A Seed of Hope

Jeremiah 31: 31-34

Hebrews 5: 5-10

When the Babylonians razed the temple in Jerusalem and dragged King Zedekiah off in chains, they destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal faithfulness. The people of Judah faced a crisis! Not only had they lost power and prestige, freedom and security; they had also lost God – or at least the assurance of God’s faithfulness which perhaps is the same thing.

Because an unfaithful god is no better than no god, and maybe even worse!

These were the consequences of Israel’s disobedience to the law of God. The consequences of their wickedness were the overthrow of their nation, the leveling of the walls of Jerusalem that kept everyone feeling safe, and the destruction of the temple the very place where God rested, and to top it off they were then banished to Babylon! Their situation was extremely bleak and the prophet Jeremiah laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the suffering people.

Sometime in our lives, we will know suffering. Some of us will suffer greatly and others of us will suffer less. In our bleakest of days, the worst knowledge we have is that sometimes we cause our own suffering. There are times when we have done nothing wrong and have followed all of the rules and yet we are punished for imagined sins. But the worst moments of our life is seeing the ruined rubble of that life falling down around us and knowing that we caused this destruction all by our self.

This is what the Israelites were experiencing. Jeremiah was not letting them off the hook. YOU caused this. YOU knew better for I have been preaching to you for years that this was going to happen and YOU ignored me!

Just when Jeremiah is really about to get on his high horse and flog everyone with his “I told you so’s”, God’s voice steps in and changes the whole tone of what happened to the Israelites. Yes, they are suffering because of what they have done, but, God promises that the day will come when God will make a new covenant with the people and it will be completely different from the past covenants! God promises that his covenant will change the way every one of us interacts with each other.

God promises to write the law not on stone tablets that can be written down and ignored, but on everyone’s heart. He promises that once again he will be their God and they will be His people. Even better, God promises that no longer will people talk about knowing God, but instead every person from the least to the greatest will know God intimately in a relationship unseen by one before this time! God promises to forgive them their every sin and promises to never remember those sins the people have committed.

What we read here is a prophecy that will come true hundreds of years later in the form of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah is predicting Jesus to the Israelites who have just had their freedom and rights taken away, and in this promise he tells them they will have a freedom and relationship with God unlike any they could have imagined. Jeremiah is bringing hope back to the people in the most unlikely of times.

He is reminding us that even the darkest moments of our lives have transformative moments if we give them to God. If we trust and believe in Jesus Christ, even the moments of suffering we bring upon ourselves can become a way for the greatest of miracles to begin. That is what happened here. In Israel’s darkest and most hellish of historical moments, there was birthed the seed of hope that would become our Messiah, the one we call our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who would offer us more than we could ever deserve.

In Jesus Christ, we are given the ability to know God deeply and truly. In Jesus Christ, we are given not just a second chance but a million second chances to make mistakes and learn and grow, and be forgiven for bumbling around like fools in the dark that have forgotten a light switch is right above us waiting to illuminate our path. In Jesus Christ, we are given the greatest inheritance, we are not just God’s creation anymore, but we are God’s children. We have the same rights and privileges that Jesus Christ has because we have been adopted into that relationship and through the Holy Spirit we are always and forever connected to God.

Take a moment to let that sink in. You are forever connected to God. Nothing you do wrong will ever take away that connection. Nothing anyone else does to you may take away the connection you have to the Lord. Through trials and tribulation, through your joys and exultations, through your moments of boredom and routine God’s heart and your heart are forever linked by the power of the Holy Spirit through the faithful sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The world may think you are a petty and an insignificant ant of a person without power or prestige, but to the Lord you are worth dying for. The world may think you have nothing to offer, but Jesus sees someone worth loving forever. The world may not have time for your heartaches and pain, but the Lord Jesus cries with you and shares in your suffering.

Lent is about a timeout in life, whatever may be going on in it, and assessing our relationship with Jesus Christ. It is about reminding ourselves of our purpose and destiny. Lent is about hearing that although we are in darkness now, the light of Christ reaches out to us and will save us from ourselves. We may fall and we may struggle and we may lose the battle now and then, but Jesus is by our side through it all and will bring renewal and hope back into our life when we need it most.

The beauty of our Savior God is that our hope never dies because it rests in Jesus and Jesus defeated death. Since we share Jesus’ inheritance that means we will defeat whatever would try to keep us away from the Lord and the peace we have in knowing we belong to God. Whatever burdens you carry; whatever heartaches keep you down; whatever stresses and anxiety keep you up at night may seem powerful and impossible to win. But this is the surety we have – Jesus Christ is by our side and that means these stresses and burdens are not carried alone.

We are called to give them to God and walk free of the burdens the world would place upon us. We are called to remember the words of Jeremiah that remind us that even the darkest and bleakest of moments give birth to hope when Jesus is by our side and in our hearts.

Amen. 

Chicken Alfredo & Artichoke Lasagna Rolls

I JUST INVENTED THE MOST AMAZING FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chicken Alfredo & Artichoke Lasagna Rolls

9 Lasagna noodles (boiled until almost al dente)
1 can (drained & chopped) Artichoke hearts
1 (6 oz) chicken breast (boiled and shredded)
1 cup of shredded Italian blend cheese
1 cup of 2% cottage cheese
1 jar of Alfredo sauce (I used a Roasted Garlic Parmesan one)
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and parsley flakes

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mix cottage cheese with salt, pepper, onion & garlic powder and parsley until creamy (all lumps may not be gone).

Mix the artichokes and chicken together, add some salt and pepper to it.

Take a lasagna noodle, spread 1 TB of cottage cheese on it, add a TB of the shredded cheese, then add the chicken mixture. Roll up carefully and place in an 8x8 pan. Repeat until the pan is filled. Pour the alfredo sauce over top of the rolls.

Cover and bake for 40 minutes.

Each roll is 267 calories, 27 carbs, 19 grams protein, and 2 grams of fiber.

Notes: If you wanted them to be extra cheesy, add more shredded cheese to the top of the rolls after you put on the sauce. I was looking to keep the calories down, but I was very tempted!

The Ultimate Love Story

GENESIS 1: 1-5

MARK 1: 4-11

Did you know that biblical scholars like to debate if the first 12 chapters of Genesis truly happened or not? Actually there are whole books of the bible that are debated if they really happened as it was written or if they were taken from other religions and reworked as a part of our theology.

For some, knowing that one part of the Bible may not be completely accurate somehow makes the whole of the Bible less in their minds. For others, they do not look at the bible as a historical or scientific document and so it doesn’t matter if everything happened in that exact way.

The point of the Bible is not to tell us how long the earth has existed or how it was created. The point is to tell us that God had a hand in it all and that God cared enough to make this world a livable and beautiful place where we have dominion over the birds of the air as well as the animals on the land and in the seas. Does it matter if what we call one day in Genesis is 24 hours or a couple million years? Human beings only consider a day 24 hours because that’s how long it takes us do a full rotation as we revolve around the sun. God created the sun, therefore, what is a day to God? I don’t understand how that kind of minute detail takes away from what the Bible is trying to tell us.

God loves us. God created us. God created the world. God saw how lost we were and so God created a covenant first with Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob. When even that was not enough to help us along he showed us His power through Moses and gave us the Ten Commandments and gave us the Promised Land. When we still went astray, God finally decided to take matters completely into God’s own hands and became a human being for us.

God humbled God’s self and took on human flesh for US. That’s the point of the Bible. It is a divine love story that shows us how important and beautiful and significant we are to the most powerful being in the universe. If we quibble over details like if Jonah was truly swallowed by a fish or if the Magi got there when Jesus was a baby or a 2 year old or since the Bible is only so many thousands of years old then the earth can only be that old – we diminish and overlook the true point of it all. We also limit the power of our Lord and Savior and why would we ever want to do that?!

The point of the Bible is that it guides us closer to God. It shows us when we are at our darkest moments that we are not the only ones that suffer and hurt. It shows us that God knows the pain we feel intimately through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who is there with us and experiencing it all over again because God loves us that deeply. God wants to be our parent and guiding force in this world. God wants to have a deep, intimate, unending relationship with every one of us and if that is not the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard then I need you to get up here and share what could be more amazing!

God, all powerful and all loving, cares SO MUCH about you – insignificant and disobedient and sinful you – that God lived and died for you so that you may join God in heaven and live forever in peace and happiness.

That is a miracle, my friends. It is the greatest miracle we will ever experience and we each get that miracle. Every person that believes in God gets to be with God.

Next week, I'm going to be baptizing a father and a son. There is such a special relationship between a father and his child. There is a bond there and next week it will be strengthened even further because on the same day we will make a promise to them and the father will make a promise to his son to walk this journey of faith with him every single day. The same way God sent Jesus to us and was with Jesus every step of the way, experiencing the pain and frustration and struggles of a human being so that God may truly understand who we are and why we do the things we do.

Baptism is an outward sign of an invisible event. Baptism is a recognition that God is with us all of our earthly days and lives inside us through the Holy Spirit. It is a welcoming into the family of Jesus Christ, we are adopted sons and daughters. In baptism, God becomes our parent and guiding light. Jesus shares with us his birthright and saving grace. We are welcomed into the bond between Father and Son – the ultimate love they have for each other - and we get to be smack dab in the middle of it!

The next time someone starts trying to debate the accuracy or empirical truths of the Bible with you, I want you to look at them and say it has nothing whatsoever to do with facts and everything to do with love. The love a parent has for their child. The love God had for Her creation and the love it took for the Son to do the Father’s bidding to save this world that had gone astray. The love Jesus had for us and for his Father to give up everything so that WE may receive everything. In that moment that Jesus hung from the cross, dirty and bleeding and gasping for a breath that wasn’t filled with pain, he cried out in a broken, ragged voice, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

In that moment, as close as Father and Son had always been and will always be, Jesus had taken into himself every sin and disease and awful thing we have done and will do and he became those sins and took that awfulness and became UNRECOGNIZABLE to his own Father. In that one moment, there was no longer a communion between the two. And then Jesus died.

He went through all of that for us. God did that for us. The bible has nothing to do with science or history. It does not matter if you believe every single word or just most of what is written. What matters is that you understand the whole of the Bible is the greatest love story to ever be written. It is about sacrificial love and redemption for a world that did not deserve to be redeemed. No matter how dark our world looks at times, no matter how far off course it seems we may get – God will not let the darkness extinguish our light. God will not let us go.

Through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will always have a place with God as long as we want it.

The question is – do you want to be with God? Then show God’s love to everyone you meet because that is all God asks of us for this beautiful, amazing, and miraculous gift!

Amen. 

Searching for Epiphany

John 1: 1-18

Luke 2: 22-35

Epiphany

After the craziness of the Christmas season, it is tempting to take the next few weeks and just relax. To no longer think about schedules already overloaded with work, family, and friends and how we managed to squeeze in time to shop and wrap and decorate as well as worship. Christmas can be exhausting physically, but it is also mentally and emotionally draining on everyone. So it is tempting to forget what comes right after Christmas, which is Epiphany.

Epiphany is the time after Christmas where we celebrate the visiting Magi, Jesus’ incarnation and baptism, his transfiguration, as well as his first miracle at the Wedding in Cana. In other words, Epiphany shows the world how God came to be with His people through Jesus Christ.  This is a very special time for Christians, but because so many are exhausted from the holidays we often do not take time to appreciate the way God came to be with his people. Jesus Christ is not a figurehead for God. He is not the poster child of the Divinity although some people like to think of him that way.

Jesus is God, made flesh. That means everything he experienced when he became a human being, God the Father also experienced. When Jesus was thirsty, God was thirsty. When Jesus was a child, he had a child’s frustrations of learning how to tie his shoes, write his name and read the scriptures just as our children have to do. Jesus became dirty and was probably yelled at by Mary when he did something she didn’t like.

When he became older, perhaps he had pimples and oily hair like a teenager. Maybe he tripped a lot because his feet grew faster than the rest of him just like other teenage boys. And as an adult, he struggled with his spirituality and humanity and the way they seemed to war against each other, just as we do. Jesus was tempted by the devil just as we often are tempted. Jesus is like us, but Jesus IS God.

And that means everything he went through, God experienced as well which brings a whole new meaning to the words, “God with us”. One of the best scriptures that describe the Epiphany of God being with us is in Luke2: 22-35 when Simeon finally sees the Messiah.

When Joseph and Mary presented Jesus to the Temple of the Lord, there was a man there named Simeon. Simeon was a faithful Jew who had been promised to see the Messiah before he passed from this life into the next. It does not say so in the passage, but perhaps Simeon was tempted to worry that he had been mistaken about God’s promise or that he had missed the Messiah because Simeon was now an old man. He had seen his family raised in the Jewish faith and now they were busy having their own children. A lot of time had passed and still the Messiah had not come. Sometimes when God makes a promise to us, we are tempted to rush the promise into fruition. We want things now rather than later. This is a human trait that comes straight from Adam and Eve. We want what we do not have and we often feel we deserve everything that God has to give, rather than being happy with what we are allotted.

So it is not inconceivable that Simeon was perhaps worried that he would die before seeing the Messiah. But finally, one day the Holy Spirit moved him to go to the courtyard of the holy temple. This part of the story is also interesting because it does not say that the Spirit tells him why he is to go there or even what the Messiah looks like. Isnt that often the way the Holy Spirit works with us as well? God often does not speak in a discernable voice that an ear can hear, but instead we feel the Lord speaking to us.

Sometimes we feel the need to call a friend we haven’t spoken with in over a year and when we do, we find out that he lost his job and feels bereft. Sometimes the Spirit will tell us not to take the shortcut we always take and later we find out there was an accident on that road. And there are other times when we feel the Spirit telling us something and we never know why. Those are the easiest times to dismiss the idea of God talking to us, because we do not see why God would tell us to do something even though we were sure at the time.

So there is Simeon, standing in the temple courtyard, unsure of why but hoping that this time he will get to see the Messiah. What do you think he thought the Messiah would look like? If God suddenly appeared in front of us right now, how would you picture God? Is God a man or a woman? Is he Caucasian, African American or Asian? Tall or short? Does God have a commanding, royal air about him or her or is God kind and compassionate looking? What does God wear? Pricey clothes from a designer boutique or faded Levis and tennis shoes?

All of these questions would have been going through Simeon’s mind as well. It makes us ask the same question of how will we know when we see Jesus? Simeon saw a young couple with a small child. There were probably many such couples. But he unerringly picked out Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. He followed his heart, he followed the Spirit where it led and even though Jesus was probably different in every way that Simeon had pictured the Messiah, he found Jesus and knew he was seeing the Messiah.

Sometimes God works in ways that are completely opposite of the way we would work. Many of us like to think that God is logical and rational, but if you ask an atheist God is anything but logical and rational. God does things differently from us so we need to work with God. We need to be open to new ideas or since the season is upon us, small epiphanies that take us where we need to be. This is a new year with new goals.

Not every thing that will happen this year will be good, logical or happy. We are going to see violence, war, natural disasters and the death of innocent people. Through all of those things, God is working. Our every day life filled with endless routine and the constant demand of time and energy from us, God is working. Simeon stayed faithful through the good as well as the bad and he was rewarded with seeing the Messiah with his own eyes before he died. We too are rewarded with glimpses of our Messiah in our life.

It is up to us if we believe what we see. It is up to you to decide what you believe. It is up to you to have faith in God’s promises as Simeon had faith. The Lord has promised us many things, not the least of which is salvation through Jesus Christ. But the Lord also promises us new bodies and new life just as Jesus received a new body and life. The Lord promised that death is not the end, that this life we live here is merely the beginning of our time with God. And that is what the Epiphany season is all about - our time with God. It is about how the Lord has come to be with us, and our response to Jesus Christ.

You do not live and die alone as many people have said in the past. You live and die with God. Take time this Epiphany season to see what God is up to. Take time to see where God is in your life, but remember, you can only see Jesus if you are looking and listening for him.

Amen.