Reading: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37, Isaiah 64:1-9
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY on November 27th 2011
A printable PDF file can be found here
It’s the first Sunday of Advent – Advent being the season when we start to consider the implications of God revealing Himself to us through the birth of Jesus long ago in a Bethlehem stable.
Why? Why did God choose to do such a crazy thing as coming to the world as a baby in a manger? Of all the options that God – being God – could have chosen in order to reveal love and righteousness and truth and light to the world, what’s with this “Jesus /Christmas/ Incarnation” thing?
I could stand up in the pulpit for a long, long, time and never even scratch the surface of the “Why” question. ‘Why’ is a tiny little word, but a great big huge question. ‘Why, Daddy, why?’ ‘Why does this do that?’ ‘Why won’t this work?’ ‘Why do I have to go to church?’ ‘Why can’t I be an astronaut?’ ‘Why does the mailman wear blue?’ ‘Why do fools fall in love?’ ‘Why did God send Jesus?’.
I think that Isaiah 64:1-9, our lectionary passage for this morning, gives us a little insight into the “Why did God send Jesus?” question. You see in that passage Isaiah going through, what can only be described as… A MAJOR CRISIS!
Isaiah was of course, (by virtue of being an old Testament prophet) writing a long time before Jesus was ever born on earth. What’s more, Isaiah, who as we’ve said was an Old Testament prophet, was an extreme sort of guy, not afraid to speak his mind when he felt called to do so.
And Isaiah, in our reading is hurting. He’s not just having a bad day – he’s having a terrible, horrible, obnoxiously awful time of things. He’s tied up in knots, frustrated and starting to get a little crazy. And most of it is to do with the fact that he is a prophet.
On the one hand, his problem is with God. God seems to be on the run… in hiding.. gone missing, gone walkabout, absent without leave. It wasn’t that God had stopped listening... God wasn’t even... as Bette Midler put it, “Watching from a Distance”…God just wasn’t there. Think about it. If you were a prophet declaring the word of God – the absence of God was a major problem. Isaiah had a problem with God.
He also had a problem with God’s people. Actually not with God’s people specifically, but just ‘people that God had made’ in general. Isaiah looked around him and looked at the way people were living and the things they were doing and then looks up to heaven and complains to God; (verse 7) “There is nobody who calls on Your name, or attempts to take hold of You”
Maybe that was exaggerating things a bit, but even those that did bother trying to connect with God, were in an equally bad position, because those who were doing the right things were doing them for the wrong reasons, and even if they did get it right, compared to the righteousness of God, their righteousness was just like dirty old rags or filthy dish-washing cloths. Welcome to the jungle! Every person for themselves and God didn’t even come into the picture.
Isaiah’s Crisis;
1) God wasn’t showing up
2) Nobody was looking for God.
That’s a problem for a prophet.
It’s a problem for any person of faith. As society becomes increasing secular and God is increasingly portrayed as ‘one of those philosophical conundrums that one can choose either to dismiss or accept only with some caution’, then the only way people can live is by working out what’s right and wrong for them selves.
You can no longer settle an argument by saying, ‘Well, it says in the Bible’. Because somebody is going to turn around and say, ‘I don’t give a fig what it says in the Bible, because it’s an outdated old book that belonged to an ancient time when people still held onto some romantic notion of their actually being a God. There is no God... so why do I have to listen to your claptrap’
Taking it one step further, the question, as to if there is or is not a God, is a complete irrelevance to some people, because God or no-God, they are not about to waste any of their valuable time looking for Him, Her or it, because frankly they feel they have better things to do with their lives. Why look for God when you are getting by quite well, thank you very much, without needing any sense of the Divine?
This is where, I believe, the ‘WHY?” of Christmas comes into play. Why did God choose the revelation of a Christmas Jesus in order to share and show divine love to the world? Precisely because, as Isaiah discovered, and as people in our world are still telling us, not only did God seem absent, but also, nobody was looking for God. Such is the crisis of belief that Isaiah faced. Such is the crisis of belief that the church today has to speak to.
And the Advent message speaks right into that situation.
1. It tells us that God is not on holiday, on study leave, missing without a weekend pass, or absent in any way whatsoever, but God in Christ comes to the center of human reality, as a baby, in a manger, subject to all the uncertainty that being human being exposes us to. God – in Christ – shouts out to us with the piercing wail if a baby’s cry – I’m real, I’m really here – right now – and I’m here to be known and known by you.
2. The Advent message is that not only is God real and really here, but God is out looking for us. If a person is lost without knowing it, the only way they ever become found is if somebody goes out looking for them, finds them where they are, taps them on the shoulder, and says, “Hey, I was looking for you!”
The God of Christmas, God in Christ, is the God whose real presence comes looking for us, the God who in Jesus, gets on our case and under our skin with words that call us to follow and actions that call us to change, whose healing touch becomes the remedy for our sickness and whose salvation gets a hold of us, at times when we don’t even realize we are lost.
This is a God whose Spirit works on our insides and says crazy things to us like, “Hey, listen, I need you. I need you to walk with me. I need you on my side. I need you on my side because you need Me more than I need you.” Did you catch that last bit? “I need you on my side because you need Me more than I need you”
This is God. It would be arrogance indeed to suggest that the God of the universe, the God who flung stars into space and carved atoms out of nothingness, actually can’t get by without us. Yet God chooses for us to know His love, not because God can’t live without it, but because God knows our lives are so different when we make room for the love of Jesus Christ in our heart of hearts.
There’s a crisis in our world. Now that’s an understatement. Our world is crisis after crisis after crisis. Seems like there’s always something going wrong, some revelation of something rotten, some bad thing going on here, tragedy there, disaster taking place in this place or that.
Maybe there’s a crisis that you are personally travelling through. Maybe it’s something you’ve got yourself into. Maybe it’s something bad that has come your way, out of nowhere. Maybe its just life, getting you down, tugging at you in ways you don’t like or can’t handle. Maybe you’re just not sure anymore. One says this. One says that, I don’t know whom to believe!
So here it is in a nutshell. The Advent message. God is here. Always was here. Always will be here. Christmas tells us that God will go to the limits of human experience to prove God’s love is here for us. Maybe we haven’t been looking? No problem. God’s looking for us!
So, on this first Sunday Advent, I invite you to let yourself be found. Believe the Good News. Christ was born in Bethlehem. May Christ be born in our hearts anew as we travel through this Christmas season! AMEN.
Rev Adrian Pratt
Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Three (actually Four) Thessalonian Songs 4."Blessed Assurance”
Readings: Joshua 3:7-17, Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Matthew 23:1-12
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, on November 13th 2011
A printable PDF file is available here
Our closing hymn this morning is to be one written by hymn writer Fanny Crosby. “Blessed Assurance”. It focuses on the themes of God’s salvation and the response that as Christians we should make to God’s Grace. Those themes complement our reading from 1 Thessalonians 5, a passage that gives Paul’s closing remarks of encouragement to the Thessalonican church.
The hymn’s first verse reads;
Our scripture passage began with Paul talking of “Glory Divine” or rather “The Day of The Lord”. Whilst Paul insists that such a day would one day be here, he mixes illustrations in such a way as to leave us guessing as to when such a time could be. On the one hand it would come like a thief in the night. On the other hand it would also be like the onset of labor pains to a pregnant woman.
Thieves in the night can come at any time. However - your likelihood of being the victim of a thief in the night - depends a lot on where you live and how well prepared you are. For instance, if it’s the middle of winter and you live in a one-horse town somewhere in North Dakota, the chances of a thief arriving are minimal. If however you are in an inner city ghetto known for it’s high crime rate, then the chances are you will have locks, chains and security devices set to warn you of the event.
The image of a pregnant woman is equally ambiguous. Usually pregnant women have a due date when they expect their labor pains to begin. By the time that due date comes around it is fairly obvious by the bulge in mothers womb that the child will be arriving any day now. Labor pains may begin at any moment during that time of being very pregnant. You can hardly say the event is entirely unexpected. The signs are all there that something is going to happen!
Paul’s concern is not to give the Thessalonians a suggested date for the second coming but rather to ensure them that there will come a ‘Day of the Lord’ when all things will be well. As to dates and times, they really didn’t need that information any more than we do. What we need to know is that God is in control and that one-day, be it today or a billion years from now, God has the final word. Such is one of the “Blessed Assurances” Paul offers to us.
It was an assurance that the Thessalonican church needed to hear because they were a persecuted people. Paul and Silas had to escape from the city under cover of darkness. Some, like Jason, a leader of that earliest church, had been bought before the courts under the charge of harboring enemies of the state.
So Paul writes to encourage them, “On the last day, those who stand against you now will stand no longer. Hold onto the faith that you have, because, although it doesn’t look that way right now, ultimately the victory will be yours.” In a similar way Fanny Crosby’s hymn uses phrases such as “Visions of rapture”, Angels descending” and “Watching and Waiting and looking above” to interpret the faith that was her story and her song.
Paul then moves on to consider how the coming of this event in the future should influence the lives we live from day to day. The primary image that he employs is to identify the people of God as being “children of light and children of the day” (v5). To reinforce that picture he uses opposing images and speaks of people who were “of the night and of the darkness”.
Thessalonica, one assumes, was, like many larger cities today, the sort of place where some would spend their nighttime hours in what one older commentary describes as ‘the over-indulgence of carnal pursuits’. Paul speaks of how ‘those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night” (v7). So he exhorts the Thessalonians, “Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (v6).
Paul suggests that we know the difference between living a life that is out of control, self-indulgent and destructive and a life that is self-controlled, compassionate and productive.That first way he compares to a drunken sleep.
The second way, the better way, is to live a life enlightened to the dangers that are out there and being ready to defend yourself against them. It is an encouragement to know that on the last day, “The Day of the Lord” all will be well, but that doesn’t mean life can just drift along without there being any problems or struggles.
Even if you are a soldier on the winning side you are not going to last long if you go out and fight the enemy without wearing any armor. The Thessalonians had a battle to fight. A battle for survival. Paul tells them to equip themselves with two defensive items “to put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”
The source for these items was in Jesus Christ, through the work He had accomplished on the Cross and through His resurrection presence; known to them through the Holy Spirit.
Because Jesus had died for them, they had hope. Because Christ was raised from the dead, they could live every day with the assurance of God’s presence. Because God had a purpose and plan for their lives, a plan that they should enjoy God’s salvation, then the way they lived their life should reflect the faith that held them sure. No part of their existence—present, future, or eternal—was seen as untouched by the saving work of Christ.
The outcome of their “Blessed Assurance” was a security that set them free to live their lives for others. They did not simply "rest assured"; they "acted assuredly" by providing others with the kind of encouragement that blessed their lives.
Fanny Crosby’s hymn speaks of being an “Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood”. She had the assurance that Christ had died for her and that she was destined therefore to live a life of purpose that would culminate in the blessings of a glorious eternity in Christ’s nearer presence. Let me tell you a little more about the lady who wrote those words.
Fanny Crosby was born on March 24th, 1820, in a one-story cottage in South East, New York. Her father, John, died before her first birthday. At six weeks old, she caught a slight cold in her eyes. The family physician was away. Another country doctor was called in to treat her. He prescribed hot mustard poultices to be applied to her eyes, which destroyed her sight completely. It was later learned that the man was not qualified to practice medicine.
At five years old, her mother took her to consult the best eye specialist in the country. Neighbors and friends pooled money together in order to send her. The diagnosis? "Poor child, I am afraid you will never see again." Such experiences of loss and human mistakes had the possibility of making her attitude to life bitter and resentful. Remarkably she considered her loss of sight as a great blessing, one time explaining to her mother, “If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind... for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.”
Moving to Ridgefield, Connecticut, she came under her Grandmothers influence and set about memorizing as much of the bible as she was able. At 15 she returned to New York to attend a school for the blind, where despite discouragement from her teachers, she developed her poetic skills.
At 23 the school, in which she was now a teacher, sought to receive financial support from Congress. Fanny decided to write a poem in celebration of the work of Congress. It worked, and not only did the school receive support, but she herself became a friend to many of the most influential people of the day, including many presidents.
Time does not permit to recount her whole life story. By the time of her death in her nineties she had witnessed over 8,000 of her poems set to music and over 100,000,000 copies of her songs printed. She became associated with the Bowery Mission in N.Y. where the piano she wrote many of her hymns is still located. Some suggest that she was the greatest hymn writer in the history of the Christian Church. Not bad for a visually handicapped girl from a single parent family in New York!
All of which brings us back to Paul’s message to the Thessalonians. They hadn’t had an easy start to their life as a church. They faced much that was discouraging. But they fixed their hope on Jesus Christ. Their ‘Blessed Assurance’ was that the love of God was greater than the forces that opposed them.
Of Fanny Crosby’s hymns, they knew not a thing. Yet I can’t help thinking that they would identify with the words of this third verse: -
So what of us and what of our lives?
What will be our story and our song?
May God’s Grace touch our lives in such a real way that we allow the love of Christ to encourage us and lead us through the many different circumstances that come our way, with the knowledge that one day… all will be well.
We may never have a life quite as productive as Fanny Crosby’s, or a church quite as famous as that of the Thessalonians, but under the touch of Jesus Christ our lives truly can be blessed with divine significance. The blessed assurance of God’s love is available to us all. It shouts to us from the Cross of Calvary and blazes forth from the empty tomb. May God help us to respond in fruitful ways to the many blessings Christ sends our way. May faithfulness become our story and commitment become our song. AMEN.
Rev Adrian Pratt
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, on November 13th 2011
A printable PDF file is available here
Our closing hymn this morning is to be one written by hymn writer Fanny Crosby. “Blessed Assurance”. It focuses on the themes of God’s salvation and the response that as Christians we should make to God’s Grace. Those themes complement our reading from 1 Thessalonians 5, a passage that gives Paul’s closing remarks of encouragement to the Thessalonican church.
The hymn’s first verse reads;
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,
O what a foretaste of Glory Divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood”
O what a foretaste of Glory Divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood”
Our scripture passage began with Paul talking of “Glory Divine” or rather “The Day of The Lord”. Whilst Paul insists that such a day would one day be here, he mixes illustrations in such a way as to leave us guessing as to when such a time could be. On the one hand it would come like a thief in the night. On the other hand it would also be like the onset of labor pains to a pregnant woman.
Thieves in the night can come at any time. However - your likelihood of being the victim of a thief in the night - depends a lot on where you live and how well prepared you are. For instance, if it’s the middle of winter and you live in a one-horse town somewhere in North Dakota, the chances of a thief arriving are minimal. If however you are in an inner city ghetto known for it’s high crime rate, then the chances are you will have locks, chains and security devices set to warn you of the event.
The image of a pregnant woman is equally ambiguous. Usually pregnant women have a due date when they expect their labor pains to begin. By the time that due date comes around it is fairly obvious by the bulge in mothers womb that the child will be arriving any day now. Labor pains may begin at any moment during that time of being very pregnant. You can hardly say the event is entirely unexpected. The signs are all there that something is going to happen!
Paul’s concern is not to give the Thessalonians a suggested date for the second coming but rather to ensure them that there will come a ‘Day of the Lord’ when all things will be well. As to dates and times, they really didn’t need that information any more than we do. What we need to know is that God is in control and that one-day, be it today or a billion years from now, God has the final word. Such is one of the “Blessed Assurances” Paul offers to us.
It was an assurance that the Thessalonican church needed to hear because they were a persecuted people. Paul and Silas had to escape from the city under cover of darkness. Some, like Jason, a leader of that earliest church, had been bought before the courts under the charge of harboring enemies of the state.
So Paul writes to encourage them, “On the last day, those who stand against you now will stand no longer. Hold onto the faith that you have, because, although it doesn’t look that way right now, ultimately the victory will be yours.” In a similar way Fanny Crosby’s hymn uses phrases such as “Visions of rapture”, Angels descending” and “Watching and Waiting and looking above” to interpret the faith that was her story and her song.
Paul then moves on to consider how the coming of this event in the future should influence the lives we live from day to day. The primary image that he employs is to identify the people of God as being “children of light and children of the day” (v5). To reinforce that picture he uses opposing images and speaks of people who were “of the night and of the darkness”.
Thessalonica, one assumes, was, like many larger cities today, the sort of place where some would spend their nighttime hours in what one older commentary describes as ‘the over-indulgence of carnal pursuits’. Paul speaks of how ‘those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night” (v7). So he exhorts the Thessalonians, “Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (v6).
Paul suggests that we know the difference between living a life that is out of control, self-indulgent and destructive and a life that is self-controlled, compassionate and productive.That first way he compares to a drunken sleep.
The second way, the better way, is to live a life enlightened to the dangers that are out there and being ready to defend yourself against them. It is an encouragement to know that on the last day, “The Day of the Lord” all will be well, but that doesn’t mean life can just drift along without there being any problems or struggles.
Even if you are a soldier on the winning side you are not going to last long if you go out and fight the enemy without wearing any armor. The Thessalonians had a battle to fight. A battle for survival. Paul tells them to equip themselves with two defensive items “to put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”
The source for these items was in Jesus Christ, through the work He had accomplished on the Cross and through His resurrection presence; known to them through the Holy Spirit.
Because Jesus had died for them, they had hope. Because Christ was raised from the dead, they could live every day with the assurance of God’s presence. Because God had a purpose and plan for their lives, a plan that they should enjoy God’s salvation, then the way they lived their life should reflect the faith that held them sure. No part of their existence—present, future, or eternal—was seen as untouched by the saving work of Christ.
The outcome of their “Blessed Assurance” was a security that set them free to live their lives for others. They did not simply "rest assured"; they "acted assuredly" by providing others with the kind of encouragement that blessed their lives.
Fanny Crosby’s hymn speaks of being an “Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood”. She had the assurance that Christ had died for her and that she was destined therefore to live a life of purpose that would culminate in the blessings of a glorious eternity in Christ’s nearer presence. Let me tell you a little more about the lady who wrote those words.
Fanny Crosby was born on March 24th, 1820, in a one-story cottage in South East, New York. Her father, John, died before her first birthday. At six weeks old, she caught a slight cold in her eyes. The family physician was away. Another country doctor was called in to treat her. He prescribed hot mustard poultices to be applied to her eyes, which destroyed her sight completely. It was later learned that the man was not qualified to practice medicine.
At five years old, her mother took her to consult the best eye specialist in the country. Neighbors and friends pooled money together in order to send her. The diagnosis? "Poor child, I am afraid you will never see again." Such experiences of loss and human mistakes had the possibility of making her attitude to life bitter and resentful. Remarkably she considered her loss of sight as a great blessing, one time explaining to her mother, “If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind... for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.”
Moving to Ridgefield, Connecticut, she came under her Grandmothers influence and set about memorizing as much of the bible as she was able. At 15 she returned to New York to attend a school for the blind, where despite discouragement from her teachers, she developed her poetic skills.
At 23 the school, in which she was now a teacher, sought to receive financial support from Congress. Fanny decided to write a poem in celebration of the work of Congress. It worked, and not only did the school receive support, but she herself became a friend to many of the most influential people of the day, including many presidents.
Time does not permit to recount her whole life story. By the time of her death in her nineties she had witnessed over 8,000 of her poems set to music and over 100,000,000 copies of her songs printed. She became associated with the Bowery Mission in N.Y. where the piano she wrote many of her hymns is still located. Some suggest that she was the greatest hymn writer in the history of the Christian Church. Not bad for a visually handicapped girl from a single parent family in New York!
All of which brings us back to Paul’s message to the Thessalonians. They hadn’t had an easy start to their life as a church. They faced much that was discouraging. But they fixed their hope on Jesus Christ. Their ‘Blessed Assurance’ was that the love of God was greater than the forces that opposed them.
Of Fanny Crosby’s hymns, they knew not a thing. Yet I can’t help thinking that they would identify with the words of this third verse: -
“Perfect submission, all is at rest
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love”
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love”
So what of us and what of our lives?
What will be our story and our song?
May God’s Grace touch our lives in such a real way that we allow the love of Christ to encourage us and lead us through the many different circumstances that come our way, with the knowledge that one day… all will be well.
We may never have a life quite as productive as Fanny Crosby’s, or a church quite as famous as that of the Thessalonians, but under the touch of Jesus Christ our lives truly can be blessed with divine significance. The blessed assurance of God’s love is available to us all. It shouts to us from the Cross of Calvary and blazes forth from the empty tomb. May God help us to respond in fruitful ways to the many blessings Christ sends our way. May faithfulness become our story and commitment become our song. AMEN.
Rev Adrian Pratt
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