November 2007

Monthly Archive

November 25, 2007

Winter Plans in the Kingdom

Posted by Jon Martin under Presbyterian, Sermons, Sunday Pulpit
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1 Corinthians 16:5-9 and Colossians 1:11-20

Paul ends his letter to the Corinthian Church by outlining his travel plans for the coming months. He writes that he plans to travel to Corinth and pass through Macedonia on the way from Ephesus. Do any of you know how far that is? It’s about 600 miles, and Paul would have made that trip partly on foot and partly by boat. He wants to spend the winter with that congregation. He also writes that when he finally arrives, he plans to stay a while. After such a long journey, you can hear why he might not want to visit them in passing. He may also want to stay longer because of the work that awaits him in Corinth. His long letter to them suggests that there is much to sort out.

But first I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, he writes, because a wide door of effective ministry had opened here. Doesn’t that sounds like a hopeful claim? Something has happened, some door has opened, and there is effective ministry to be done. Nothing more is written about that.

So do you wonder how all of that turned out? When Paul writes again to the Corinthian congregation he has already left Ephesus and was on his way through Macedonia. We don’t ever learn exactly what that ministry opportunity was in Ephesus or how it turned out.

A lot of ministry is like that. Do we really know the effect we have when we sit with someone in a hospital and offer a prayer for healing? Do we really know the effect we have when we tell a youth how glad we are to see them in church—that their presence here makes a difference? Or when we grieve along side of someone who’s just lost a daughter—even if there are no words spoken but only our silent presence? Or when we invite someone to come and see what God is doing in this community of faith? These are all wide doors of effective ministry, and ministry is such that we don’t always see the fruit of our ministry. Maybe that’s partly why the word “patience” is in the New Testament so much.

Certainly when we see an opportunity to minister to another—whatever that might be—don’t we all hope that God will make that ministry effective? I like the way Paul words that earlier in his letter: I planted, he wrote, Apollos (a colleague in ministry) watered, and God gave the growth. I like that image because it puts our work at the beginning the rest is up to God. That is a great sequence for us to keep.

The trouble with that kind of an approach is that the world measures success by output: the final score of a ball game, the amount of a shareholder’s dividend, the net sales on the day after Thanksgiving. Those are all results, and to be fair, they are fine for the world, but I hear a different metric for the church. We are called to focus on the input side—the planting and the watering—and then trust the results to God. I know this can be a challenge in a culture that teaches us to be impatient and to be result-oriented.

Do you remember Brody’s baptisms two weeks ago? We gathered around the font that day and celebrated the beginning of his life in Christ. We don’t know what is down the road for him, but what will it mean to him as a teenager that someone here (not his parent) took time to get to know him because they were there on the day he was baptized in this sanctuary? Which one of you will that be?

What about that grieving person? The doorbell rang and someone dropped off some food and offered a smile. No words were shared. It was too emotional a moment, but later a grieving mother remembered the ministry of caring from a church she didn’t even attend but reached out to her.

What about a person searching for a place to belong who will come to our Moravian lovefeast or our Christmas services because someone invited him?

What about the soldier in Afghanistan who received a Bible from us along with a letter from a pastor and a card signed by people he had never met?

Do you see how we work on the front end and trust the results to God? Sometimes we are blessed to see those results and sometimes we do not, but the wide doors of effective ministry are there. So what wide doors are waiting for you to walk through? The door of this church? The door of your own home or a friend’s home, the door of your work or school? Maybe it’s a hospital door or a barn door.

A church member asked me consider and pray about organizing a prayer time for peace so that people could gather here in this place and pray together for an end to the war. Another church member asked what we might do for the wounded soldiers at the VA hospital in Lexington? We’ve just finished a stewardship season and are shaping some plans for a new year of mission and ministry.

What are our winter plans in the kingdom? I hear an answer in the Colossians reading. Our winter plans in the kingdom are for us to remain a redemptive community. That means we forgive each other just as the Lord has forgiven us. That means we pray forgive us our debts to the extent that we are willing to forgive others. Our plans call us to demonstrate by our lives what redemption looks like. It has been shown us by God who has made peace by the cross, and it must be shown to the world by how we gather together for worship, study, mission, and fellowship.

I also hear in those ancient words that God wills for the church to do this in such a way that we understand Jesus himself to be in charge. A couple of years ago I suggested that there are two rules for church leadership. The first rule is that Jesus is head of the church. The second rule is if you think you’re in charge, see rule number one.

Here are some of the marks of a church that gets this: it’s free to concentrate on the input—on those wide doors for effective ministry—and not on measuring the results—God will take care of the results. It knows the difference between ministry and distractions from ministry. And then as Nancy Jo reminded us at the Thanksgiving Day Service, a church that really understands that Jesus is head of the church gets to rejoice together and then share that joy with the world.

I am looking forward to the winter months ahead. There is much work for us to do in the Kingdom. It will take all of us, and we will be made strong for this work with the strength that comes from God’s glorious power. And more than that, we will be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to God. Amen.

 

November 18, 2007

Anxiety Ahead

Posted by Jon Martin under Presbyterian, Sermons, Sunday Pulpit
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2 Corinthians 4:7-15 and Mark 1:29-39

When I drive our jeep, and then drive our minivan, I notice what I can see of each car through the windshield is a little different. When I drive the Jeep, I can see the end of the hood. Jeeps are made like that. Maybe you can see the front of the hood in your car and you know what I’m talking about. There’s the hood out there and beyond that there’s the road.

When I drive the minivan, however, I can’t see its hood. If I look to the bottom of the windshield down by the wipers, all I can see it the road. Maybe in the car you drive, that’s your view too. Of course it doesn’t take an aerospace engineer to figure out that the front of the minivan is like that so air flows smoothly around it. A jeep is not that aerodynamic.

So when I’m in the jeep and looking out the windshield, I can see where the jeep ends and the road begins. Many of the events of life are like that view from the jeep. You know when they are out there right when they end. A child’s school day is like that. Katherine gets home at 3:07pm. Your work might be like that ending at 5:30pm. Your subscription to Newsweek is like that. It will end next April. So too the days until the Iowa caucus, the time it takes to bake a roast, when the library books are due, and the number of days until a loved-one comes home from Iraq. All of these events of life are like looking out the windshield of a car and seeing that end point out there where the car ends and the road begins.

The seasons of the church year are like this. We know right when Advent begins (in two weeks) and right when it ends (on Christmas morning). We know that Christmas will last 12 days and give way to epiphany. Most Sunday mornings we even aim at finishing by 9:30/12:00. Much of the stuff of life is the regular, predictable beginning and ending stuff. It’s like the hood of the jeep. You see it out there and you know right where it is.

Then there’s the other view, the view from the minivan. There’s no front end visible on the van only the road ahead. A lot of life is like this view too. It’s the stuff that doesn’t have a clear end point. When will the war on Terror end? How long will it take for this new medicine to work? How long will I grieve? When will I find happiness again? And what about global warming?

Do you hear the difference between these two views? The view out this second windshield isn’t so predicable, and this second view has a lot of uncertainty with it. I am sensing anxiety in the conversations I’m having with people. Are you sensing this too? Is there a collective anxiety in our world right now? The economy, housing market, war, security, elections, the price of gasoline, new technology, we could add more to this list. Some of these have no clear end point. I wonder what life will be like for the children and youth of our church indeed even what they are facing right now. There is much that remains unanswered about our world and for many these are anxious days.

What role has the church in these anxious days? Our role is to act. We don’t react. We act. With wisdom, we bring word and action into that anxiety. To react would be to retreat or circle the wagons or wring our hands. As the church we are called to do none of those things. Instead we are called to make a stand and lead this fearful world forward with the promise that God is a present help in times of trouble, the predictable and the unpredictable moments in life

In the face of anxiety we choose to be people of hope. That means we—to return to the illustration of a car—do not put that car into park and stand still refusing to go forward. Neither to we put the car into reverse and seek some happier time in the past. We do not put the car in Neutral either and then let the slope of the road determine our direction of travel. As the church, we are called to put the car in drive and move forward into the future determined to make a difference. God is with us on this journey and nothing can change that.

This reminds me of a moment early in the gospel of Mark. After a long day of helping what must have seemed like an endless line of people, Jesus rose early the following morning and went off by himself to pray. Later the disciples went looking for him. When they finally found him they said everyone is looking for you.

That’s one of my favorite stories in the gospel of Mark. I imagine Jesus is quiet for a moment as he thinks about the previous day and the line of people stretching out the door, and the words from the disciples, “everyone is looking for you.” An anxious world is looking for you. Jesus answered, let us go on the neighboring towns and proclaim the message for this is what I came out to do. Knowing that his future would mean more of what he had just experienced the previous day, Jesus went forward.

This is the pattern he has set for the church. We are to go forward and bring a voice of hope and healing into the anxiety of the day. The world needs us to do this. There are times when the right question is not what’s in it for me, but what does the world need from people of faith? I believe right now the answer is some alternative to anxiety around us.

On this stewardship dedication Sunday we are committing to make visible this alternative by our mission and ministry. Your role as a follower of Jesus is to give your time, energy, and treasure toward this work as an act of discipleship.

Paul shared with the church in Corinth the struggle he faced in his ministry; certainly a formula for anxiety and defeat. He writes that he was afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. With each of these, however, he adds something more to show the presence of God with him. This presence, he writes is treasure we carry in clay vessels. Though we are afflicted, he writes, we are not crushed. Perplexed, he writes, but not driven to despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down but not destroyed. We might add to Paul’s litany: we are anxious, but not stuck, for we have the same Spirit of God with us, the same treasure in our clay vessels. The world needs us to share this treasure, and God calls us to do this.

In this stewardship season, you’ve seen some of the plans for the new year. Some of them are from your dreaming last summer. Today, for the two-hundred and twenty third time, the people of Pisgah church will choose to act, and make plans for the future. We will look through that windshield and drive forward on this journey together.Two hundred and twenty three years is a long history. To be sure, it is first and foremost a testimony to the faithfulness of God. Only after that it is a testimony to the greatness of this place, and to the commitment of God’s people who assemble here. And thanks be to God. Amen.

 

November 11, 2007

Ancient Paths

Posted by Jon Martin under Presbyterian, Sermons, Sunday Pulpit
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Jeremiah 6:16a and Romans 6:3-11

   

Our family attended a baptism this summer that was for me very moving. We were visiting Susanne’s family in Virginia and had gone to church with them on Sunday. During that service, the pastor said that two people would be baptized at the river at that afternoon. After church and lunch we drove to the river for the service. The river was the New River and we gathered at a wide, slow-moving section of it on a sunny July afternoon.

The pastor and a deacon waded into the river. They went a little ways out to a place that was about waist deep. A mother and daughter were baptized that day. Each one came out of the river soaking wet, head to toe. They were greeted with kind words, a towel, and smiles. Someone took a picture. It was a moving service for me because as these two people waded out of the river ready to begin life anew in Christ, and in that moment, I saw how we are all baptized into something much bigger than ourselves. We are so tiny and the waters of baptism are so big like that river in Virginia: wide, purposeful, slow moving and ancient.

Water, as you know, has a way of shaping the land around it. The water of the New River has shaped a path through the Appalachian Mountains over millions of years. I was really moved by the image of new life in Christ beginning in a place that has been shaped forever by water. Can you imagine the strength of water to make a path through mountains? Last month I saw two other places that are the way they are because of water.

 When we were in California for fall break last month, we spent a day in Yosemite with my mom. It’s a place formed by the power of slow-moving determined glaciers carving and sculpting granite. For me, the mountainscape of Yosemite is a witness to the power of water to shape solid rock. In Yosemite, glaciers have stacked rocks on top of each others, used rocks like sand paper to polish huge rock faces, and cut an entire mountain in half. What strength that is!

On our way home from California, we were on the side of the plane that got to see the Grand Canyon with its dark red, layered walls of sediment and the Colorado river deep at the bottom. Here too is a witness to the steady strength of flowing water.

Like those places, you too have been shaped forever by water, the waters of baptism. From the day of your own baptism you have been forever changed. This is the language of Paul in Romans 6. Our baptism is a sign of our own dying and rising with Christ into new life: a forever-changed life. We’ve not been changed into perfect people by the water of baptism, but we have embarked on a journey that is leading us closer to what God has called us to become.

 

When we profess faith in Jesus Christ in connection with our baptism—whether that happens right with baptism like at a river or later like during a confirmation program—we must, Paul writes, consider ourselves alive to God in Christ Jesus. The waters of baptism change us forever because they are the sign of our own dying and rising with Christ. It is the physical sign for us that we are resurrection people. Baptismal water, like resurrection, has the power to move stone out of its way.

 

We are changed forever because we had died and risen with Christ. In Baptism, we are also washed clean: everything old is gone and all things are new. Last month, a veteran of WWII returned to Normandy for the second time in sixty-three years. His first visit was by landing craft on D-Day. Last month he again stood on the beach and looked at the North Sea. He remembered the red in the water and on the sand from that day long ago. On this visit the beach looks so different now, he said. The sea water has washed that beach clean again. There is no sign of what had happed there except in his memory and in the cemetery nearby. So it is with the waters of baptism, because no matter what we’ve come through, we are washed clean and are made new.

 

In Baptism, we are also made part of something bigger than ourselves. We are included in the household of God. The adoption papers have been signed and we belong. We are not alone in this world. We have a family to help us grow in faith, cheer us on, and help us up when we stumble. We belong to the one who knows us and claims us even before we are aware of that claim on our lives. I want to challenge you to get to know the children and youth of this church by name and reinforce for them that they belong here.

 What does all this mean for us? Let me bring in the words from Jeremiah. It’s just one verse but the image is strong: Thus says the Lord: stand at the cross roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

 

We are at a cross roads as a church. We have asked one another in what direction should we proceed, and what we are dreaming about for the future. The session has prepared a budget and, for the past four weeks, we have heard from several church members about our individual responsibility for the mission and ministry for what’s ahead.

 

At this cross road Jeremiah’s counsel is to be still. Stand still he says. Before you proceed down any pathway, stand still and look. Ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies, and then walk in that way. Today we stand still around a font.

Jeremiah’s counsel is to proceed only after we have sought the good way. The truth I hear in these ancient words is that what we are called forward down a path that connects us to our ancient roots. Down this path there is good work ahead. You got to see some of this at the fair last week. What we’ve heard in this stewardship season so far reflects some of our plans for this work in the new year, but we should also be open to being surprised by what God will bring our way. Remember the strength of water. We have been changed forever, made new, and included in something bigger than ourselves. This is the good way and here there is rest for your soul. And thanks be to God. Amen.

 

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