Fear and Love

Jer 1: 4-10
Hebrews 12: 18-29

The scripture we read today in Hebrews is a confusing text because it seems to be filled with contradictions. Like last week, we are met not with a loving God, but one that causes Moses to tremble with fear and who's voice shakes the heavens. And yet, in this passage we also see the God we have come to expect, the one full of forgiveness and love for God's wayward creation.

Which God is our God - the one that makes the mountains and heavens tremble in fear or the one that inspires reverence and awe for the promises that have been made and kept in Jesus' name?

God is all things. There is no choice here because the God that can make us tremble in fear is also the one that loves us beyond all imagining. Jesus understood that sometimes we needed to be fearful in order to respect the message he was trying to convey to us. It is why last week he talked about reigning fire down upon all of us when normally he is telling us to forgive 77 x 7 times.

There comes a moment in each of our lives when we need to shape up. There is something we are not doing well or deliberately not doing at all. Perhaps there is someone you dislike and so you avoid them day after day. Maybe it's even a family member or was a close friend until you had a disagreement. Perhaps you have been cutting corners at work and hoping no one would notice that things have not been going well for some time.

Perhaps you've been ignoring your spouse and have taken advantage of the idea that they'd always be there for you instead of appreciating them. Perhaps you have been working so much and such late hours that your children never see you and you never make it to any of their extracurricular activities. Perhaps you have been ignoring that ache in your chest or that pain in your hip or that your weight has been getting higher year after year.  

God reminds us in this passage that although we are blessed with the promise of life after death forged in the blood of Jesus Christ, that does not mean we should get lazy. Because it's not only in our personal life that we need to shape up. In the church we are called to act like a blessed people which means creating ways for others to be blessed by God. It means sharing our love for God with others. It means stepping out of these walls to make a difference in our town, our nation, and the world. God does not want a bunch of people that merely sing songs of love and forgiveness and generosity. Jesus calls us to BE all of those things as well.

Yes, God is the one that makes us tremble in fear as well as reverence. Jesus is our judge as well as our savior. We need him to be. We need to know that it's not okay to sit back and relax all the time. These passages in the last few weeks are a stick prodding us in the backside and telling us to get moving. It's time to act! It's time to make a change in the world!

This doesn't have to be some huge, momentous event. Some of the most amazing things have happened because a person started small. There was a young boy that wanted to make a difference in his community and so he began to shoot basketball hoops to raise money to help others. He'd ask for a donation for every three point shot he made and people sponsored him. Then one day, he got a friend to join him. And another joined. One day, the whole school decided to shoot hoops for charity. Now schools all over the nation do it. This kid just wanted to help others and so he looked at what he was good at and he used it to make a difference. He had no idea that he was going to begin something that would change a lot of lives. All he knew is that God had called him to help others and this was his way of helping.

Don't assume because of your age or gender or your set of skills that God isn't calling you to help others. In Jeremiah today we read about his call by God. Jeremiah tried to use excuses to get out of being God's prophet as well. "I'm too young! Too inexperienced!" and God responds with the most amazing words, "I knew you in the womb and have been calling you to this since that moment." God created you. God breathed life into you. If you think God does not know your skill set and what you can and can't do then you're kidding yourself. God knows you. God still wants you to do something to help others, and has been calling you to do so from the moment of your creation.

Whether it is icing cookies for the funeral today or setting up chairs for the spaghetti dinner this fall, or whether it is creating a program that will one day make the nation sit up and notice- Jesus wants you to help make the Kingdom of God a little more real to those who are hurting. That's our true calling as a church. We are here to remind the world that there is more to life than pain. There is a beautiful life full of peace, forgiveness, and love waiting for all of us. And the more we remind others of this gift of salvation, the more we are reassured as well.

We all need to remember that we're not alone in this world. We all need those connections that sharing the Gospel provides for us. We all need more of Jesus in our life and less of our own egos. Moses was one of the greatest people in the bible and he trembled in fear before the Lord. Today we should take a moment to be amazed by the God that moves mountains and who's voice shakes the heavens, and remember that our calling is not something we should be able to ignore.

Amen. 

From Hypocrite to Disciple

Jer 23: 23-29
Luke 12: 49-56

Where is the Jesus that talks about love and reconciliation? The man who is always preaching forgiveness and compassion? The one who a few weeks before yelled at the disciples for wanting to reign down fire upon the villagers and is now speaking of wanting to bring down fire himself? We are left wondering what has happened to make Jesus so cold and harsh.

Earlier in Luke, we are told that Jesus is now on his way to Jerusalem. He knows where he is heading and what is coming. Perhaps the reality of it has made his words harsher than they have been before, but there is more to these words that seem out of place with the kind Savior that is often depicted in the scriptures.

Jesus loves the world, but Jesus knows us too. Jesus knows that as much as we want to be good and kind people that follow his ways, we will often and gloriously fall short of his goals. Does that mean we are going to be punished for it? This passage seems to say BEWARE! DANGER! there is a cost to being Jesus' disciple!

How many of you have been Christians your whole life? How many of us have sat in these pews all these years and heard sermon after sermon, and how many of us have read the bible in Sunday school and at home and in church? We know things about Jesus and being his disciple that others do not know. Jesus is holding us accountable for that knowledge. This passage is a serious warning to all who proclaim to know Jesus, but do not act like they know him.

Back before the Civil War, there was a man named James who thought slavery was wrong. He treated his slaves as workers, paid them wages, and did not beat or abuse them. One day, another plantation owner came to his house yelling and screaming about an escaped slave and how he had run toward James' lands. "Help me find that sorry excuse for a slave!" the owner yelled at him and so they went out searching for the escaped slave. They began to question the James' slaves and discovered the person was there on the plantation. She had heard about the way he treated his slaves and had wanted to escape her barbaric owner because she was pregnant, and knew that she would be beaten when her production went down.

When James' saw this woman crying, his heart hurt for her, but the other owner immediately demanded the woman back and yelled that those slaves of James' that had hid her should also be punished. James did not agree, for these two slaves had become his good friends and he understood why they had hid this pregnant woman. He knew this was wrong, but he let the other man drag the three slaves to the field and watched silently as they were stripped naked and tied up. When he was handed the whip to beat his slaves with, he hesitated. The other owner continued to scream abuse and slowly James' hand raised and came down upon the back of this man he had once called a friend and had looked in the eye as an equal.

This is a shocking story. It's barbaric and horrific and it's a true story. These things happened a lot before the Civil War. They happened afterward too. The message of the story isn't only about slavery and how wrong it is though, the message of this story is that James did not agree with the treatment of slaves but allowed himself to be coerced into doing what he knew was wrong. Every time we say we know the Gospel message that talks about equality and forgiveness and then we turn upon another person like a rabid dog - we have become the hypocrites Jesus calls these people in the passage. Hypocrites like James.

We know what is wrong and what is right. James knew as well, but we often let society dictate to us what we should do. We listen to voices that are not God's. We follow humans instead of Jesus. Then, like guilty children trying to escape punishment, we try to pretend we did not know it was the wrong thing to do.

We may be able to convince those around us that we did not know the truth, but Jesus knows what is in our hearts. When we ignore the need to care for the sick and shut-in; when we fail to create programs for our children and youth; when we forget to love those that others hate - we fail in our Christian duty. We can say we didn't know that God meant help THOSE people and we didn't know that Jesus wanted us to reach out even MORE, but we're lying. We knew. We just didn't care enough. We just couldn't bring ourselves to put us last and others first.

We put out excuse after excuse and hope it will be enough to dull God's voice in our hearts. Jesus tells us that he is headed toward a baptism by fire - he is about to die to make life after death possible for us. He shows us what true sacrifice and real love are all about. In the face of such love and sacrifice our excuses become pitiful. Jesus is deliberately shaming us in this passage because he does not want to see us fall into these traps.

Because Jesus sees in each of us the greatest of possibilities. Jesus sees everything you could do and be, and treasures the person you are whether you know your potential or not. Inside some of you he sees the heart of a true caregiver; one who can bring comfort to the loneliest of shut-ins and the most hurt of lost people. Inside some of you he sees the secret administrator who could organize the church from top to bottom with a couple weeks of work. Inside some of you he sees the actor or the artist; the ones who have the ability to come up with new ways of making worship and programs more interesting for all of us. Inside some of you he sees the quiet person who doesn't think they have any talents at all, but you're the first one to volunteer to bake a pie for a funeral or to offer your day to help clean up an event.

God sees you. The beautiful parts as well as the ugly ones, and God wants for you all that is good. Jesus is warning us not because he wants to be harsh and critical, but because he does not want us to become hypocrites. He does not want us to fail to help those that need us. He does not want us to look at him on Judgment Day, and try to explain away our indifference and lack of love for others. God is Our Father in heaven who wants to warn his wayward children of the dangers of self-service.

Although Jesus is harsh in this passage, we must remember what comes next. He may be disappointed with those around him who have excuses galore for the way they act and treat others, but still Jesus goes to the cross for them (for us!). He accepts the beatings, the accusations, and as they spit and ridicule him he continues to pray to God for the people's redemption. Jesus is our Judge and our Savior. It is never too late to get back on the path that he has set out for us. That is what grace is all about - loving forgiveness for all that seek it.

Today what I want you to take away from this passage and sermon is that God loves every single part of you. Jesus sees inside of you the person you hide from everyone else - the good and the bad. And if we let ourselves listen to the Holy Spirit whispering in our hearts and ears, we have the ability to stand proud on Judgment Day and tell Jesus with a happy heart that we have done everything we could to make the world a better place; that we have shared the Gospel with as many that would listen; and that we have no regrets about how we lived out our lives as His disciple.


Amen.

It's More Than Believing

Genesis 15: 1-6 Luke 12: 32-40

The two passages we read today both begin the same way, "Do not be afraid". Someone a lot more industrious than me has counted how many times in the Bible it says, "do not fear" and it added up to 365 times and the common response to that is - that means there is a "do not fear" for each day in the year. It's important for us to understand why Jesus and the prophets are continually telling us to not be afraid.

Abram was consumed with the need to have an heir to pass along his legacy. He wanted a child that could show the love and care for the things he had built and he wanted a child to continue his family line. God wanted Abram to have a child because through that son a whole nation of people would be born. People that were born to help bring about the salvation of the whole world through Jesus Christ.

It is because Abram stopped being afraid that the Bible exists. It would have been a short book without his faithful following of God into places most of us do not want to go. Abram had a great life and a lot of treasures he had accumulated in his long life with his wife Sarah. He listened to a voice talking to him and he heard the promises this voice made and he responded to them. He decided to stop fearing the future, and instead he believed in the promises that seemed impossible and improbable.

Through the faith and persistence of Abraham and Sarah, and their long years of traveling, trouble, and toil they were given the gift they had waited 90 years to experience. They gave birth to a son, Isaac. From Isaac was born Jacob who gave birth to the 12 sons that make up the tribes of Israel. From the birth of the tribes of Israel came Moses who listened to God and they were delivered from Egypt and found refuge in a new land, the land we call Israel today. And down through the line of sometimes sinful and sometimes faithful people, eventually there was born a young male child to a virgin and her carpenter husband. The birth of Jesus Christ was only possible because of thousands of faithful people who went through mental, emotional, and physical hell at times to make it possible.

These people and their faithful response to God's voice is why this church exists. They heard and understood what God was saying to them when a voice cried out, "Do not be afraid! I have a plan!"

Every church in the world experiences fear at some time or another. We all worry about our future and the life of the church. Sometimes the fear is tangible, we can practically taste the tension in the air. There are other times when it is not a fear so much as a worry in the back of our minds. These two passages are given to us today because we need to stop fearing and start praying.

We are here today because we believe in the promises Jesus has made to us. We believe that God loves us. We believe that God gave us Jesus to bring us back into righteousness. We believe that Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit so we would never be alone in the world. Always, we have a mediator that will help us through life. We are here because we are told that it's not just enough to believe in the promises, but we must respond to them. We are here because the promises are so wonderful that we are compelled to worship God, we want to give thanks for our life! We also are here to work together to help others share in what we have been given.

Some would consider God selfish. God is selfish because Jesus is not content with just us coming to heaven when we die. Jesus wants every single person in the world to be in heaven with us. God wants us all, and that is our mission - to help make sure everyone receives the promise of eternal life. I guess we can call it a possessive love. Jesus loves all of us and therefore he wants to spend eternity with every single one of us which is why the very last command he gives to the disciples (and therefore to us) is to spread the Gospel to every corner of the earth.

We don't always like hearing that though. We don't love everyone the way God loves everyone. There are people we truly dislike and the idea of spending eternity anywhere near them makes us cringe. How do we as individuals get past such thinking to be caring toward even those we do not like? How as a church can we get past our dislike for other denominations, and other religions to see the people the way God sees them?

We may not always like it, but we are called to put aside our fear and distrust of these people we've taken a dislike to and to help them to get to heaven with us. There are things God is calling us each to do and calling our church to do that we are not going to like. We need to get over it. We need to stop doubting our abilities. We have been called to share God's love. It's time to get organized and do it

. Abram could have talked about being faithful until he was blue in the face. Talking only gets a person so far. Abram had to accept that what God said was true and then he acted. He RESPONDED to God's promises and he gave up his own comfort to help make our salvation possible. He had no idea that's what he was doing. All he knew is that if he listened to God that something great was going to happen.

Isn't that the same promise that Jesus offers us today? Jesus promises good things to those that follow him. He can and will make us fishers of people. First, we must believe it is possible. Stop being afraid. Stop doubting. Stop worrying. These fears only destroy our possibilities of making a difference. Begin to believe. Have the audacity to be bold in your faith! Jesus is here with us and willing to help us become so much more than we ever were before!

What are we being called to do? What is Jesus whispering to you in your heart? Do not let your fears drown out God's voice! It doesn't matter your age, it doesn't matter your gender, it doesn't matter what you have done in the past or didn't do - Jesus IS talking to you. Jesus IS calling this church to new and better things.

It's up to you. You can listen and become the church that changes our community for the better or you can ignore Jesus and watch our church become nothing more than a pretty building people walk by. I know many of you feel it - that this church has great possibilities. We have the ability to be something great and life changing for those that have never heard of Jesus Christ. But it will only happen if we work together and stop fearing the 'what-ifs' and instead embrace the promises of God. It's time for us to believe and respond faithfully. Just as we depended upon Abraham and Sarah's faithful response to God; someone out there is depending upon us.

Amen.

Rich Toward God

Hosea 11: 1-11

Luke 12: 13-21

What does it mean to be "rich toward God"? Many preachers would use this text to implore the congregation to give more generously because you cannot take the money with you when you pass away. However, I think there is more to this passage than just giving money to the church or charities. Despite the fact that we are behind in our budget, I'm learning that although I may worry about such things privately, it is not what we should worry about as a congregation.

Money is important. It is important to make our budget, but that cannot be the focus or our purpose as a church. What is the point of being open if our main concern is staying in the black? We might as well close our doors, give our assets to the poor or another church if that is all we are concerned about. It all comes back to what Jesus says at the end of this passage in Luke. "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God."

Again, it leaves me to ask, what does it mean for a person to be rich toward God? What does it mean for a congregation to be rich toward God?

It is important for us to pay attention to what we worry about the most. Whatever we spend the most time on in our meetings and our committees are the things we consider our mission and purpose. The rich landowner was concerned with himself. If we go back to the passage and read it again we will notice an abundance of me language when the landowner talks. He does not think about the Lord who has made this abundance possible. He does not think about those who are less fortunate than him and do not have anything to eat let alone excess grain to store. He does not even take a moment to think about selling the grain to others, but instead he wants to tear down his perfectly good barns to create bigger ones to store all that he has. He wants to sit back and count his grain, and enjoy a life of leisure.

Now, some of you may be wondering what is wrong about storing up for leaner months. Don't we all buy an extra toothbrush or the big jug of oil when it's on sale? We all tend to buy the 3 cans of corn instead of just the one we need at the moment because it's cheaper and we know eventually we'll need it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. However, we also know of people whose lives revolve around storing up as much as they can for themselves and giving nothing back to those who might need it.

Jesus warns us that we must be careful in how we let wealth and abundance distract us from our purpose here on earth. We are meant to live together; to share together; to love each other. If each of us sits in our houses busily counting our stored treasures then we are not experiencing the life God has given to us.

In the story of the 3 Little Pigs, each one builds themselves a house and goes to live in it while happily congratulating themselves on how successful they are to own their own home. Then along comes that wily wolf and he huffs and puffs and blows down the straw house of the first pig, and then he comes to the second pig's house made of sticks and he blows down that house. When he comes to the third house, made of brick, he cannot get in and with the three little pigs working together, they manage to defeat the wily wolf when he tries to get them by coming down the chimney.

Why am I telling you this old fairytale? Because the three little pigs are just like us. We go out into the world trying to make something of ourselves and we get so caught up in making everything just right and in having something bigger and better than everyone else that we lose sight of God. We stop giving thanks for God's blessing and begin to congratulate ourselves. We get comfy in our little houses with our treasures surrounding us whether they are that 50 foot television or the many pieces of jewelry we've accumulated in our life and we forget the big picture.

There are people out there that need us. What we have, we have been blessed with by God. We do not have to give everything up to prove our love for God, but we are told that unless we learn to be rich toward God, we are dead inside. The same is true for this church. Until we learn to be rich toward God, we are a dead church. We come here on Sundays, we show up for our meetings and yet we are not truly living until we make a difference in our community. Our church life cannot revolve around how to make budget no matter how tight it may get, and honestly, it's pretty tight right now.

If we want to be a vital church, a growing church, a church that means something more than just a pretty building people pass by; then we need to be vital people who understand the blessings Jesus has given us are not for us alone. We need to open our doors. We need to be inviting, always welcoming, and inclusive. We need to reach out and ask the community to come here and ask them what they want from a church. The most amazing part of it all is how much things will change and how great we will all feel once we begin to do this.

Change is hard, but it brings benefits with it. The grace and glory of God are given to those who show mercy and love to the people around them. We are a rich congregation compared to many. However, sometimes we do not act very blessed. We phone in the motions and wonder why nothing changes. It's time for us to remember what we were created for and what our purpose is as a congregation. Some of you are tired and feel like you have done your fair share.

But Jesus reminds us in this parable he does not care much about what is a person's fair share. The first person to talk to Jesus in this passage asks him to tell his brother to give him his 'fair share of the inheritance' and Jesus instead shares a parable about a rich man whose major concern was about himself and his fair share, and at the end of the story proclaims that man is dead inside.

Being a Christian is hard work. The whole bible talks about how hard it is to be a loving, faithful disciple and how it wears  a person down. We have work ahead of us. We have a lot left to do here at Trinity. Many of us want to go back to the 'glory days' when the church was always filled. I want to remind you that we can have glory days again, but it comes with work. We cannot just pray people into these pews. We need to reach out to them. We need to love them and each other. We need to stop bickering about the petty things and instead concentrate on what it means to be rich toward God.

If we only do what will benefit our life, if we only help out to make ourselves look good, if we deny help because we've 'been on that committee before' then we are not being rich toward God, but rich toward our self. These are hard words to hear, I know, because they apply to every single one us including myself. We all phone it in some times. We all do the bare minimum to scrape by for another month or another year when we get tired. Jesus is calling us on this attitude. He is reminding us that if we want to be alive then we must live a life that gives constantly toward others and not just ourselves.

We need to stop thinking of ourselves, and only of how change will affect "me or I" and instead think about how our church may become something truly spectacular when we start following Jesus' ways of being rich toward God. Perhaps when we learn how to do that, we will see that our glory days are not in the past at all, but they were always in our future.

Amen.