You Are Witnesses

  

Text: Luke 24:44-53

Focus: ascension

Function: to remember the promises.

⁴⁴Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

⁵⁰Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Good morning to the beloved children of God. We live in a faith, with a God who describes their own self as Love and us as the children of the loving Father. Praise God! I want us to dwell on this truth because Romans 8 says that nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus.

Jesus dying, then coming back to life and then leaving again could have been a traumatic event, but the promises that Jesus made right before he ascended are relevant for us today and we will take some time to look at them.

The first promise is how the Holy Spirit will open our minds to understand the scripture.

After the Spirit came, we began to understand passages in the Old Testament that talked about a victorious leader who also was a suffering servant.

They could not reconcile those two different realities in their own mind. But the Spirit shows us the deep meaning behind the scriptures given to us.

They didn’t understand that God’s plan for humanity came through the agency of the suffering of the Christ.

Upon the Cross, Jesus forgave his murderers.

He showed them a different way of reacting. He showed them love and forgiveness.

The disciples understood that God’s kingdom resides in the heart of people and is not political. It is spiritual and it changes them into kinder and more loving people.

If love has not filled us and changed us, we are not listening to the leading of God’s Spirit inside of us.

The second promise he gives us the promise of the power from on high.

I don’t want to get premature with the celebration of Pentecost next week where we see how the coming of the Spirit affects the body of Christ.

Remember, I introduced the sermon with the thought that the disciples should have been concerned that Jesus was leaving them. But instead, the text says that they left the place rejoicing in what had happened.

That was a move of God to comfort them in the time of their loss.

And it came with the hope of a promise.

They were instructed to wait for the Spirit to come. Luke records it again in the book of Acts exactly the same way except he narrows down the place of ascension to the Mount of Olives with sat on the South side of the town of Bethany.

The promise given was that we will somehow have the ability to accomplish this monumental task of loving others as well as we love ourselves.

The promises of the Ascension are Understanding and the Spirit.

Then there is a call in the text.

That leads me to a transition. Many bibles include headings above groups of verses that describe the text so that people can find stuff easier. And almost every translation calls this passage; “The Ascension” because Jesus goes to heaven in the passage.

But Eugene Peterson, in his translation calls the passage “Witnesses.” And that is significant because the apostles were given the call to spread these truths to others.

We are witnesses for Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:27 says that we are the body of Christ, so we can’t be anything else. When we let the Spirit of God take control and we give in to the command to lay down our selfishness, ego and fear -three things that keep us from loving sacrificially- then Christ works through us to heal the world we are in with grace and mercy.

Without being negative, let us look at those three distractions, or obstacles, as we tell the men in prison at Kairos.

Selfishness is greedy living where we hoard what we can. We can hoard mercy and only give it to people who look and think like us. We can love only our own family, our own race, our own country, our own team and not care for the needs of others. God calls us to witness God’s love to the world entire.

Selfishness applies to money. I know people who still believe that they are measured by the money they have made. I believe we should be like Dolly Parton and be measured by the money we give away. Trust God to provide.

Then there is ego. Ego can cause an unwillingness to change course or belief when God shows us a better way by the Spirit.

One of the biggest areas that I personally contend with in dealing with my ego is forgiveness. I have to set aside my ego and lay down my pride to forgive someone who has harmed me when I know I am in the one who is right.

And finally we look at fear. Fear can control us.

Fear is not living by faith. Remember, God promises to provide. God called me to fight racism early in my life. And I used to allow myself to hate racists. Hatred of anyone is sin because even racists have access to Christ’s Spirit inside of them.

Then I realized that most prejudice comes from fear. I hate to say it but the majority of early TV programming trained me to fear black people.

And when we allow faith to flourish, fear dissipates and along with it, the prejudices that fear enhances.

For me, Christian discipline contains letting the Spirit reign in my heart because the Spirit fights those influences of fear, ego and selfishness.

Let the Spirit lead you in life. Jesus promised it right before he left us and the Spirit is here today. Praise God!

Peterson calls the passage “witnesses”

He left blessing them.

The holy Spirit makes us understand

About Suffering

  

Text: 1 Peter 3:13-18

Focus: Suffering

Function: to help us find peace in the midst of trials

¹³Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

Good Morning. Let me remind you that you are the beloved children of the living God. Your name is carved in their hands and God will never forget you.

My title for this message is “About Suffering.” I am trying to understand a theology of suffering as we face the trials in this life.

I feel inadequate to preach the subject because I know that many of you are suffering and you have placed your faith in God and I can learn from you.

Now, I was raised in the Missionary Church and true to our name, we made it our mission to convert others to the way we understood the faith.

And unfortunately, we were told that the eternal destiny of those we didn’t reach was going to be laid on our account if we didn’t do everything possible to convert them.

I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that God will restore everyone to their love eventually because God describes God’s own self as Love.

But I don’t want to undermine the missionary call either. Most of the books that make up the New Testament were written by a missionary, Paul.

It was God’s calling on him and without that missionary call, God’s call to love everyone through Christ would have died out in the first century. We owe a lot to missionaries and God still uses them today.

Peter was not a missionary, but he writes in this passage that we are to be bold and fearless, and always be ready to share the hope that we have in Christ.

And he ends that phrase with the Kairos method: “With gentleness and respect.”

Peter is saying that while sharing the love of Jesus, we do not judge or disrespect the person with whom we are sharing.

And he tells us to do it mainly with our ethical and moral lifestyle.

It happens as we value the other person. Remember, Christ is in everyone at some level or another and we have the power of the Spirit of Christ to bring out that love in others by showing that love ourselves.

That means we have to love and forgive. Forgiveness takes faith.

It takes faith because we have oftentimes been made to suffer when we were innocent and didn’t it.

And Peter points us to Jesus who suffered and died in order to redeem us. Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of everyone, even those who are unjust.

Some believe that God is a God of wrath. I do not. I believe that God is a God of restoration, not revenge.

God takes our sins and unjust actions, forgives them, and gives us another chance to do the right thing.

Sometimes while doing the right thing, we suffer.

Christ suffered also. Christ suffered specifically so that we can know that he can feel our pain and he understands the terror of our suffering.

He shares it with us and lightens the burden because we know that he understands our pain.

So Peter tells the audience in the letter that we should not fear what they fear. Instead, we should rest in God, even if serving God leads us to suffer.

Peter speaks of the Other. The “They” who are those who do not yet rely on the loving power of the Spirit in their lives through Christ .

We get to show it to them.

He doesn’t tell us what they are afraid of.

I surmise that given the prevailing culture of Greek Mythology at the time this was written, the fear is the wrath of God in hell.

But we trust the fact that Jesus forgave us and we have the power of the Spirit to live a different life, one that is born from above with the power of love prevailing our intents and purposes.

We also fear pain. And when I think of suffering, I think of pain.

And in the midst of suffering I believe we can take comfort in the fact that Christ has given us the power of the Spirit to help endure.

When we suffer we can remember that Christ is with us and will never leave us.

And again, we live by faith.

The passage refers us to Jesus when we are suffering. But when I think of suffering and the pain caused by it and my need to have comfort in my suffering, I think of a Mother’s love who knows how to kiss away the pain.

Just the knowledge of her love in the midst of suffering. It is a love that doesn’t quit.

The crucifixion story came up in my devotions this week and I noticed that contingent of women who stood by Jesus when all the apostles abandoned him at the cross.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was given a prophecy before she miraculously conceived that her heart would be broken but through the Christ, the world would have hope again.

She suffered for God when she endured her son’s murder.

I am beginning to understand the unconditional nature of God’s love for us as I understand the unconditional love of a mother for her children.

Mary suffered with Jesus.

And her suffering is part of God’s salvation for us.

Genesis 1 says that we are created in the image of God. Male and female are both the image of God.

Mary’s love for her son was divine and is part of God’s love for us.

God’s love is both Fatherly and Motherly.

One of the names for God in the Old Testament is El Shaddai. It means “The many breasted one.”

And it refers to God as the nurturer.

Motherhood is divine and although we are not all mothers, we all had one and we can rejoice in the way that God designed to show us love through our mothers.

CHRISTian

  

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Focus: Being Christian

Function: to help people see the power available to them as priests to God

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— ³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the very head of the corner,”

⁸and

“A stone that makes them stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.

Good morning to the beloved children of our living and loving God.

This passage contrasts the difference between trusting in the way of Christ for healing and restoration in this world or trusting in our own way of doing things.

God gave humanity a template for loving others when God became human and walked the earth as Jesus the Nazarene.

God showed love to the world. God embodied love for us so that we can learn to love and care for the other as much as we care for ourselves.

I like the way the passage calls us a people who were chosen by God and we have become a priesthood with royal power.

I place the emphasis on God’s calling us to their own self in love.

When we do the Kairos weekend, the first thing we tell the men who come is that God has called them there for a special time of receiving God’s love and mercy for them.

The call is in love and these men certainly need the mercy that love brings.

Many of them are in prison in the first place because they did not get the right kind of love and nurture in the first place.

During the weekend, we see the walls of defense that these men have built up come down as we share from our hearts the fact that we too are not perfect and somehow we have found God’s grace and forgiveness in our own failures.

We have a series of ten talks with titles like: Choices, opening the door (to God), Studying to know God, forgiveness, Christian action and others. During these talks, we get very personal and describe, as I said, a time when we failed and God brought us through. The hope is that the men in the room can see themselves as people that God can redeem as well.

For most of the men, it seems to me that keeping hope up is their biggest challenge.

So, we remind them that God has called them there and that they are not out of God’s sight for love even though they are in such a rough place.

And the point comes from the passage that God has chosen us to be God’s special people.

I like to think of that fact that God choose me to know me and to heal and restore me.

God is in the business of healing and restoration. That is why God came to planet earth as Jesus, to heal the world of its lack of love and to change the dynamic of power in human culture.

Peter, in his contrasting those who trust Christ’s way and those who do not, speaks of how the difference is seen in the way they accept “The Word.”

John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word.

The difference is in whether or not they obey the word of God, whether or not they obey the teachings of Jesus.

I notice that he doesn’t condemn those who do not follow Jesus, but he blesses those who do. It isn’t an us verses them mentality, it is a “God is in Christ healing the world” mentality.

One of the disciplines we have as a team on Kairos is to make sure that when we see the residents, we see Christ and the potential that Christ has inside of them, instead of looking at their past failures.

Whenever I get to pray for the team right before we enter the prison, I pray that we would treat Christ well when we care for the prisoners.

Christ’s Spirit is in everyone according to Romans 1.

Somewhere, hidden in the midst of a person’s own ego, pride, failures, and successes is Christ. And anyone can draw upon Christ’s Spirit to find the healing and restoration that Jesus envisioned for the world entire. That is why he calls us a royal Priesthood. The actual Christ dwells inside of us.

Christ shines through us in the way we love others.

And picking up that theme, the text calls us a chosen generation, as I mentioned, but also a royal priesthood.

A priest is one who has direct access to God. We do through Jesus. And we are royal priests because not only do we have this direct access to God, but we are also God’s family as we are now one with God and Christ.

That means in this world, we too, are Christ, that is why we are called Christian. We are Christ to the world and we have the same power to bring people back into the love of God by loving them into God’s family.

It hit me the middle of the night last week when I was praying for the Kairos weekend during my time slot that a Christian is a person who first and foremost models Christ.

And it helps me to remember that in this world, I too am the Christ who is called to bring God’s healing.

Let us fulfill our mission.