Lent Midweek 2 2013

Lent Midweek 2
February 20, 2013
Jesus Is Our Sacrifice
Text: Hebrews 9:26-10:10

I’ll never forget the time when Jacob was about six years old and we lived in Pittsburgh at the time. One evening, the three of us were on a walk in the local park and we were climbing up the steps of a stadium. And Jacob, instead of climbing up the stairs, was stepping up on the benches. I can remember that a little voice in my head said, “that’s not a good idea.” But I didn’t say anything to stop him. Just like you might expect, his foot slipped or he missed a step and fell face forward right onto the bench. A cut opened on his forehead and he looked up at us, a stunned look on his face, and the blood instantly began to pour down his face.

Most people have a visceral reaction to the sight of blood. Blood is supposed to be on the inside of the body, not the outside. Usually, if you see blood, that is not a good sign. That means something is wrong.

I have met people who were shocked the first time they really read the Bible cover to cover at how bloody a book it truly is. There are 362 occurrences of blood in the Old Testament, most of the time referring to sacrifice or violent death. In the New Testament, 92 times blood is mentioned, again, usually in reference to violent death.

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Sermon: First Sunday in Lent 2013

Last Updated on Saturday, 02 March 2013 15:16

First Sunday in Lent
February 17, 2013
Text: Luke: 4:1-13

Whenever I baptize someone, I ask these three questions: “Do you renounce the devil?  And all his works?  And all his ways?” I like the custom of some of the Eastern Orthodox churches.  When they baptize someone, they literally spit at the devil.  So if you see me installing a spittoon in our sanctuary, you will know why.  I admit that I feel contempt for him for he has been no friend to me.

A lot of modern people will say that they don’t believe that the devil is a real personal being.  They believe instead that he is just symbolic of all the evil that exists in our world.  I suspect that one of the reasons modern skeptics have trouble believing in the devil is because of how we have portrayed him over the years.  If the devil is a red guy with a goatee, horns and a pitchfork, then I don’t believe in him either.  But that’s not what he is.  That’s a caricature.  It’s a cartoon.  Just like I don’t believe in a God who’s an old man with a long white beard sitting on a throne.  God is spirit.  And so is the devil.  God created the devil when He created the angels, because before the devil was a devil, he was one of the angels of God in heaven.  But he rebelled against the Almighty and was evicted from heaven.  Now, the Scripture says, he is roaming the earth looking for someone to devour.

The evidence is all around us.  A devastating school massacre in an otherwise quiet town in Connecticut.  Or closer to home, the epidemic of homicides in Chicago making it one of the top five most violent cities in the world.

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Sermon: Ash Wednesday 2013

Ash Wednesday
February 13, 2013
Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The high point of the year for a Christian is not Christmas.  It is not Mother’s Day.  It is not Arbor Day, 4th of July or even International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day (September 19).  It is Easter.  All the evidence tells us that Christians considered Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead to be most important day in the history of the world.  And from the very earliest times, Christians began observing an annual commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection.  Easter is so important in the life of a believer that Christians starting spending a few weeks leading up to it to prepare themselves spiritually for such a meaningful celebration.

This period of preparation is called Lent and it begins with a day called Ash Wednesday.  Lent is the forty-day period, not counting Sundays, between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

A typical Ash Wednesday service for millions of Christians around the world includes the invitation for each person to come forward to have the sign of the cross marked on his or her forehead.  As your forehead is marked with ashes, you hear these words from Genesis 3:19—“Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”

Putting ashes on your face has been a way to demonstrate remorse or humility or mourning from the time of ancient Israel and earliest Christianity

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Sermon: Second Sunday in Advent 2012

Second Sunday in Advent
December 9, 2012
Text: Luke 3:1-14

Yesterday, when I was working on this sermon and I was studying the passage from Luke chapter 3, I really wrestled with these words:

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

I thought, “Boy, John the Baptist is scary.”  John the Baptist was insulting, angry and uses violent language.  This isn't really what we want talk about in church in the run up to Christmas!  Why is this man so fired up?

But John was fed up with religious pretence
and with religion which was only skin deep,
full of the appearance but devoid of the substance of real faith.

Calling on people to repent of their sins is not easy at Christmas, when we are more concerned with decorating trees and going to parties and buying presents and eating cookies.  But it is part of the real Christmas message which tells us to sort ourselves out.

The Gospels describe what John looked like.  He ate locusts and wild honey. Luke tells us about when John appeared.  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconituis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Ablilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.” You can’t get more specific than that.

Luke is writing history.  This is not some sort of religious fable or legend.  This is not something that happened, “a long, long time ago in a land far, far away.”  This happened 1,987 years ago.  This is not a pious fairy tale or a “timeless myth.”  This is historic fact.  As historic as Tiberius Caesar and Napoleon and George Washington.  It’s anchored in the history of the Roman Empire and the priesthood of Israel.  It happened at just the right time in history, when the fullness of time had come.

John was the voice calling out in the wilderness.  It was time for a repentance.  The Greek word for repentance indicates something more than superficial adjustments of behavior.  It indicates a change of thinking.  God was about to do something new, and the people had to be prepared.

When I was the Director of Admission for the seminary in Fort Wayne, IN, I did quite a bit of traveling.  I had a staff and we divided the country into regions.  One of the places that I made many trips to between 2006 and 2010 was Michigan.  I went to churches and schools all over the state.  I made many trips up I-69 going from Fort Wayne to various destinations in Michigan.  And I never needed to see the signs to know when I crossed the state line.  At least a few years ago, Indiana did a much better job of maintaining the interstate highways than Michigan.  Everything would be going along smoothly and then suddenly, bumpity-bump-bump-bump.  The roads in Michigan were a lot rougher.  There were more potholes.

John was God’s bulldozer, leveling the soil of Israel, cutting a straight path.  It didn’t matter whether you were a prophet, a priest, a king, or simply a peasant.  According to John, you needed to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.  John didn’t care who you were and where you came from.  What he said applied to everyone without exception.

What are the roadblocks in your heart and life that interfere with God’s working in your life?  We all have rough spots that need to be smoothed off.  We are all susceptible to pitfalls and potholes that interrupt our walk with God and those need to be filled in.

Faith in Jesus Christ comes by hearing the Word of Jesus Christ preached out of mouths and into ears.  That’s what John was doing: preaching.  Preaching people to repentance and baptism.  But that was then.  This is now.  The Church is John the Baptist for the last days.

Before Jesus ascended, He ordered His disciples, “Go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” What John was doing: Baptizing and teaching.

Like John the Baptist, we are here to prepare the world to meet its Messiah.  The One who died for us and rose again.  We’re preparing a world for the appearing of Jesus, who will come to judge the living and the dead.  We’re calling people to repent, to change their thinking about God and about themselves, to acknowledge their own sinfulness and to believe in the forgiveness that Jesus Christ has won for all by His death.

As you know, I do a lot of work sitting at the Starbucks in uptown Elmhurst.  Sometimes I observe some pretty interesting things.  A couple of months ago, there was a young man, he looked like he was in his early twenties, walking up and down York Ave. carrying a wooden cross.  Did any of you see that?  He wasn’t disturbing anyone, just walking back and forth, up and down the road.  He was also wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus is…” on the front and the words, “…coming soon” on the back.  Jesus is / coming soon.  He caused a bit of a stir at the coffee shop.  One couple, in particular, was mocking him and said, “It’s been 2000 years.  Give up already.”  They thought this was quite humorous.

Yes, many people today think that those of us who actually believe in the actual coming of an actual Jesus are deluded if not downright crazy.  Some people think we are like Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive.

To the world, we may as well be wearing camel’s hair and eating grasshoppers.  We’ll be looked on as weird, strange, quirky, fanatical, out of touch with the culture if we talk about repentance and having a change of heart, and the return of Christ to judge the world.

The Church is God’s Israel of the end times.  There aren’t too many prophets in the same vein as John the Baptist today.  Now, God’s Spirit has anointed the Church, the Body of Christ, to be His witness.  We are a beacon reflecting the light of Christ into the ever-darkening world.  We have good news in a world filled with bad news: The Lord God comes with power and might to save.  He came by virgin mother, crib and cross.  He comes by Word and water and Supper.  He is coming in glory to raise the dead, to bring life and a new creation.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.