Category: Sermons

a sermon on Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,  the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;  but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together,  and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

I’ve had just about enough change.

My difficulty with change is not so much that it frightens me, although I do admit change can be fearful and overwhelming; it’s more that right now change EXHAUSTS me.

Saying goodbye to the past and making way for the new;

Discerning what change is good, faithful, and for the better–and what change is not;

Dealing gracefully with the unknown and unpredictable;

It’s all so draining and tempts me to shut my eyes and pretend, at least for a moment, that change isn’t knocking right now at the door of my life, of our world, of Southminster, in a variety of ways. I expect some of you may be tempted to do the same.

But then Isaiah shares a vision with us today:

Of a changing of the guard and the rise of a servant of the Lord who will, empowered by the spirit of God, bear witness to God’s salvation for all people;

Of a changing social order where the poor, the marginalized, and the unjustly oppressed shall know equity, compassion, and justice;

Of a wolf and a lamb, a lion and a calf, a snake and a child changing from enemies into fellow residents in the peaceable kingdom of God.

So, I cannot hide. None of us can hide. A change is going to come.

And if we’re serious about our Advent faith that actively waits for and seeks out signs of Christ’s presence which change the world for the better, we must have courage to open our eyes and engage.

In an article in Presbyterians Today, a monthly magazine published by the PC(USA) Austin Seminary professor Cynthia Rigby admits this approach to change is risky.

She writes: “If we could convince ourselves that change is either impossible or illusory, we could exempt ourselves from fretting about it. If we could give up on changing things, we would never have to deal with the pain of shattered expectations.”

Rigby continues by pointing out that those who seek to follow Christ are called to give up such resistance to change and instead join with God to “imagine, engage, and even contribute to the coming of the God’s kingdom to earth, as it is heaven.”

Inspired by Isaiah’s vision, we might say that we are called not to resist change—difficult and disruptive as it can be–but rather we are called to remember that God’s Holy Spirit, the same breath of air that rested upon the shoulders and filled the lungs of Chris (who we believe is the servant Isaiah’s vision points to by the way!) rests upon and fills us, too.

That spirt of God equips us for the task, offering us the gifts given to Christ–wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, and the fear and awe of God’s continuing work in the world; gifts which enable us to encounter change with faithfulness and discernment rather than fear or fatigue.

The last lines of Isaiah’s vision are also instructive for us in learning how to engage faithfully with the change God is bringing for they remind us that “the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

As we follow the spirit into the world, Christ Jesus is visible in plain sight, already enacting the change we wish to see, already giving us his peace, love and grace which never changes and which we and our world hunger for.

And so we join in, for our love of Christ draws us closer to that signal and to each other. We rush forward playing catch up with the spirit and doing what we can to open eyes and hearts that even now are fed up and exhausted.

Following the spirit in this way may take any number of forms for us this Advent and beyond:  *Quiet conversation and prayer with a friend who is fearful and needs the hope your listening presence provides…

*A deep breath that carries with it a reminder of the spirit’s gifts of wisdom, and understanding and love that enables you to echo Isaiah’s vision in which no one destroys or gets hurt on any mountain God has created.

*A shopping excursion to buy a toy for GBM or a winter cleaning of your closet that results ina delivery of coats for First Light Shelter, or the time you give at Jimmy Hale mission, or any number of other small but significant acts of mercy and kindness that are more apparent this time of year but are available almost any season.

A change is going to come. In fact that change is already here. It is present among us as we light candles of peace and hope. It is breaking in as we eat at table with gifts of bread and cup. The Spirit is coming to rest even now on the shoulders of the one who is to come and on the ones who wish to follow him. Do not resist or turn a blind eye, but be drawn to Christ so that you along with the world, might also be changed for the better.

Amen.

an Advent meditation on Luke 2:1-8

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

This season often seems one of constant movement, doesn’t it?

So many things to do, so little time to do them all.

Parties to attend, gifts to buy, people to see, performances to prepare for, places to travel, schedules to pay close attention to.

It can be a joyful race all that movement, but even when done in joy the end result can be quite tiring. And sometimes even while necessary, that go, go, go approach can leave us missing out on a thing or two about what really makes this time special.

The very first Christmas was a sort of “Go, Go. Go” mad dash of an event, too though.

Think about all the hustle and bustle required of Mary and Joseph in a time when there was no Expedia to book your tickets, no gas station every couple of exits to stretch your legs, and fuel your donkey, no iPhone GPS to tell you how to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem without having to go through Atlanta or hitting all those toll roads!

And as bad as the crowds may get at the Summitt or Galleria, they must have paled in comparison to the mad rush in Bethlehem that led to a no vacancy sign in ever inn save the one that happened to have a manger in the back.

And yet as we think about that Christmas, as we think about seasons past and seasons yet to come, we feel a moment when time seems to stop; when go, go, go, gives way to still, still, still, still.

That’s the moment of course when the baby is born—which as we know is a mad dash all in and of itself. But it’s a different sort of dash, too, one which actually invites us to put aside the frenetic pace we keep so often in this and many other times, and instead stop and pay attention in ways far deeper than we ever thought we could. really can fade, and a deep and abiding peace can begin to take hold.

Because a baby, if nothing else, demands our attention. Demands we alter our movements and concentrate not just on what’s straight ahead but also on what’s all around.

And this baby Jesus demands something even a bit more—demands that we put aside every other thing that occupies our hearts and instead focus on the joy, love and peace of his heart, which this baby promises to deliver to the world.

In the process, we are invited to remember that while life in this world necessitates a certain amount of go, go, go, the most important things, the deep things, the precious things, call for us to pause, to relish the moment, to be still, still, still, and know that we are mortal, that God is God, and that God’s love and grace are to be enjoyed, appreciated, and shared everywhere the journeys of the season take us.

My goal therefore for this Advent season is to accept that invitation and to slow down a little bit more. To be at peace a little bit more. If that means I’m a little late to the party, or have to stand in the checkout  line a little longer, or spend an extra moment or two stretching my legs at each rest stop—so be it.

For those times of stillness are also opportunities to hum along to a piece of music, or to be aware of the people around me, or to hear the laughter of children or the cry of a baby and be reminded of the love of God that comes to us in surprising ways, of God’s grace which changes the world, of God’s peace which stills our hearts and our steps and fills us with the light of hope.

May that same peace be with you in all your going and yet grant you stillness when it is needed most. Amen.

 

Mighty God, as we move through this advent season guide our steps and calm our hearts so that we may also learn to pause and recognize your goodness filling up our lives and our world. Amen.

 

a sermon on John 10:11-18

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes[a] it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

 

Down to the River to pray…

That’s the common title and the first line of the tune/song we just heard.

It’s a gospel song, written in 1867 or perhaps even earlier, but made especially popular in the last 15 years after singer/songwriter Alison Krauss recorded a version of it for the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? in 2000[1].

In the film the song is heard during a scene in which a baptism occurs. And as I have been thinking about this Sunday, when we celebrate the baptism of William Reid Brown, son of Matt and Lauren Brown, that image has just stuck with me.

In a very real way, as they come to the font, Reid and his family are coming come down to the river, the river of living water to be exact, down to the font of blessing, where we see clearly God’s love and grace for us all.

The truth of this amazing grace is rooted in the promises we hear throughout God’s Word, but which are especially evident in our readings this morning from Psalm 23 and John’s Gospel.

The image of God as shepherd, of God leading us to green pastures and beside still waters, of God through Jesus—calling each of us God’s own—ties deeply into what we believe about baptism:

That we belong to God always.

That God–through Jesus–loves us so deeply that the valley of the shadow of death cannot overtake us, and the wolf cannot scatter us,

That God invites us to follow in the paths of righteousness and grace the shepherd treads.

That’s the God who calls Reid down to the river today. That’s the God we promise to teach him—and all other children of God—about in the days to come. A God that loves us from the beginning and will love us to the end, a Good shepherd who is willing to lays down his life and takes it up again for our sake.

And so, today is a celebration—and a grand one at that!  God’s love made visible is always worth a shout of joy and a song or two.

In fact it’s such a celebration, that we might be tempted to linger at the party a little too long.

It’s easy to see why we might overstay our welcome. Given the heartache, uncertainty and conflict that can so easily be seen in our world and lives, going down to the river, resting in green pastures and beside still waters can be a balm to the soul, a safeguard for all the things that threaten to undo us.

But it can be so tempting to turn that balm into a suit of armor;  to use our experience of God’s presence as a way to insulate ourselves from the pains of the world; to turn a blind eye to others in the flock who may still be wandering; to think that being called God’s own is for us inside these walls alone.

Such is not the way of the Good Shepherd.

The way of the Good shepherd as the Psalm explains it, as Jesus proclaims it, does take us down to the river of grace and belonging and peace, does lead us to green pastures and still waters, but those  places are not the final destination. Rather they are the places where we gather our strength before getting to work in the dark valleys, where pain is real, and choices are difficult, and loving enemies is essential.

That’s the way of baptism, too. Baptism is a celebration, but it is also calling. It is the beginning point of our ministry as disciples of Jesus.

In baptism, we come down to the river to splash in the living waters of grace, and then we go from the river to share that water with those who are thirsty and wandering and who do not yet feel they belong;  those who may even perplex, frustrate, or scare us.

It’s not always easy; to be kind to those we might think are as dedicated as a hired hand who runs at the first sight of trouble; to be humble even in the presence of our enemies; to be hopeful even when the dark valley feels so close.

But those are the lessons we pledge to teach Reid today, the lessons we have promised to teach others in the past, the lessons we cling to as we remember our own baptisms. And the best way I know to teach those lessons is to live them.

And it just so happens, that today God has given us a time and place to do just that. For today, we join with countless others in our Presbytery in going down to the river, Living River, a Retreat on the Cahaba, to be exact.

We go–some of us physically and all of us in spirit– praying that God will make that ground holy, that God’s love will be visible to all who go to Living River today and in the years to follow.

We go to dedicate the grounds, facilities, and memories of the saints who gave their gifts so that through camps and conferences and all other sorts of encounters, valleys might be made less dark, enemies might become friends, and all may dwell in God’s house as God’s children forever.

We go, with Reid, with all children of God down to the river, down to the waters of baptism, heeding the call of the our Good Shepherd, trusting that we are God’s own, so that we may rise from those waters to share them with the world.

May our Good shepherd show us the way.

Amen.

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_River_to_Pray

a sermon on 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

One of my seminary professors, Rodger Nishioka, would begin several of his Christian Education classes with a quiz. This quiz was based on a  Gallup poll, I believe, from the late 1990s or early 2000s.

One of the questions on the quiz was “What is the biggest fear young people reported having?” The answer might or might not surprise you: entering the school lunchroom and having no place to, no friend to sit with.

I am not sure if that is still the biggest fear young people face today but I do think the need that fear underscores is one that is pretty basic to all of us—no matter our age.

The need is for belonging.

Belonging fills a need for community. It enables us to be a part of something that is bigger than ourselves, and to gather with others who share values and interests similar to our own.

Belonging also give us a sense of identity.  Saying that we belong to a certain family, or that we are students at a certain school, or that we play or cheer for a certain team tells others who we are, where we come from, and what things we can be expected to do.

This church is a great example of that. I’ve said before that one of the things I have appreciated about Southminster already is that you know what it means to be Presbyterian.

To say one belongs to the Presbyterian church, means more or less that we believe in certain things: the sovereignty of God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the primacy of grace; and that we respond to God  in certain ways: by giving thanks, by caring for others, by being good stewards of creation.

Belonging is something the church in Corinth though, is struggling with. In the passage we heard from chapter 3 of Paul’s letter, Paul is continuing an argument begun in Chapter 1, answering people who claim to belong to certain theological camps. Some say they belong to Paul, others to another teacher named Apollos.

This is something like us today saying we belong to the Republican or Democratic party, or to the camp of liberal or conservative, or even closer to home, Alabama or Auburn.

The problem with the Corinthian church though is that these camps they say they belong to have become fixed; they’ve come to be defined as much by who they exclude as who they include. They’ve become huddled masses of us vs. them.   Perhaps that’s happened to some of the groups we belong to from time to time as well.

When that happens belonging really isn’t belonging any more. It becomes idolatry.

It’s idolatry because what we are really saying is that who we are is not defined by God but by the expectations and customs of one group.

It’s idolatry because it treats the image of God in others and ourselves as secondary to what the group thinks is worthy and valuable.

It’s idolatry because it claims that what really matters is the way we look, or act, rather than how God looks at us, how God acts for us.

Paul, thinks such claims are nonsense. “Who is Paul?” He says. “Who is Apollos?” Certainly not the be all and end all themselves. They are rather servants of the one to whom we all belong.

To say otherwise about Paul, or Apollos, or any group we may belong is to miss the point entirely of our existence, to tell a lie instead of the truth about who we really are.

And the truth about who the church of Corinth was then-and who we are today is this: they are, you are, we are children of God.

Not by our own doing, but by God’s grace.

We are children of God and God uses us to be part of something far greater than we can imagine. God plants us as a field, God crafts us as a building, Paul writes, God makes us—as different as we each are–Christ’s body at work in the world so that we may proclaim that God’s love known in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for all.

Everyone belongs, because God says we belong.

Of course this may seem like foolishness to much of the world, and Paul says as much elsewhere, and perhaps that’s because the world, in all of the ways it wants us to belong, doesn’t really demand of us as much as belonging to Christ demands of us.

Belonging only to Apollos or to Paul or to this team, or that political party or that theological position means you only have to look out for those who are wearing your same uniform, who are going for the same prize you are, who will always say “yes” to your ideas, who will always make you feel safe and secure that your position is the right one to have.

But to belong to Christ and to follow the message of the cross demands that we trust in God above anything else, we trust that to God belongs the ultimate powers of salvation and of growth, and that God means for everyone to enjoy those blessings.

To belong to each other through Christ means that we have to put aside jealousy and quarreling and take up instead the challenging tasks of breaking down walls of exclusion, of going outside our comfort zones, of struggling together with those who feel and believe and act differently than we do, of recognizing the mark of Christ in even those we consider strange, lost, or less than.

That’s a good lesson for us to remember, for just like the church of Corinth we can experience conflict in our life together. We can disagree about decisions that need to be made, and can be tempted to huddle in like minded groups in an us vs. them mentality

Our challenge is to lean on Gods grace and resist that temptation, proclaiming the truth rather than being swallowed by the lie.

There is a practice I have found helpful in remembering and proclaiming that truth of our belonging—and I’d like to share it with you.

It’s to always answer the question “Who are you?” with the phrase “I am a child of God.”

In my ministry with children and youth at camps and conferences, with confirmation classes and even with adults in Sunday school and on retreats, I have even used that question and answer as an impromptu liturgical response. I ask: Who are You? And the answers come shouting back: “I am a Child of God.”

I’ll be asking just that question of all of you during the benediction.

It’s simple maybe, and perhaps a bit cheesy and I know that some of the people I have had the privilege of growing in faith with have rolled their eyes at it.

But it’s one of the best way I can think of remember who I am—who we are, and how we belong to God and to each other. And besides–it’s the truth.  We are children of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.