Surprising Faith

Text: Luke 7:1-10

Focus: Faith

Function: To help people have faith

Form: Story-telling

Intro: I always found verse 9 of this passage to be a blessing. At first, I wondered if Jesus was God and new everything, then how could He have been surprised?

But the author isn’t trying to argue any point, he isn’t worried that someone will parse every word to catch an inconsistency. No, the author is relaying to us, the wonder of the moment and the amazement that Jesus feels when someone reacts to God with faith and trust.

This man, this centurion, was a man of power and authority. He understood how things worked and it appears that his spiritual understanding is impressive. But it is based on the fact that he is used to being heard.

But he does not seem to be arrogant. He isn’t begging Jesus off from a visit because he does not want to bother with entertaining him, he simply believes in Jesus and his statement, “I am not worthy for you to enter my house” seems to come from a genuine and sincere heart.

I am not going to preach a sermon on how faith works so that you have all the conditions right so that you can get your own miracle. That isn’t how it works.

I believe that I have seen miracles happen. But they beg the question as to whether or not God has favorites because some get a yes and others do not when they pray.

There is no magic formula, God is God. And, God is love. That, I believe, is faith.

It is important to note this: The centurion was full of love. That does not mean that those who have died prematurely are not full of love themselves. Others, full of love have died.

But the scripture takes time to note this other thing about the Centurion. Apparently, Jewish people knew that Jesus spent His time with the Jewish people and so they are the ones who made this introduction of the Centurion to Jesus because they too, were impressed with the way that this man loved both God and other people.

Again, this does not mean that others who have struggled are not loving.

This centurion, full of love and authority, who had servants to do whatever he needed, took the time to stop and care for a servant. His attitude about even his own, probably a slave, was one of care and compassion.

His faith led him to treat others differently. The Roman society was highly stratified with elites, nobility, aristocrats, and then commoners and then slaves.

Slaves were possessions, But this man cared. In order to “fit in” to the culture as an upper class person, one had to believe that these people were less human, less worthwhile than others.

Jesus sees the dignity and worth of every person.

This man, this aristocrat, defied his heritage, and by faith, trusted God to love even the least of these.

Well, that isn’t any different than all of us since Jesus informs our hearts by the power of His Holy Spirit (tap heart).

The man loved God and the man loved others. The description of him is also the description that Jesus gives about who His followers are.

And the man has faith.

What is faith?

Faith is not cognitive dissonance where we believe in the impossible and improbable.

Faith is trust.

The man comes to Jesus in simple humility with this request for another person, but also because he loves this person, because he depends on this person to serve him, his request is for himself.

When I pray for my kids, I pray my love for them and although the prayer is focused on them, I know that their comfort is a greater concern for me than it is for others.

The man, full of love for God and others, asks God for a miracle on behalf of another, but it is also for himself.

And for some reason, this miracle happens.

Faith is rest and trust.

I believe that great faith is to trust regardless of whether or not the outcome is the way we asked for it.

And again, that is not just an excuse when our prayers are not answered the way we pray them.

Trust in God is rest in God’s plan and power. (repeat)

Every person is a child of God.

But some walk with God.

Remember, Micah 6:8: He has shown us what is good and what the Lord requires of us, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.

Walking in faith is part of walking humbly with God. Walking in trust is part of walking humbly with God.

Faith is praying, making our requests known to God and then actually trusting God for the outcome.

Faith is born out of our relationship with God.

Because the man took time to build his relationship with God, he lived with a sense of trust in the love, protection, purpose and power of God in his life.

And for some reason, I need to share this story with you about a man named Alan.

Alan was the nephew of a member of my church and was driving home from work when a cement truck crossed the center line, hit and crushed his car.

To make things worse, a piece of re-bar, rusty metal spike went right through his brain.

At the hospital, right before pulling the plug, the family and I prayed that God would give him another chance.

And for some reason, he immediately began a recovery to the point where 6 months later, he was back at work.

I visited with him and he asked me if a miracle happened. I believed it did and so did he.

I asked him if he trusted in Jesus and he invited me to leave.

I was probably a little pushy, but something bigger than me was happening.

But I must not have offended him to much because a 6 months later he asked me to officiate his wedding.

Then, Alan got cancer and again, a year or so later, on his death bed, his mother, his wife and I prayed that God would give him another chance.

A year later his aunt asked me to visit him. He was in remission, pronounced cancer free and again looking with hope for a new lease on life.

And again, I asked him if he wanted to enter in to this relationship with this God whom he acknowledges has been especially good to him.

And again, I am invited to leave the house. Odd. But, I guess I was to pushy.

And you probably guessed it, the cancer comes back and this time, it is not going away.

I am beginning to think that maybe I should not invite him into a relationship with Jesus.

And again, his aunt begs me to visit him.

The human body is amazing. God’s power is amazing. He defied medical prognosis once before but I am wondering what is exactly going on.

Why, if he was healed, was he sick again?

Certainly God does not act that way in vengeance if a person refuses God, does God?

That isn’t love in my book.

No, I don’t really know what has happening.

I know that both times he recovered, it began moments after we all prayed together for him.

And I don’t want to threaten anyone in any way.

But I did see this with him. When he died, he died with Jesus, singing Amazing Grace, right after we baptized him on his death bed.

Look, I don’t know why this all happens the way it does, but I do believe this, God is in control in some way or another.

It wasn’t the miracles, or perhaps miracles that happened that built my faith in this story. No, it was the way he died, in peace, with God, in hope, in faith and in trust that proves to me my own faith.

More to Come

Text: John 16:12-15

Focus: The Holy Spirit's revealing power

Function: To help people connect (always!)

Intro:

I remember studying Hermeneutics. That is the fancy term for the system by which we approach Scripture.

My professor would say, “Now remember, the gospel can be understood by a child, but the Scriptures are not first grade primers. Take the time to study the source, know the context, understand the heart of the author and more than anything, listen to the Spirit of God. Judge your hermeneutic by the rest of scripture and be faithful to God's revealed Word.”

That was good advice.

Today is Pentecost. We have been speaking of the Holy Spirit the last few weeks, today we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church.

More than anything, I think of the giving of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of Jesus' promise from the same passage, chapter 14:6 that He would not leave us orphans.

I wonder how much we think about what this means. I am sure that after 3 years of what appears to be non-stop ministry with all kinds of exciting events, those three years came to an end. Even though Jesus rose from the dead, His death began the process of separation that must have been hard to bear.

I understand it a little. Thursday started a week of comfort for me because I went home to get Kathy, she has a long weekend, and then I will take a day or two off this week and we will get to be together 7 days straight!

I can't imagine the feeling of loss after years of marriage to be all of a sudden alone.

The heart aches to be reunited.

The Holy Spirit came back to reunite them to Jesus. That is how they understood this event that day.

The promise is also in Romans 8:¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Through the Holy Spirit, we sense, we believe, we realize, that we are the children of God.

When I hear the term “Abba,” which most of you know is the intimate term for father: daddy, I begin to get the picture of just what is happening between God and humans when the Holy Spirit fills the heart of the believer.

What happens is this: God's Spirit calls us to God.

I understand why, at times, in worship, I feel led to cover my heart (cross arms at chest) to preserve the feeling and the moment, or to raise my hands in childlike faith and trust.

It is a real experience. It was new to them, so God punctuates the moment with tongues of fire.

God's Spirit calls us to God. Don't be ashamed, or fall in to the trap of feeling guilty when we don't sense a close presence because God's Spirit calls us to God. God does this.

So, let us focus on a particular aspect of the Holy Spirit this morning from our text: “You cannot bear it now.”

That moment, punctuated with these tongues of fire, changed the way they looked at their religion.

That same theology professor that I mentioned earlier sort of took, what I think, to be a skewed image of this passage, almost sort of the opposite of what it seems to me.

He said this. “Jesus' teachings were incomplete, this verse is telling us about the rest of the NT, and therefore the epistles are there to help us interpret what Jesus said.”

The weight we put on Jesus' teaching versus the rest of the scripture is a big question.

For example, the poor man in Luke 16 was saved simply because he was poor. The person who gives to the poor, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits the prisoner, welcomes the refugee, accepts the man or woman from a different race, whoever shows mercy to the least of all people, (the worse of all people?), has done it to me?

And yet, Paul said that we are saved by faith alone and not works.

My bother and I debate this sometimes.

I believe that it is those who are actually working to show kindness to every person, looking especially for those who are cast out, looked down upon and disregarded who are those who live as those being saved from the thinking that the world is evil and the only person we should care for is ourselves. Jesus said, “the least of these.”

But my brother believes that it is simply a matter of faith and he has scripture to back it up.

But the question seems to me to be, was Jesus incomplete in His teaching? Do we look at those other scriptures in light of Jesus, or Jesus in light of them?

I say, we start with Jesus.

But, was did Jesus mean?

Well, there is the rest of the New Testament. The writings that explain what happened after Jesus did all this teaching. And all of that does count for something.

Why did Jesus say they could not bear it now?

There may be many reasons, but I want to submit one for us to see this morning.

Jesus came to fulfill the law, not make more laws. The whole problem with the ancient Jewish faith was that they codified law after law, 13,000 to explain the 1,300 so that they were sure they never made any mistakes.

They didn't understand Jesus' words, A new law I give you, love one another.

If you go through the rest of the NT, you can see a progression away from the law.

First, the Holy Spirit tells them to baptize Gentiles. The Holy Spirit leads women into leadership. The Holy Spirit leads them to change worship from Saturday to Sunday. The Holy Spirit teaches them that they do not have to be circumcised.

The Holy Spirit was changing things away from more religious duties to less, to only one: Love one another.

All of those new rules were a direct contradiction to what they experienced through the OT law. Jesus was telling them to abandon the idea that more rules, without a changed heart, were not going to help them love one another, or love God more.

Just love one another. And the Church began the process.

But they went back and forth. You can read about some of the arguments, debates and even power struggles that occurred as they were trying, and we still are, trying to work all this out.

And the teaching was for the disciples to let the Holy Spirit work on their minds and hearts to help them understand the grace and power of God's forgiveness toward others.

And you can see it. Even though the Holy Spirit showed Peter to baptize Gentiles, the crowd arrested Paul simply for being in Jerusalem with a gentile follower.

They could not have born the idea that the letter of the law was to be demolished in favor of the Spirit of the law which is to love one another.

And, through the process, they got better. But society has been on a cycle ever since. At one time, they got carried away. In 1 Corinthians 5, we read how a man, thinking there were no moral values at all, had a relationship with his father's wife.

And Paul said to them, “Look, you have gone to far. Even the culture around you has a problem with this kind of behavior.”

They reigned in their behavior a little bit and they struck a balance point.

Society is on this cycle. We are certainly not in the prudish age known as The Victorian Era, but we are in a time where behavior is scrutinized by others for the purpose of passing judgment.

And here is the question: what message do we send? Yes, we have standards, and they do reflect the culture and at this time, the culture is asking the question, does God love the other? The culture is asking the Church, Does God love Muslim? Does God love the transgendered person? Does God love the minority race as much as the dominant race? Does God love everyone as much as God loves you, or does your faith tell us that you think you are better than us?

And the Church responded at the time the same way it does today. Some were afraid and said no, we must stick to the older ways, and others, I believe, led by the Holy Spirit said yes and opened their arms to more and more.

In a day and age when group after group is criticized simply because controversy and attacks attract attention and that sells advertising, and those groups, Muslims, Women, Minorities, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Christians, Conservatives, Liberals, Gays, Straights, Religious and irreligious, the one who demonstrates a consistent message of love and acceptance is the one who is following the leading and power of the Holy Spirit.

More to come. I believe, it is more to love, more to accept, a bigger and bigger circle is included in God's great family as the Holy Spirit keeps on working.

At Her Request

Text: Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Focus: Unconditional love

Function: To give an invitation to join the family.

Intro: I suppose a different kind of theological journey opened up for me when I read the book “The Shack.”

It isn't particularly well written, but it is an intriguing story about human suffering and God and where God is in the middle of our pain.

The book was quite controversial simply because the character of the Godhead in the Trinity was that of a wise, old black woman.

The role of the Holy Spirit was played by what appeared to be a wispy, sort of ghostlike female form and the only male in the Trinity was that of the son, Jesus.

People were offended by the idea of God in the feminine. But the Bible says that God created male and female in God's own image. The image of God is both, but the language of the OT is male.

Throughout the scripture, the female, nurturing, caring qualities of God are brought out.

Nurture and caring are not supposed to be solely female characteristics, but the book piqued my imagination as to how much I have limited my understanding of God by forcing the Godhead into a traditional male role.

The Spirit and the Bride say Come.

Both of those invitations to humanity are given to us in the feminine gender.

We have come to God at her request. We come to God at the request of her body, the bride, the Church, us.

I stopped to visit with my mom on Thursday morning, early. She is beginning to thrive again in the nursing home and that really comforts me.

It didn't feel like nurturing when I placed those events into an irrevocable motion about a year before we had all planned on doing it.

And, the initial reaction, born out of confusion was anger and that caused a lot, a lot of pain.

But her pain was overcome by her mother's love.

Her desire to have her children back, folded into her brood, safe in her nest and comforted in her love was greater than the pain she felt at my decision.

At her request, I was able to come back and the last several visits have all been about the love and nurture between a mother and son. And now that love and nurture goes both ways.

I learned something about nurture in that process.

A mother's nurture always offers grace and it always compels a person to be their best. A mother's love always believes and always welcomes us.

Isn't that like God's love toward us?

God, El Shaddai, The Many Breasted One, God, the nurturer.

And our passage, verse 17: ¹⁷The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!”

Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.”

(gesture the embrace of breast-feeding, to the hug of a baby and then point to God in worship)

God, the nurturer. God who is both woman and man, the nurturer. It is a call for us to be the same to an hurting world.

The Spirit and the Bride say Come. Funny, but the Spirit is female and the bride, as we have seen is female. The Bride is the Church, female, but the church is also Christ's body, male.

These gender distinctions can be a cop out from our true calling to be the healing agent.

So again, verse 17: ¹⁷The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!”

Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.”

There is a neat metaphor here to one of the parables. Matthew 13:33. Jesus said that the kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, you can't see it change others, but each cell affects the cell next to it and transforms the cells around it.

The middle of verse 17: Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!”

God the nurturer, and the bride, the deliberately feminine image of God's transforming power continue the revolution, the change, one person toward another by offering the same love, grace and mercy toward everyone else.

It all starts with a response to the call, again from the end of verse 17: accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.”

This is that cellular transformation. One individual calling to another to take the water of life freely.

I wonder why everyone does not respond?

I wonder if it is because instead of offering the water of life freely, without cost, if instead of offering the water of life to every single person, at times Christians have been much more comfortable offering the free gift to those who will not make them uncomfortable because they are so different.

That is why taking care of the Muhamud family is so important to our Christian witness. And we know that it is also a metaphor for extending ourselves beyond our comfort zone to everyone who is different from us. From those who are different religions and faiths, to those whose lifestyles make us uncomfortable.

This invitation comes by the Holy Spirit, through the Church, through us, to the world entire.

Take the drink, take the gift.

And that brings me to my grandmother.

She was always vibrant. Jeannie reminds me of her. I remember one Saturday afternoon with her playing the piano and all the grandkids standing around her singing the classic hymn “When we all get to heaven” and feeling the joy of the Lord.

It was a way to offer the gift of the water of life freely and she did something amazing as soon as the song was over. I will never forget it.

She looked at all of us, about 10 and with tears of joy, without preaching, but with a mothers longing, a mother's aching heart to have all her children with her, she invited us to drink the water of life without cost, freely.

It starts at that invitation, a gift from God to us.

A gift of love to us from God. The water of life, hope and peace in a world gone wrong with greed and all we have to do is drink.

Have we drunk freely today?

Revelation 22:12-21 Good News Translation

¹²“Listen!” says Jesus. “I am coming soon! I will bring my rewards with me, to give to each one according to what he has done. ¹³I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

¹⁴Happy are those who wash their robes clean and so have the right to eat the fruit from the tree of life and to go through the gates into the city.

¹⁶“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to announce these things to you in the churches. I am descended from the family of David; I am the bright morning star.”

¹⁷The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!”

Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.

²⁰He who gives his testimony to all this says, “Yes indeed! I am coming soon!”

So be it. Come, Lord Jesus!

Divine Wind

Text: John 14:23-29

Focus: The Holy Spirit

Function: To help people connect with God through the Holy Spirit

Form: Lectio Divina

Intro:

Today is Ascension Sunday and we celebrate Jesus going to God and the promise of the Holy Spirit in exchange for His physical presence.

In verses 15-18 of John 14, just before our text for today, we read these words: ¹⁵“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. ¹⁸“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

Repeat: I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.

Today, on Ascension Sunday we are going to focus on the Holy Spirit.

Spirit is Wind. Divine Wind. Holy Spirit

Tony Compolo has been a muse and inspiration to me my whole life. Kathy and I went to hear him speak a few months ago here in Grand Rapids.

He, like me, still has a pretty high view of Scripture and he was telling us how he is led by the Holy Spirit as he is reading scripture.

He was explaining how his belief system about homosexuality changed through the discipline of Reading with God, or Lectio Divina.

And the passage we are looking at this morning is about how the Holy Spirit will continue to reveal new and changing truth to us.

For example, around the homosexuality issue, we do live in an homophobic culture and unfortunately, homophobia informs how we interpret the scriptures around homosexuality.

In Tony Compolo's own spiritual journey, he reread the Romans passge with Divine reading and the focus changed when we read to be informed by the Holy Spirit.

It changes from what we can say about others, the way we judge others, to the way we judge ourselves by looking at the scripture from the lens of learning NOT WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT OTHERS, but what it speaks to me.

Divine Reading. He counts on the Divine Wind to help him understand it.

And we are going to do that this morning as we practice the disciplines of listening, meditating, praying and contemplating with God and the text through the Holy Spirit.

Today's exercise is taken from Soulshepherding, a website dedicated to Spiritual Disciplines.

So, in order to do this, we have the text for today printed in the bulletin.

God's Spirit is real, I pray that during this exercise, we can all connect with God.

1^st Reading: Listen to the Holy Spirit minister God’s Word to you. What one word or phrase especially touches your heart?

2^nd Reading: Enter the passage. What emotions do you have? What personal struggle or longing in your life today is God speaking into? (Be specific.)

3^rd Reading: Respond to Holy Spirit. What prayer does this passage ignite in you to God?

4^th Reading: Receive what Christ has for you today. What is your personal invitation from the Lord? What do you sense God might be saying to you?