Faithful Works

Isaiah 9: 1-4
Matthew 4: 12-23

Throughout our lives, we are tested many times. Our lives are living testaments to our character. Part of who we are is directly influenced by outside sources like the people we surround ourselves with and the other part is directly influenced by the personality we were given upon our birth. However, all of our heart and mind should be influenced by Jesus Christ when we call ourselves Christians. Which means that when we give our lives to Christ, we accept that it no longer matters as much what others think of us and what our own doubts and insecurities are because we have given up control to Jesus.

We believe that God holds us steady through the storms of life. We hold onto Jesus as our anchor. It doesn't always work out that way though. Sometimes, we forget. Sometimes, we get so caught up with the problems in our life that we stop turning to God and instead we turn to those around us or our own ingenuity. Then, when things start to fall even further apart, we get just desperate enough to turn to God.
Yes, sometimes it is desperation and a last ditch effort to save ourselves that makes us see Jesus more clearly. Sometimes it is other people's last ditch efforts on our behalf that help us see that Jesus is the foundation on which we should build our lives.

One of the earliest and the most outstanding intellectuals, leaders and defenders of the Christian faith was Augustine, the fourth century writer of the “Confessions of Saint Augustine,” one of the most famous tell-all autobiographies written. Young Augustine was a hedonist, a philosopher, an agnostic, and a rebel, but his mother Monica was a godly, persistent, and resourceful woman.

Augustine often laughed at his mother’s pious ways, mocked her faith, and deliberately defied her continual pleading for him to repent of his pagan lifestyle, to convert to Christ, and to live an exemplary life. When Augustine wanted to leave the shores of Carthage, North Africa, for the bright lights of Rome, his mother feared the worst for her son, dreaded the outcome of his leaving, and often fled to the church for solace, prayer, and advice.

In her despair, she would often weep uncontrollably for her son. One day a minister noticed her painful cries, and asked her why she was so bitter. She told him of her wayward son, but the bishop reassured her with these words: “Go in peace; as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” Augustine avoided his mother as much as possible and ignored her warnings time and again, but he could not escape her continuous prayers. Monica painstakingly prayed, wept, and looked for her son for 30 years until Augustine surrendered his life to Christ.

Monica did not give up on her son and she did not give up her faith in Jesus. She knew that God has the power to save even those that do not know they need to be saved. All we can do is trust in Jesus to be the one that will lead our loved ones as well as us back into the arms of the Lord.

It takes faith. Faith is not a complicated thing. Faith is as simple as a man walking up to two fishermen and when he says, "Follow me." they put down their nets and follow him. They saw something about this man they had never seen before and they were instantly drawn to him. They knew that this man was going to stand by his word and that they would indeed do great things in their lives from that day forward if they followed him. They had faith in him.

While faith is not a complicated concept, it is not easy to do either. It's not easy to constantly have faith especially when things aren't going our way. It's not easy to believe there is something better coming our way when everytime we fight our way through one battle; another, bigger one looms on the horizon. Faith is simple, but it's not simple to live out in our daily lives.

The only way way to live out our faith is through doing things that remind us daily we are faithful disciples of Christ. Jesus didn't just tell those two men to follow him where he walked, he wanted them to follow his actions as well. He sent his disciples out to pray over people, to cast out demons, to heal the sick and to comfort the berieved. He believed that following meant doing and the same is true for us!

It's not enough for us to just proclaim ourselves Christians. We must ACT like Christians. We must do good works in Jesus Christ's name and we must speak of our faith without fear. The only way to stay consistent in our faith is by the things we do in our lives. Otherwise, we end up going around in a circle where we have faith for awhile and we feel good about ourselves, and then slowly we stop having faith when things get tough before we get desperate enough to once gain turn to Jesus. And around and around we go.

An old Scotsman operated a little rowboat for transporting passengers. One day a passenger noticed that the good old man had carved on one oar the word "Faith" and on the other oar the word "Works." Curiosity led him to ask the meaning of these oars. The old man, being a well-balanced Christian and glad for the opportunity to testify said, "I will show you."

Then he dropped one oar and plied the other called Works, and they just went around in circles. Then he dropped that oar and began to ply the oar called Faith, and the little boat just went around in circles again - this time the other way around, but still in a circle.

After this demonstration the old man picked up Faith and Works, and plying both oars together, sped swiftly over the water, explaining to his inquiring passenger. "You see, that is the way it is in the Christian life. Dead works without faith are useless, and faith without works is dead also, getting you nowhere. But faith and works pulling together make for safety, progress, and blessing."

So you see, sometimes we have faith but we do not act on our faith therefore what good is there in having it? It helps no one, not even ourselves. But sometimes we are so busy trying to do good works that we forget to have faith in Jesus and then what good is it to do good things without a firm foundation in Christ? We accomplish our goals when we work faithfully to fulfill Jesus Christ's dreams instead of our own.

This church is filled with many wonderful, talented people. A lot of hard workers. But what are we working toward? Are we working to fulfill Jesus' dream for this church or our own dreams? Are we carrying out God's plans or our own? Remember that just as we must not act out of fear of our future, we cannot act without faith! Either one will hurt our church and it will be because we did not remember to work faithfully with full trust in Jesus.

Jesus Christ has issued a command to us today. Follow him. When we follow Jesus we become like him, filled with faith in God's love for us and through that faith and love, our hearts overflow with the desire to do good things for others. That is our goal as Christians. We are here to make our Lord proud as we show our love through fulfilling Christ's mission for the world.

Amen.

Who's Your Savior?

Isaiah 49 January 18, 2014

This week, I wrote a pretty good sermon on the 1 Corinthians passage we read today. I labored over it. I struggled over the words and the exactly right illustrations to use. Finally, after quite a few hours, it was written and saved to my computer, and as I sometimes do, I asked a fellow minister to read it over to see what she thought. She asked me to send it to her, and when I went to open my computer up, it didn't turn on.

I didn't get worried too quickly however, because I just figured if I hit the power button, the computer will load up quickly enough. But nothing happened when I did that. So I pressed the button harder. I held it in for a good, long minute. Nothing. I plugged the computer in, even though I knew that the battery was fully charged, but I was getting desperate now. Still, nothing turned that computer on.

I sat there, stunned and angry because this computer is barely 6 months old and how dare this happen to me when I had no way to access that wonderful sermon I had written? By now, in my head, my sermon has become this epic writing that will inspire every one of us to do great things in the name of Jesus Christ. (Leave me to my illusions, please)

I was angry and upset, but not completely disheartened. I have friends that are technologically savvy. I turned to them. They couldn't help me. Then I remembered the man who has a computer business that has worked on the church computer. I gave him a call and he cheerfully agreed to look at it and he said that he'd at the least be able to get me my sermon off the hard drive. I breathed a deep sigh of relief! I was saved! This man was going to be my salvation!

I really should know better, shouldn't I? I am a pastor after all, I should know there is only one savior and it is not the very nice man at ACT. I dropped off my computer on Saturday morning and immediately, I heard him say, "Oh. This has a sealed hard drive. Hmm.." and I looked at him, alarmed, "Should.. should I write another sermon, just in case?"

"It might be wise," the man told me, but I didn't want to believe that he couldn't fix it; that this man couldn't save me the toil of writing two sermons in a week. I went and worked out, I took a leisurely shower, I called my grandmother. I went to Barnes and Noble and had a coffee, playing on the internet and considering writing a sermon, but holding off. I did everything but write a sermon because I had faith in the this man's computer saving skills.

As I write this, the man has had my computer for over eight hours and will not answer the phone when I call. I think he's afraid of delivering the blow that my sermon will be forever lost to me. That's when I decided to reread Isaiah 49 and a couple lines really jumped out at me.

"[God] said to me, “You are my servant,  Israel, in whom I will display my splendor. But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.”

I labored in vain all week long to write a sermon that would connect with each of you in the pews this week. It was in vain because I am unable to share it with you in it's exact, glorious form. However, the true lesson this week was a reminder to us all that when we do not remember God that we labor in vain. I wanted that man to save me. He's not my savior. Jesus Christ is my savior. Jesus Christ has control of my destiny. Not the ACT man.

And that's where the message I had written for you this week intersects with the one I had to relearn. Our destiny as a church should begin with Jesus Christ. The foundation of our every rule, the rock on which we stand begins and ends not with our own ideas and feelings, but with what Jesus would have us do as HIS church. You see, we allow ourselves to get caught up in the world and the world's ideas of what is right and wrong. We allow ourselves to worry and the anxiety rips apart the peace that comes from being beloved children of God.

The world has a distorted view of truth. Jesus tells us that he is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except through Jesus Christ. Then why is it, when something bad happens in the world, that we tighten our ropes and batten down the hatches and act like the world has control over what we do here? The world's rules and problems, while they can influence how we minister to the needs of others, should not and cannot affect who we are as a church. We cannot let fear and doubt be our motivators in what we do.

The fear and anxiety we experience every time we hear about something bad is not coming from Jesus. It comes from the devil. When we make decisions to not help others because our budget wasn't made last year; when we huddle in groups to gossip about others because it's easier than facing the problems of the church; when we turn to making more committees and rules and bylaws because it makes us feel safer; we are not following Jesus Christ.

Jesus never played it safe. Jesus never allowed an angry mob to prevent him from speaking the truth. Jesus  never spoke something about a person that he wasn't willing to say to their face and he didn't use others to say those things he was thinking about them. Jesus didn't think the answer to a problem was to make a bunch of rules. The way Jesus faced problems was through prayer, meditation, reading the scriptures, and trusting in the unshakable foundation of his relationship with God. The same relationship that we have been adopted into upon our baptism.

As a church, we need to stop fearing the future. We need to let go of our anxieties as individuals. We need to leave the burdens of the world at the door and embrace the Holy Spirit's claim upon us. We are children of God. We are promised that when we trust in Jesus Christ, that he will guide us where we need to go. Jesus doesn't promise that it will be an easy journey, but he promises to be our shepherd.

When we don't think and act like Jesus, we labor in vain. When we make the mistake of thinking another person or another bunch of rules can save us; we labor in vain. We dig a huge hole for ourselves and wonder why suddenly we can no longer see the light. LOOK UP. Let go of your fears. Let go of your doubts. Trust that God has placed you exactly where you're supposed to be, that the people that are in your life are there for a reason, and trust in Jesus.

Stop trusting the world. Stop trusting the world's reactions to what goes on. Stop trusting yourself and all your thoughts that aren't inspired by the love and peace of Jesus Christ. Stop trusting in committees and rules and this crazy idea that the more you worry about something that you can prevent it from happening! We drive ourselves mad with all of these thoughts, worries, and fears. We get so lost and caught up in them that we forget why we're here.

WHY ARE YOU HERE?! If it's not to worship God, to share in the love of Jesus Christ, to experience the connection of a community bound in the Holy Spirit then you're here for the wrong reasons. If you're here to hear a good sermon or to be entertained by the music then you're here for the wrong reason. If you're here because you like me or because you hate me; if you're here because you've always come here; if you're here because you had nothing better to do this morning then you're here for the wrong reason.

Church is community. Worship services are about giving thanks to God for the blessings of our life and sharing in each other's sorrows. It's about connecting with others who believe the things that you believe. It's about loving that slightly strange person that walks in five minutes late every service. It's about feeling a sense of belonging to something so much bigger and grander than anything else in the world. It's about learning to accept differences and be more tolerant and forgiving. This is not a social club. This is not something to do on a Sunday morning. This is not the place to judge others.

When church becomes anything other than a connection of a community that is in love with Jesus Christ, it is doomed to fail. Harsh words, but true. We're not here because of you or me. We're here because of Jesus. We're not here to show off our jewelry or clothes. We're here to be clothed in the glory of Christ. We're not here to be petty and mean in our thoughts about the people we don't like that attend here. We're here to learn more about what it means to love a person that annoys us to death because Jesus loved those that killed him.

Fear and anxiety remove us from the light. Fear and anxiety will keep us wandering in the desert for a lot longer than the 40 years the Israelites spent in it. How long will we wander from God's path? How long will we ignore the Holy Spirit's urgings? How long will we pretend to be our own savior instead of acknowledging Christ as our only Savior?

That.. is up to you.

Amen.

Let it Go

Isaiah 42: 1-9
Matthew 3: 13-17

There is nothing more precious than a child. There is something inside most adults that feels the need to nurture and protect little ones when we see them. We instinctively know that our future lies with these children and if we do not raise them properly, then everything that we have built will be for nothing. When God created the world, God created human beings. We are God's children. God considers us precious beyond words.

God loves us so much that we were given the greatest gift; that of God's Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the one who came to save the world and make us the heirs to the Kingdom of God. Jesus was born without sin, and yet the first thing he does before beginning his ministry is to go up to John the Baptist and asked to be baptized. There are several reasons we baptize our children and adults. We are baptizing them to bless them with the Holy Spirit, and upon being blessed they are accepted as God's child. We also baptize them because Jesus Christ asked to be baptized, the one that had no sin believed it was very important to become part of the body of God through the cleansing ritual given by water and Holy Spirit.

And because Jesus did it, we consider it important in the United Church of Christ. It's the reason we also celebrate Communion. Jesus did it, and therefore so do we. There are many things that Jesus did that we should consider important. Jesus' deep love for the sinners of the world and his intense compassion for those whose lives were marred with mistakes are two things we all need to get better at in our efforts to be Christ's disciples.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a convicted murderer and cannibal who cooked and ate his victims. You don’t really get much more heinous than that. He was awarded 16 life sentences. While in prison, Dahmer met with Roy Ratcliff, a minister with the Church of Christ in Madison, Wisconsin, and turned his life over to Jesus Christ. He was baptized in prison, knowing that he would never leave prison alive. He had nothing to gain in this life, but everything to gain in the next. 
We may scoff at jailhouse conversions, but within months of Dahmer’s baptism, people noticed a Christian spirit in him. His father and pen pals noticed the difference, and his father, who had left the church, has since been restored as a faithful member. Dahmer’s younger brother also had a conversion experience of his own. 

Dahmer was killed in prison by a fellow inmate a few months after his baptism. At his memorial service, along with his own family and several Christians, two sisters of one of his victims attended, having grown close to Dahmer’s family after their brother’s death. 

That may have been Dahmer’s last chance for repentance, and he took it. But many of us think he shouldn’t have been given another chance. He didn’t deserve it. And that’s true. He didn’t deserve another chance. But neither do we.

Baptism is a beautiful sacrament that reminds us that despite our sinfulness; despite the constant warring of our flesh and spirit; despite the constant barrage of petty thoughts in our minds that we are still loved by God. As Jesus comes up out of the water, the Spirit alights upon him in the form of a dove and the voice of God is heard to say, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Every time we baptize a child or adult, the Holy Spirit comes to rest upon them. Every time we baptize a child or adult, God tells that person they are now part of God's family and they are loved.

This is a miracle. That some blessed water and a few words by the pastor can bring a person into the Promised Land. What we waited thousands of years for; what God had promised from the beginning with Adam and Eve and then with Abraham and Sarah and then with Moses and Aaron is that they will be delivered into the Promised Land and that nothing shall ever harm them as they have become God's chosen ones. Baptism proclaims the same exact thing! We are God's chosen ones! WE ARE GOD'S CHOSEN CHILDREN!

The second part of the miracle is up to us. Does this matter to you? Do you care that you are now part of something glorious and amazing and miraculous? Then we need to change. We need to see where we have grown lazy in our lives and in the church and make the changes God would have us make. Every person has something in their life that keeps them from committing fully to God and God's plan for them. We allow fear and the unknown to cause us to worry and stress and so we put up blocks inside of our hearts.

Today, as we celebrate the baptism of Jesus Christ, let us let go of those stumbling blocks. Close your eyes and think for a moment of what holds you back from being more loving. What keeps you from attending those church functions? What prevents you from talking more about Jesus to strangers? What has God been calling you to do that you have been persistently ignoring? Remove the fear from your heart. Remove the worry from your eyes. Remove the pain of the past and accept your future. A future free and clear of all that worry and fear and pain.

Jesus' baptism, our baptism gives us that freedom. We were accepted as God's child. We are clean and whole and perfect in God's eyes. We just need to see ourselves with the same light of love that God has for us. When you see what God sees inside of you, your confidence and your ability to love and forgive will increase exponentially.

We need to know how to love others better. We need to know how to forgive the people that drive us crazy. We need to accept the things we can change and then change them, but we also need to let go of what is unchangeable and move forward. Getting stuck in the past and getting caught up in worry, fear, and pain prevents you from being the baptized and beloved child of God that you are. Let it go. Let.it.go.

And may God's love shine out of you and become a beacon to the ones that are lost and stumbling in the dark. May you find renewed joy in being the baptized and beloved child of God, and through your joy my hope for you is that you can bring others to God's arms. That is what Jesus did for us when he came up out of the water. He brought us into God's arms. May we bless another the way we have been blessed!

Amen.