In The Light

  

Text: Ephesians 5:6-14

Focus: Being good

Function: to help people see doing good has its rewards

⁵You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

^6-7Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with him. Don’t even hang around people like that.

^8-10You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.

^11-16Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.

Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

Good morning to the beloved Children of God.

I bring you greetings and thanks from the residents at Warren Correctional Institute where I spent the day yesterday in a retreat as we explored the meaning of some of the beatitudes.

I want to pass along thanks from the residents for all the cookies that are lovingly baked for these guys. I gotta tell you, I don’t know how they survive in prison. I hear horror stories of the food and the conditions that they have to put up with.

The blessing of Kairos is that we treat them like men. Yesterday they served lunch and it was beef stew. Somehow some of the beef got burnt and gave an acrid odor to the room where it was prepared. But the team toughed it out and separated the burnt from the caramelized and fed the residents. One guy at my table eating the tinged beef almost broke into tears of gratitude because it was the first time he had beef this year.

When we go in there and show them unconditional love, it is powerful. They respond with faith and belief that they are worth something.

And that is an introduction to my message this morning as we look at the effect and the power of the light of the gospel as it transforms darkness.

The passage contrasts light and darkness. It contrasts good and evil. It contrasts worldly living with living by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The book of Ephesians is one of several letters written to different churches to encourage and or correct the church as it was struggling with its foundation.

In the letter, Paul has just got done telling them what worldly living is. And it is centered on greed and selfishness and it leads to impurity and immorality. Those are referred to as the deeds of darkness. They generally have to do with one person taking advantage over another. We are called to treat others just as well as we treat ourselves.

And sadly, he points out that some of this worldly living comes from people in the church telling others that it is okay to keep on living for themselves instead of being a part of the community into which Christ called us.

I believe we see it happening still with the obscene wealth collected by some of these TV evangelists.

Paul is trying to warn us off a doctrine the leads to greed and selfishness. Our doctrine should always leads us to the same mercy and compassion for others that we expect for ourselves and our loved ones.

When he tells them that they groped their way once through that kind of life he is reminding them of the time that they were ignorant of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

I want to emphasize that we are called to love others as well as we love ourselves and that sometimes that is difficult. We have to forgive when we have been hurt. We have to endure the foibles that another person has might rub us wrong.

And I want to emphasize that we cannot do that in our own strength. We read the Old Testament and we see the failures that the people of God had because the Spirit of God was not generally given to humanity until the sacrifice of the Christ.

Somehow only a few people were filled with the Spirit in the OT accounts. But now, the Spirit is given to the world entire and all we have to do is tap into its power and love.

In our text, we see the contrast between light and dark. Paul implies the the difference should be obvious to us. Do good and don’t do bad things.

When we do good, we are fulfilling the law of Christ.

That might seem obvious to all of us.

But the world we live in tells us that it is okay to live just for ourselves. As a matter of fact, we are taught the world is a jungle and we have to fight our way through it to survive the dangers that lurk everywhere.

We are taught to fight to survive instead of cooperate to survive. But Jesus calls us to better.

The Church changed the economic picture in Jerusalem when they started their commune. The took seriously the words of Jesus and held their lives in common.

Sadly, or apparently, that didn’t work out because it didn’t continue and subsequent attempts at communes fail after a generation or so.

I’m not advocating a commune, but I illustrate it to point out just how radical their willingness to obey Jesus was. They were taking the command to love others as well as themselves to its logical conclusion.

They focused on love for others. In my biblical opinion, there just isn’t anything more important for us to be doing as believers. That is how we shine the light of Christ.

So Paul takes a very hard stand against Christians living in greed in this passage and tells us that instead we are called to be bearers of the light.

We are called to do good for others. Earlier in the letter, Paul reminds them that they are saved by God to do good works. And now he is telling them that those preachers who preach personal prosperity are wrong and we shouldn’t listen to them but rather expose them.

We do good and we love because love covers over a multitude of sinful behavior. Love shines the light.

It is love that transforms the heart and that is where our power lies.

Returned to God

  

Text: Romans 5:1-11

Focus: restoration

Function: to help us appreciate the gift of Christ

5:¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. ⁹Much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. ¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Good morning to God’s beloved Children!

Today, for Lent, we are looking at the gift of salvation that is given to us in Christ Jesus.

And as the author points out, it springs from the sacrifice of Christ.

I suppose that a Lenten sacrifice is a way for us to symbolically honor the life, death and resurrection of the Christ who has reconciled us to God.

There is a lot to unpack in this passage; it is full of deep theology. So we will do a bit of a study of the different ideas presented and what they mean, but the focus of the entire passage is the way that Christ has brought us back to God. Christ returned us to God.

He starts out with the theological concept of justification. It means that we are placed in right standing with God. And it happens to us when we place our faith in Christ. Placing our faith in Christ means that we trust in Christ enough to order our lives after his teaching.

It takes faith to turn the other cheek. It takes faith to forgive when we have been harmed. It takes faith to rest in God in the midst of suffering and to remember to pray when times are good and when times are bad.

Living by faith is the lifestyle of loving our neighbor -which is everyone- and wishing for them the same blessings, grace and mercy that God is giving to us. Even more. It means that we are not resentful when others prosper but we rest in the provision of God.

That is what Abraham did and by doing that he was made right in God’s eyes.

And now we are in the New Covenant, the New Testament. And we have Jesus as the author of our salvation.

It is almost like Paul points out that we have it easier than Abraham since we now have Jesus and his death and resurrection to prove our hope in the God’s promises for us. We have something historical to hang our hope on.

He is excited about what God has done for him so twice he says we brag about God and God’s mercy for us.

And his boasting is not just about God’s mercy for us, but also about the way God takes us through the trials that we face in life. Abraham again was the father of faith because when problems came it was to God that he went. He trusted in God’s promise for him.

Paul ends the first paragraph again with the constant reminder that it is the Holy Spirit in our lives that gives us the power to trust and live by faith.

And it is hope in the midst of trials that the Spirit gives us. Hope, faith, and love are the three pillars of the Christian faith.

Hope comes from God and spurs faith in us.

But Paul wants us again, as he mentions the Spirit at work in us to bring us the hope, to focus on Jesus.

So, in order to build our faith he reminds us of just what happened for us from God when Jesus died and rose again.

He speaks of the sacrifice of Christ and how Christ gave his life for us when we were ignorant of who he was and what he was doing. Since we were ignorant and living for ourselves instead of loving God by loving others, he says it is like we were enemies of Christ since we didn’t obey.

But 1 John 2:2 says that Jesus gave his life to save all of humanity.

So Paul points out that it means that Jesus died for some people that others would not consider worth saving. Jesus died for the good and the bad. Jesus died for saints and sinners. Jesus died for decent folks and for scoundrels. Jesus died for all of humanity. He loves everyone. That is why you hear me pray against war and for the immigrants. That is why I am so engrossed in the Kairos ministry and so blessed by your support of me in this ministry. I feel like you are doing Kairos with me. Thank you. And what we are doing is bringing the mercy of God to a world that needs love and mercy.

Christ died for all. All are our brothers and sisters. It us the work of God worth bragging about: God saved us! And as we read from 1 John it was the world entire that God saved, not just those who name Christ here before they die.

And Paul called that reconciliation. God reconciled the world to him. The idea that all are saved comes again not just from the verse we read in John but also from another place where he focuses on the doctrine of reconciliation and being returned to God:

Look at 2 Corinthians 5:15-20: ¹⁵One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.

^16-20Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

So, brothers and sisters, let us keep on loving and living by faith and trusting that the sacrifices we make to live faithfully will be rewarded with more and more love being shared in this world and the kingdom to come.

The Power of Faith

  

Text: Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Focus: faith

Function: to help people put faith into action

4:¹What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? ²For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ⁴Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. ⁵But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

¹³For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

¹⁶For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

I pray that Christ’s peace abound in your hearts and minds fully as we celebrate the faith that God has given us expressed in our confidence in God’s covenant when when we baptize Oliver.

At one time I was asked to consider taking the role of pastor at a United Methodist Church and they asked me specifically about my practice of baptism since the tradition in the Church of the Brethren has been to dedicate babies and wait to baptize them until they were old enough to know whether or not it was their choice.

And I told the person questioning me that the Scripture supports both modes of baptism and that I could defend either one. I believe strongly that we are on a journey together and that the Holy Spirit is leading us and that the Spirit celebrates the diversity of all the religions in the world, not making one superior to the other but calling us all by faith to love one another.

And in that diversity, I am certainly willing to begin the covenant into this Christian journey with Oliver according to his parent’s personal convictions and baptize him. His baptism into the Christian faith is a covenant between him, God, his parents, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles and this Church to provide the spiritual nurture necessary to bring him securely into God’s family of faith.

And Faith is what we are looking at today.

Through faith Abraham found favor with God. Because Abraham trusted God, God declared him to be righteous. Having faith in God, trusting in God, living by his promises and love for others is one of the goals we have as we practice our faith in God.

In the passage, and in the context of the book of Romans, Paul is explaining how trusting Christ brings us to this place with God whereby God is present in our lives and is healing and restoring us to the design that God has for us and humanity.

Paul contrasts the difference between living by faith in Christ with trying to earn our salvation through the religious practices that we prescribed to the Jewish people through Moses.

It is referred to in the New Testament as the law of Moses, or The Law. And the problem was that it didn’t take into account the Holy Spirit’s leading in the life of the believer to bolster their ability to trust in God.

The emphasis on the power of faith is that it brings us to the grace of God and God’s mercy.

Abraham was a man of faith because he took the risks God that God lead him into.

Abraham walked with God in his problems and rested in God’s protection. God walked with him through the difficulties of life.

Abraham’s life story is a metaphor for us in taking the risk to obey Christ rather than live by the greedy values of this world.

God doesn’t promise to deliver us from risk, but to walk with us through it. And sometimes, we see the providence of God intervening even in miraculous ways.

When God led him, Abraham obeyed, even to the point where he was willing to risk the life of his son because he knew that God could raise his son from the dead. He trusted God promises.

God declared Abraham righteous because of his faith. What does it mean to be righteous? It means we are in the right place with God. And it springs from the fact that we righteous people do the right things.

Today it takes faith to do the right things. It takes faith for us to be different from the culture around us. It takes faith to do the right thing in this world. I takes faith and courage for us to present love for others in a culture that worships rugged individualism and machismo to the point where they refuse to care for the least of these.

Abraham is called the father of our faith, and I might add, not just ours but also the father of the Jewish and Muslim faith as well. We all worship the same God.

And one of the joys of that worship to me is the way that God includes everyone.

When Jesus was involved in all of his important teaching and ministering to people and in the thick of it, some children were brought to him and the disciples thought he was too important to bother with them.

But Jesus instead welcomed the children and told us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

He reminded us that it is in love and care that God is present.

And today we baptize Oliver Gerald Lee Manning into the Christian faith here at Painter Creek Church.

Today, we begin the Christian journey with Oliver here at Painter Creek and we commend him to God’s favor and protection.