frederick Norris, “Antioch of Syria,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992), I, 265-268

[2] Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts: Finding New Life through Unwanted Change (Dower’s Grove, IL: IVP, 1996), 13. See also Matthew 16:25 and Luke 17:33.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

September 20, 2015

Acts 10:1-23

We’ve come to the pinnacle of Acts.[1]  As I have discussed again and again over the past few months, the book we know as “Acts of the Apostles” is really about the Acts of God through the Apostles.  Those expanding circles Jesus laid out at the beginning of this book—taking the gospel to Jerusalem, then Samaria, then to the ends of the world[2]—is fulfilled as God leads the Apostles further and further from Jerusalem.  In the past few chapters, we’ve seen an Ethiopian saved, which was a major feat for the Apostles who wouldn’t have had anything to do with such a man beforehand.  He was not a Jew.  The barrier between Jew and Gentile is breaking down.

A few weeks ago I read a novel by a local Savannah writer, Lance Levens, titled Tietam Cane.  The story is set in the early 1960s.  Tietam is a young boy, whose name derives from Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.  He’s being raised by a bigoted grandfather who has him living out the Civil War.  His teacher describes him as a “brainwashed, violence-prone, arrogant little demon.” One of his aunts, hoping to intervene, takes Tietam to visit an African-American woman who lends him a book of poetry written by her grandmother, who was a slave.  These poems plant a seed in Tietam, which allows him to reconsidering what he has accepted as the “truth.”[3] Likewise, as we will see in our text today, seeds are planted in Peter’s and Cornelius’ mind through visions that allow them to change their world-view.

Here, in the 10th chapter of Acts, the holes in the barriers that insulate Jewish Christians from the Gentiles are thrown wide open as God works on both sides of the equation to bring Jew and Gentile together.  What happens here, in these verses lays the groundwork for what Paul proclaims to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek but all are one in Christ Jesus.”[4]  Our theme today is reconciliation.  We are looking at the first half of the 10^th chapter of Acts.  (Verses 1-23)

###

It’s 1805.  European Americans have barely crossed the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains. A preacher from the Boston Missionary Society makes his way into Western New York to evangelize the white settlers who have been moving from New England into this fringe of the frontier.  After preaching to the white settlers, he visits one of the many Indian villages in the region, members of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy, where he preaches to the Natives.  Afterwards, the Great Seneca Chief Red Jacket speaks and his words recorded:

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place.  These people are our neighbors.  We are acquainted with them.  We will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them.  If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will consider again what you have to say.[5]

At this point, Red Jacket and several other Senecas walked over to shake hands with the evangelist, but he refused.  Feeling as if he had been rejected, the evangelist said there could be no fellowship between the religion of God and the devil.

I wonder how many times in the history of the Christian Church we’ve missed the chance to share the gospel because of barriers we’re erected, prejudices we hold, or intolerance we allow to go unchecked? The Good News is that God often steps in and helps change our misguided direction as we see in our reading today.  Our story is about God removing those barriers and bringing together two unlikely friends: Peter and Cornelius.  God is involved here, on both sides, to make sure things don’t get screwed up because if it had been left up to Peter, the good Jew, he’d never entered Cornelius’ home (as we’ll see him doing next week).

There are three main characters in this passage: Peter, Cornelius and God.  God’s role is behind the scene but it’s crucial as these two mortals are pulled together in a way that both of them are converted.  Notice, I said both are converted.  You may think that Peter didn’t need conversion but that’s not the case.  In fact, he’s been converted over and over again since he answered Jesus’ call on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.   To convert means to change direction, to realign ourselves to the mind of Christ.  Yes, to some extent, Peter did this but he also has to do it again and again as he learns what it mean to follow our Savior.[6]

Conversion is often more than a one-time experience!  Each conversion is expressed by a new understanding of what God wants for our lives and for how God would like the world to be ordered.  The bringing together of Peter and Cornelius involves a change for both parties.  Cornelius hears the gospel for the first time and opens himself up to accept Christ.  Peter experiences the gospel in a new way.  Through this experience he comes to understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not only intended for Jews.  “Jesus came to save sinners,” as Paul would later proclaim, not just sinners of a particular stripe.[7]

Think of this impact upon Peter.  There’s some radical stuff going on here.  He’s never eaten pork.  He’s never enjoyed beef stroganoff (you know those dietary laws not only prevented one from eating pork and shellfish, but also from eating beef cooked in milk).  Not only did he maintain a kosher diet, he has spent a lifetime of shunning Gentiles. The Jews felt superior to others and his tradition taught him to avoid non-Jews (and even Jews who were less than faithful).  Peter’s visit with Cornelius is earth shattering for the First Century.  It would be kind of like the Prime Minister of Israel eating with the king of Saudi Arabia or the supreme leader of Iran.

Peter is changed.  His vision shows him God can make clean what is unclean—which should be good news for us!  His visit to Cornelius’ home convinces him that the Gospel is not just for the Jews (and maybe a select group of non-believers like the Ethiopian guy), but for everyone.  Peter is beginning to grasps, although he will have some more growing to do, that Jesus meant it when he told them to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

We need to understand what kind of change this was for Peter and for first century Jews.  With our modern minds, we might think, “What’s the danger of enjoying a barbecue sandwich?”  “What’s wrong not completely observing the Sabbath, with eating with a Gentile?” Because Christianity, even though we have our struggles, is the dominate religion in the Western World, such small concessions seem inconsequential to us, but to a minority religion, as Judaism was in the first century, breaking such taboos threatened the survival of the faith.[8] These rules provided their identity. Peter’s vision, we’re told, had to be repeated three times.  It took that long for God to get through his thick head.  What’s happening here is something beyond the scope of what Peter can imagine.  If God is behind something, we shouldn’t worry about things like survival for that’s in God’s hands and we are not in control.

Cornelius is also changed by his encounter from Peter.  We’ll learn more about this next week.  He becomes a Christian.  We’re told he has been seeking to know God better, that he’s a God-fearer, which was a term to describe Gentles who were learning about the Jewish faith and had accepted some of their teachings.  Like a devout Jew, Cornelius prays regularly and practices acts of charity.  He’s now ready to hear the good news, to experience the gospel, and to be baptized as a sign of his belief.

Peter and Cornelius need each other.  Cornelius needs someone to share with him the Good News and there are people like that today, who may or may not have heard about Jesus but don’t know what difference Jesus can make in their lives.  Remember my opening story about Red Jacket!  If the gospel’s fruits are not showing, why would anyone believe us?  Peter also needs Cornelius in order to grasp God’s grand vision of reconciliation of a troubled world.  Our faith is not just about us being forgiven and given a ticket to heaven—it is about reconcilation.

In a way, our story today is just a small scene in a larger drama God’s grand design of reconciling heaven and earth, of doing away with the bondage of sin that separates us not only from God but from one another.  God is like a matchmaker who drops hints to a boy about a girl, suggesting that she likes him, and then hints to the girl about the boy’s interest.

Those of us who believe and who strive to follow Jesus are called to play a role in this grand drama of reconciliation.  God uses us to carry out his plan just as he used Peter to share the good news with Cornelius.   We are ambassadors of a different kingdom.  We are here to break down barriers that separate us from one another.   We are here to seek peace between all people, for we are all created in God’s image and are all loved by our Heavenly Father.

As followers of Jesus, we are to exhibit a new order, God’s kingdom, to the world.[9]  We do this by speaking the truth about the gospel, challenging those who would exclude others from Christian charity, and by living as best as possible in harmony with one another.  It may seem an overwhelming challenge to live in such a manner, but remember that we don’t depend on our own power, but on the power of God who brought together Peter and Cornelius as just one act in an ongoing drama to reconcile the world through Jesus Christ.[10]  Amen.

As we ponder this, let us stand and read together from one of our confessional statements, “The Confession of 1967,” what it is we believe about reconciliation:

Confession of Faith concerning God’s work of reconciliation

(adapted from the Confession of 1967)

God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces our lives: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate. It includes our natural environment even though exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished from his creation.

Biblical visions and images of the rule of Christ such as a heavenly city, a father’s house, a new heaven and earth, a marriage feast, and an unending day culminate in the image of the kingdom. The kingdom represents the triumph of God over all that resists his will and disrupts his creation. Already God’s reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in men and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption.

With an urgency born of this hope we, the church, applies ourselves to present tasks and strive for a better world. We do not identify limited progress with the kingdom of God on earth, nor do we despair in the face of disappointment and defeat. In steadfast hope, we looks beyond all partial achievement to the final triumph of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

©2015

[1] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 162 and William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (1984, Louisville: WJKP, 2010), 93.

[2] Acts 1:8

[3] Lance Levens, Tietam Cane ((Fireshippress, 2013).  Quote from page 121/

[4] Galatians 3:28.

[5] American Indian Literature: An Anthology, Alan R. Velie, ed. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahama, 1979), 139.

[6] Peter was converted when Jesus called him.  Other examples of his conversions include the time he told Jesus that he couldn’t allow himself to die, and when he told Jesus he couldn’t wash his feet, and again when he betrayed his Savior.

[7] 1 Timothy 1:15.

[8] Willimon, 96.

[9] See the sixth “Great Ends of the Church.”  Presbyterian Church (USA), Book of Order, F-1.0304

[10] Presbyterian Church, USA, Book of Confessions, “Confession of 1967”, Part Three, 9:56

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway island Presbyterian Church

Acts 9:36-43

September 13, 2015

Today, as we continue working through the book known as Acts of the Apostles, we’re going to read about two individuals, Aeneas and Tabitha.  Both experience a blessing from God delivered through Peter. The first man, Aeneas, we don’t know much about.  We don’t even know if he was a believer, only that he’s paralyzed and been bedridden for eight years.  Peter, calling on the name of Jesus, commands him to get up and make up his bed and he does.  This miracle draws more people into the church.

The second is Tabitha, a pillar of the church in Joppa.  We know more about her.  When she dies, everyone grieves.  But then along comes Peter and we have an account of him raising her from the dead.  Tabitha wasn’t raised because she was a good person or even because those widows in Joppa needed her. In fact, we don’t know what she did afterwards. We don’t know if she continued helping those widows. She could have spent her remaining time on earth in stunned silence, for all we know…  But we do know that sooner or later, she again died and there was once again grieving by those left behind.  This miracle had nothing to do with her, her work or the need of the community; this miracle was only to demonstrate God’s power.  READ ACTS 9:32-43.

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I know a few of you have seen the movie that recently came out, “A Walk in the Woods.”  Let me tell you another story from my “walk in the woods” of over twenty-five years ago. It was mid-July. I set out alone this morning, hiking as the day was just breaking.  The trail ran alongside the Housatonic River in Connecticut. The air was heavy and filled with the rich scent of honeysuckle. Fog blanketed the river, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The day was going to be hot and humid, and I wanted to get in as many miles as possible before the heat became unbearable. When I began to get into the swing of hiking, after working out the soreness in my muscles, I lengthened my stride and by sunrise was making pretty good time.  I was looking forward to having breakfast at Cornwall Bridge.  The rising sun backlighted the trees along the east bank of the river, its rays bouncing across the water. Everything turned golden. While taking this in, a herd of deer, ten or twelve, broke out of the forest in front of me, jumped down the embankment into the water.  They forded the river with graceful leaps and then climbed the bank on the far side and disappeared into the woods.  I stood in awe of the deer and of God’s creation. It was a spiritual moment, a moment of joy, a blessing to be savored.

Deer and antelope and other such animals appear so graceful in nature that taking time to observe them can often be a mystical experience.  (The exception to this is when they are pigging out on our shrubby and flowers.)  “Now, what does the gracefulness of such animals have to do with our reading from Acts, you might be asking yourself? I have this image of Tabitha as an exhibit of grace. Her name, in Greek, was Dorcas which was a small gazelle, an animal related to the deer.[1]

In scripture, in the Song of Solomon as we heard read earlier, gazelles are a metaphor for the gracefulness of a lover.[2] It’s is a fitting metaphor. From her name and what we know about her, we can assume Tabitha was a graceful and loving woman. She obviously was a woman of some means and talent. She used her wealth and God-given ability to make clothing for widows—those who were most needy in the ancient world where there was no social security or pension plans. We can also assume Tabitha’s generosity extended beyond the local church since a distinction is made in the text between the saints and widows who gathered at her death.

Tabitha was a disciple. That is, she placed her faith in Jesus Christ and lived out her faith, doing her best to follow the example set by her Master.  And like Christ, her generosity was not limited to those who were followers or pious law abiders. A true follower of Jesus will help someone regardless of who they are. Tabitha must have been a pillar of the church in Joppa. From the very beginning, women have played an important role in the church, providing stability and keeping the church focused on what it’s to be about. We can almost imagine a church council meeting in Joppa—the men arguing about something important like how to fix the roof. In the heat of the discussion, Tabitha reminds them that the church is not a building and there are mission concerns they also need to address. Tabitha reminds them of what was important.

Consequently, when Tabitha dies, there’s lamenting. The church loses a true saint and all the faithful gather. Widows come sporting the tunics made by Tabitha. They’ve lost a friend and a supporter. Her death is mourned. Everyone is sad.

Now since Peter was nearby, some ten miles away in Lydda, where he had just participated in the healing of a man, they send for him. We are not told if they were expecting Peter to raise Tabitha from the dead.  Maybe they just wanted an Apostle to speak at the funeral. The raising of the dead, according to Scripture, was not a major focus of the early church and it was only a very small part of Jesus’ ministry.[3]  The focus of the church is not bringing the dead back to life (in this world), where they will die again, but to bring people into a new life that will continue on after the resurrection. But in this incident, Peter comes and raises Tabitha and people rejoice and many, we’re told, are saved.

There are, as you can imagine, some problems with how we interpret and deal with this passage. Instead of asking ourselves why Tabitha was raised from the dead, why not ask why she died in the first place. I’m sure all the faithful in Joppa were praying for her. Were their prayers less effective than Peter’s? Why was Peter able to strut into the room, kick out the mourners and kneel by the bed, pray and then say “Tabitha, get up” and have her respond? Why did Peter’s prayers, after the fact, work better than those offered at Tabitha’s bedside when she was breathing her last?  To be honest, I don’t know.

Roy and Velma were an elderly couple in the church I served in Utah.  Roy was a sheepherder and had been born in Utah shortly after the turn of the 20^th Century.  When I arrived in Utah, he was 93 and still riding a horse.  It was a privilege to know them and I was honored to officiate at both of their funerals.  Visiting them early in my ministry there, Velma told me their story.  She was from California.  Roy had originally married Vera, Velma’s identical twin sister, but Vera died young.  Roy was left with two very small children and several thousand head of sheep to tend.  Velma had also been married, but was divorced and had a couple of children of her own and so Roy proposed and they married and Velma raised all the kids.  Roy and Velma had been married way over 50 years when I met them…

When Velma would tell the story, she’d always smile when she got to the part about coming home with Roy to Cedar City.  She said the first day she was there, the mailman came to the door and just about had a heart attack thinking her sister had come back to life.  I joked with Velma, telling her if she’d played the role of her sister, the Presbyterians would have been able to convert the whole city.  Think about the power and the prestige that would have given the church… But that’s not the purpose of the church and we really don’t have the power to save, anyway.  That belongs to God.

Perhaps this is why the early church didn’t go into the resuscitation business.  The power and prestige would have been too much and the faithful would have forgotten what they were to be about.  The church isn’t to brag about its abilities, for truly what we have comes only by the grace of God.

As the church, we have to be careful with how we use and interpret the power God has given us. We can humbly use it for the building up of the kingdom, or we can abuse the power and make a joke out of it and ourselves.  We’re not to focus on reclaiming those who have died, for that’s God’s work.  Instead we’re to work with Jesus, reclaiming those who are alive, yet dead. Afterwards, when the people of Joppa saw Tabitha in the marketplace, they believed in the power of God through Jesus Christ to forgive sins and to offer life. Tabitha’s resurrection was for them was a sign of God’s power.

What is it that we can take from this story of Tabitha?  First of all, I wonder if we look at miracles the wrong way.  Maybe miracles are not for the person who benefits from them, but for those who witness them.  Think of the witness to God’s power made through Aeneas jumping up and making his bed or Tabitha crawling out of the casket.  Secondly, when God answers our prayers, we should be humbled even more because we know we couldn’t have done it on our own.  We have to depend upon his power.  We see the humility in this story from Peter, who after raising Tabitha, assumes a humbled existence.

Think of this for a moment.  Peter could have capitalized on his miracle.  After all, he did what the doctors were unable to do.  He could have stayed in a fancy home overlooking the water and with servants seeing to his every need.  Instead, he stayed with a tanner, a man with a nasty job.  A tanner was one of the lowest positions in society.  The work stunk and since he mostly likely worked out of his home, his house stunk.  Dealing with dead carcasses was looked down on by law-abiding Jews.  Yet, Peter stayed there with Simon the Tanner.  He humbly did God’s work and didn’t claim any glory for himself.  This passage does not show us how to resuscitate the dead….  Instead, it reminds us of God’s power in life and death and gives us two role models: Tabitha’s gracefulness and Peter’s humility.

I wonder what Tabitha did with the rest of her life?  We don’t know, but we can imagine. But what we need to remember is that most of us won’t have a second chance like her, to continue on doing good deeds.  Therefore, we should examine our lives and ask ourselves, “Are we who we want to be?” Or more important, “Are we who God would want us to be?”  Another question, “Will the ‘saints and town folks’ praise us at our death?”  “Will we be known for kindness?  Will our good deeds follow us after our death, as promised in Revelation?[4]   Most likely we’re not going to get the chance to crawl out of a casket like Tabitha, but we do have a chance to change our lives and live gracefully like her in the future.

Tabitha is an example not only for women, but for all of us.  So take a moment today and think about Tabitha and how she was regarded by those in Joppa…  Sooner or later, we’re all going to be gone.  After we leave this life, what will people say?  What might we change to have the reputation of Tabitha?  Amen.

©2015

[1] There are two types of Gazelles in the Holy Lands.  Gazella dorcas are small, only about 2 feet tall.  Gazella subgutturosa are larger, about four feet in height.  Anchor Bible Dictionary entry under Zoology

[2] See Song of Solomon 2:9, 4:5, 7:3 and 8:14

[3] We have three stories of Jesus raising the dead:  Jarius’ daughter (Matthew 9:18-25, Mark 5:35-39, Luke 8:41-55), Widow’s son (Luke 7:12-15) and Lazarus (John 11:1-44).  In addition, when Jesus set out the 12, among a number of other powers, he gave them the commission to raise the dead (Matthew 10:8)

[4] Revelation 14:13.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Acts 9:10-19a

August 30, 2015

The late British New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce declared that “no single event, apart from the Christ-event itself, has proved so determinant for the course of Christian history as the conversion and commissioning of Paul.”[1]  Paul’s dramatic conversion, his missionary activity and his writings, have influenced the church more than any other Apostle and any theologian who came later.   For some reason unbeknownst to his followers, Jesus picked Paul to get the word out to the Gentile world and Paul fulfilled his purpose.  Today, as we continue to work through Acts, we’ll take a second look at Paul’s conversion.  Last week, we looked at Jesus meeting Saul, as he was known then, along the Damascus Road.  Saul had no choice but to follow Christ.  Although his conversion was instant, Saul found he needed the help of others, as we see in this passage.  Likewise, in our walk of discipleship, we need both Jesus and believing friends at our side.

If you remember, Saul is on his way to Damascus.  He’s not far from town when he encounters Jesus in a blinding light.  His companions take him on into Damascus, which is perhaps the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.  Some scholars consider Damascus as a code for a “place of exile.”[2] Obviously, there are those in the city who’d fled persecution and who are in exile, but in another way, we all live in exile during this life.  For Saul, Damascus is just the beginning; he’ll end up taking the message all the way to Rome.

In the book of Acts, it appears that as soon as Saul’s sight is restored, he begins preaching in the synagogues in Damascus.  Luke may have shortened the story a bit, leaving out a part that Paul tells us in Galatians, where he went to the desert of Arabia, after encountering Christ, preparing himself for what was to come.[3]  We get the essential details down, but Paul’s desert journey is also important for it reminds us of the need for preparation to fulfill God’s call.  Also, in our preparation for ministry (whether lay or ordained) we need the help of mentors such as Ananias, who helped Paul.  Read Acts 9:10-19a.

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 We’re not in this life alone.  We have God and we have one another, and to have a good life and to fulfill our purpose, we need both. There’s not much we can do by ourselves.  As the old saying goes, “no man is an island.”[4]  Think for a minute, this morning, about those people who have encouraged you in your Christian walk.  None of us has taken this walk by ourselves.

The entrance to camp

It’s amazing who God sends into our lives to nudge us along the way.  As you know, before seminary I was working for the Boy Scouts and my last position with them was in Hickory, North Carolina.   I got to know two Lutheran pastors who were very involved in the scouting organization.  The first was Reverend Jim Bruce.  At the first camporee our district held, Jim had a heart-attack.  Things were going well at the camporee, with the volunteers in control, so I followed the ambulance to the hospital, called his wife and met her and their daughter, who was about three or four, at the hospital.  I spent time with the two of them in the hospital and when he was out of surgery, the hospital staff did not want the daughter to go in, so I ended up babysitting this girl in the hospital lounge for another hour.  Jim turned out to be fine and the next time we ran into each other, he thanked me for caring for his family and then asked, “Why aren’t you a pastor?”  He had no idea I was struggling with that decision.

A few months later, Reverend Dunn, spent a week as a chaplain at Camp Bud Schiele, where I was the director for the summer.  At the end of the week, after we’d had a lot of theological discussions and even more laughs, he asked me when I was going to answer the call.  Although interested in theology, I had not confided in him that I was pondering seminary which is where, a year and a half later, I found myself.  God sends people in our direction to help us make decisions and to teach us what the Christian life is to be about.

Back in the early 70s, a Catholic Priest and Philosopher, Ivan Illych, issued a challenge to the modern world with a book titled Deschooling Society.[5]  I remember reading the book in the early 80s and thinking, “wow, if this could only be implemented.”  If I’m remembering right (it has been more than 30 years since I read it and somewhere along the way I lend out my copy and it never returned), the thrust of the book is that as one learns, one teaches.  Education becomes the responsibility for everyone—older students in school teach younger ones and so forth.  Actually, this is the way our Christian walk is supposed to work. You experience, you learn and then you share or witness.  We’re all to be students and teachers at the same time.  As we learn and share with one another, we also care and show God’s love.

In our passage for today, we see that even after Saul has had his great conversion experience, he has to depend upon others.  And God, who’d set this whole thing up, made sure that there was someone to help Saul.  It was Ananias, who in a vision was told to go to Saul.  Now, put yourself in Ananias’ shoes.  You’re told to go see this guy who has been talk trash about you, who would like to see you strung up or at least locked up.  Ananias, as would any normal person, objects.   He knows Saul’s plans.  Going to see Saul is a little like crawling into a lion’s cage.  But God convinces Ananias.  When God calls Ananias, he answers with that old response that we find throughout the Bible, “Here I am, Lord.”  And God tells him that Saul is his chosen instrument.[6]  The calling of Saul is God’s decision, so Ananias visits Saul, lays his hands upon him and his sight is restored.  Saul is then baptized and received into the church.  Ananias who had referred to Paul’s evil deeds in verse 13 has a change in heart.  In verse 17, he calls Saul as a “brother.”

There are three points from this passage that I want us to understand.  First of all, God’s ways are not our ways.  Who would have picked Saul for such an assignment?  This guy was out to get the church!  For Ananias to go to him would be like one of us being called on to visit the Great Leader of North Korea or the head of Isis.  For good reasons, Saul was feared by the early Christians.  He was willing to do anything to wipe out this sect that he saw as a black eye on his Jewish faith.  But God’s ways are different from ours; God changes Saul’s heart so that he’s transformed from the persecutor to the persecuted.

Secondly, when God calls someone, God provides so that they have what they need to fulfill their calling.  Walking by faith means that we have to trust God more than ourselves.  When I went into seminary, I didn’t want to become a preacher.  This idea of having something to say each week in front of a congregation was daunting.  I couldn’t do that…  But, over time, God worked on me and by the time I graduated, I had changed. No longer was I feeling called into some kind of administrative position, but to the pulpit.  God will make sure we have the tools we need to do his work, so if you have a feeling that you should share your faith or take a new role within the church, don’t worry too much about your abilities.  Pray and ask God if that’s what you’re supposed to do.  If it is, God will provide you the insight you need to share with others.

By the way, this isn’t just for us as individuals.  When God calls a group of people—a church—to a particular mission or ministry, they have to trust that God will give them what is needed for its completion.  Both churches that I served as pastor of who built a new campus had to step out in faith.  When God leads us to take such a risk, God can bless us beyond our imaginations!  Believe that!  Live it!

And finally, my third point, although salvation is God’s doing, we need other people of faith around us.  The Christian walk isn’t about being the Lone Ranger.  We need teachers and mentors…  We learn from others but we are also teachers and mentors to others.  Jesus calls us into a community of faith, into a church, where we find not only nourishment but also the opportunity to nourish others.  The church isn’t a one way street.  You can’t just come and take and leave.  If you’re going to get the full benefit, if you’re going to live in the kingdom, you have to also be willing to share, to give of yourself through doing jobs like teaching a Bible Study or mentoring students or helping out with the youth, caring for those in need, providing snacks and leadership and a building and grounds…

Today, think about those people in your lives who have made a difference with your walk with Christ.  If you can, if they are still around, thank them for their faithfulness.  They may not even remember, even so, it is good for us to acknowledge the role others have played in our lives.  Unfortunately, after checking with a friend whom I worked with in scouting who went on to become a Lutheran pastor, I learned both Reverends Bruce and Dunn have died.  I can only give thanks to God for their role in my discernment and be available for God to use me in a similar way in the life of another.

Sooner or later, all of us will have a chance to help another.  When that opportunity comes, are we willing to be the Ananias on the spot?  The Christian faith is about learning and sharing and caring all while being led by God.  Through our efforts, God can do some incredible things.  May we all do our part and may God’s blessings flow forth.  Amen.

©2015

[1] F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1977), 75.

[2] Bruce, 76-78.

[3] Galatians 1:16-17

[4] From a poem by John Donne

[5] Ivan Illych, Deschooling Society, 1971.

[6] William H. Willimon, Acts (1988, Louisville: WJKP, 2010), 76.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

August 16, 2015

Acts 8:26-40

         I grew up on the first generation of Star Trek, which seems a bit dated now.  The special effects were somewhat cheesy, but back in the day, it was exciting to see the crew “transponded” down onto an unexplored planet or, when things got out of hand, back up to the safety of the Enterprise as it continued to go where no one had gone before.  “Beam me up, Scotty,” was a well-used line.  Scotty was the engineer who operated the transponder and was responsible for those who were being sent out on a mission.  Those being sent seemed to “atomize” before our eyes as they disappeared and then reappeared somewhere else.

What does this have to do with our text for today, you’re probably wondering.  Last week, as you may remember, Philip was preaching in Samaria.  The gospel, Jesus told the disciples before his ascension, was to be shared in Jerusalem, then Samaria, then to the ends of the earth.  Last week, it was Samaria.  Today, as we continue our exploration of Acts, we see Philip being moved around by God’s Spirit, as Scotty might have deployed those off the Enterprise.  First, he’s on the road south, heading toward the wilderness and on to Egypt and the not-yet-fully-discovered continent of Africa.  After that mission, he’s up north, heading toward Caesarea… In all of this, the gospel is spreading to a far corner of the world.  This passage is the first of a series of conversions that result in fulfilling what Jesus called them to do. Of course, that mandate to take the gospel to the ends of the world still applies to us.  Read Acts 8:26-40

###

Jesus came to save sinners.  We often hear these words of Paul from 1^st Timothy echoed in our Assurance of Pardon after confessing our sins.[1]  Jesus came to save sinners. Our passage this morning emphasizes this role of our Savior.  Here, the good news is experienced by someone first century Judaism would have considered beyond redemption. Worse even than a sinner, he was a foreigner to be avoided and a eunuch who, like a leper, was considered unclean.

Now we don’t know if this Ethiopian eunuch was a bad guy, and the evidence we have within the text suggests that he wasn’t for he was seeking God.  He’d made a long trek up the Nile and across the wilderness to worship, to seek truth.  Only those who have a desire for God would have gone on such a pilgrimage.  Of course, being good and bad has nothing to do with our need for God in our lives.  We all need God which is why Jesus came.

It is interesting that this Ethiopian eunuch would have gone to Jerusalem to worship.  As a eunuch, he was in the service of a queen, and may have had some official business in Jerusalem, but we don’t know.  Several of you have asked me if I had been watching the NBC TV program, “AD” which portrays the development of the early church with a lot of details filled in.  I saw one episode, which happened to be the one in which the Ethiopian was driven out of Jerusalem, at the threat of death, because the Romans feared an Ethiopian/Zionist alliance.  As he leaves Jerusalem, traveling through Gaza, the wheel comes off his chariot and Philip happens along the way and not only does he interpret Isaiah for the Ethiopian, he repairs his chariot.[2]  Of course, they’re trying to make a story that plays better on the big screen by providing a few additional details.  According to the text, we’re just told that the Ethiopian was in Jerusalem to worship—all the rest of the story as told by NBC was made-up.

I find it interesting that the Ethiopian went to Jerusalem to worship.  Was he a proselyte?  Or, was he what at the time was known as a “God-fearer,” one who studied the Hebrew Scriptures but was not yet circumcised, a rite that would have been impossible for this man.[3]  Many of the commentators on this passage play down the man as a eunuch, stressing instead his official positions.  He was an important man. After all, he had a chariot (Israel wasn’t filled with ‘two-chariot homes” in those days).  He also had the ability to travel far away and as an African, he would have been seen as someone exotic.  Finally, he held a responsible position, the Queen’s treasurer.  That said, the fact he was a eunuch would have kept him from becoming a proselyte to the Jewish faith and would have barred from ever entering the temple.  But in this encounter with Philip, he finds acceptance.  Whatever happened during his time in Jerusalem, he now understands the gospel.  Interestingly, he came to Jerusalem to worship, but didn’t discover God by himself.  It’s on his way home that God finds him.  Ultimately, our conversion into the faith is grounded not in our search for the truth, but God searching us out and using other believers to help us understand.   Remember what I’ve said all along, “Acts of the Apostles” should really be titled “Acts of God through the Apostles.”

Even the Scriptures do not help this man to fully encounter God.  It takes someone else, Philip the Evangelist (although maybe he should be called Philip the Runner as we can imagine him sprinting alongside the chariot, talking about what Isaiah meant).  Philip, at the Spirit’s request, heads down the Gaza road.  Philip, who’s preaching has been very effective in Samaria, leaves a place where good fruit is being harvested in order to go into a wilderness area with no one around.  Often, God’s ways seems strange for us humans.

The New Revised Standard version says he was sent south to the Gaza, but a footnote suggests this can also be translated as “at noon” he goes to the Gaza…”  Who, in their right mind, would set out on a journey in a barren waterless land at noon?   It would be unbearably hot.  Furthermore, he’s sent to run alongside the Ethiopian’s chariot.  This isn’t Philip’s idea.  God has called him to this task.[4]

As Philip hears the man read Isaiah, he asks him about it and is invited up into the chariot, where an out-of-breath Philip lays out what God is doing through Jesus Christ.  The next miraculous event is that they happen along a pool or water—something that isn’t common in the Gaza—and the Ethiopian asks to be baptized.  Philip baptizes him and when the Ethiopian comes up from the water, Philip disappears just as Spock and Captain Kirk would disappear from a distant planet, leaving behind the inhabitants to wonder.  But the Ethiopian isn’t worried, he’s happy.  He understands and he goes on his way, praising God.  Perhaps, but don’t know for sure,  he was the one who took  the gospel south of Egypt for we know that early in Christian history, the gospel flourished there and there is still a strong Coptic Church in Ethiopia to this day.

What can we take away from this text?  You know, Christians are not made in a vacuum.  One can’t just pick up this book we love (the Bible), and begin to read and experience the fullness of a Christian life.  The Ethiopian was reading it, but couldn’t understand.  Think about how you learned of the faith…  There was someone or mostly likely “someones” who helped you grown in understanding that lead first to your acceptance of Jesus and later to deepen your walk of faith.  It could have been a parent, a Sunday School teacher, youth leader, camp counselor, or friend.  God uses people, believers, to help us understand, to help us interpret and apply the word to our lives.

Let me tell you a story.  Back in the early 1980s, after a painful breakup, I went through a period where I stay away from church for a while.  I was working for the Boy Scouts at the time and one day, I received a call from Bob Eplee (one of the district scout leaders).  He said he and Junebug (another leader) wanted to talk to me.  I assumed it was about scouting and met them for breakfast one morning with my notebook in hand.  They told me to put it away and said, “We’re not here for that.  We think it’s time for you to come back to church.”  In a way, I believe, they were sent by God and pulled me back in.

We have all had people in our lives that have shown us how to live as a follower of Jesus.  For such people, we should be thankful and we should remember that we, too, need to be attuned to what the Spirit is telling us.  With that thought, let me give you an assignment:  Who is it that we might be called to reach out to and to help them in their walk of faith?  Consider those who may have strayed and need an encouraging word and an invitation to come back.  Think about those who are struggling and need a hopeful word.  Ponder those you know who are seeking meaning in their lives.  Make a list of such people, write them down, pray about them, and see if God’s Spirit doesn’t open up a way for you to reach out, offering a helpful word or an encouraging comment.

God’s Spirit worked through Philip to bring the Gospel to the Ethiopian.  God’s Spirit worked through Bob and Junebug to remind me what I was missing.  God’s Spirit is still working in our world…  Are we listening?  Amen.

[1] 1 Timothy 1:15.

[2] For a summary of this episode, see:  http://www.nbc.com/ad-the-bible-continues/episode-guide/season-1/rise-up/111/2388571

[3] See Deuteronomy 23:1

[4] See Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 141-142; and William H. Willimon, Acts (1983: Lousiville: Westminister/JKP, 2010), 71-72.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Acts 5:12-42

July 12, 2015

In the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain works in this kernel of truth: “Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.” We’ll see this play out in today’s reading as the Jewish leaders want to maintain the status quo and, despite evidence of a change coming, do everything they can to hinder the challenges presented by Jesus’ disciples.

Our reading is a long one, as we are looking at the last thirty verses in Acts 5, so I am going to summarize the first few verses and then break the passage into two readings.   If you remember, last week we discussed Ananias and Sapphira, the two who lied to God and died.  This created much fear within the community as people realized their lives were not only threatened with judgement from the Jewish leadership but, if they were unfaithful, by God Almighty.  In verse 13, we learn that although the Apostles are held at high esteem, there are those reluctant to join because they are afraid.  But the faithful carry on the work of Jesus, bringing the sick to Peter.  There is even a belief that Peter’s shadow is enough to bring about healing, such was the people’s faith in the work and teachings of the Apostles.  Much good is being done, but there’s change in the wind and those in power are scared and are quick to act.  I will pick up my reading in verse 17 and I’ll read on to verse 33. When I finish this reading, you might want to keep your Bibles open as we’ll come back and pick up the rest of this chapter later.

###

Let’s recall another movie this week: Groundhog Day.  It’s a classic that not only you can watch over and over again, but you watch it over and over in the same sitting.  The film creatively has Bill Murray as Phil Conners, a TV reporter from Pittsburgh, reliving the same day (Groundhog Day) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  This happens dozens of times and he is the only one who realizes it.  Phil becomes cynical and takes advantage of what he knows is going to happen for personal benefit, only to find himself back where he started from when the alarms goes off on what should be February 3.  But it’s not, it is once again, February 2, Groundhog Day.  Eventually he gets it and uses his knowledge for the good of others and is able to win the heart of Rita, his producer, played by the beautiful Andie MacDowell.

It seems what happens here, as in the movie Groundhog Day, is a repeat to what has already happened, with a few additional twists.  The Apostles perform some good deeds and the powers that be become angry and fearful of what’s happening and arrests them. [1]  We’ve seen this scene before.  Yet, they can’t keep Peter and John from testifying to the power of the resurrection.  Heck, they can’t even keep them in jail, for they are mysteriously released and, instead of fleeing, are back in the temple preaching.  It’s almost as if this is a scene from an old keystone cops movie.[2]  Imagine the surprise of the guards as they look into their cells and find them missing, but then hear them preaching in the temple.

They are rearrested (although it appears they go willingly) and taken back to the Council where they are ask why they have disobeyed the order for them not to talk about this man.  Interestingly, the High Priest avoids to use of Jesus’ name.  They respond, “We must obey God rather than human authority.”  This response, by the way, is very similar to that which Socrates gave to those in Athens when he was on trial.  His comments didn’t make the Athenians very happy and they came back with a death sentence[3] and soon, in Acts, we’re going to see that there are those who will lose their lives because of their testimony to Jesus Christ.

Would we be so brave as to stand up as for what God wants instead of falling in line with popular opinion and what those in leadership demand or expect?  When the numbers line up against you, what would you do?

This is a story that has been around the internet many times that I am sure is not true, but it illustrates an important point.  A couple of masked gunmen come into a church during worship and, pointing their automatic weapons to the congregation, say they’re going to shoot anyone who believes this nonsense.  People begin to deny their faith and when allowed, rush to the streets.  Only a handful remain.  Then the gunmen drop their weapons, remove their masks, and say to the pastor, “Okay, we’ve gotten rid of the hypocrites.”  What would we do in such a situation? Would you be shaking in the sanctuary, afraid but secure in your faith?  Or would you be running down the street?

Many people today think this might be where our society is heading, to a place where we will be persecuted for our faith, but before we worry too much, I think we should realize that it has always been tough to stand up for the gospel.  This isn’t anything new; those white pastors who stood up for civil rights, especially before the late 1960s were often condemned and in some cases physically threaten.  Yet, history was on their side, even though many suffered greatly for their convictions.

Our allegiance first and foremost is to Jesus Christ and our citizenship is in the Kingdom of God.  We must remember that the Kingdom is not the status quo.  We’re not yet in Paradise.  We long for God’s Kingdom to be fulfilled and until that day, we need to stand with the one whom we claim as King of all Kings.

Peter and the Apostles’ response to the Jewish Council, telling them that they must first obey God and then reminding them that Jesus was resurrected and is calling Israel to repentance and offering forgiveness.  This is too much.  The Council sees themselves as being in the right and not having any need to repent or to be forgiven.  Peter’s accusation enrages them.  After all, he’s a fisherman.  Who’s he to be speaking in such a manner to those in leadership?  They want to kill ‘em.  Déjà vu all over.  They wanted to kill Jesus, and they eventually did.  Eventually, most of the Apostles will be martyred, too.  But the spilling of their blood is like pouring out fertilizer, for the church continues to grow and to become even stronger.

I want us to return to the text and read one response.  Let me also point out that so far in Acts, we’ve mainly been hearing from Sadducees, a political and theological party in Israel who did not believe in the resurrection.  Another position in Israel was that of the Pharisees, who also had problems with Jesus but they did believe in the resurrection.  Now we hear from one Pharisee, Gamaliel.

Read Acts 5:33-42

###

There is a lot of wisdom in what Gamaliel says.  Although we seek God’s will, we don’t always have a clear idea of where God is going.  After all, we’re called to walk in faith.  In John’s gospel, we told God’s Spirit is like the wind, it comes, it goes, but is mysterious.[4]  The problem with the Jewish Council is that they are so sure they are right and that they have the ability to maintain control.  When God moves, we need to understand that we are not in control.  We’re along for the ride.  Of course, they are sure that God isn’t behind what the Apostles are doing and thereby justified their treatment of the Apostles as something necessary in order to keep the peace.  They are people who don’t like change, but the winds of change from God is blowing and their attempts to hold it back is not going to be successful.

Gamaliel’s suggestion is a wise one.  If God isn’t behind a movement, it’ll ultimately unravel.  He cites two examples of zealots who, along with their followers, have come and gone.  But, as he also reminds them, if God is behind this movement, they don’t want to stand in the way.   It appears that the Council only took part of this advice.  They have the Apostles flogged and let them go and they resume what they have been doing, preaching and teaching and proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah.

As I said earlier in this study, the “Acts of the Apostles” is really a book about the acts of God, which is what we learn from Gamaliel’s prediction.  If God is not behind this, sooner or later the movement will falter.[5]

We often forget we worship an Almighty God.  We think we have to give God a hand, that we have to be God’s army, but we forget that even if we fail to do what God wants us to do, that God can raise up someone else (even stones, as Jesus told his challengers on Palm Sunday), to do his work.  Sometimes, too, we are be like the Council and want to judge and even retaliate against those we see as enemies of God.  But, you know, we got to be careful.  Are they God’s enemies or our own enemies?  There’s a difference!  Furthermore, God also teaches, going back to the Old Testament, that vengeance belong to him, not us.[6]

When the disciples leave the Council on this day, they do something amazing.  They rejoice that they are worthy enough to suffer dishonor for Jesus.  How many of us, having been whipped, would rejoice?  Yet, this attitude sets the stage for more people to be drawn into the community that, as we’ll see in the next few chapters, is about to bust out of Jerusalem and spread across the Roman Empire.

There are two things you need to take away from this section of Scripture: Obey and trust God.  As the Apostles tell the Council, we must obey God, and as Gamaliel suggests, we must let God be God and not stand in the way.  Obey and trust, or with the old hymn, reverse the two: “Trust and obey.”  Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.”[7]  Amen.

©2015

[1] In chapters 3-4, Peter heals a lame man and as he teaches is arrested and the next day brought before the Council.

[2] William H. Willimon, Acts (2008, Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2010), 56

[3] Plato, Apology.  See also, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The Acts of the Apostles (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004), 109.

[4] John 3:8

[5] Gaventa, 110.

[6] Isaiah 63:4,  Deuteronomy 32:35,  Psalm  94:1.  For a New Testament reference see Romans 12;10

[7] Refrain from John Sammis’ hymn, “Trust and Obey.”

Jeff Garrison  

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Acts 4:23-5:11

July 5, 2015

I am grateful for Rachel who preached for me while I was on vacation and to Allan who brought us the good news last Sunday, right after my return.  Today, we’re going back to the book of Acts (and it is going to take us till October to work through the first sixteen chapters).  The focus of Luke’s history of the church is still in Jerusalem.  We have experienced the mystery of God working through this small group of Jesus’ followers, their growth in number, their ability to bring about miracles, and the first whiff of persecution as Peter and John are hauled before the Jewish council.  Even though there is lurking danger, the picture of the church in the first four chapters of Acts is idyllic.  People are generous, they get along with one another and are seen as such loving people that other can’t help but to want to join and to experience their joy.

Listen to this quote from Donald Posterski, who writes about the appeal of such a vision:

In a world gripped by greed, generosity is beautiful.  It is like the sun breaking through the clouds on a dismal rainy day.  Generosity breeds generosity.  Whether the gift is money, time, thoughtfulness, a bouquet of flowers, a special candlelight meal, and a crafted word sent out on a piece of plain paper or an elaborate card–generosity lifts the level of life to what God intends for his creation.

“Generosity lifts the level of life to what God intends…”  We have a generous God and as followers of Jesus, we’re to follow suit, living in a gracious and loving manner.  That’s what made the early church so powerful.  But this doesn’t please everyone, for there is a lurking enemy.  Unable to destroy the church leadership before the Jewish council, Satan now works inside the church, using deceit as a way to undermine the fellowship.[1]

My passage this morning begins with another wonderful view of the early church and then ends with one of the fearful things in scripture, judgment.  Read Acts 4:32-5:11.

###

A few weeks ago I talked about one of my favorite all-time movies, The Blues Brothers.  Today, I want to share another of my favorite movies, “The Gods’ Must Be Crazy.”  Anyone seen it?  It was produced in South Africa in 1980 and became available in the United States on video in the mid-80s.  The film has grown into a cult classic.

The movie is about a tribe of people in Africa who lived without any connection to the larger world.  The way the movie begins, you think you’re watching a documentary about this tribe.  It’s an ideal world in which they live, with enough food for everyone.  They believe the gods look after them and they share everything and enjoy one another’s company.  It’s as if they have never left Eden, everything is in perfect harmony.  But then, one day, a brush pilot is flying overhead, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola.  Downing it, he tosses it out of the airplane and it lands in a sandy area in the midst of this village and they immediately assume the gods have sent them a gift.

In time, the bottle becomes valuable as members of the tribe find more and more usages for it.  It is a tool to hammer and pound.  The glass can be used to concentrate the sun’s rays and start a fire in dry grass.  Water can be held in the bottle and one can blow across the top to create music.  But there’s a problem.  There is only one coke bottle and it’s in constant use.  Suddenly, strife develops within the community as they begin to fight over the bottle.  Soon, this behavior takes over other areas of their lives and they begin to hoard goods and not share.  Realizing their tranquility is threatened, the tribe’s elders decide that this gift should be returned to the gods.  They elect one young man to take the bottle to the edge of the earth and to throw it back to the gods…  The rest of the movie is about his journey and it gets even crazier as he runs into an absent minded scientist, a lovely school teacher, and a gang of revolutionaries.

A generous society has appeal.  We are told this was one of the characteristics that made the early church so attractive, that people would seek out the fellowship of the church while knowing they could be martyred for their faith.  For the second time in his story of the church, Luke describes a community in harmony.[2]  But, unfortunately, the church since this era has lost its luster.  The tarnishing of our reputation began in Jerusalem and it came from the inside the church, as we see in today’s reading.

The story of Ananias and Sapphira seems harsh and unbelievable.  It is preceded by the example of Joseph or Barnabas, who was Jewish, a Levite, but also a foreigner as he was from Cypress.  His incredible act of generosity is lifted up in Scripture.   He sells a field and he gives the money to the Apostles to be used for those in need.  We’re told there are others who also did this, too, but with only one example, we are left to wonder how widespread it was (or how many early Christians even had the property to sell).

But then, after lifting up Joseph as an example, Luke gives a counter-example as we learn about two members of the fellowship.  Now, we don’t know what was going on in their heads, but it appears that maybe they saw others, like Joseph, make generous gifts to the church.  Perhaps they wanted to be seen in a good light, as generous, so they, too, decide to sell some property.  You know, good deeds often inspire other good deeds, but they want to be seen for their good deeds without paying the price.  “See how generous we are, we’re going to sell the lower 40 of our farm and give it to the church,” they might have said.  But instead of going through with what they say they are going to do, they give only a portion and hide the fact that they keep part of the profits for themselves.  “No one will know,” they assume.

We can fool others, but we cannot fool God and that’s what happens here.  The Spirit enlightens Peter to what’s happening and as Ananias makes his gift, Peter confronts him.  Although Peter invokes Satan’s name in Ananias’ deceit, this is not a case of the “Devil made him do it.”  Ananias is responsible for his attempt to lie to the Holy Spirit.  We can fool others, but not God!  Furthermore, we learn from Peter that this isn’t some of kind of forced sale of property for inclusion into the church.  The sin of Ananias is not that he gave back only a portion of the proceeds of the sale.   His sin was that he lied and acted like it was a bigger deal that it was.   He thought his little indiscretion would be swept under the rug and no one would know anything different.

The couple’s sin has to do with declaring that they were giving the proceeds to the Apostles, and hiding the fact that they did not follow through.  The Greek verb translated as “kept back” (in verse 3), is a word often used in relationship to the misappropriation of funds.  In other words, what they had given no longer belonged to them, therefore they are guilty of theft.[3]

With Sapphira, Peter gives her a chance to confess.  She doesn’t yet know what’s happened to her husband and so when Peter tells her the amount given and asks if this is what the property was sold for, she sticks to their story.  “Yeah, that’s right,” she says.  The Peter tells her what happened to her husband and she, too, drops over dead.  We might think of it this way, “giving to the church is a serious matter,” but that’s not really the concern here.  The concern is with their honesty toward God.  “We might be able to fool some of the people some of the time, but we can never fool God.”

To have a community like the early church in Jerusalem, people need to be honest not only with one another, but to God.  Satan thought he could corrupt the church with dishonesty, but God’s Spirit insures the church is protected.  Today, we are often causal about our relationship to the Almighty, but this passage reminds us that when it comes to our relationship to God, we are dealing with something beyond us and need handle this relationship with awe and fear.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” we learn from the Old Testament.[4]

When you talk to God in your prayers or confess your sins to God, be honest.  God already knows what you are going to say, what you are thinking.  In this way, God is like an all-knowing parent who wants their children to take responsibility for their actions.  If the parent is good, the child will get off a lot easier if he or she is honest about what they’ve done.  It’s the same way with God.  Be honest, even if you are struggling and not doing what you know you should be doing.  Then, God like a good parent, can help redirect your way.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Jack Stotts, The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today), quote provided by a friend:  “”, as soon as the Spirit came upon the church, Satan launched a ferocious counter-attack…Having failed to destroy the church from outside, he attempted through Ananias and Sapphira to insinuate evil into its interior life, and so ruin the Christian fellowship.”

[2] See Luke 2:43-47

[3] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 102.

[4] Proverbs 1:7, 9:10 and Psalms 111:10

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Acts 4:1-22

June 14, 2015

We all know the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” That’s what happens to Peter and John.  If you remember from last week, they go to the temple for prayers and as they enter find a man who has never walked.  The man asks for alms and having nothing to give, they give him what they have, the ability to call upon Jesus who heals the man.  People are amazed when they see this guy leaping around. This sets up an opportunity for Peter to give his second sermon that’s recorded in Acts.  Peter, with the guy who’d been healed holding on to his sleeve, addresses a crowd that has gathered around them on a patio or porch off to the side of the temple.  We heard all that last week.

Today, as we continue our journey through the Book of Acts, we learn what happens next.  Peter’s sermon is cut short when the temple authorities show up.  They thought they had done away with all this talk about Jesus when they conspired to have him nailed to the cross.  But now they learn that Jesus’ followers are continuing his ministry and this is upsetting to those in power.  Read Acts 4:1-22

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One of my all-time favorite movies is the Blues Brothers.  I’m sure many of you have seen it.  Jake, who has just been released from prison, joins up with his brother Elwood and the rest of their band as they strive to make enough money to pay off a tax lien on the orphanage where they’d grown up.  They finally get it together and have a large hall filled with paying guests anxious to hear the “Blues Brothers” and their hopping band.  But they are not the only ones who are there to meet the Blues Brothers.  Also in the crowd is another band, from whom they stole a gig, Jake’s ex-fiancé who is carrying a grudge of having been left at the altar, and a score of law enforcement officers.  The latter have guns, night sticks and handcuffs, and have blocked every entrance to the hall.  Jake and Elwood sends the crowd into a frenzy, forcing the police to stoically wait for an opportunity to pounce.  But it doesn’t happen that way, for Jake and Elwood escape through a tunnel that runs under the stage and, after a high speed chase across the state of Illinois, are only arrested after they have paid the orphanage’s taxes.

Now think about Peter and John in our story today.  Peter is in the middle of his sermon as the temple authorities along with the Sadducees, much like officers in the Blues Brothers, file onto the porch and cover every exit.  Of course, they don’t wait for the sermon to be over.  With the place secured, the Captain of the Temple and his henchmen step forward and arrest the two Apostles.  As it is at the end of the working day and who has time for bail (besides, we know they were out of cash when they’d been asked for alms), so the authorities toss Peter and John into jail.  But if they think they have done away with this Jesus’ menace, they are mistaken as Luke tells us that 5,000 people believe their message.  And it appears that they believe despite the messengers being under arrest.

The church is growing at an astonishing rate.  Because God is behind it, there is nothing the authorities can do to stop it.  But that doesn’t mean they don’t try.  After all, the devil doesn’t have to go after those who are bad…  But those who are a threat, like Peter and John, are singled out and persecuted.  No good deed goes unpunished.

The next day Peter and John along with the man who was healed are brought before the temple authorities for questioning.  They want to know how this man was healed, by what power or name they asked.  They set themselves up for an answer they won’t like.  Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, begin to speak and tells them the man was healed by Jesus…  but he doesn’t stop there, going on to make the point that Jesus was the one that they had crucified, but whom God has raised from the dead.  Then, to emphasize this point, he quotes a Psalm, the stone rejected by the builder has become the cornerstone.”[1]  He ends his defense by declaring that salvation can be from no other source.

The image Luke draws for us with his words in verse 13 is humorous.  Peter and John are bold, yet it is evident that they do not belong to the learned guild of those who are in authority over the temple.  They are fishermen.

Not knowing what to say to these two disciples and the healed man who is before them, they do what most good lawyers do (at least the good lawyers in courtroom dramas on TV), they call for a recess and gather in private to discuss the matter.  Since there is nothing they can come up with to punish Peter and John (and people would revolt if they punished someone who had helped one in such a need), they decide they’ll let them go but tell them to stop talking about Jesus!

Calling the Apostles back before them, they order Peter and John not to speak or teach about Jesus. Peter and John respond, essentially asking them who is in charge and saying that they can’t stop talking about what they’ve seen and heard.  The authorities let them go with a warning, but they go out praising God.  At the end of Chapter 4, we learn that the man healed at the beginning of Chapter 3, who had never walked in his life, is over 40 years old.  This guy who is leaping around isn’t, for this era, a young man.

It is interesting that nothing has been resolved.  If the powers that be thought this would end the teachings of Jesus, they were mistaken.

There are two things I want you to take from this passage.  First of all, it is a classic example of what happens when those who are in power are threatened.  The Jewish leaders felt threatened by Jesus.  Now they could have welcomed him and we could imagine how different the world might be, but that wasn’t what happened.  They stuck to what they felt was right, unwilling to look at what was happening before their eyes.

Are we not like that?  This is church, after all, and sometimes it is hard to get a church to change its ways of doing things.  I know, I have been the one designated to help lead change.  The best illustration that I’ve came up with in my last pastorate to describe this work is that trying to change a church is like steering a battleship with a canoe paddle.  It takes a while for the momentum to build up and the ship begins to turn.  Organizations fear change, but we need to remember that change is natural.

We change as we grow up and then as we grow older.  Technology changes, music changes, communication styles change, leadership changes, it’s natural.  So let’s not fear change.

Jesus gave the church its marching orders 2000 years ago.[2]  We are to make disciples.  And for all that time, the message remains the same, but the means to carry it out changes.  There were times people would sit for two, three or even four hour sermons (you’re thinking about your poor bottoms and I’m thinking about the poor preacher).  But that’s changed.  What do we need to change around here to reach people for Jesus Christ?  How can we be more effective?  What might we as individuals need to sacrifice in order to draw in new disciples?

Recently I was talking with some of our staff and this phrase came to me.  “Mission drives all that we do.”  We are here, not to maintain the status quo, but to be about God’s mission.  That was a lesson the authorities in Jerusalem didn’t understand in our reading today.

The second thing I want you to take from this passage is an understanding that when things are going in the right direction, there will be opposition.  From my experience, this seems to be the norm instead of the exception.  It seems as if Satan or the forces of evil don’t like things that are moving forward for good.

When there is excitement in the air and the spirit seems to be moving a congregation forward, it always seems that a wrench is tossed into the gears and things begin to flounder for a while.  What’s important when we face such challenges is that we not give up, or even let up.  We continue in faith, praying and encouraging one another.  There are those who don’t like the idea of change who will immediately jump up and say, “I told you so.”  If they have their way, the church’s movement in the right direction will stall.  If that had been allowed to happen 2000 years ago, the message would have never made it out of Jerusalem.  Because this is a God movement, it succeed.  As Jesus told the authorities on Palm Sunday, if the crowds didn’t shout, God would raise up stones to shout.[3]  If we don’t do God’s work, someone else will.

When I began this series on Acts, I told you it was about a journey.  As the church, we’re still on that journey.  William Easum, a church consultant, wrote a book a number of years ago titled, Sacred Cows make Gourmet Burgers.[4]  You know what a sacred cow is, don’t you?  It’s a program or a thing that’s holding us back but because someone has a vested interest—like the temple authorities in today’s reading.  Nobody is to challenge a sacred cow and it continues to drag the church down. With that in mind, we need to ask ourselves a few questions.  What is it that we need to be doing in our worship to attract new people?  How should we configure and utilize our buildings to make Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church appear open and welcoming to our community?  What groups of people on Skidaway Island or even across the bridge could benefit from our missionary outreach?  You see, it ain’t about us, it’s about reaching out and thereby, as Peter and John did when they left the temple, glorify God.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Psalm 118:22.

[2] Acts 1:8

[3] Luke 19:40

[4] William M. Easum, Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers: Ministry Anytime, Anywhere, by Anyone (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995).

As we continue to work our way through the Book of Acts, I’ll begin my reading today with the 3rd Chapter.  If you remember, last week we look at the end of the second chapter, where we had an idyllic vision of the early church.  It was a close-knit community that worshipped and shared together.  However, Jesus’ command was for them to spread the message.  It’s not enough for them (or us) to be a comfortable church isolated from the world.[1]  Jesus wants the message to get out.  In Acts 3, starting in Jerusalem, we witness the Apostles’ first taking the message into town.  They start with Jerusalem on their way to Samaria and the ends of the earth, fulfilling the command Jesus gave at his ascension.[2]  In Chapter 2, the church is empowered with the Spirit and a revival occurs at its doorstep.  In Chapter 3, the outward movement begins with Peter and John heading to the temple to prayer.  Listen:  Read Acts 3:1-10.

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There is a story about Thomas Aquinas visiting Pope Innocent II.  When he arrives in Rome, his holiness is busy counting a large sum of money.  Thomas is taken into the Vatican treasury with the Pope and others responsible for the money.  He’s greeted warmly and then the Pope says, “You see, Thomas, the Church can no longer say, ‘I have no silver and gold.’”  “True, Holy Father,” said Thomas as he looks around in amazement, “and neither can she say, “Stand up and walk.”[3]

Too often we think the answer to our problems is having the resources at hand, but if that’s our attitude, we better have put life jackets on before we try to walk on water.  God wants us to be bold and to trust his Spirit!

We’re told that Peter and John headed to the temple at the appropriate hour to pray.  At this point, they are still observant Jews and we know from antiquity that twice a day, in the early morning and at the ninth hour (3 PM for us), sacrifices were made in the temple that were accompanied by a prayer service. They entered one of the gates, possibly the gate between the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women, which was fashioned out of polished bronze and so spectacular that it was considered more valuable than the gates which were overlaid with silver and gold.  By this gate they spot a lame beggar.[4]

Friends or family of this man, who’d been lame all his life, would take him daily to the temple where he could beg for enough money to purchase food and the necessities for life.  The lame man asked Peter and John for alms.  In such a situation, in a time with no social safety net, giving alms was an expectation of their faith.  If you had the means, it was an obligation.  But they don’t have any money with them.

Perhaps it is because they have been amazed themselves over the recent events that they give the man what they have, faith.  They calling on Jesus to raise him up so that he might walk.  He jumps up, and then not only does he walk, he leaps, for joy no doubt, as he makes his way into the temple where he praises God.   The amazement spreads when those who had seen this man beg by the gate for years, unable to walk, now jumping for joy.  This creates an opportunity for Peter and he seizes upon it as we’ll see in the second half of this Chapter.  Read Acts 3:11-26.

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The scene shifts from inside the temple to a porch or patio, large enough for a crowd, as Peter preaches his second sermon recorded in Acts.  It must have been a sight, the formerly lame man clinging to Peter’s arm as he speaks.  In his first sermon, on Pentecost, Peter began by dispelling a myth going around.  “Men of Jerusalem, these men are not drunk,” he proclaimed in the Second Chapter, verse 14-15.  In this instance, it seems that some must have through that the man’s healing was a result of Peter and John’s power or piety.  They’ve gone from drunks to goody two-shoes in the eyes of the people.

But don’t we sometimes think this way?  That someone’s blessings is because they are so good, that God must be smiling on them?  However, that’s a dangerous way of thinking for two reasons.  First of all, Scripture tells us that God brings rain on the fields of the just and the unjust.[5]  Secondly, such thoughts led us to question the unfortunate and makes it easier for us to say, “They had it coming.”  We should know from Scripture that even the righteous can and will suffer.  Peter reframes the situation, recalling on the traditional Jewish liturgy[6] (The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of our ancestors), as he interprets what God is doing through Jesus’ death and resurrection.  As we see throughout this book, God is the actor, the one who is bringing about a new world order. [7]

I remember hearing Craig Barnes, who is now the President of Princeton Theological Seminary, preach.  Some of you have read one or more of his books in Sunday School classes.  In the sermon, he cited someone of authority who made the statement that there were really on three sermons.  Barnes, who was a pastor at the time, said he’d shared this tidbit of knowledge with his Session.  One of his Elders humbled him by asking, “When are you going to get around to the other two?”  Barnes may be in good company because it seems that Peter only had one sermon—showing what God is doing in Jesus Christ and linking that to God’s mission in the past through Israel while looking forward to the day foretold by God to Abraham, when his family will become a blessing to all people.

As in the Pentecost sermon, Peter convicts the crowd of their implication in Jesus’ death.  Peter uses a series of escalating verbs to increase the tension of his message.  “You handed over, you rejected, and you killed.[8]   But then Peter lets them off a bit, noting that they acted in ignorance, that they didn’t know what they were doing.  In doing so, they fulfilled the Scriptures.  Then, like he did earlier, Peter calls on them to repent and turn to God who is doing something amazing.  He returns to the Jesus and points out how he is the fulfillment of what has been promised the prophets.

What can we learn from this passage, this healing and this sermon from Peter?  First of all, I think Peter illustrates how the church should operate.  First and foremost, we are to be concerned with those, like the lame man, who cannot help themselves and when we have the ability, we’re to offer help.  Yes, we provide a message of hope, but we also do what we can to alleviate suffering.  What might you do this week to assist in reducing suffering of a friend, family member, neighbor or stranger?

Secondly, and maybe even more important, we are not to limit ourselves to what we have on hand. We are to live by faith.  Now, we probably won’t become healers today, although there are places in the world, especially on the mission field, that that seems to happen.  But even if such healing doesn’t happen, we are not to limit ourselves or our goals of helping others to that which we can do by ourselves.  We have God on our side.  We have the church and all of you on our side.  That’s an incredible resource.  We’ve been blessed with God’s Spirit and filled with His love; there is no stopping what we might accomplish through Jesus Christ.  Do we have such faith?  Do we believe that with Christ, we can accomplish far more than we can do on our own?

Finally, we’re to give God credit for all that we are able to do in the name of Jesus.  Let’s face it, without God’s providence, our breaths would draw short.  God provides us with a bountiful world.  God has given us life in a rich and blessed land.  God has instilled talents in each of us.  These can be used for making a life and for giving back in a gracious response to the author of life, the one who gives us hope for life everlasting in Jesus Christ.

In summary:  1. Help where you can, 2. don’t limit yourself, and 3. give thanks.  Amen.

[1]William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1988), 43.

[2] Acts 1:8

[3] Story credited to   by F. F. Bruce, Acts: The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 84.

[4] F. F. Bruce, 83.  Bruce draws upon the writings of Josephus.  See especially note 7.

[5] Matthew 5:45.

[6] Bruce, 87.

[7] See the quote at the top of the bulletin from Darrell L. Bock, The Theology of Luke and Acts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 95.

[8] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 86.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

May 24, 2015

Pentecost Sunday:  Acts 2:1-16

When I was in seminary, Ken, a fellow student from Japan, found America’s “alternative newspapers” worthy of his attention.  I am speaking of the papers found next to the grocery store checkouts—stellar pieces of journalistic excellence such as the National Inquirer.  If there was something in an issue he felt we should know, he would inform us.  One such article was about a pastor who spontaneously combusted in the pulpit.  As we were studying to become preachers, this was something worth noting and became a big joke among those of us who lived on the 3^rd Floor of Fisher Hall.

It was during this time that I somehow obtained the honor of being the first student of our class to preach at chapel.  The morning of chapel, a fellow student went into the hall and “borrowed” fire extinguishers from the walls by the doors and placed one on each side of the pulpit, just in case.  This was done with no explanation and most people didn’t notice until I was half way through the sermon…  On about the fourth pew back sat my fellow classmates from 3^rd Floor Fisher.  I notice one of them pointing to the fire extinguishers and poking the guy beside him and this continued down the line.

As I waxed eloquently about some deep theological point of eternal significance, and much of the audience struggled to stay awake, this one row began to laugh uncontrollably.  I buried my head in my notes, knowing that I ever looked up it would be over.  Most of those present that morning never got the joke, they just wondered what the fire extinguishers were doing by the pulpit and assumed everyone from 3^rd Floor Fisher was rude.

Another story.  When I lived in Whiteville, North Carolina, a few miles out of town was a little white church down by the intersection of two rural roads.  There were never more than a half-dozen cars in its parking lot on Sunday mornings when I passed it heading to church. I never stopped.  I wish I had, but there was something about its name that made me reluctant, yet curious…  The name, painted in red on an old board and nailed to a pine tree out by the road went something like this: “Fire-baptized Fundamentalist, Primitive Free-will Baptist Church.”

What is it about fire that both incites our imagination and also causes fear?  Fire is used in worship—from the candles on our table to Israel’s sacrifices.  It is also a sign of God’s presence from the burning bush to the cloud leading Israel across the desert, on to Elijah’s triumph over the prophets of Baal and the visions of Isaiah and John of God’s throne with the flaming altars.  And then there is Pentecost, and God pouring out his Spirit as with tongues of fire…  Fire is the perfect metaphor for the Spirit, because it is hard to control and dangerous, but desperately needed.  Doesn’t that sound like God’s Spirit?  Today, as we continue working our way through Acts, let us listen to what happened on this day…  Read Acts 2:1-16

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What a difference a day makes?  Think about how one day can seemingly change the world.  September 11^th: we’ll never forget it.  November 22^nd: the day Kennedy was shot. December 7^th: the Day of Infamy. October 29^th: the crash of the stock market. August 4^th: the beginning of World War I.  All these are days in which the world seemed to stand still for a moment and, once passed, we found ourselves in a new era.

Included right up there with Easter, the day of resurrection; Good Friday, the Day of Atonement for Christians; and Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior, the day of Pentecost is such a defining moment for the church.  On this day the church was given a jump-start; on this day the church became a living and growing entity.  Pentecost is our birthday although in a way it is just the last major event that began with the crucifixion.  In a way, the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost are all a part of the same movement.[1]  God is at work undoing the powers of sin and establishing an eternal reign.

This morning, let’s consider three truths of Pentecost.  First: God is the primary actor.  God takes the initiative and without whom, our efforts are in vain.  Second, there is a link between the Old and New Covenants.  The festival represents the giving of the law, and on Pentecost, the Spirit comes writing the law into the hearts of men and women, fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy.[2] Finally, God’s action on Pentecost reminds us the true nature of the church is multicultural.  The separation of people that occurred after the Tower of Babel has been undone.  God has called us all back together with a common language, the language of grace, and with a common focus, Jesus Christ.

First, let’s start with the story and consider the role God plays.  As dawn broke on this day in question, there were a handful of believers, 120 or so.  From this small beginning, the Christian faith now claims approximately 1/3 of the world’s population.

As most of you know, this past year I went through training to become a firefighter.  One of the many videos that was recommended we watched showed the development of a fire.  Silent Night was playing in the background.  What started as a small spark with a frayed electrical cord in the tree had, before the song ended, consumed the entire room.  At first, it was just a spark, then it smoldered as it built up gases that filled the room and soon combusted and, in less than 3 minutes, everything was blazing.  Fire can be unpredictable and can builds exponentially.  Fire can destroy and purify.

That’s what happened to these “tongues of flames” that fell upon the small group of believers who’d gathered on Pentecost.  Filled with God’s Spirit, they went out setting the world on fire.  When the morning began, they sat around not knowing what to do.  They had been given a mission, Jesus was pretty specific before his departure that they’re to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.  But they are like a car with no gas.  They have a purpose, but no energy.  So they wait.  They wait knowing Jesus has promised his Spirit.   They wait not knowing what to expect.  They wait in the morning calm, wondering…

This motley collection of men and women are not the type of people you’d think could change the world.  And they don’t change the world.  That’s part of the point of the story.  God’s the primary actor here.  Or, another way of looking at it, God is the playwright and the director.  Without God’s intervention, nothing would have happened.  And the same is true in our lives, when we encounter the gospel.  God can use us all; we don’t have to be sophisticated or multi-talented.  The primary skill needed is faithfulness and trust in the power of God.   If God is for us, no one can stand against us.  If God is against us, well, then we’re in trouble…

The second aspect of Pentecost I want us to consider is the linkage between the Old and New Covenant.  Those who’d gathered on this morning, on the day of Pentecost, gathered to celebrate a Jewish holiday.  The name Pentecost is derived from the festival being held on the fiftieth day following the Passover.  The festival was also known as the Feasts of the Weeks, the Feast of the Harvest, or the Day of the First Fruits.  Originally it was when the grain harvest was formally dedicated, but over time the festival had come to represent the giving of the law on Sinai, which, according to tradition, occurred fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt.

The two flames on our Presbyterian cross represent the two covenants—the Old and the New Testament.  The flame of the Old Testament was the giving of the law on Sinai.  The other flame represents the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, or the fulfillment of the prophecy from Jeremiah that God will write the law onto the hearts of believers.

To have the fullness of God’s word, to know God to the best of our limited human abilities, we must draw upon both the Old and the New Testaments.  The two covenants remind us of the mysterious nature of our God.  God is God; we are a part of God’s creation.  What we know about God has been revealed to us by the Almighty, first in the Hebrew Scriptures and then, the final revelation, in the life of Jesus Christ.   Again, God is the actor; God is the one engaging the world.

The final aspect of Pentecost I want us to consider is how this event serves as a model for God’s intention for the world.  Consider the group who’d gathered on this morning.  They were all Jews.  Yet first century Judaism was more multi-cultural than they were.  Most of the group were from Galilee, a territory to the north of Jerusalem.   They gather, a homogeneous lot, without an idea as to what would happen.  Soon a violent wind destroys the morning calm.  Luke describes the coming of the Spirit as a gale blowing into the house where they’d gathered.  Picture the curtains blowing, the dishes rattling in the cupboards.  They are frightened, for the afternoon breezes are hours away.  “What’s going on,” they wonder?  Luke goes on to say that the wind was like tongues of fire; like a wildfire that gains momentum consuming all that’s around.  And those who had gathered begin to speak, in all different kinds of languages.

In addition to celebrating the giving of the law, the Pentecost holiday was special for another reason.  Passover was considered the “high holy day” for the first century Jewish faithful.  But because it was such a long trip, many would stay through Pentecost and would have caught wind of what’s happening at this time.[3]  We need to remember that by the first century, Jewish settlements had been established throughout the Mediterranean region.   This explains why there were so many different people in Jerusalem for this festival.  They’d come to worship; they’d come with expectation.  When most people make a religious pilgrimage, they expect something to happen.  And here, as they’ve gathered in their ancestral homeland, people who were no longer fluent in Hebrew, begin to hear the gospel in their native languages.

Again, God is the one who is acting.  The early disciples and believers who’d gathered weren’t sitting around scheming, trying to create a strategic plan of how the church would grow.  And if they had been, you can bet they wouldn’t have even considered reaching such a diverse group of people as they did that day.  After all, these people had a tradition of interacting only with those who looked and sounded and acted like they did.  Again, God is doing the work here.  God’s vision is much larger than they could imagine.  God is calling all people to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.  What is our vision of what God might do through us?

The story of Pentecost is really about the power of the gospel.  God’s power is beyond anything we can ever imagine.  God can create a community from a diverse group; God can bring together enemies, people who are culturally different; people who don’t even speak the same language.  Pentecost is about the power of the gospel to heal rifts within society.  Pentecost also reminds us of God’s true intention for his coming kingdom?  Are we ready for such a world?  Are we ready to experience God’s power?  If so, pray for the Spirit to fill your lives and the life of our fellowship.  And be ready!  Amen.

©2015

[1] William H. Willimon, Acts: Intrepretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), 28.

[2] Jeremiah 31:33.

[3] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 74-75

My Mother and Father, 1959

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

May 10, 2015

Acts 1:1-11

We’re setting off on a new tack this morning, as we work our way through the book of Acts.  The official title given to this book is The Acts of the Apostles, but it’s really about the acts of God through the Apostles.  Today, on the Sunday before Accession Day, the day in the church’s calendar in which we recall Jesus’ leaving the disciples behind, we’re looking at the opening of this book.  Unfortunately, the way Scripture is laid out, you miss the natural connection with the Gospel of Luke and Acts.  Both are written by Luke, addressed to same person, Theophilius (a name that literally means lover or beloved of God).  In the Gospel of Luke, we have the story of Jesus and in the book of Acts, we have the story of the church.  As we’re going to see, its one grand adventure, which is what church should be, a grand adventure directed by God.[1]  Let me tell you a story…

In early January, before school resumed for the winter term of my senior year in college, my brother and I drove my parents and my younger brother to the airport.  It took both of our cars for they each had two large suitcases and two carry-on.  Airlines were more lenient in those days and besides, they were moving to Japan and the rest of their stuff, which was traveling by ship, would take two or three months to arrive.

It was a morning of mixed emotions and because we were there much earlier than we needed to be, there was plenty of time for expressing such feelings.   Mom, especially, wasn’t quite sure what they were getting themselves into and was reluctant to go.  This might have been the hardest thing she ever did, leaving us behind.  My father and younger brother (who had just turned 12), were excited about the grand adventure upon which they were embarking.  After an hour of nervous goodbyes, the three of them walked out and boarded a Piedmont Airlines plane for the first leg of their journey.  My brother and I waited until the plane was in the air and then returned home, a little sad as our world was changing, but we got over it as we prepared for our next semester in college.

When we think of people heading off on a journey and the mixed emotions of excitement and sadness that goes with the departure, it is the one who is departing whom we expect will have the grand adventure.  And that was true for my parents, but not completely, for the four years they were in Japan, my brother and had many of our own adventures.  My mother was sad about leaving and afterwards would even say that she still had regrets because when she returned from Japan we were done with college and spread out geographically.  Things would never be the same… They never are. It would have been that way regardless of had they stayed home or moved overseas.  Sadly, she no longer remembers her adventures and is unable to talk on the phone.   So for her, I’ll wish all you moms (and those who have or have had mothers, a Happy Mother’s Day.

Now let’s go back in time, to learn about another group of folks sending off their best friend, the Lord Jesus.  Read Acts 1:1-11

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One of the most interesting southern revivalists during the 19th century was Sam Jones.  He’s from Cartersville, up in the hills of northeast Georgia.  “Golden Rule” Jones, as he was also called, was known for his humor.  One unique aspect of Jones’ revivals was “quittin’ meetings.”  The new converts would publicly confess their vices: cussing, drinking (Jones was a teetotaler), smoking, gossiping, running around, and so forth.  Once they confessed, they promised to quit. This was a 100 years before the “just say no” campaigns and I’m not sure they had any better track record back then than today, but that’s not my point.

At one of these meetings, “Golden Rule” Jones asked a convert what she planned to quit.  “I ain’t been doing nothing,” she said, “and I’m going to quit doing that too.”[2]   I expect there are many people in her category. She’s right, you know.  Disciples are created to “do.”  We’ve been created for mission and that’s what the books of Acts is about.  At his ascension, Jesus commissions the disciples with a task and all disciples that come later are given that same task.  We’re not here to worry about when the kingdom is going to be fulfilled or anything else, where here to be Jesus’ witnesses!  As I’ve said, we’re created for mission!

          Now, this doesn’t mean that we’re all going to be sent to the Sudan or to China or onto the foreign mission field.  Yes, there are those who are called to such places and one of the ways we fulfill our calling is to help support them.  But even those of us who never have such an opportunity to serve in an exotic place are called to do mission wherever we find ourselves.  You see, our mission is to be sent to and love those who do not know Jesus Christ.  This involves telling people about Jesus and caring for them.  We don’t have to go very far to find people in need of hearing a message of hope.  The mission field begins at our doorstep.

I’ve heard it said “the Christian faith is more about doing than about being.”  Doing is in a large part being a Christian.  Of course, our salvation does not depend upon our doing.  If it did, that would mean we would have to earn it and we’d all be in a heap of trouble.  It’s kind of hard for us mere mortals to impress God with our capabilities!

Our salvation is secured by Jesus and what he did for us.  Instead of working to achieve righteousness, we are righteousness because of him.  We do good because God, through Jesus Christ, has already done more than enough for us.  Out of gratitude and thanksgiving, we give back a portion of our blessings and this doesn’t just mean giving money when we pass the plates.  That’s important, but a disciple must also give hope to those who do not know Christ: that’s our mission!

In 1988, Nike came out with has become one of the most recognized corporate slogan in the world during a very successful marketing campaigns.  Do you remember the slogan that went with their swish logo?  It was….  “JUST DO IT!”   There are a number of books written about this slogan.  People have even credited it for helping them break addictions, encouraging them to move out of abusive relationships, to start businesses and, of course, to buy sneakers.[3]

JUST DO IT!  This brings us back to the disciples in our scripture reading who are just standing there looking up into the sky.  In a cloud, Jesus departs.  He’s no longer there to be seen, yet the disciples still gaze into the heavens.  Then, two men in white robes appear; we’re reminded of the men in dazzling clothes who met the women at Jesus’ empty tomb.[4]  Were they angels?  The text doesn’t really say.  But they bring a heavenly message, asking, “What are you doing looking up into the heavens?”  Of course, they know good and well what the disciples are doing.  Jesus has gone away and they are so stunned they keep looking for him.  This question, “what are you looking up there?” is a humorous reminder that the disciples have work to do as soon as they receive the Spirit.  Jesus left them with a big mission.  They need to get ready, yet they just stand and look into the sky…

Someday I feel like that.  I want to just lie on my back and look up at the sky.  But since I’m not an astronomer nor an air traffic controller, I don’t often have that luxury.

Next, the two men tell the disciples that Jesus, who was taken up in the clouds, will come again in the same way as they saw him go up…  If I had the power to rewrite scripture, I might leave this last thought out.  Unfortunately, too many people get hung up on the idea that Jesus will come again in the sky and miss the meaning of this encounter with these two men.  That first rhetorical question, “what are you looking at?” is a reminder that Jesus left them with a job to do and right before he left Jesus told them not to worry about when he’s to return.  Instead, until he does return, we’re to be his witnesses.  The disciples were to start where they were at, in Jerusalem, then moving into the seedy neighborhoods of Samaria and then on to the ends of the world.  What are you looking at could be interpreted as “Didn’t you understand what Jesus told you?  Get to it, JUST DO IT!”

Now let’s consider this: If our belief in Jesus Christ doesn’t lead us to act, aren’t we really just looking up in the sky?  Perhaps we need to incorporate Nike’s slogan into our lives…. JUST DO IT.  Of course, by itself the slogan is “empty and narcissistic,”[5] morally indifferent and hollow.  “Hearing these words, we are given no distinction between feeding the hungry and having an affair; between teaching Sunday school and robbing a bank.  But we know better because we’ve been created for more, we’ve been created for mission!

Tony Campolo tells about being a college professor and having students asking him to help them identify what God’s want them to do with their lives. He said that he can’t answer that question, but that there is a more important question: “What is Jesus calling us to do today?”  “This is the day the Lord has made.  What does God want me to do?  What does God want me to achieve today?”[6]

When those two men remind the disciples they have a job to do, the disciples don’t need to ask for directions.  They had been with Jesus for three years.  They had heard our Savior’s commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.[7]  They had learned from our Savior’s parables: “O Lord, when we did we see you hungry and offer food, thirsty and offer drink?” Jesus answered, “When you did it to the least of these…”[8]  And they had seen our Savior teach by example:  Going to Lazarus when it wasn’t safe for him to go near Jerusalem, talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, forgiving the woman caught in adultery, and calling the children to come to him.[9]

JUST DO IT, we’re told… but what are we to do?  Just reach out to someone hurting, just challenge a hateful comment, just confront destruction, just offer a word of encouragement, just share the gospel with someone seeking, just give out a cup of cold water, just seek to live more like Jesus.  Just do it!  Amen.

©2015

[1] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 66.

[2] Doug Adams, Humor in the American Pulpit from George Whitfield to Henry Ward Beecher (Austin, TX: The Sharing Company, 1975), 71.  Story of the “quittin meetings” from Leonard Sweet in Soul Cafe (April 1995).  See also Kathleen Minnix, Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones (Athens, GA: Univ of GA Press, 1993).

[3] Sweet, Soul Cafe.  Donald Katz, Just Do It (New York: Random House, 1994).

[4] Luke 24:4

[5]Sweet, Soul Cafe, 2.

[6] Tony Compoloo, “Becoming What God Intended You to Be,” Thirty Good Minutes, Program 4715 (January 25, 2004).  See www.30goodminutes.org

[7] Matthew 22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27-2

[8] Matthew 25:45

[9] John 11ff, John 4:4ff, John 8:3ff, Matthew 19:14

April 26, 2015

Psalm 34:1-14

In a documentary titled Mother Teresa, a priest who had known her since she was young noted this misconception about Teresa.  Most people think she went to Calcutta and was so moved by the conditions of the poor that she had to do something.  The priest then says “that was not it!”  Instead, “she knew the love of Jesus and it was specifically because of that love that she responded.”  As another writer says of Teresa, “Worship changed her.”[1]  Because she knew what God had done for her in Jesus Christ, she felt called to show mercy to others.

Last week, I talked about us coming into the presence of God in worship and how we should respond in praise, confession and a willingness to hear and do God’s work.  Today, I want us to look a little deeper into how the worship of an Almighty God changes us.  When we come into God’s presence and learn from God’s story, our world and worldview changes.  No longer should we be concern with “the self.”  Now our vision is godly; we’re to look at the world through God’s eyes and respond in a manner that furthers God’s kingdom and that will bring God all glory.  Today’s passage comes from Psalm 34.

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According to the subscript, David wrote this Psalm before becoming king.  Saul is king of Israel and he’s after David.  In his flight, David is captured by the Philistines, Israel’s age-old enemies.  David is then taken to the King of Gath.  Fearful of what might happen, David acts as if he’s crazy by clawing at the doors and letting spit run down his beard.  The king, seeing David in such a condition, chastises his servants.  “Do you not see this man is mad?” he asks.  “Why did you bring him to me?”  The king of Gath must have had a sense of humor for he then asks, “Do I lack for madmen?”  David’s trickery is successful.  He is released.  If you’re interested in the story, you can find it in 1^st Samuel, chapter 21.[2]

This is a Psalm of Thanksgiving to God for having delivered David from trouble.  But it doesn’t just apply to David.  In fact, any of us who have felt God’s salvation might pray this Psalm as a way to give thanks for what we’ve experienced.

Let’s think of the Psalm in the context that it’s set in Scripture.  David is fleeing Saul but he’s not exactly in the presence of friends.  He’s got to come up with a plan to get away for he represents a threat not just to Saul but to other kings around Israel.   And he comes up with a “crazy” idea.  He’ll act insane.

You know, David could have claimed responsibility for his deliverance.  Why didn’t he?  After all, he was the one who thought up the stunt.  If God had been the deliverer, why wasn’t there bolts of lightning or flames of fire?  To have someone act crazy seems a little wimpy for God.  In fact, if you go back to the 1^st Samuel account, you won’t find God being mentioned as intervening in this situation.  Instead, this passage was probably a folk story that gave ancient Israel a good laugh at the cunningness of their great king, David.  These are the stories that helped endear David to the Hebrew people.  But David, the Psalmist, knows who butters his toast.  He points to God.

This speaks well of David’s character, his crediting God for his salvation instead of claiming responsibility himself.  Despite his faults, David recognizes that all his blessings are from God.  That’s why he is remembered as a great king and able to survive Bathsheba-gate and other scandals of his administration.

There are two parts to the part of the Psalm I read this morning.  In the first seven verses, the Psalmist recalls God’s good deeds.  In verse two, he proclaims God’s good news to the humbled, verse four to the fearful, and verse six to the poor.  This section ends with the Psalmist envisioning the angel of the Lord on sentry duty, camped around those who fear the Lord, saving them from their troubles.  God is good; the Psalmist knows this!  God wants what is best for us and for all his creation.

The second part of this Psalm concerns itself with our response to the goodness we’ve experienced from God.  Reformed theology—the theology of the Presbyterian Church—taking its cue from scripture, has always maintained that God’s grace comes before human response.  In other words, we don’t buy grace, we can’t bribe God for it, and we don’t keep God’s law just so God will be good to us.  God has already proven his concern for his people as the Hebrew people experienced over and over again.  We, too, have experienced this love through Jesus Christ.  After reciting his experience with God’s grace in the first seven verses, the Psalmist invites us to experience it.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” he proclaims.  “Come, O children, and I will teach you to fear the lord.”  “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit; depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.”  Having encountered the divine, the Psalmist invites us not only to experience God but also to change our lives to reflect God’s righteousness.  First there’s God’s grace, then our response!

How many of you have seen the Robert Devall movie, The Apostle?  It came out 15 or so years.  In it, Devall plays the character of Sonny, a Pentecostal-holiness preacher who, in a fit of rage, takes a baseball bat to his associate pastor, who is having an affair with his wife.  Not only is the guy his wife’s lover, he’s also gaining the loyalty of Sonny’s kids.  The man dies and Sonny flees, settling in rural Louisiana where he takes on a new identity as Apostle E. F.  Teaming up with a retired African-American pastor, the two set out to rebuild an old church building and to establish a new congregation.

Soon, with an old school bus and the remodeled church building, Sonny is back in the preaching business.  His first Sunday is a bit slow, but slowly he fills the building and soon the congregation is hopping.  Although the style of worship is foreign to traditional Presbyterian worship, there is little doubt that God is present and that Sonny believes in what he’s doing.  Even when the law finally catches up with him following an evening service, Sonny is calm.  Asking the officer for some time, he takes off his watch and jewelry and gives them to a man in the church and asks him to hock the items and use the money to keep the ministry going.  In the final scene of the movie, Sonny and a group of fellow prisoners are working in a chain-gang.  As they work in a ditch with swing blades, Sonny recites a litany of God’s goodness and his fellow prisoners respond with praise.

As humans, we have our share of shortcomings and failures.  Sonny had more than his share, including murder, yet in the movie Devall was able to show God working through his character such as when he stands down a bulldozer driven by a local bigot who planned to destroy the church where Sonny was preaching because of the interracial makeup of its members.  With confidence, Sonny was able to confront this guy and soon, the bigoted man is on his knees praying.  The movie shows God using Sonny, a broken and guilty man, just as Scripture shows us God using David, despite his shortcomings.

Robert Devall, in an interview after the release of “The Apostle” was asked about why he would display bad side, the weaknesses of the preacher.  He said:

“[W]e either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the bible. I would have to rip the Psalms out of the bible and never read them again. Because no one less than the greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife. And that was a far more evil thing than anything Sonny would ever, ever do.”[3]

As humans, we have our good and our bad sides.  We can be petty and needy, especially when we focus on ourselves.  If David had wanted to claim responsibility for his escape from the Philistines, he could have and no one would have thought twice, but God wouldn’t have received the glory and ultimately, that’s what is important.  We need to get the focus off us and onto God—that is what worship is all about.

If we want true joy in our lives, we need to bask not in what we’ve done but in what God has done.  If we want to truly reflect Jesus to the world, we can’t focus on ourselves.  David knew his success belonged to God and was able to rejoice, not in what he could do, but in what God was doing.  And David invites us to experience God, to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Will we take up on his offer?  Will we allow worship to change us so that we might live not for ourselves, but for our Lord Jesus Christ?  May his name be honored in our lives.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2007), 77.

[2] 1 Samuel 21:10-15.

[3] Bill Blizah & Ronald Burke, “The Apostle: An interview with Robert Devall, Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2, #1 (April 1998).  See  https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/apostle.INTERVIEW.htm

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

April 12, 2015

Genesis 1:14-18, 1:26-2:3

Over the next five weeks, I want us to think about how worship can assist us in being better disciples.  How might worship help us reflect Jesus’ face to the world?  This series of sermons will correspond to a class I’ll begin teaching starting this Wednesday (at 7 PM). In these sessions, we’ll explore in depth what I am trying to convey in my sermons.

We worship a God of order.  The first thing God does in the opening of Scripture, is to bring order to chaos.  The earth was a formless void in which wind blew upon the waters and all was dark.  God begins by creating light and separating it from the dark, and then creating the sky and then separating the land from the sea.  In the first three days, the earth takes shapes.  Now this isn’t to say that God does this in our understanding of a 24 hour day in which the earth spins around.  There is a deeper meaning to be learned.  Besides, God’s time is not our own, as the Psalmist reminds us when he proclaims that a thousand years in God’s eyes are like a day to us.[1]

We live by calendars and watches (or iPhones, which combine the two).  We’re all incredibility busy, but that’s not something unusual for humanity.  We learn early on that if we want something done, we best do it ourselves and in such we work hard, which is good but we risk making an idol out of ourselves when we achieve.  Therefore, it is good to have reminders to pause and worship.  The church has a calendar which strives to remind us of what God has done and we’ll talk more about that in my Wednesday night study. Today, I’m going to focus on our daily and weekly schedules and the need for regular prayer and for observing the Sabbath. These two things will enhance our worship of God.

When we carve out space with the time we’re granted in order that we might focus on God, we bring a different order to our lives.  We realize our dependence on our Creator and our own limitations.  When our lives are ordered in a holy way, we align ourselves with God’s purposes.  Order reprioritizes our lives.  We’re important to God, as we’ll see in our morning reading, but we’re not the center of the universe.  Today, I want us to look at the ending of the first account of creation as found in Genesis 1.  I’ll begin reading with verse 14.

###

I’ve always marked time by the sky, at least since I was a Boy Scout and became interested in the constellations and their movements.   Growing up, I’d spend nights in the fall fishing on Masonboro Island with my dad.  This nine mile long uninhabited island can be quite dark, especially when the moon is not up, providing a wonderful vista to watch the winter   constellations rise on the horizon.  As the hours in the evening passed, the stars would rise higher.  By the time I was in high school, I had come to associate the rising of Tarsus, the Pleiades, and Orion with fall.  The later in the season it was, the earlier in the evening they’d rise, so by winter they’d be up in the sky as soon as it was dark.  As we’re now in the spring, you can watch them setting in the west shortly after the last of the day’s light has drained from the sky.  It won’t be long and they’ll all disappear in the evening sky, only to return in the fall.

Having lived and camped in the arid west, where you can sleep on the ground without a tent and bug net and not be rained upon or driven crazy by bugs, I used to make a game of guessing what time it was by how far the constellations had moved from when I first fell asleep.  When I’d check my watch, I’d generally be close, within an hour.  While doing this, I often thought about how the ancient people kept track of time by the heavens.  Not only was the heavens their clock, it was also their calendar.  When certain stars appeared on the horizon early in the evening, they’d know it was time to plant their crops or that the rainy season was approaching.

We’re told in the Book of Ecclesiastes that God has instilled in us a sense of time—past, presence and future—and has made everything for a particular time in our lives.  We can’t know what God’s up to, but according to this Old Testament book, we’re to enjoy what God has given us while we stand in humbled awe before our Creator.[2]  Today, think about the cycles of time and how we worship God.

The early Christians had their prayers at dawn and sunset, the latter known as vesper or evening song.  The monastic movement within the early Christian Church divided up the day into “hours” and the night into “watches” as a way to help them fulfill Paul’s command to pray without ceasing.[3]  Kathleen Norris, a Presbyterian lay pastor and author, spent two sabbatical periods of her life living in monastic setting in which she set her day by the canonical hours.  Reflecting on her experience she wrote:

“In our culture, time can seem like an enemy: it chews us up and spits us out with appalling ease.  But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God, and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used by it.”[4]

Perhaps we need to look at how we allow time to control our lives and reorder our time so that it might inform our spiritual lives.

The Bible opens with a story of time, as God brings order into the chaos.  Everything has its place–earth and water, light and dark, sun and moon…  Interestingly, light is created on day one, the sun and the moon are placed in the sky on day four.  What’s going on with this?  God isn’t telling us how the cosmos was created; God is making a theological point.  True light comes from God, as we read in the first chapter of John’s gospel.[5]  There were those in the ancient world who worshipped the sun and sought meaning from the stars, but the God of creation dethrones such fake deities.  The sun, moon and stars become a calendar instead of a god.  The opening chapter of Genesis is filled with theology that helps us understand the nature of God and our role within God’s creation.

The next thing I want you to understand about this reading is how the day is organized.  We’re told over and over again that there was evening and then morning, then the first day (or the fourth of the fifth).  In other words, as we learn from our Jewish friends, our days don’t begin with the ringing of the alarm clock and the scuttle to get somewhere on time, but with the setting of the sun.  God invites us to begin our days in rest, not labor!  Slaves labor to earn rest, but that’s not a part of God’s gracious plan for us.  Each day begins with the rest necessary for us to sustain life.

But there is another rest that we’re old of in these verses, one that comes at the end of the week, the Sabbath rest.  But before we get to that, we come upon God’s creative activities of the sixth day and are reminded that God has been busy long before we came on the scene.  We didn’t inherit a formless void of earth.  Instead, God created the earth and then brought us into it to be his partner in maintaining it as we enjoy its benefits.  According to Genesis 1:29 and 30, we shouldn’t be going hungry because God has taken care of our needs.

Then, after finishing the work of Creation, God takes a break.  When we observe this Sabbath rest, we are emulating God.  Daily rest is granted so that we might be renewed for work, for God created us in that way.  But the Sabbath is a gift.  It’s a chance to unhook for the pressures of life and step back from all that we’re doing and acknowledge our dependence on God.[6]

How many of you have seen the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”?  If you haven’t, you should; it’s a beautiful film.  Tevye, a milkman in Czarist Russia, is a devote Jew.  At the end of the week, he greets the Sabbath at sundown, playing his violin.  It’s a special day, a special time.  By observing the Sabbath religiously, he has fostered a deep relationship with God, often talking to God as he delivers milk to the village.  If we can instill within our routines time (to reflect, to mediate, to pray, and to enjoy the Sabbath), we’ll be brought closer to God.  Tevye, in the movie, is able to find strength to get through some very difficult times including persecution, because of how, participating in this godly ritual, he’s been brought closer to the Almighty.

If time, as illustrated in the setting and rising of the sun, the positions of the stars and the moon, has been placed into order by God, it’s sacred.  It’s a gift!  As one’s who acknowledges the source of this gift, we should give thanks to the Creator by hallowing out a portion of time to focus on the relationship we’re called to have with God through Jesus Christ.

Now Jesus, as we heard in our New Testament reading, warns us against doing this in a legalistic way.[7]  We don’t observe the Sabbath as a way of earning salvation.  Instead, the day is provided for our benefit, as a way that we can grow closer to our Heavenly Father.  Jesus grants us the freedom to observe the Sabbath for the right reasons.

We could all benefit of taking a day off, a day to stop and just enjoy. Furthermore, as Jesus shows us countless times in his life, when he went off alone to pray,[8] we need to take time during our days to pray and to be at one with our Father.  Through Christ, we’re called into a relationship with God and as we know from our relationships on earth, they require a commitment, they require time…

The first way that worship should help us reflect Jesus’ face is to remind us that time is sacred and that our lives need to be reprioritize so we can connect with God in order that we might reflect the face of God’s Son.  Some of you are already doing this, but if you’re not, I encourage you to take a day a week to enjoy life and then to carve out of the other hours you’re given moments to connect daily with God.  At the very least, pray that God gives you strength during the day when you wake, give God thanks for that which you have when you eat, and surrender your burdens to God at night when you go to sleep.  Such simple gestures reminds us of what’s important and orients our lives in a manner that will bring God glory.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Psalm 90:4.

[2] Ecclesiastes 3:11-14

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5:17.  See C. W. Dugmore, “Canonical Hours” in The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986).

[4] Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996),  xix.

[5] John 1:4-5.

[6] Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (Dower’s Grove, IL: IVP, 2007), 106.

[7] Mark 2:23-28.

[8] Examples:  Matthew 14:23, 26:36-35; Mark 1:35, 6:46, 14:32, 14:36; Luke 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28-29.

Jeff Garrison

First Presbyterian Church

March 22, 2015

John 12:20-26

Image from http://www.atcunion.org/blog/files/0cd447caee0c7396988c0850231e44cb-197.html

This morning we’re going to explore a passage in the 12^th Chapter of John’s gospel.  This incident occurs just a few days before Jesus’ crucifixion.   The situation in Jerusalem is tense.  In the preceding chapter, Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave.  Paradoxically, in John’s gospel, this life-giving miracle is the final straw for the Jewish leaders.  They are thinking that the only way to stop Jesus is to kill him.  In the verse right before where I will begin reading, a new urgency can be heard within their voices as they complain about how everyone is going after Jesus. Providing life to one leads to the death of another—that’s a way of understanding the gospel!

It’s almost as if John is trying to legitimize the leader’s fear by then telling us a group of Greeks are coming to meet Jesus.  Jesus is popular!   But instead of building on his popularity, Jesus tells a parable that implies the seriousness of following him.   Listen.  READ JOHN 12:20-26.

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I like the way this passage starts off.  “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  If I was stronger, I’d turn this pulpit around and show you the plaque on the inside that reads, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” which is the King James translation of this passage.[1]  Hopefully, at times, Jesus is experienced in our worship (as well as in our lives).

Here, we have some Greeks, outsiders, seeking Jesus!  A shift has occurred.  The magnitude of Jesus’ ministry, which won’t be fully understood until after his death and resurrection, is foreshadowed.  Jesus had primarily worked with the Jews.  Now these Greeks seek Jesus.  There are disagreements among scholars if these “Greeks” were Greek-speaking Jews, Jewish proselytes, or Gentiles.[2]  Since they’re in Jerusalem right before the Passover, it seems that they must be Jewish; or, they are at least considering adopting Jewish practices and becoming a proselyte, but John doesn’t say one way or another.  Regardless of their background, John uses them to foreshadow Jesus’ larger purpose—salvation for the entire world.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” they ask.  Jesus draws people to himself, which he still does today, but we’re not told if they ever got a chance to see Jesus.  The question is asked of Philip—a disciple with a Greek name, which may be the reason he’s singled out.  In the stories of Philip, it seems he can’t do anything by himself.  Instead of answering, he runs off finds Andrew and the two of them take the request to Jesus. [3] But John doesn’t tell us if Jesus granted them an audience.  Instead, John notes Jesus’ shift in conversation, as he talks about what’s going to happen.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  Now that John has shown that interest in Jesus extends beyond those living in Judah, Galilee and Samaria, Jesus focuses on what is about to unfold.  “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  I’m sure this was sweet music to the disciples’ ears.  They’ve been wondering when Jesus was going to usher in his kingdom.   They’ve had visions of Jesus sitting up on David’s throne and them all around him in positions of power and glory.  But Jesus doesn’t stop at the glory, he continues on with a disturbing parable.  “Unless the wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a kernel, but in dying it can grow into a plant which bears fruit.”  Jesus isn’t just hinting around, he is saying clearly that he must die.  The Pharisees are going to get their wish.  As Jesus peaks in popularity, his life and ministry on earth comes to an end.

Let’s consider this parable.  Farming was tough back in Jesus’ day.  There were no Co-ops or Farm Supply Stores where you could buy seed.  Instead, you kept a portion of your previous harvest as seed so you would have something to plant during the next season.  This means that if you had a poor harvest and, as the winter continued, your supply of wheat would dwindle and you’d have to make a hard decision.  Do you eat all your wheat or do you tighten up your belt and go with less so that you will have seed enough for another crop?  Consider your thoughts as you, on an empty stomach, sowed the seeds into the ground.  It took faith to be a farmer back then, just as it does today, to bury seeds knowing they’ll die but in the hopes they’ll sprout.

Some of the disciples listening to Jesus’ parable had probably experienced such situations.  They knew the value of planting, of letting the seed die in the hopes that God would give it new life and an abundant harvest.  Here Jesus is talking about himself, about his death, but he quickly shifts to talk not just about himself but also about his followers.

“Those who love their life will lose it and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me…”  This idea of losing our lives or losing ourselves for Jesus isn’t too appealing, but there is something to it because this saying from Jesus is recorded in all four of the gospels.[4]

There are a couple of things in this passage that I want us to consider this morning.  First of all, Jesus wants to make sure that his disciples, and his followers who come thereafter, know that he came to die, and that in dying he was doing something very counter-intuitive.  Through his death, through being lifted up (if you’d read ahead to verse 33), Jesus draws all people to himself.  Like the seed that dies in the ground as it sprouts new growth, Jesus knows his sacrifice will reap an incredible harvest.

Jesus’ message is “I love you enough to die for you.”  In this way, Jesus is like a good parent who will do anything and everything to save the children.  It is something instilled in mothers throughout the animal kingdom.  I have seen it when paddling on a river and come near to the nests of ducks and one bird takes off, limping, as if to lead us from the nest.  The bird keeps moving away from the nest until we are far away and then, flying normally, circles back.  I’ve also seen this behavior when hiking—a grouse will wobble away from the nest staying just out-of-reach, until you are a safe distant from the nest, then flies off normally and circles back to the nest.  Both birds are making themselves more vulnerable in order to save their young.  Likewise, Jesus is there for us and not only is he willing to die for us, he does!

Jesus sacrifices for us, but he also calls on us to sacrifice for others.  It is not just about Jesus’ sacrifice, but our willingness to work on behalf of others.  If we follow Jesus, we must as he said in another place, “Pick up our cross daily.”[5]  The Spiritual life is about being in tune with the needs of others.  We have to be willing to sacrifice, to let go of things that we hold dear but which hinder our walk with Jesus.  If we want to enjoy a life with Christ, we got to give up a life of sinful ways.  You can’t be hating folks and be a Christ follower.  You can’t be dishonest and be considered a Christ follower.  I’m not saying we have to be perfect.  Certainly we’ll all slip up, but when we do, we confess and repent and continue on, devoting ourselves to change and continue striving to be better.

But this passage isn’t just about the sins we’re to give up; it acknowledges that a life following Jesus has cost which can be quite high—it can cost as much as our own lives.  Yet, our focus can’t be on what we’ll lose, but on what we –and more appropriately—what our Master will gain in the harvest.

We always have to give up something to acquire something else, that’s a principle of economics.  You can’t have it all, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, so you make an economic decision to sacrifice one thing for another.  If you’re a kid and you have a dollar burning in your pocket, you have to decide if you’re going to spend it on an ice cream cone that’s been tempting you, or if you will invest the dollar for when you go to college.  One satisfies an immediate need, the other a long-term need.  Unfortunately, in our society, immediate gratification generally wins. But not in the gospel!  Long-term gratification takes precedent.  Consider Jesus’ words about storing up our treasures in heaven where we don’t have to fear thieves and where they will not rust.[6]

What is it that Jesus is calling us to give up for him?   A lot of what is being taught in this passage has to do with death, but I hope you can see a linkage between this parable and Jesus’ teachings on stewardship.  In the parable of the talents, in which those who were rewarded had invested all they had, the ones who were rewarded did not hedge their bets.[7]  They had faith.  Jesus calls us to be faithful and willing to invest in the building up of his kingdom.  As an individual, that may mean being willing to give sacrificially to Christ’s work in our church and in his missions in the world.  Or it may mean you give up a pleasurable vacation and volunteer to go on a mission trip.  As a congregation it may mean us doing something we’re uncomfortable with, perhaps adjusting the style or the time of worship in order to make room to receive new disciples.  It may mean compromising so that we all benefit and our programs are strengthen.  It may mean we are forced out of our comfortable zone and go out into the world to help others.  “Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies,” we’re told.

I want to go back to that opening question in our text, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus?”  How would we respond to such a request?  Although we cannot take them physically to Jesus, hopefully they will witness Jesus in our lives and in the life of his community, the church.  For we are his body in the world and when we follow him, he can be seen through our lives.  As Jesus reminds us in the Parable of the Judgment of the Nations, when we show kindness, we serve him.  But you know what; Jesus doesn’t want us to wait for that question.  Instead, he wants us to share him, to show his love, with others.  Jesus wants us to reflect his face—Jesus’ face—onto a hurting world.  What are we willing to give us, to sacrifice, for him?  Amen.

©2015

[1]This isn’t the only pulpit with this as Frederick Dale Bruner points out in his commentary, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 712.

[2] Brown thinks they are Greek proselytes.  See Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 466.  Sloyan thinks they’re Greek speaking Jews living outside Israel’s borders.  Gerald Sloyan, John: Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox, 1988),155.

[3] When Philip was called to follow Jesus, he went and got Nathanael to go with him.  John 1:43ff.

[4] See Matthew 10:39, Mark 8:35, Luke 17:33.

[5] Luke 9:23

[6] Matthew 6:19-21.

[7] Matthew 25:13-20

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

March 15, 2015

John 3:14-21

Spring is around us as trees are budding forth as azaleas bloom.  The show of color is a reminder of the new life offered through Jesus Christ.  But before we can embrace the new, we must let go of the old which is what Lent is all about.

Today, we’re looking at the second half of Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus as found in John 3.  It contains that verse we all know—John 3:16—which is the gospel encapsulated in a single sentence.  I once heard it described in terms of superlatives:

• The greatest subject ever: God
• The greatest extend ever: So
• The greatest affection ever: Loved
• The greatest object ever: The cosmos
• The greatest gift ever: His one and only Son
• The greatest opportunity ever: Whoever believes
• The greatest commitment ever: Entrusting oneself to Him
• The greatest rescue ever: From destruction
• The greatest promise ever: Everlasting life[1]

In these verses, as in much of John’s gospel, our Savior speaks of light and darkness, of grace and judgment.  If we believe in Christ, we must leave the darkness behind and come into his light.  But that’s easier said than done, for shame holds us back.  Shame hinders our will.  READ John 3:14-21.

###

None of us like to admit guilt.  Nor do we like to be caught doing something wrong.  It’s a part of the human condition, going all the way back to the garden where Adam and Eve, after biting into that juicy piece of fruit, hid from God.  Or they tried to hide… Sooner or later our transgressions come to light.  We can’t run forever!  We end up like a kid, having raided the cookie jar, standing before our mom denying our deed with melted chocolate chips on our hands and crumbs in the corners of our mouths.  We get caught.  Maybe we’ll get away with our misdeeds for a while, maybe we’ll even go a lifetime without being caught, but the big guy knows.  Sooner or later, we must come clean.

In the meantime, we worry and fret over being caught.  We cover our tracks the best of our ability, but we’re never able to pull it off perfectly.  When I was in the ninth grade, I participated in a serious prank the last day of school before the Christmas vacation.  A couple of us decided our school needed a white Christmas and finding old test papers, we covered the front lawn with paper.  I don’t remember anything that happened during those two weeks off; I don’t even remember what I got for Christmas.  My only memory of that vacation is worry—being afraid that when my Christmas vacation was over, it would be extended for me to the great displeasure of my parents.  Mike (one of my co-conspirators) and I rode the school bus back to school that early January like two men on death row.  But we got off easy.  It seemed everyone had forgotten about the prank.  Worry, it turned out, was our penance.  But I still remember the knot in my stomach as I rode the bus back to school knowing I’d done wrong.

Garrison Keillor captures the fear of getting caught doing wrong in a humorous account in his first bestseller, Lake Wobegon Days.  The story is about a boy who is a member of a fundamentalist church.  One night, he goes out drinking with a Catholic girl…  They were driving home at night down the Old Post Road.  They’d had two whiskey sours each, on her fake ID.  When he topped a hill driving way too fast, he notices a pair of tail lights directly in front of him.  It was Brother Louie, driving his usual 30 miles per hour.  He slams on brakes, swerves, and then hits the gas to pass him…  But as he swerves, Louie’s neon red license plate holder catches his attention.  “The wages of sin is death,” the top side read.   “Romans 6:23,” was below the plate.  “It was like a flashbulb exploding my face,” he recalled.  His date thought he was a wonderful driver and had saved her life, but he knew the truth and assumed God saved him from his sin (drinking and lusting over a Catholic girl) because God had something important for Brother Louie to do.[2]

Have you ever been there?  Thinking God spared your life because it was the only way someone else would be safe?  There’s enough guilt in the world to go around and it causes us to think less of ourselves that we should.  For the truth is, as we read in this passage today, “God loves the world.”  This love implies a supreme act, its love shown in action.[3]   Secondly, this love is for the whole world, not just for believers.  The word translated here, as “world,” is cosmos, which implies all there is to the created order.  This is no selective love shown to just a few.  This is an all-encompassing love manifested in action.  My paraphrasing this passage, trying to capture the intent here, goes like this:  “God shows his love to the cosmos (think Star Trek) by giving His Son.”

All of us have done things for which we’re ashamed.  That’s okay.  As I’ve said, that’s part of the human condition, going back to the beginning.  We’re disobedient, we rebel, and then we feel guilty and want to go hide.  There are two important things to understand.  Our shame shows our need for grace and, secondly, God’s love still extends to us.  God provides a way for us to escape the helplessness that Nicodemus felt when Jesus told him, earlier in this chapter, that he’d have to be born again.  When Old Nick heard that, he thought he might as well throw in the towel.  But as we learned in that passage, Jesus isn’t talking about something that Nicodemus does, he’s talking about what God does for us.  God sends His Son.

This is good news; however, there is a warning linked to the good.  Jesus does not come to condemn the world, we’re told in verse 17.  He comes to save it.  But what about those who don’t want to be saved, what about those who don’t want to admit that they’ve got problems only God can solve?

I think this passage might be best understood in light of the events at the Garden when our ancestors first violated God’s order.  “Eat of this tree and you will die,” they were told.   And like a kid being told not to play in the puddle or with an electrical outlet, they went right to it and the shadow of their curse hangs over humanity today.  Call it original sin.  As a race, we’ve fallen from God’s grace.  We’re condemned!  That’s a given.  That’s already happened.  Jesus doesn’t come into the world to bring further condemnation; he comes to save.

Think metaphorically of the human race sailing on the Titanic.  It’s struck ice and is listing badly.  Jesus is a purser, calling folks to get into the lifeboats, but as we know from that maritime disaster, the first set of lifeboats go away nearly empty.  Most people put their faith in the supposedly unsinkable ship.

You may have faith in your own ability to save yourselves, or you may just be afraid of what might be exposed if you come into the light, either way your ego keeps you from experiencing the fullness of life as God intends.  And sooner or later, judgment day comes; sooner or later, our pride and misdeeds will be brought to light.  What then?

Graham Greene’s wonderful novel, A Burnt-out Case, is the story of Querry, an architect, who has built great cathedrals but yet doesn’t believe in God.  Tired of all the praise and glamour, he runs away to a Leper Colony in the Congo, “into the heart of darkness” (to quote another English author).   It seems appropriate, with our text from John, to have someone running away from God with the hopes of hiding in the jungle.  Of course, no jungle is dark enough for God of the cosmos, and even there Querry is hunted down.  He befriends one of the lepers, feeling a kinship with one whose flesh has rotted away.  Querry believes his soul has also experienced such rot.  Yet he finds enough of his old self that he’s able to build the one building that satisfies him—a simple hospital, nothing elaborate.

The book ends with Querry’s death.  We’re left with an uncertainty as to whether or not Querry experienced salvation.   In the last chapter there’s a discussion between a doctor and one of the priests who works at the colony.  They cannot decide if his soul has been “cured.”  But as the priest notes, “he learned to laugh and to serve others.”  And then he quotes the medieval mystic Pascal, “a man who starts looking for God has already found him.”[4]

Although we may love the darkness, we can’t run forever.  Yes, we can try…  But sooner or later the truth comes out.  The sooner we stop running and open ourselves up to the grace God offers through Jesus Christ, the happier we’ll be.   There is no need to carry around the shame and the guilt of sin, for God through his Son, provides an alternative.  We can get over our guilt.  We can put away the burden of sin and shame and embrace a new life as a disciple of Jesus—the life of a believer in the one who is the author of all life.

Our passage today is part of a longer section.  It starts with Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night.  And Jesus tells the Pharisee that he’ll need to be born again—which leaves Nicodemus speechless, for he can see no way he can make this happen.  But that’s just the point.  He can’t.  We can’t.  But God can.  And God cares for this messed up world so much, he’s willing to give it all, to give his Son, so that through him we can find forgiveness and acceptance and be able to put away the burdens we’ve carried, and live life eternally in his presence.  Don’t be afraid, that’s the message for all of us here.  Don’t be afraid of the light—it’s the only hope we have.

Our passage begins with Jesus recalling a strange healing ritual God had Moses perform in the desert—gazing upon an object they feared—a bronze serpent.  Those who were able to face their fears were able to be healed of the snakes’ poisonousness bite.  Don’t ask me how it worked, but it’s the same way with our sin.  We don’t like it, but as long as we let our fear keep it from the light, we will never get better.  We need to face our fears and one of our greatest fears is our shame being brought to light.  But it is the only way to salvation, the admission that we can’t save ourselves and must surrender all to the God of Creation who showed us his love in Jesus Christ.  This week, when you experience the glorious sunlight of spring in Savannah, think about what sins you need to bring to God’s light in order to be healed.  Amen.

©2015

[1] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 201.

[2] Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Penguin, 1985), 140.

[3] See Raymond Brown, The Gospel of John I-XII: The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 133.

[4] Graham Green, A Burnt-out Case (New York: Viking, 1961), 247.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Boy Scout Sunday: Psalm 8  

February 8, 2014

 My love for being outdoors was kindled during my years as a Boy Scout.  Our troop would often camp in Holly Shelter Swamp along the Northeast Cape Fear River.  Down below the bluff on which we camped was a dirt parking lot for a boat ramp.  On Saturday evening, after the sun set and dinner was done and dishes washed, we would gather in the empty parking lot for a giant game of capture the flag followed by a bonfire.  In the winter, with clear skies and no electric lights for miles, the stars were brilliant.  Some nights, our scoutmaster would tell us a scary story but other nights he’d talk about the mythology behind some of the constellations.  We would look up at the sky in awe, and I still do.  On Thursday evening, about nine, Orion was high overhead, Tarsus (the Bull) along with Pleiades (the Seven Sisters), were beginning their descent toward the western horizon as Canis Major (with the Dog Star) rising higher in the east.  Looking up, I felt as if I am among old friends.

Psalm 8 is attributed to David, the Shepherd King. I can imagine him, on the nights he spent out in the fields with the sheep, looking up in awe of God’s handiwork.  The sky, especially on a crisp clear night, is amazing.  And he pens these words…   Read Psalm 8

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Do any of you Boy Scouts like Dennis the Menace?  He was one of my heroes when I was in Scouts and my uncle, who was like an older brother to me, would pass along his old comic books and I would laugh and laugh as I devoured them.  I remember in one strip, Dennis the Menace tells his friend Joey he prayed at night because the rates are lower.  (I hate to have to explain this joke, but it’s probably one only those of you over 25 who understand… you see, before cell phones and changes in telephone services, it was once much cheaper to call at night.  That’s a history lesson for the Scouts!).

Part of what makes Dennis so endearing is his honesty. “It’s cheaper to pray at night,” the five-year old reasoned, picking up I’m sure on a reference from his parents that long-distance calls are cheaper at night than daytime. And why shouldn’t prayer be the same way? There may even be an underlying truth to his comment. I expect if you took a survey of people who pray regularly, you’ll find that with the exception of mealtime, most people pray at night, while horizontal in their beds. I know I do.  It’s the time of day to put our worries aside and prayer is one way for us to do this.

If you are praying at night, continue! But if you are only praying at night, think about what this says about how important God is in your life. As I once heard it said, “Prayer is not a part-time occupation for Christians.” If we want an intimate relationship with God, we have to do our part to stay connected as well as to understand what God requires of us.

Since Christmas, I have been talking about distinctions which make us Presbyterian and a part of the church known as the Reformed Tradition.  One of the things we in the Reformed Tradition highlight is the importance of stewardship.[1]  Now, too often people only think of stewardship as giving money to the church, but as I’ll say over and over again, that is only a very small part of what it means.

Stewardship is an acknowledgement that all we are and all we have and the entire domain in which we live belongs to God.  As stewards, God has placed us on earth and expects us use the gifts given to make the world a better place.  We are called by God, we are saved through the death of Jesus, for the purpose of carrying out God’s will.[2]  Therefore, all of us, not just these guys in uniform at the front, are to be doing good turns daily! We’re to be God’s stewards of that which God provides, making the world a better place even as we wait for paradise to be restored as we heard in our first reading this morning.[3]

Today, we’re spending time with a passage that’ll help us understand our role as God’s stewards in the world.  God creates a world that over and over again is proclaimed “good.”[4] And God, the Almighty one, the “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” gives us dominion over this world. We’re heirs of God’s creation and his creative ability. Unfortunately, too often we take this for granted. But it’s not always been that way. Listen to what Eugene Peterson, the translator of The Message, a Presbyterian minister and theologian has to say about how Israel used the Psalms.

The Psalms were prayed by people who understood that God had everything to do with them. God, not their feelings, was the center. God, not their souls, was the issue. God, not the meaning of life, was critical. Feelings, souls and meanings were not excluded—they are very much in evidence—but they are not the reason of the prayers.[5]

 The Psalms are prayers and hymns of Israel, a people who, in their best, drew their meaning from this unique relationship they had with the Creator. They were a people who didn’t consider prayer a long distant phone call, for they knew God was present. Likewise, God is present with us. We don’t pray just because we’re in the mood; we don’t pray just because we need something; we don’t pray just because we want to go to heaven—that’s all self-centered stuff—we pray because we acknowledge God as source of all life and from there know that if we’re to be happy, content, and fulfilled in this life, we must ground ourselves in a relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.

The author of the Eighth Psalm is amazed when he contemplates God. Think about him lying on a hill there in Judea watching sheep. As night descends, he looks up into the sky. Stars begin to pop out and he makes out images—the dipper. If it’s winter, he sees Orion, the hunter; if it’s summer, there on the southern horizon, he watches the Scorpion. He looks in awe at the planets. In amazement, he gazes upon the waning moon and is in awe at a streaking meteor. Taking all this in, he’s humbled to think about vastness of the universe and that God, who created is all, is still concerned with a mortals like him, with mortals like you and me.

Some may look at the sky and be overwhelmed and feel so insignificant, but the Psalmist takes a different tack.  As one Old Testament scholar writes, when it comes to God, we don’t worry about what we don’t know about galaxies and electrons, instead we proclaim who it is we trust.[6]

The Psalmist thinks about how God created us. “We are created a little lower than God,” he writes. Indeed, we are created in God’s image; we’ve been given a huge legacy.  Just as God has control and dominion over the universe, we have dominion over our world. The Psalmist recognizes human power, but it’s a power within the context of God. As humans, we relate to the world around us like God relate to us; in other words, God cares for us and we should care for the part of God’s creation we’re given dominion over. Our power is a gift from God. Having dominion doesn’t mean we’re absolute monarchs; rather we’re benevolent kings over creation, ruling for the benefit of all creation.[7]

After the Psalmist elevates the human to a creature given special power and responsibility from God, he returns to his original words: “O Lord, Our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Everything within the Psalmist life is centered and ordered on his relationship to God. If he wants to boast on his achievements, he must, as Paul suggests, “boast in the Lord.”[8]

You know when we consider the wonders of the universe and then consider how God is closely involved with all our lives; we should realize the nature of our relationship to God. When God is revealed in Scripture, we find that our own understanding of self is linked to God. There is no revelation of God without it also throwing light on the nature of humanity.[9] Looking at God, we learn who we are—the power we have as well as our limitations—so that we can see how we should live in order to maximize our lives. Looking at God, we should stand in awe, but with joy in our hearts. God is good and has entrusted us with a world that provides for our needs, a place where we can live fruitful and fulfilled lives; but it’s an awesome responsibility for we are to be good stewards of the gifts God has given.

Let me tell you a story… Once there was a good king who ruled wisely and was loved by all the people of his kingdom. He only had daughters, four of them, and he loved them as well. One day he called his daughters together and told them he was leaving on a long journey. “I wish to learn about God,” he said. “I’m putting you in charge.” They didn’t want him to go, but the King said he’d pray for them and they’d do well. He also told them he had a gift for each of them. They each stepped forward and he placed a grain of rice in each of their hands, telling them it was his wish for them to learn the meaning of the rule.

The oldest daughter immediately went into her room and tired a long golden thread around the rice and placed it in a crystal box. Every day she would look at it. The second daughter also went to her room and placed the grain of rice in a wooden box and put the box in a secure spot under her mattress. The third daughter, the pragmatic one (there always one of them), noticed her grain of rice was no different than all the others. She threw it away, figuring she could always replace it. The youngest daughter took her grain of rice to her room. She thought about it for a week or two, for a month or so. Then finally, she understood.

Several years passed before their father, the king, returned from his pilgrimage. As the oldest daughter saw her father coming down the road, she rushed out to greet him, showing him the grain of rice he had given her. “Very good,” the king said. Then the second daughter ran forth and presented her grain to her father and again the king said, “Very good,” he said again. As the first two daughters were heading out to greet the father, the third ran into the kitchen and fetched a grain of rice. She too presented it to him and again he said, “Very good.”

Finally, the youngest daughter stepped forward and told her father that she did not have the grain of rice he’d given her. “What did you do with it,” her father asked?” “Father,” she said, “I thought about the meaning of the rice for a long time. Finally, I realized that it was nothing but a seed, and then I discovered the meaning. So I planted it (obviously this was a grain of rice that hadn’t been bleached or shucked) and it grew and from that I harvested many seeds and replanted them and now I have enough rice to feed our kingdom.” She then led her father, the king, to where he could see the results. Surrounding the castle were acres and acres of rice.

The king took off his crown and placed it on his youngest daughter’s head saying, “You have learned the meaning of the rule.”[10]

To paraphrase the Psalmist: “God has given us dominion over the works of his hands; God has placed all things under our feet….” Jesus tells us, “The kingdom of God is like a seed…”[11] Standing in awe of God doesn’t mean we’re caught like a deer in the headlights. We worship an awesome God; a God who made us just a little lower than himself, and because of this we have incredible potential to be a positive force for good in the world.

Do you accept the potential God has given you? Will you accept your responsibility to be a good steward of all that God has given you?  Will you do your good turn daily?  Amen.

©2015 

[1] Presbyterian Church USA, Book of Order, F-2.05

[2] Ephesians 2:10, Titus 3:6-9

[3] See Revelation 21 & 22.

[4] Genesis 1:31

[5] Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 14.

[6] James L. Mays, “What is a Human Being?  Reflections on Psalm 8,” Theology Today 50: #4 (January 1993), 517.

[7] Cf: Mays, 518.

[8] 1 Corinthians 1:31, 2 Corinthians 10:17; Galatians 6:14.

[9] Artur Weiser, Psalms: Old Testament Library, Herbert Hartwell, translator, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 142-143.  In the opening chapter of The Institute of Christian Religion (1559 edition), John Calvin writes:  “man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him (God) to scrutinize himself.” (Calvin, Institutes, I.1.2)

[10] William R. White, Stories for Telling (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 71-73.

[11] Matthew 13:31.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

January 11, 2014

2 Timothy 3:10-17

Martin Luther

Before the great awakening of the church in the 16th Century, known as the Protestant Reformation, the Western Church held to multiple sources of authority: the Bible, the church, and tradition.  In time, errors seeped into the church, leading Martin Luther to proclaim that only scripture held ultimate authority and that the pope and church councils may be fallible. This didn’t go over well in some corners.  Luther ideas that began to spread throughout Europe challenged the power of the established church and was booted from the Roman Church.  Unintentionally, Luther began the church that now bears his name, but he also placed his stamp on the entire Protestant Reformation.

Unlike the Swiss Reformers, such as Calvin whom I wove into my sermon last week, Luther didn’t want to leave the Catholic Church.  He actually believed if he could demonstrate to the pope the church’s errors, things would be changed.  But the church, it seems, always resist change and Luther found himself at the head of a new movement.  He thought of himself as an unlikely reformer.

Martin Luther had a troubled soul.  He was so bothered by the fear that he might forget and leave some sin unconfessed and thereby be assigned to perdition.  He drove his superiors’ nuts with his constant need to confess his trivial sins.  In reading the book of Romans, he had an epiphany.  He experienced God’s grace; he developed a faith in God’s goodness as opposed to his own good works; and he understood that scripture, God’s revelation to us, trumped all human authority.  Had Germany been making Volkswagens in those days, there’d be bumper stickers reading:  “Grace alone, Faith alone, and Scripture alone.[1]  In other words, Scripture tells us that we’re saved by God’s grace through faith…  This doesn’t mean that things like tradition or the ordering of the church weren’t important, they were and are, they’re just not authoritative.  Scripture, God’s revelation, is our source for authority.  This concept united the German and Swiss Reformers.

Today, my focus is on the role of Scripture and our passage comes from the Second Letter to Timothy, chapter 3, beginning with verse 10.

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When I was a child, I idolized Dennis the Menace.  In one of his cartoons, his Sunday School teacher asks him to name some of things that can be found in the Bible.  Dennis thinks for a minute and then responds: “my baby picture, dried up flowers, an’ a piece of bacon that I’ve been saving.”  I am sure we have all placed important things that we don’t want to lose in the Bible, which in a way shows our reverence to this book even if it isn’t its intended purpose.  We know that such things are safe there!

As a family, we always had such a Bible in the living room, one that probably weighed twenty pounds and was only read on Christmas Eve (there were other Bibles in the house to use for reading).  I remember my mother remarking that we need to dust the Bible just in case the preacher came by…  And then there was that kid who was asked by his mom during a visit by the preacher to bring “that big book that she’s always looking at to her.”  To her horror, her son brought her Sears and Roebuck’s big book.  Of course, it’s been a while since there was a Sears catalog.  To paraphrase Isaiah, “catalogues come, catalogues go, but the Word of God stands forever.”[2]

After the Diet of Worms, which thankfully had nothing to do with dinner but was a meeting of the German princes before whom Martin Luther refused to recant his teachings, Luther was on the fast track to his own barbecue.  In order to save Luther, Fredrick, one of Luther’s supporters, had him “kidnapped” and took him to the Wartburg Castle where he was disguised as a knight and allowed to write.  It was during this time that Luther produced his German translation of scripture, for he felt that the people needed to have access to God’s word in their own tongue.

I am sure that during this period of his life, when the Reformation was young and the danger was real, Luther could identity with Paul when he writes about his persecutions and sufferings?  Paul calls on Timothy to observe his teachings and actions, how he remained steadfast through his suffering, and then credits the Lord for rescuing him.  Like Paul, it seems that early in the Reformation, the more Luther was attacked and the more danger he faced, the more certain he became of his beliefs and the more defiant he was toward those who challenged him.   In Luther’s case, the Lord worked through a German prince to save his life and to allow him the freedom to expand the Reformation by the publication of a Bible in the vernacular, in the common language of the people.  As we are reminded in verse 12, persecution may come to those who desire to live a godly life, yet we are to endure and to remain steadfast in our faith.

In verses 14 and 15, we are informed that Timothy, to whom this letter was addressed, had a similar background to most of us.  He had been brought up in the faith.  He had attended church and Sunday School and the youth group or their equivalent.  He knew the sacred writings.  His training is credited to his mother and grandmother, Eunice and Lois.[3]  We, too, have had others who have instructed us in the Scriptures and to them we should honor and give credit for the gift they’ve given us.

The highlight of this passage is in verse 16 which reminds us that Scripture takes precedent over all human authority including the church.   Even our struggling denomination proclaims this.  The Bible trumps both the Book of Order and the Book of Confessions.  Those other books aren’t sacred.  They are referred to as “subordinate standards,” “subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him.”[4]  The confessions can help us interpret Scripture, but cannot replace it.

“All scripture is inspired by God,” we’re told in this passage.  Let me unpack this a bit.  For Timothy and his contemporaries in the late first century, scripture was the Hebrew Bible or what we know as the Old Testament.  The New Testament, such as this letter, was in the process of being written.  But in time, the new canon came into being and the church applied this teaching to both the old and the new.  Those of us within the Reformed Tradition see them as equally important.  Both testaments contain revelation of God.

Presbyterian Seal

This is the reason most Presbyterians have two candles on the communion table and our seal has two flames beside the cross.  One candle (or flame) is for God’s revelation in the Old Testament as symbolized in the burning bush.  The other candle represents the New Testament and God’s ongoing revelation in Jesus Christ that continues with the Spirit which showed up on Pentecost as flames.   So, when we read all Scripture, we can assume this means the entirety of the Bible.

The second item in this phrase, “inspired by God,” also needs to be explored.  The word “inspired” comes from the Greek and can be literally translated as “breath.”[5]  We read in the creation account of God giving breath to Adam.  God gives us the breath of life.  Likewise, God gives us breath of life by inspiring those who wrote the Scriptures.  Furthermore, through the inward work of God’s Spirit, the Bible is “God’s Word in our hearts.”[6]

This passage concludes with a list of things for which scripture is to be used.  It doesn’t say that the Holy Book is a science textbook.  It doesn’t give us all the answers and is not to be used as a weapon.  It doesn’t give us all the answers.  Instead, Scripture is for teaching us about God and ourselves.[7]  It shows us where we are wrong so that we might realize our path and be brought into God’s grace and even after we have been brought into God’s fold through the forgiveness of our Savior, Scripture helps us along the path toward sanctification—as we strive to live in a manner that will honor and be pleasing to God.  In the end, as we read, as those who belong to God, through the study of scripture, we are equipped to do God’s good works in the world.

The Bible is a gift from God.  In it, we learn about God goodness and love and about our role in God’s world and coming kingdom.  If we are to be truthful to our calling as Christ followers, we must study and struggle with Scripture, praying for God’s Spirit to guide us.  For this reason, I encourage everyone of you to be involved in a Bible study, for the study of this book isn’t something we only do by ourselves late at night, it needs to be done with others who are also seeking out God’s will for their lives.  If you are not in a Bible study, ask yourselves, “why not?”  Seek out one or start a new one.  If you need resources to get started, they will be provided.  Just see me.

There was an old Jewish tradition that whenever a student would begin to study the Scriptures with a rabbi, a bit of honey would be dropped on the student’s tongue to remind him that God’s word is sweet.  It is life!  It’s the sweet life! Embrace it and live it.  Amen.

[1] I am indebted to Jack Rogers in a video on the “Essential Tenets” for this joke.

[2] Isaiah 40:8 (The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of God stands forever.)

[3] 2 Timothy 1:5

[4] Presbyterian Church, USA, Book of Order, F-2.02

[5]J.N.D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles: Timothy 1 & 2 and Titus (Hendrickson, 1960), 203

[6] Presbyterian Church, USA, Westminster Confession of Faith, Book of Confession 6.005.

[7] The third question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What do the Scriptures principally teach?”  The answer: “Scriptures principally teach what we are to believe concerning God, and what duties God requires of us.”

©2015

Moravian star on our front porch

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

December 28, 2014

Isaiah 64

Jesus was born at an interesting time. Luke provides a historical setting for the birth: Augustus was emperor, Quirinius was governor, and there was a major census being conducted.  It was a time of stability and peace in which the word easily spread throughout the known world.  But it was a fragile peace, maintained by terror and force.

In Simply Jesus, N. T. Wright begins telling Jesus’ story by going into the background of this world.  As an analogy, he draws upon the story of the fishing boat, Andrea Gail.  If  you read the book or seen the movie, you’ll remember she was lost in the North Atlantic during a storm created by the confluence of three weather systems that created The Perfect Storm.

Wright identifies the making of this first century perfect storm into which Jesus was born involving the confluence of the Roman world (which provided the means for the message to get out), the Jewish world (which was longing for a Messiah and hated the Romans) and the sovereign wind of God blowing into the already troubled world and challenges everyone’s (the Romans and the Jews) assumptions.[1]

When we invite God into our midst, we need to be careful.  We need to be ready to have things shaken up.  And that’s what happened when God came to us as a child born in Bethlehem.  Today, I want us to once again go back to that world without Jesus and imagine what life was like in Israel.  My passage today is from the Book of Isaiah, the 64^th chapter, in which the prophet cries out for God to intervene.  Would we be so brave?  Read Isaiah 64:

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Although Isaiah was centuries before the birth of Jesus, it was already a similar world.  Israel was a small nation, a pawn on an international scene dominated by foreign armies.  It started with the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, Babylonians and would continue on with the Persians, Greeks and finally the Romans.  This world of power was spinning around Israel.  God’s people were dizzy and felt lost and abandoned so that the prophet cries out to God to tear open the heavens and come down.

This is a cry of lament!  Isaiah knows God is near; he’s a devoted worshiper of the Almighty.  He and all Israel know God is not locked up in the heavens, beyond their grasp.  God exists! God listens to their complaints.  Tearing open the heavens is metaphorical language.  God is present!  It’s just that God doesn’t seem to be doing anything.  Israel would like to see some tangible evidence, a reminder, something to boost their faithfulness.  Therefore they call on God to reveal himself in a manner that his presence will be unmistakable: in an earthquake or fire or lightning.  They want God to reveal himself as in the days of old.  Isaiah cries for God to give his contemporaries who feels abandoned an example of his power like God did for Pharaoh. What they’d really like God to do is show up and scares the pants off their enemies.

You know, Isaiah’s request is a familiar one.  We’d all like to witness such power. I’ve been told many times by individuals that if they just had a sign, if they just had more tangible evidence, it’d make all the difference in their lives.  But does it?  After all, the Hebrew children in the wilderness had witnessed God’s power and all its fury with the plagues and the parting of the sea, yet they still continued to turn from God.  The disciples witnessed Jesus’ miracles, yet they still denied him.

There’s just something about us wanting God to step into history and to solve our problems, right here, right now.  We want God to be on our side; we want God to do our bidding; we want to choose God for our team as if we’re in some pick-up basketball game, forgetting that we don’t choose God. God chooses us!  Instead of us trying to lure God over to our team, we should make sure that we’re on his team.

This prayer, or lament, of Isaiah’s can be divided into three parts and if we separate them, we can better understand the prophet’s theology.  The first five verses ask God to act because God has acted in the past. Isaiah knows what God has done for the Hebrew people, they know what God is capable of doing; therefore he bases his request on God’s past history. Asking God to come down is an appeal for God to act in the world—to enter human history on behalf of his people.

You may be in the situation of Isaiah, knowing God but only in the past tense, thinking that God’s action stop with Jesus or the Apostles or maybe with your baptism or confirmation. If so, I invite you to join in Isaiah’s lament and cry out for God to make himself known to us once again.  God is the only one capable of meeting our innermost longings. We cry out to the Almighty, who already knows our needs.  Our cries led us to reevaluate our lives and how we relate to God. This is what happens to Isaiah.

Isaiah, after recalling God’s past grace, reflects on his and his people’s sinfulness. The second part of the petition involves confession. In verses five through seven, Isaiah admits the problems from which they need deliverance are result of their disobedience.[2] They have sinned; they are guilty; they need God to pull them out of the deep and troubling water.

Here again we often find ourselves in the situation of Isaiah.  At such times, we should ask ourselves what we have done to cause God to seem so far away.  Do we turn our backs on our Savior?  Is the problem with us?  Probably so, and we need to confess those sins which drive us away from God’s holiness.  We need to root out our indifferences toward God that cause Him to seem so distant.

The third part of this lament affirms their trust in God while continuing to plea for God’s help.  In a fashion reminiscence of Moses, who shamed God when the Lord wanted to destroy the people after the fashioning of the golden calf, Isaiah reminds God that the Israelites are his people.[3]  “God,” he says, “those destroyed cities are your cities; that ruined temple is your temple.”  God has big shoulders and Isaiah brings his petition before God, dropping his concerns on the Almighty.  Then he waits.  There is nothing more to do but to carry on as we wait for God’s answer.  We wait, trusting in the Lord.

In the fourth verse of this chapter, we are reminded that God’s works for those who wait.  And when we think about it, much of scripture is about God’s people waiting on God to act.  Abraham and Sarah waiting for a child; the Hebrew slaves waiting in bondage; those exiled in Babylon waiting for release; the waiting for the Messiah.  And now it’s our turn to wait for Christ’s return.  At times, at least within the measurement of human history, it seems as if God is slow to act.  Yet, in the meantime, we are to wait faithfully.  Our willingness to wait reflects our trust in the Almighty.

But our culture does not place much value on waiting.  We want things immediately—we desire instant gratification!  Fast food and faster computers, interstate highways and supersonic jets.  Instead of mailing a letter, we zip ‘em off by email, or we shoot a text and expect an almost immediate response.  We don’t make time nor do we have time to wait.  This is even true in religion for we want immediate salvation.  We want to accept Christ and all-of-a-sudden have everything better.  We want to have our spiritual longings filled, immediately!  But it doesn’t work that way.  There is truth in the old cliché, “Anything worthwhile takes time.”

About ten years ago, there was an editorial in Christianity Today about the prevalent culture of cheating.  The author pointed to book by David Callahan titled, The Cheating Culture; Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.  According to the author of this book, cheating had increased greatly in the final decade of the 20^th century.  One study cited found 90% of college graduates saying they’d cheat to get the job they wanted.  The editorial went on to extend Callahan’s thoughts to the spiritual realm and suggested that we cheat even there and that much of evangelical Christianity stands guilty.  “We read one-minute Bibles, pray through five-minute devotions, wander from one conference to another to get five keys to Spiritual success,” he writes.  “We except Spiritual maturity in 40 days of purpose-filled studies…  One of the lies of the world is that we can have instant discipleship….  We think we’re tourist, after instant gratification, forgetting we’re pilgrims in for the long haul to our new heavenly home.”[4]

We’ve just finished four weeks of Advent in which there was a lot of talk about waiting…  During these weeks, we were reminded of the centuries God’s people waiting for the Messiah, even as we wait for his return.  God, through the Psalmist, encourages us to be still (or, we might say, to wait) and know that He is God.[5]   At times, waiting may be our only real option.  We can barge ahead without God and screw everything up, or we can patiently wait for God’s direction.

You know, the ironic thing about this passage is that even while Isaiah calls upon God to come down from the heavens and make himself known, God was there.  God was present.  At the beginning of Chapter 65, God replies: “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me.  I said, ‘Here I am, here I am’ to a nation that did not call my name.”  God was present, but Isaiah’s contemporaries were unwilling to seek Him out.  God was working to get Israel out of exile and back to the Promised Land.  God was already forging a new relationship with his people, one that would in time cumulate with the birth of a Savior.

God was present then, amidst the chaos of the world, just as God is present now in a world that is seemingly just as chaotic.  At times, from our point of view, we might not know where God is, but when we look back on where we’ve been, we often realize God has been with us, guiding us along, working through us to bring about his purposes.

Let me clarify one point as we close.  I don’t want you to go away thinking that our waiting on God means no action on our part.  Isaiah wasn’t inactive.  He was proactive, taking his concerns to God and admitting his and his people’s shortcomings and in so doing, opening himself up for God to reveal himself as we see happening in the 65^th chapter of Isaiah.

Craig Barnes, who is now the president of Princeton Theological Seminary, says in one of his earlier books, Sacred Thirst, that the point of hope (and I’d say that same applies to waiting) is not just to hold on, it’s to be free so we can seek holiness where we find ourselves.[6]  And isn’t that what Isaiah does?  Externally, his situation doesn’t change, even after God replies in the next chapter. But he’s changed.  He’s changed because having called upon God and reflected upon his sinfulness, he’s now open to encounter God and to know God’s presence.  Knowing God’s presence is ultimately all that matters, for when God is with us, we can undergo any obstacles and face any challenges.  Amen.

©2014

[1] N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus” A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), 13-56.

[2] It is interesting that Isaiah began by blaming God (we sinned because you away-verse 5).  But the tone changes as he takes responsibility (you have delivered us into the hands of our iniquity-verse 7).

[3] Exodus 32:11-14. See also Numbers 14:13-17.

[4] “Spiritual Shortcuts,” Christianity Today (January 2005), 27.

[5] Psalm 46:10.

[6] M. Craig Barnes, Sacred Thirst: Meeting God in the Desert of our Longings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 175.

Frozen Cheeries, December 22, 2013

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

December 21, 2014

4^th Sunday of Advent

Hebrews 1:1-4

A year ago, on this very Sunday, I did something I had never done in my a quarter century of preaching…  I cancelled church.  Last December was the start of what became an infamous winter up north.  We started the month with heavy snows and cold weather, it just kept coming through mid-April.  Interestingly, however, things warmed up on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday of Advent.  The thermometer inched up above freezing and it started to rain.  It was just miserable—temperature in the mid-30s and pouring rain.   Then, as daylight faded, the rain continued as the temperature inched back below the freezing mark.  This was the making of a disaster.  That evening, we were treated to a better firework display than I’ve ever seen on the fourth of July as the ice on limbs caused them to snap and shorted out power lines, blowing out transformers.  Slowly, various sections of the town and the county went dark.  The roads were too slick to travel and filled with limbs and down lines.

Christmas Eve 2013

The next morning, we along with everyone else in the county, cancelled our worship services.   People fled the area, taking hotel rooms in Grand Rapids and other towns that missed the ice storm.  At the Garrison house, we spent the next day and a half in front of the fireplace and candles burned at night.  When we did get outside, it was to haul debris to the road for pickup, where it remained under a blanket of snow until April.   Thankfully, the power came back on at the church the evening before Christmas Eve.  The church building served as a warming station on Christmas Eve and we were able to have services that night.  However, most of the county was still without power on Christmas Day, some were out for over a week.  It was a Christmas to remember!

Sometime during all this mess of what was last winter, my daughter said she wanted to decorate a palm for our next Christmas tree.  I didn’t realize at the time that she was clairvoyant.  If you drive by our house and see the palm out front decorated, you’ll know why!   She has been too busy with school to get around to it, but she promises as soon as the rain abates…

Today, we’re looking at the fourth “non-tangible” gift we receive at Christmas—the gift of revelation.  Many people think about revelation in relation to the future and especially the end of time, as if it provides a way for us to be clairvoyant of God’s timing.  They forget Jesus’ word that no one knows the day or the hour…[1]  At its core, revelation is about God revealing himself to us.[2]   God is of a different realm and without revelation, we would not about able to know truth about the Almighty.  With the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, God’s revelation is made clear.  In the life of Jesus, we see God and learn what God considers important.  Our text this morning comes from the Book of Hebrews, Chapter 1, verses 1-4.

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Our mission statement here at Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church is to nurture Christians who, by their words and actions, reflect the face of Jesus to the world.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that people will experience his ministry through our actions.[3]  This is a big responsibility, and an important one, reflecting the face of Jesus to the world.  But we are equipped to do this because Jesus reflected God’s glory.  Jesus is the complete revelation of God.  Jesus came to show and display divine love.  Jesus came to help us understand who God is and who we are in relationship to God.  Jesus came to cleanse us from sin so that we might come into God’s presence without fear.

Our passage this morning comes from the “Letter to the Hebrews.”  Unlike many of the letters or epistles as they’re also known in the New Testament—those by Paul and Peter, James and John—Hebrews doesn’t appear to be truly a letter.  It has been suggested it might have originally been a sermon,[4] for instead of beginning with the greeting and niceties of a letter, the author starts with the one premise that makes all the difference in the world: God has spoken!  The writer of this sermon reminds his readers that God has been speaking to their ancestors all along, through prophets.  But now God has spoken in an even better way, through a Son.   One of the themes of Hebrews is the superiority of Jesus Christ to both human servants of God (prophets) and divine servants or messages of God (angels).

Historically, the church has spoken of Christ holding three offices: prophet, priest and king.  In all three, Christ surpasses human prophets, human priests and human kings.[5]  Throughout this book, the author goes into great detail to show Christ’s preeminence which he proclaims here at the beginning with a sevenfold confirmation of Jesus superiority:

1. He is appointed heir of all,
2. The is the creator of the world,
3. He is the refection of God’s glory,
4. He is the exact imprint of God,
5. He upholds all things by his power,
6. He purifies our sin and
7. He sits at God’s right hand.[6]

God, by coming to us in Jesus Christ, is revealing the nature of the divine in a way we can understand.  That’s why Jesus name is more excellent than all other names, as we’re told in verse 4.  Jesus Christ, our prophet, our priest and our king, the one who came to show us God’s glory and to forgive us so that we are freed to be God’s agents in the world.  During this season, we celebrate what happened at the stable in Bethlehem so long ago.  God came into the world and through Jesus showed the world his love.  But the story doesn’t end in Bethlehem or even at Calvary.   With Jesus, now in our hearts, we are to be the ones reflecting his love to the world so that all people might experience the joy of salvation and have hope.

There is a story that has been told before, you may have heard it, about a farmer who was a good man, but he had a hard time accepting the faith.  He was a good man, for you don’t have to have faith to be good.  He allowed his wife to attend church with the kids.  He’d enjoy his Sunday mornings at home, putting around the barn.

One Christmas Eve, his wife tried to get him to attend church with her and the kids, but he refused.  I’ll just sit and read a book and wait for you to return, he said.  When she insisted and wanted to know why he wouldn’t attend, he said it is because the story is nonsense.  “Why would God lower himself to come to earth as a man?” he asked.

The family left, disappointed, as he began to read his book.  Outside it snowing and cold.  The light was draining from the gray sky.  The man was immersed in his book when he heard a thump.  Then another thump.  He looked out the window and saw a flock of birds around the house and realized it they had been flying into the window in an attempt to escape the cold.  “They must have been migrating,” he thought, “and got caught in the storm.”

He was a good man and so he worried about the birds.  Finally he had an idea.  Pulling on his boots and putting on his coat and hat, he went into the storm that was becoming a blizzard.  He made his way over to the barn and opened the door thinking that the birds could seek shelter there.  But none of them would fly in the direction of the open doors.  He tried to shoo them into the barn, but they all scattered.  He went back inside and grabbed some bread and crumbed it up and sprinkled it on the ground.  The birds began to eat, so he made a path toward the barn, but they stopped short of the doors.

He keep trying to think of another way to lure them into the barn…  “Do you want to just sit out here and freeze to death,” he asked the birds in desperation.  “Why don’t you follow me?”  Of course the birds didn’t answer, they sat in the snow, their feathers puffed out for warmth, picking at whatever crumbs were left.  “If only I was a bird,” he said, “I could come among them and guide them into the barn.”

As soon as he said this to himself, the distant church bell began to ring.  He could hear it faintly from across the valley, as he recalled what he had told his wife earlier, how he questioned why God would come to us in the flesh.  Suddenly he understood what Christmas was about, why Christ had to come.  He fell to his knees in the snow and began to pray…

It would be a mistake to see ourselves as the farmer in this story; we’re one of the birds.  As a Christian, we’re the bird that “gets it,” we’re the one that understands the goodness in the farmer’s heart and therefore leads the flock into shelter, allowing others to come to understand the goodness that comes from our Father in heaven.

Will you be that bird leading others to safety?  Christmas is the most natural time to share your faith, to tell the story, to serve as Christ’s servants, to reflect the face of Jesus to the world.  Amen.

©2014

[1]Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32

[2] See the Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter 1:1 or 6.001) and the Confession of 1967 (Part 1, Section C2 or 9.27) n the Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church USA.

[3] Matthew 25:31-46.

[4] Hugh Montefiore, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 33.

[5] See the Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 152-155.

[6] F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 3-8.

Jeff Garrison

Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

Third Sunday of Advent

December 14, 2014

First Peter 1:1-5

It’s the third Sunday of Advent and today we’re looking at the third non-tangible gift that we might receive this Christmas—one of the gifts made possible by the coming of Jesus—the gift of hope.

For my text this morning, we’re in First Peter.   Let me give you a bit of background of this letter addressed to a series of churches in the northern area of what we now know as the country of Turkey.  The letter was probably written in the last quarter of the first century.  Peter encourages these churches as they strive to live as Christians in a hostile world.  Although the return address on the letter is Peter’s, there has been some debate among scholars as to whether or not it was written by Peter the fisherman (if so, he certainly had some help with his Greek grammar).  The letter doesn’t go into details of Peter’s life, but instead focuses on the lives of the recipients.[1]

As we listen to these opening verses, think about what it means to be faithful to the one whose birth we celebrate in less than two weeks.  Think about the hope we have in Jesus Christ.  Read 1 Peter 1:1-12.

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Let me tell you about a time in my life.  I woke up at precisely 6 A.M. the radio crackled with the Star Spangled Banner.  KSIS was returning to the airways with its 58 watts of power dedicated to covering the Wood River Valley.  During the summer I had come to depend upon the station (the only one I could get) as an alarm clock.  I would leave my radio on at night, as the station went off air at midnight, assured that in the morning I’d be rousted out of bed with patriotic furor.  Normally, I would jump out of bed, dress quickly and head down to the lodge and start a fire in the potbellied stove to knock the chill out of the air.  In the Idaho Mountains, it could be quite chilly in the early morning hours, even during the summer.  But on this day, I was not too quick to jump out of bed. I was fearful of what was ahead.  I laid there, warm under the covers, listening to the Star Spangled Banner, and then the news and the weather.  Although it was in the mid-30s at camp, the temperature in the desert to the south would spike above 100 that afternoon.

It was the day after Labor Day, my last day at a camp in Idaho.  In the kitchen, the cooks were preparing the last meal of the season for the few of us who were still on site.  Over a cup of coffee, we talked and laughed about the summer.  But inside, my stomach churned as I thought about leaving the familiar setting of camp and heading for the unknowns of Nevada.  The year was 1988; I’d taken a break from the seminary classroom to devote a year serving as a student pastor for a church in a small mountain town in Nevada.

As a naive seminarian, Nevada appeared as a den of iniquity.  Saloons and casinos that never closed, gambling and prostitution; I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into.

The following afternoon, after having driven across the desert and up the steep and windy road up to Virginia City, I stopped in front of the rickety white wooden church on C Street.  The doors were locked. For a few moments I stood on the porch, looking down Six-mile Canyon toward a rock formation known as Sugarloaf.  There were plenty of people on the streets, but no one seemed to notice me.  Everyone assumed I was just another tourist.

A couple minutes later, I headed down the boardwalk to the Bucket of Blood, a saloon where I had been instructed to pick up the keys for the church and for the little house where I would be living. I have to admit, it seemed a little odd for my first task being to call on a place named the Bucket of Blood.  The sun was warm and although the peak of the tourist season was over, there were still quite a few tourists on C Street, vying for the slot machines that stood just inside the doors of all the establishments adjacent to the boardwalk.   The noise of the electronic bandits and the smell of the sausage dogs and spilt beer overwhelmed me.  Again, I wondered, “What am I getting myself into?”

It’s hard for me now to think back about how I felt when I first went to Virginia City.  I was nervous.  I didn’t gamble and I’d never been inside a casino.  I’d never lived in a place where, on a given Sunday, only a handful of folks would be in church.  Needless to say, I was nervous, but I have to say things worked out and that year is one of the more memorable years of my life.  That Christmas Eve was a holy event (If you’re interested, I’ll post more about it in my blog later this week.[2]  That’s a teaser!)

Living in Nevada forced me to think hard about what it means to follow Jesus when, many times, being faithful to him means that we have to live differently than the society in which we find ourselves.  As a follower of Jesus, by refusing to go along with certain accepted things, we stick out.  This is the world in which those who followed Jesus in the first century lived, but it is also the world in which we now live.  A few decades ago, two scholars wrote a book titled Resident Alien: Life in the Christian Colony.[3] Their thesis is that the world has changed and as Christians, we’re the outsiders.  So, how do we live as resident aliens?

In the first sentence of Peter’s letter, we learn that its intended recipients are “exiles from the Dispersion.”  Now the Dispersion refers to those Jews who lived, at this time in history, throughout the Mediterranean region.  After Babylon, Jewish enclaves were established through that part of the world and, as we know from early church history, Paul and Peter and other Apostles often found a receptive ear in these communities.  If you think about Paul’s travels in Acts, his first place to visit in a new city, if it had one, was the synagogue.

But Peter isn’t writing to those in the synagogue, instead it is thought he’s writing to those who have been exiled or booted out of the synagogue (The exiled of the Dispersion).  In a religious sense, these are homeless people.  They are a minority to start with, but then they’re not wanted any more at the synagogue.  Because they are followers of Jesus, because they are disciples, they find themselves exiled from the community that was, in a sense, already exiled.

Think about the world in which they lived.  Most of their neighbors worshipped the ancient gods as well as Caesar.  For them, God in the flesh was the emperor in Rome.  If you lived in this world, you were expected to pay homage to the gods and to Caesar with a loophole provided for the Jews.  As the early Christians found themselves no longer a part of the Jewish minority, they had nowhere to go, in a sense they were “twice-exiled.”

But there is good news to these “twice-shunned” believers.  Peter’s language carries overtones of predestination (which by the way, didn’t begin with John Calvin or Augustine, but with the writings of Paul and Peter).  By the way, predestination essentially means that God has things under control and we’re in His hands and apart of his plan.  As much as we like the thought of free-will, the theology of predestination is only popular when things are in turmoil.  It implies an act of faith in the goodness of God despite the troubles of the world.

Peter reminds his readers that they have been chosen and destined by God.  So even though they may feel like out-casts, God is with them.  Furthermore, they’re sanctified by the Spirit and have been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, the one to whom they are obedient.  Peter, in the very first sentence, packs in the theology: all three members of the Trinity are lifted up as well as God’s gracious sovereignty, Jesus’ atonement and our need for sanctification.

Then, in verse 3, Peter begins to lay out the hope they have in Jesus Christ.  In the Greek, this is all one long run-on sentence, going all the way to verse 12.  Luckily, for us, the translators have broken the sentence up into smaller chunks even though by modern standards they’re still pretty long sentences.  In this super-sentence, Peter acknowledges the trouble his readers are facing, the trials they’re enduring, but he reminds them that their inheritance is intact.   Hold on, be obedient to Jesus, for it is in him that we have hope.   Even though it may not always seem like it, they are being protected by God and their future is bright.

Now, let’s face it, whatever tribulation we face today is nothing when compared to what Christians in the first three centuries faced, or even the challenges faced by many Christians today in other parts of the world.  Yet, we have our own problems and must remember that our first loyalty as a disciple of Jesus is to him, the one in whom we have our hope.  We’re to live in this world filled with values that run counter to the gospel.  But we lives here as resident aliens—whose lives are committed to the Lord into whom we have hope.

Christmas is the season of hope!  There is hope for all people, but especially those who are often overlooked by society, such as the readers of Peter’s letter.  But that’s the way God works.  Think of Mary, as we heard earlier, a nobody living in a second-rate town in a distant part of the world who is chosen to be the mother of Jesus.  It wasn’t because she was particular pious.  The decision that she carry God’s son was because of God’s graciousness.

In fact, the whole Christmas story is about hope being provided to those who often are without it.  Think of who gets invited to the stable… You’ve got the shepherds.  These guys were dirty and lived outdoors and weren’t exactly the pillars of the community.  And then there are the magi, the wise men from the east, foreigners, who were out-of-place in a Jewish society that longed for purity.  But it is to those on the margin who witnesses the miracle, who experiences the hope that comes into the world with the birth of a Savior.

We, too, are offered such hope.   Yes, as Peter points out, life isn’t always going to be rosy, but that doesn’t matter because we know things aren’t the way they should be.  But because we have faith in Jesus Christ, we endure. We live in eternal hope that is only possible for those who have been chosen and destined by God.  This Christmas, receive the gift of hope and consider what a difference it makes to your life and to the lives of those around you.  Live in hope!  Amen.

©2014

[1] The places in the letter that allude to Peter’s authorship is the first verse and a few verses in chapter five.  See Donald Senior, “First Peter Introduction” in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 2181-2182.

[2] My blog can be found at:  www.thepulpitandthepen.com

[3] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Alients: Life in the Christian Colony, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989).