Power Up!

This is the third part of our sermon series, “Who is this God person, anyway?”  We’ve already talked about how God is eternal, how God is all-knowing, and how God is everywhere.  Today we’re going to talk about another aspect of who God is.  God is all-powerful.

           

That thought will not come as a shock to very many of us here.  Most of us are probably aware that Christians consider God to be all-powerful.  Here’s the thing, though.  How many of us actually live our lives as if we believe that?

           

This morning we heard two stories from the gospel of Matthew.  In one case, the person involved trusted the power of God.  In the other case, the people involved did not.  I think looking at these two stories together tells us a lot about how believing in the power of God can make a difference in our lives. 

The first story deals with Jesus and a Roman centurion.  Now, the word “centurion” comes from the same root as the word “century”, meaning a hundred.  A centurion was a Roman army officer who was in charge of a hundred soldiers.  This Roman army officer, this centurion, comes up to Jesus and tells him his servant is suffering terribly.

           

That was probably something that happened to Jesus all the time.  Once word got around that Jesus had the power to heal people, I imagine people came from miles around to get him to heal either them or their relatives or friends.  In fact, there are some stories like that you read about in the Bible.  So, Jesus asks the centurion if he wants him to come and heal the servant.  So far, this is probably a pretty typical day for Jesus once he started his ministry.

           

The centurion gives a surprising answer.  He says no.  He says no, you don’t need to come to my house to heal him.  I believe in your power.  I believe you have so much power if that if you just say the word from where we are, my servant will be healed.

           

Now that’s believing in Jesus’ power.  In fact, even Jesus was impressed by how much the centurion believed in Jesus’ power.  The thing is, though, that this belief in Jesus’ power showed itself in two ways.  The second one, the one we tend to focus on, is that the centurion told Jesus he did not have to come to the centurion’s house.

           

Now that’s belief.  In fact, it’s a lot of belief.  There’s another way the centurion showed his belief in Jesus’ power, though, and it’s something we miss sometimes.  Listen again to what the centurion said when he approached Jesus.  He said, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

           

Did you see where I’m going with this?  Nowhere in that statement does the centurion specifically ask Jesus to heal his servant.  All he does is tell Jesus about the problem.  He believes in Jesus’ power so much that he figures that’s all he needs to do.  He trusts that if just tells Jesus what the problem is, Jesus can and will do the right thing. 

           

That’s awesome.  That’s why Jesus said he had not found anyone in Israel who had as much faith as this Roman centurion.  Jesus must have had people coming up to him all the time, asking him to do things, sometimes probably demanding that he do things.  This centurion did not ask Jesus to do anything.  He simply told Jesus the problem.

           

That’s belief in Jesus’ power.  The centurion believed so much in Jesus’ power that he knew he could count on Jesus to do the right thing.  The centurion did not tell Jesus what the centurion wanted.  He did not go up to Jesus and try to tell him what to do.  Instead, he trusted in Jesus’ power.  He trusted that, if the all-powerful Son of God was aware of the situation, then he would know what to do.  He also trusted Jesus’ power enough to be confident that, whatever Jesus did, it would be the right thing to do.

           

That right thing might or might not be what the centurion wanted.  He said, “just say the word, and my servant will be healed”, but he did not try to force Jesus to say that word.  He knew what Jesus could do, but he trusted Jesus’ power enough to be all right with whatever Jesus would do, whether Jesus said the word and healed his servant or not.

           

Now, let’s look at the second story.  This story comes almost immediately after the one we just looked at.  It’s in the same chapter of Matthew, only separated by ten verses.

           

Jesus and the disciples go out on a boat.  Jesus falls asleep.  A storm comes up.  The disciples try to fight the storm themselves and they get nowhere.  They wake Jesus up and say, “Lord, save us!  We’re going to drown!”

           

That’s quite a contrast to what the centurion said.  The disciples did not have any quiet confidence in Jesus.  They were not content to just tell Jesus the problem and wait for him to do the right thing.  The disciples were in a panic.  They begged Jesus to save them.

Look at Jesus’ response.  Jesus he asks the disciples, why do you have so little faith?  Why are you so afraid?  We’re told that the disciples asked, “What kind of man is this, who controls the wind and the waves?”  In other words, they were asking, who is this God person anyway?

           

When we read that story, we tend to think Jesus was being critical of the disciples.  We think he must’ve been mad at them or disappointed in them or something like that.  That’s possible—the Bible does not really say—but that’s not how I read it.  I don’t think Jesus was angry or upset with the disciples because of their reaction.  I think he was saddened by it.  I think he felt sorry for them for reacting the way they did.

           

He felt sorry for them because he could see that the disciples were so scared, and yet they had no reason to be.  They had God the Son there with them.  God the Son, who had all the power in the world and then some.  They did not need to be afraid of what was going to happen to them.  They did not need to worry about it.  All they needed to do was trust God’s power.  All they needed to do was what the centurion did.  All they needed to do was make God the Son, Jesus, aware of the situation.  Once they did that, they could relax.  They could trust the power of God.  They could trust that God the Son would know what to do, and that whatever he did, it would be the right thing to do.

           

I think there’s a reason these two stories come so close together in Matthew’s gospel.  I think they’re meant to be set against each other.  They represent a choice we have as Christians.

           

All of us have times when we have to deal with some serious stuff in our lives.  In fact, I know there are some of you who are going through some serious stuff right now.  If you’re not, you know some people who are.  When that happens, we can get pretty scared.  We feel like we’re all alone, and we don’t know what to do.  When we feel scared and alone and don’t know what to do, it’s really tempting for us to do what the disciples did.  It’s tempting for us to panic.  It’s tempting for us to start pleading to Jesus “Save me!  Please, wake up and save me!”

           

Jesus understands why we do that.  Jesus won’t get mad at us for it.  I just think it maybe makes Jesus a little sad.  I think, when we’re in that situation, Jesus would like to say to us, “You don’t need to panic.  You don’t need to be scared.  I’m right here.  I have enough power to handle your problems and then some.  Just relax and let me handle it.  Trust my power.  I know what to do, and I’ll do the right thing.”

           

Jesus won’t get mad at us if we react like the disciples did.  Jesus won’t refuse to help us if we do that.  After all, Jesus did help the disciples.  We’ll be better off, though, if we can do what the centurion did.  We’ll be better off if we can stay calm and trust God and God’s power.  We’ll be better off if we can trust God and God’s power enough to pray, to tell God about the situation as we see it, and then to turn the situation over to God.  We’ll be better off if we can trust God and God’s power enough to believe that, once we’ve turned the situation over to God and God’s power, God will know what to do.  We’ll be better of if we can trust God and God’s power enough to believe that, whatever God decides to do, it will be the right thing, even if it’s not what we were hoping God would do.

           

The disciples, even though they were right there with Jesus, God the Son, did not understand who this God person was.  The centurion did.  Not totally, not in every aspect, but enough.  The centurion understood that God is all-powerful.  He understood that God can take care of all of our needs.  And, he understood that God can always be trusted to do the right thing.

           

Who is this God person?  This God person is the one who is powerful enough to handle all our problems.  All we need to do is pray and trust God’s power enough to believe that whatever God decides to do, it will be the right thing.  God’s power is enough to take care of all of us.

The Parable of the Dead Evergreen Needles

            Wanda and I went for our first bicycle ride of the season recently.  We like to ride our bikes, but we like it to be warm outside when we do.  We’ve had some warm days, but it seems like every time we’ve had one we’ve either been out of town or did not have time to go for a ride.  Now, we finally were able to do it.

            As we rode, we went past a yard that had evergreen trees.  Around the evergreen trees were a lot of dead evergreen needles.  That brought back memories for us.

            As you know, before we came here, we were in North Sioux City.  The yard of the parsonage in North Sioux City has a lot of evergreen trees, which means it also has a lot of dead evergreen needles.  Unfortunately, when we got there, the yard had not been raked for quite some time.  That means that, over most of the yard, all you could see was a fairly thick mat of dead, brown evergreen needles.  It was kind of overwhelming, and kind of depressing.

            Well, Wanda and I went to work and started raking.  We raked and raked.  We filled lots of garbage bags full of dead evergreen needles.  It took us quite a few weeks, working an hour or so a day, to get the whole yard done.

            When we raked, though, we discovered something we did not expect.  Underneath that mat of dead, brown evergreen needles there was some live, green grass.  Despite everything, it was able to grow.  Once we got the evergreen needles off that grass, and it could get some sunlight and rain, it grew even better.  I’m not going to say our lawn was ever perfect, but eventually it got to where it didn’t look just too bad.

            Sometimes our lives can be like that yard in North Sioux City.  The problems of life can drop on us like dead, brown evergreen needles.  If we don’t do anything about them, those problems can seem so heavy and thick on us that all we or anyone else can see are those problems.  Those problems can seem overwhelming, as well as being depressing to us.

            If we turn to God, though, God can start helping us clear those problems away.  Then, we can discover, sometimes to our surprise, that there’s still a lot of good in ourselves and in life.  Once the problems start getting cleared away, we can start to feel the power of God and the warmth of God’s love.  Then, we can discover even more of the goodness that exists in us and in life.  Our lives may not turn out to be perfect, but eventually they may turn out to not be too bad.  In fact, they may turn out to be pretty good.

            No matter how overwhelmed we may get by life and life’s problems, God is always there.  When we turn to God and rely on God’s power and God’s love, amazing things can happen.

Use It or Lose It

            It was with some sadness that I read a few weeks ago that my hometown of Delmont will not field an amateur baseball team this year.

            I knew this would come sometime.  Delmont is getting smaller, as are many of our small towns.  The school joined with Tripp quite a few years ago.  They stopped fielding youth baseball teams a while back.  With no young people coming up, it was only a matter of time until the guys who’d been playing got too old to continue to do so.

            It still makes me sad, though.  I think the saddest thing of all is to think of the Delmont ballpark falling into disrepair.  It was never a great ballpark, but it was pretty good for a little town.  It hosted a lot of district baseball tournaments over the years.  When I was growing up, a lot of my summer life revolved around that ballpark.  At various times, I played, I umpired, I ran the scoreboard (first manual, then electronic), I kept the scorebook, I did some public address announcing.  It makes me sad to think that, in years to come, that ballpark that was so much a part of my life will continue to look shabbier and shabbier.

            That shabbiness is not inevitable, of course.  There’s nothing to stop people from mowing it and raking it and keeping it up.  The chances are, though, that it won’t happen.  One of the rules of life seems to be “use it or lose it.”  With no teams actually playing in that ballpark, the chances of anyone keeping it in good shape are pretty small.

            “Use it or lose it” applies to a lot of things in life.  If we don’t exercise our muscles, we’ll lose them.  If we don’t exercise our skills, we’ll lose them, too.

            I think “use it or lose it” also applies to our faith.  That’s why I think it’s important to pray regularly.  That’s why I think it’s important to go to church regularly.  These are ways we can exercise our faith.

            Why is important to exercise our faith?  Well, why is it important to exercise our muscles?  We don’t exercise our muscles just for the sake of exercising.  We exercise them so, when we need those muscles, we’ll have them.  It’s the same way with our skills.  We don’t exercise our skills just for the sake of it.  We exercise them so, when we need them, we have them.

            Our faith works the same way, too.  We don’t exercise our faith just for the sake of it.  We exercise our faith so, when we need our faith, we have it.

            Life can be hard sometimes.  No matter how good things seem to be, we’re all going to hit rough spots.  When we do, we’ll find out what kind of shape our faith is in.  If we’ve been exercising our faith regularly, we’ll find that it’s there when we need it, and it will help carry us through those tough times.  If we haven’t been exercising our faith regularly, well, we’re going to find out that we don’t have it to fall back on when we need it.  It’s not that God won’t be there for us; it’s that we won’t believe that we can trust God, because we haven’t been exercising our faith the way we should.

            Any time something is not used, it gets lost.  Keep your faith in good shape.  That way, when you need it, it’ll be there.

I Got a System

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, April 22, 2012.  The scriptures are Psalm 139, Isaiah 40:21-31, and 1 Corinthians 2:6-16.

            There are all kinds of people out there who claim they know the perfect system that’ll make us rich.  You see them advertising all the time.  They’ve got the perfect system for beating the stock market.  They’ve got the perfect system for betting on football games.  They’ve got the perfect system for how to win at blackjack.  They’ve even got the perfect system for picking winning lottery numbers.  They claim to have some kind of secret knowledge, to know stuff that nobody else knows, and they’ll let you in on the secret—for two easy payments of $19.95 each, plus shipping and handling.

            I’ve always wondered why, if these people know so much about it, they don’t just use their knowledge and make a fortune, rather than selling books and DVDs to the rest of us.  Still, it’s easy to fall for stuff like this.  It’s not just because we want to make money, either.  That’s part of it, but not all of it.

            I think there’s a part of all of us that wants to believe there’s some sort of secret knowledge out there.  We want to believe there’s this stuff out there that nobody knows, but we can know it, if we just find the right person to teach us.  The idea that there are people out there who know all the answers, and that we can be one of those people, too, can be really attractive to us.

The thing is, of course, that there’s only one person who knows everything, and that’s God.  As we move into the second part of our sermon series, ”Who Is This God Person, Anyway,” that’s the aspect of God that we’re going to talk about today.  God is all-knowing, and God is everywhere.

Now, the fact that God is all-knowing and is everywhere means at least two things for us.  The first one is that nothing about us is hidden from God. We talked last week about how God stands outside of time.  That means that, before we’re even born, God knows everything about us.   

As our psalm said, there’s nowhere we can go to get away from God, and there’s nothing about us that God does not know.  If we go to the highest heights, God is already there.  If we go to the lowest low spots, God is already there.  God knows when we sit down and when we get up.  God knows what we’re going to say before we even say it.  God knows our every thought.

That can be kind of scary.  After all, none of us has lived a perfect life.  I certainly have not.  I’m sure each one of us has done some things we’re not particularly proud of.  In fact, each one of us has probably done some things we’re pretty ashamed of.  Each one of us has some things about ourselves that we’d just as soon God did not know.  It can make us pretty uncomfortable to think about the fact that God knows absolutely everything about us.

God knows all the bad stuff about us.  God knows things about us that nobody else knows.  God sees even the things about us that we try to hide from ourselves.  If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s a pretty unpleasant thought.

It does not have to be, though.  God knows the bad stuff about us, but God knows the good stuff about us, too.  In fact, God knows that good stuff better than we do, too.  While it’s true that we can hide our sins from ourselves, there are times when we hide our goodness from ourselves, too.  There are times when we get so down on ourselves that we don’t recognize how good we really are. 

Not seeing the good in ourselves is just as wrong as not seeing the bad.  Both ways give us a distorted picture of who we are.  In fact, when we don’t recognize the good in ourselves, we’re not giving God enough credit or praise.  Remember, our psalm also tells us that God created us and knew us before we were born.  It says that not only is God wonderful, but all of God’s works are wonderful, too.  That includes us.  God cannot create something that is not good. 

God sees everything about us, the good and the bad.  God sees it all, and God knows it all.  That brings us to the other side of God being all-knowing and everywhere.  It’s true that we can never hide from God, but the good news is that God will never hide from us, either.

  We know that, of course, but sometimes we struggle to believe it.  I understand why.  Life can be hard sometimes.  In fact, it can be hard a lot of the time.  I’d say that pretty much everyone here is struggling with something or other in your life.  Other people may or may not know about it, but the struggle is still there.  If anyone here is not struggling with something, then there’s someone close to you who is.  That’s just the way life works.

When we have those struggles, it can be easy for us to feel like God is not there.  We feel like either God does not know what’s going on or God just does not care.  We say, “God, if you’re actually there, and you know what’s going on, why are you not doing something to help me?”

Well, God is always there.  God always knows what’s going on.  It’s just that God does not look at things the way we do.  That’s what Isaiah was telling us in our reading this morning. 

Isaiah says God sits enthroned above the earth.  He says that, compared to God, we’re as small as grasshoppers.  Yet, Isaiah says, God stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in. 

Think about that.  Even though we’re so small that we might think God would hardly even notice us, God still takes care of us.  Not only that, Isaiah says God provides us a place to live in the heavens.  That’s pretty cool, really.

In fact, it’s more than cool.  It’s amazing.  Isaiah goes on to say that there is no one to whom we can even compare God.  God is so far above everyone that any comparison to God would be ridiculous.  Yet that same God, the God who knows the names of each one of the stars, takes care of us.  That’s awesome!  That’s incredible!

It seems like it’s so hard for us to just trust that.  We keep wanting things to go the way we want them to.  When things don’t go the way we want them to go, we feel like God must not be going to do anything.  So, we try to do it ourselves.  We try to force things to go the way we want them to go.  We rely on our own wisdom, rather than relying on God’s wisdom.

It seems like it’s so tempting for us to do it that way.  Yet, we find out time after time that it just Does.  Not.  Work.  We keep trying to force things to go our way, while the all-knowing God is waiting, wishing we’d get out of the way and let God take over.

It was the same in Isaiah’s time.  Listen to what Isaiah says about it:

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

God has not gone any place.  God is always there.  The fact that things are not going the way we want them to go does not mean God has abandoned us.  It just means that God has a different plan in mind than we do.  Isaiah says God’s understanding is unsearchable.  Paul, in our reading from First Corinthians, asks “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” 

Think about that.  Isaiah tells us that we can never understand the mind of God.  Paul tells us that we have no right to try to tell God what to do.  We hear that, and our instinct is to get upset about it.  We want to understand God.  We want to be able to tell God what to do.  We don’t like the fact that not only don’t we understand what God’s doing, we don’t even get a say in it.

Paul says, though, that this is a good thing.  Paul says the reason we don’t understand, and the reason we don’t get a say, is that God has something better in mind for us than we could ever think of for ourselves.  Listen to what Paul says, “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, God has prepared for those who love him.”

The fact that we cannot see what God’s doing does not meant God is doing nothing.  It just means we don’t understand what God’s doing yet.  A lot of times, when we don’t understand what God’s doing, it’s because God has something in mind for us that’s better than anything we’ve thought of.  I’ve had that experience in my life a few times.  I’ll bet you have, too.

We cannot hide from God, but God will not hide from us.  God knows everything about us, and God still loves us.  God loves us so much that God will do things for us that are better than anything we ever could have thought of on our own.

God has the system we need.  It may not make us rich.  It will help us live happier and more peaceful lives on earth, though.  If we accept God’s love and God’s presence in our lives, we will always be with God and God will always be with us.  That’s God’s perfect system.  And it works.

The Lord of Time

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, April 15, 2012.  The scriptures were Matthew 6:25-34, Genesis 1:1-5, and Acts 17:22-28a.

            One of my favorite books is called, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”  It’s a comic science fiction book about a person from earth who goes hitchhiking around the galaxy with an electronic guidebook to help him out.  At one point, the guidebook tells him about a man who got rich by writing a series of books with the titles, “Where God Went Wrong”, “More of God’s Greatest Mistakes”, and “Who Is This God Person, Anyway?”

            The idea that we have the right to tell God where God got things wrong is obviously pretty arrogant of us, as if we could be smarter than God, although I suspect we’re all tempted to do that from time to time.  The last question, though, is one we’re going to talk about in the sermon series we’re starting today.  Just who is this God person, anyway?

            The answer may not be as clear as we think.  We all have an idea of who God is, but I don’t know that any of us really have a complete understanding of who God is.  In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to fully understand who God is. 

The disciples had Jesus Christ—God the Son—right there with them, and they still did not understand who God is.  When I did a Google search for “attributes of God”, I found lists with as many as twenty-five of them.  And you know what?  One of the attributes they all had was that God is infinite!  How in the world can we come to a complete understanding of an infinite God?

Well, we probably cannot do that.  Still, we need to try to get some understanding of God if we’re going to properly worship God.  It would make no sense to say we worshipped a God we did not understand at all.  That was one of the things that surprised the Apostle Paul on his trip to Greece.  He walked around the city and saw a statue that said, “To an unknown God.”  He went to the people and said, “Does that really make sense to you, that you should worship a God you don’t know.  I know God, and God wants you to know God, too.  Let me tell you about God, so you can know the God you’re worshipping.”

So, in this sermon series, we’re going to try to get a better understanding of who God is and how who God is affects our lives.  We’re going to start with what might be the most fundamental aspect of who God is.  God is eternal.

That can be a really hard concept for us to grasp.  We tend to think of something that’s eternal as something lasts for a really long time.  That’s not really what it means.  In fact, even saying that eternal means forever is not quite accurate. 

Here’s what the dictionary says “eternal” means.  “Eternal” means something that has no beginning and no end.  It means something that exists outside of any relationship to time.  That’s who God is.  God has no beginning and no end.  God exists outside of any relationship to time.  God just is.

Can we really even grasp that concept?  I’m not sure I can.  For you and me, time is a constant.  In fact, it’s one of the few constants about the world.  For us, time is a factor in everything we do.  It moves in one direction:  forward.  It moves at the same rate of speed.  We can divide it into years and months, weeks and days, hours, minutes, and seconds. 

We count on that constant, consistent movement.  Our bodies get used to the rhythm of it.  That’s why it goofs us up so much when we go on or off daylight saving time.  It’s why we have trouble when we go to a different time zone.  We’re so used to that constant, consistent movement that we’re out of sorts when we suddenly jump forward or backward even by just one hour.

We divide time in other ways, too.  We divide into yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  In other words, we divide it into the past, the present and the future.  We do that without even really thinking about it.  It’s just the way life is for us.

Try to imagine what it would be like if there was no past and now future.  Instead, there was just now.  There was no such thing as was or will be.  There was just is.

That’s how it works for God.  God stands outside of time.  We know this because God created time, just like God created everything else.  Listen again to the words of Genesis:

“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’.  And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

There was no such thing as a day until God created it.  There was no such thing as

time itself until God created it.  Time does not “pass” for God, the way it passes for us. God understands how time works for us, because God created it, but God stands outside of time.  God existed before time was created, if the phrase “before time” even makes sense. 

That’s what God being eternal really means.  It’s not that God exists forever.  It’s that even the concept of “forever” makes no sense when we talk about God.  God does not experience time the way we do.  God just is.  God is always in the now.

So, if I’ve not lost you yet, you’re probably wondering, “So what?  Even if this is all true, what does it mean for us?”

Well, Jesus promised us that, by God’s grace and through our faith, we’ll have eternal life, too.  That means that in heaven, we’ll be eternal, too, just like God is.

Think about your life.  Think about the impact time has on your life.  We have deadlines and schedules.  We try to get things done on time.  We try to get to certain places on time.  We have to hurry up and get things done, so we can get on to the next thing and get it done, too.  Sometimes we don’t have enough to do, and it seems like we have too much time.

In heaven, we won’t have to worry about any of that.  We won’t have a deadline or a schedule, because time won’t exist there.  We won’t have to hurry, and we won’t be bored.  We won’t have to worry about what we have to do next.  We’ll focus on whatever it is we’re doing and really enjoy it.  We’ll be living in the now, without worrying about the past or the future.

The knowledge that God is eternal does not just matter to us in heaven, though.  It matters to us in our lives on earth, too. 

See, the past and the future both influence our lives in all kinds of ways.  If the past was really good, we can get so nostalgic for it that we look at every change as a change for the worse.  Our love of the past keeps us from enjoying the now.  If the past was really bad, we can become overly fearful that things will go bad again.  Our fears in the past keep us from enjoying the now.  There’s nothing wrong with remembering the past, of course, but it can be wrong when we let our memories of the past keep us from enjoying the now.

The future can work that way, too.  Sometimes we want so much for things to be good in the future that we spend all of our time planning for it.  Our hope for the future keeps us from enjoying the now.  Sometimes we’re so fearful that things will be bad in the future that we spend all of our time trying to prevent it.  Our fears of the future keep us from enjoying the now.  There’s nothing wrong with making provisions for the future, but again, but it can be wrong when we let our plans for the future keep us from enjoying the now. 

Remember, Jesus told us not to worry about the future, because it won’t do us any good.  He told us that tomorrow will worry about itself.  He told us we should keep focused on the now.

The knowledge that God is eternal helps us focus on the now.  Because God is eternal and stands outside of time, we don’t have to let the past control us.  Whatever happened in the past, whether it was good or bad, God has already taken care of it.  Because God is eternal and stands outside of time, we don’t have to worry about the future, either.  Whatever the future holds, God is already there in that future, and God has already taken care of that, too.

Who is this “God” person?  God is the one who’s in control of time.  What that means for us is that we don’t have to worry about time.  We can live in the now.  We can let go of the past, and we don’t have to be overly concerned about the future.

God lives in the now.  God invites us to live in the now, too.  When we do, we find that God takes care of us, in the past, the future, and the now.

We Interrupt This Week

            At some point every weekend, I make out a schedule for myself.  I list the things I plan to get done that week, as well as the events I plan to go to.  Within the list of things to do, I try to estimate what I plan to get done each day.

            It’s not because I’m a compulsive list-maker or anything.  It’s just that I’ve found that, if I don’t make out a list like this, I start forgetting things I need to do.  In fact, I sometimes have to amend the list, because I’ve forgotten something when I made it out.  Still, having the list in the first place helps keep me on track.  Plus, I’ll admit, it gives me a feeling of satisfaction when I’m able to cross things off the list.

            The thing is, though, that I very rarely am able to stick to my list.  It seems like every week, inevitably, something will happen to keep me from getting done all the things I planned to do.  These things keep me from staying on schedule.  They mess up my plans.  I don’t like this.  After all, the things on my schedule were the things I’d planned to do to serve God.  I don’t like having those plans disrupted.

            At least, I don’t like it at first.  What I’ve learned, though, is that those things that disrupt my schedule generally involve serving God, too.  In fact, sometimes the things that disrupt my schedule are a more important way of serving God, at that moment, than the things that are on my schedule. 

That’s not to say the things on my schedule are bad things.  They’re very good things.  It’s just that sometimes, other things are more important.  When they are, God usually has a way of letting me know that.  Quite often, I come back from doing those “unscheduled” things feeling very satisfied, because I know that the unscheduled thing was the thing God wanted me to do at that moment.

God’s plans are better than mine.  That’s pretty obvious, I suppose, but it can be easy for me to forget.  It can be easy for me—with entirely good motives—to get so worried about my plans and my schedules that I miss chances for service that God puts in front of me.  When I realize that later, I’m disappointed in myself.

The good news for me—and maybe the good news for you—is that when I do that, God usually gives me a second chance.  If I’ve missed a chance to serve, God will usually put another one in front of me.  Sometimes, it’s even the exact same one that I missed the first time.  No matter how many chances to serve we miss, God keeps giving us more.  Eventually, even though it messes up my schedule, I get a clue and take advantage of some of those chances.

God will never give up on us.  God will keep interrupting our plans with chances to serve.  The trick is to keep our eyes open to see those chances, and to keep our hearts open to take advantage of them.  I’m better at that than I used to be, but I still have a ways to go.  So I’ll keep working on it.  And I know God will keep giving me chances to do exactly that.

Was Jesus Happy?

            I saw an article recently with the headline “Was Jesus Happy?”  It was a report about a study conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia.  The study compared the views of Jesus held by American Christians with those held by Korean Christians.  It found that, as a rule, American Christians tend to think that Jesus was happier, while he was on earth, than Korean Christians do.

            It got me thinking about it.  Was Jesus happy, while he was on earth?  Certainly he wasn’t happy all the time.  Arguing with the Pharisees can’t have been a lot of fun.  Dealing with the disciples must have been really frustrating sometimes; I suspect there were times when he wanted to bang their heads together when he’d explain something over and over and they just Could. Not. Get it.  And, obviously, getting nailed to a cross was not something that anyone would enjoy.

            When you think about it, the gospels don’t really seem to record many times when Jesus was happy.  Most Christians are familiar with the times when Jesus wept.  I’m not sure the gospels mention any times when Jesus laughed or even smiled.  So, maybe Jesus really wasn’t very happy at all while he was on earth.

            When we think about this, though, I think we need to make a distinction between things like fun and enjoyment and happiness.  Fun and enjoyment tend to be momentary things.  They’re things that we experience for a little while, but then are gone.  That does not mean they’re worthless.  In fact, they’re very necessary.  Still, if we measure our lives in terms of fun, we’re likely to be disappointed, because at some point, the fun times always come to an end.

            Happiness is different.  Happiness means being content.  Happiness means being satisfied.  We can feel happiness more strongly sometimes than at other times, of course, but it tends not to be just a momentary feeling.  The reason for that is that happiness is an attitude.  Happiness is not dependent on the immediate circumstances, the way fun is, because happiness comes from the inside.  It’s a feeling of satisfaction.  It’s a feeling that we are where we are supposed to be and we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.  When we have that feeling, we can be happy, even if the immediate circumstances are not particularly pleasant.

            So, was Jesus happy?  I think he was.  He may not have had a lot of fun, but I think he was happy.  He was happy because he knew that he was where God the Father wanted him to be, and he was doing what God the Father wanted him to do.  That feeling gave him contentment and satisfaction.  It’s a feeling that allowed him to obey God the Father all the way, even to the cross.

            There’s nothing wrong with having fun.  We all need to have fun sometimes.  My prayer, though, is that all of us can find happiness, regardless of our circumstances.  I think that’s something God wants for all of us.

No One Hates the Insignificant

            I saw a quote recently that I really liked.  It said, "The opposite of love is not hate; it is use. Those who hate me at least recognize me as human, a force with which to be reckoned, a legitimate source of ideas. Those who use me consider me nothing more than a means to an end. Those who use me dehumanize me.”

            It seems to me there’s a lot of truth in that.  In an odd way, to be hated can be a compliment.  Think about it:  we don’t bother to hate someone who’s insignificant.  The act of hating someone, while not a good thing, at least recognizes that the one you hate is important. 

Think of the most hated politicians, of either party.  The one thing they have in common is that they have power.  Nobody hates a freshman legislator from the ninth district of Arkansas.  Nobody even knows who he or she is.  The people who are hated are the ones who have power.

            It works that way in sports, too.  What baseball team is hated the most?  The Yankees.  Why?  Because they win so much.  Nobody hates the Washington Nationals.  Why would you?  They’ve never won anything.  It’s not worth anybody’s time to hate them.

            This, of course, explains why the Pharisees and others hated Jesus while he walked the earth.  There were other people, around the time that Jesus was on earth, who claimed to be the Messiah.  Some of them even attracted some followers.  None of them was crucified.  Why not?  Because none of them had any power.  They made a little splash for a while, then they faded away.  None of them was worth hating.

            Jesus was.  Jesus had power.  Jesus had influence.  Jesus had the potential to really change things, to upset the apple cart.  That’s why the Pharisees and others hated him.  That’s why they thought they had to stop him.  If he’d just been a harmless crank, they’d never have bothered.

            So what does that say for the church?  Well, first, let’s look at what it doesn’t say.  It does not say that the church’s goal should be to be hated.  Jesus did not set out to be hated.  It simply was an unavoidable by-product of who he was and what he did. 

It also does not mean that the church’s goal should be to seek power and influence.  Again, Jesus did not seek power and influence.  It simply was the by-product of who he was and what he did.

Jesus did not have power and influence because he sought them.  He had power and influence because he was faithful to God.  He did not worry about what would result from that faithfulness.  That result was not his concern.  Jesus had power and influence because he served his heavenly Father in everything he said and did.  The power and influence were the result of his faithfulness.  Unfortunately, so was the hatred.

I think what that says for the church is that we should not seek power and influence.  Instead, we should always, in all things, seek to be faithful to God.  There may be times when power and influence results from that.  Or, there may not.  That’s not our worry.  Unfortunately, there may even be times when the church is hated because of our faithfulness.  Or, there may not.  That’s not our worry, either.

The job of the church is to be faithful to God at all times and in all circumstances.  What happens as a result of that is not our concern.  If the church is faithful to God, we can trust God to take care of what happens as a result.

First Things First, But Not in That Order

Below is the text of the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, April 8, 2012.  The scripture is 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.

I’ve mentioned before that my favorite TV show is Doctor Who.  One of my favorite quotes comes from that show, too.  The Doctor once said, “Put first things first, but not necessarily in that order.”

It makes sense to us to put first things first.  Sometimes, though, the first thing in putting first things first is deciding what the first thing is.  For instance, what’s the first thing, the most important thing, about faith in Jesus Christ?

           

I suppose there are a lot of answers we could give to that question.  The obvious one might be love.  After all, Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are that we love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Because of that, it might seem like love is the first thing about our faith.

           

I don’t think so, though.  Love is really important, obviously.  The thing is that what Jesus said is only important if we already have faith in the first place.  If we don’t have faith in Jesus, then it really won’t matter much to us what Jesus said.  So love is important, but it’s not really the first thing about our faith.

           

How about obedience?  Jesus said blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.  Jesus said anyone who loves him will obey his teaching.  Again, though while obedience is important, it’s something that only becomes important if we already have faith in the first place.  If we don’t have faith, we won’t be very interested in obeying Jesus.

           

So what is it?  Well, I think the first thing about our faith in Jesus Christ is what we celebrate today.  The first thing, the most important thing about our faith in Jesus Christ is that he was raised from the dead.  That means that, in the story of Jesus’ life, the first thing came last.

           

Listen again to what the Apostle Paul said:  “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:  that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.’

Later on, Paul says this:  “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.”  In fact, Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, “We are to be pitied more than all others.”

Some of you may be wondering why the last thing about Jesus’ life would be the first thing about our faith.  After all, Jesus being raised does not change any of the things he said.  It does not change any of the things he did.  Jesus was still just as wise and just as good whether he was raised from the dead or not.

That’s true.  If Jesus was not raised from the dead, he was still a very wise man.  If Jesus was not raised from the dead, he was still a very good man.  That’s the thing, though.  If Jesus was not raised from the dead, he was a just a man.  A very wise man, a very good man, but still just a man, a human being.

We’re not supposed to worship a human being.  We can like a human being, we can respect a human being, we can admire a human being, we can love a human being, we can even try to be like a human being.  Even so, we’re not supposed to worship a human being, no matter how good and how wise that human being was.

If Jesus was not raised from the dead, he was just a man.  He was not the divine Son of God.  If Jesus was not the divine Son of God, if he was just a man, then anything he told us was just his opinion, the opinion of a man.  If the things Jesus said were just the opinions of a man, then we’re free to accept them or reject them as we like.  Jesus’ opinions don’t have any authority, if he was just a man.

While that’s all important, though, it’s not why Jesus being raised from the dead is the first thing about our faith.  The reason Jesus being raised from the dead is the first thing about our faith is that if Jesus was just a man, then he did not have the ability to save us.  The death of a human being, even a good and wise human being, would not give us any salvation.  Our belief in a human being, even a good and wise human being, cannot get us into heaven.  Only God’s grace, offered to us through our faith in the Savior, can do that.  If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, it’s proof that he really was the divine Son of God, and that our belief in him leads to eternal life in heaven.  If Jesus was not raised from the dead, then he was not the divine Son of God and our belief in him does us no good at all.

That’s why Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, our faith is him is useless.  If Christ has not been raised, then our faith is based on a lie.  We’re wasting our time believing in him. 

In fact, it’s worse than that.  If Christ has not been raised, then we believe in a false god rather than the true God.  That’s why Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, we should be pitied more than anyone else.  It would be better to not believe in any god at all than to believe in a false god who has no power.

I think, even if we’ve never really thought about it in this way, most of us realize this.  There’s a reason that churches have their highest attendance all year on Easter Sunday.  It’s not just because it’s a nice spring Sunday and people feel like going to church. 

We come to church on Easter Sunday because we realize the event we remember on this day is the first thing about our faith.  We come on Easter Sunday because we realize how important it is that we acknowledge and affirm, to ourselves and to everyone else, that we really believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.  When we come to church on Easter Sunday, we are saying that we believe Jesus was more than just a human being, that he truly was the divine Son of God, and that he truly is our Savior.  We’re saying we recognize Jesus being raised from the dead as the first thing about our faith, and we are putting first things first.

The thing is, of course, that if that’s all we do, we never get past the first thing.  The first thing then becomes the last thing and we never get anywhere else.  It’s good to acknowledge that Jesus is our Savior, but it’s not enough.  We also need to live in a way that shows we believe it, because our actions reveal our beliefs.  We need to go on to the second thing and the third thing and the fourth thing if we really believe the first thing.

Those second and third and fourth things include the things we talked about at the start of this message.  They’re things like love and obedience and trust.  If we really believe in Jesus as the divine Son of God, then we need to take seriously what he said about loving God and loving our neighbor.  If we really believe in Jesus as the divine Son of God, then we need to take seriously what he said about loving even our enemies, and praying for those who treat us badly.  If we really believe in Jesus as the divine Son of God, then we need to take seriously what he said about being willing to give up everything, if need be, to follow him.  If the second thing and the third thing and all the other things are not there, it shows we were never really serious about the first thing.

Which brings me back to the saying from Doctor Who:  First things first, but not necessarily in that order.  As Christians, we cannot take things in that order.  We cannot start with the first thing and then go to the second thing and then go to the third thing.  The first thing and the second thing and the third thing and the fourth thing are all connected.  We don’t really believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, and that he’s our Savior, unless we love as Jesus loved, are obedient to Jesus’ teaching, and trust him enough to follow where he leads us.

Jesus died for our sins.  He was buried.  He was raised on the third day.  That’s the first thing.  The fact that we’re all here today shows we claim to believe that.  It shows that we claim to believe that Jesus really is the divine Son of God, our Savior. 

So let's get past the first thing.  Let's resolve to love God and love others, to do what Jesus taught us to do, and to trust that, when we do, God will always be there for us.  Let's put first things first, but not necessarily in that order.