61*

Last Sunday was my birthday.  I am now sixty-one years old.

That’s hard for me to believe.  In my mind, I feel like I’m still fairly young.  Until, of course, I get around people who actually are young.  Then, I realize that things that don’t seem all that long ago to me happened before they were born.  

I wonder sometimes what I must look like to younger people.  I especially wonder what I must look like to the kids in my youth group.  I was just finally getting used to the fact that I was old enough to be their father.  Now, I’m old enough to be their grandfather.

Sixty-one.  Think of all the changes that have happened in the world since I was born.  Dwight Eisenhower was the president.  No one had heard of Vietnam.  There were only sixteen major league baseball teams.  The Dodgers had just played their first season in Los Angeles.  There was only one major league sports team in Minnesota, and it was the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers.  People still used manual typewriters.  A telephone was something that was attached to the wall, and the receiver had a cord.  In fact, some people didn’t even have a dial--they still had party lines.  Television was mostly black and white, and around here you were lucky if you got three channels.  Space flight was still a far-fetched dream.  And I could go on and on and on.

Sixty-one years.  It’s a long time, in human terms.  In God’s terms, of course, it’s nothing at all.  The Bible tells us that to God, a thousand years are but a single day.  Sixty-one years to God is what?  A long lunch?

And the truth is, I don’t really wish I was younger.  I’m quite happy with who I am and where I am and what I’m doing.  I am fortunate to still have very good health--I have no serious problems, and don’t even have anything that hurts on a regular basis yet.  I was able to ride my bicycle ten miles or so regularly this summer and am able to use my exercise glider regularly this winter.  I still have a good energy level.  I’m able to do work that’s meaningful and that I enjoy.  I’m able to do that work in a place I love being in.  And I’m able to do that work with wonderful people who are great to work with.

When you get right down to it, there’s not a lot more you can ask out of life than that.  It’s like it says in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes:  to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in your work is a gift from God.  I am enjoying that gift, and will continue to enjoy it for as long as God gives it to me.

So, happy birthday to me!  I hope you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas, too.  And may we all have a Happy New Year.

Get Up and Do It!

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 22, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 1:18-25.

            Some of you may remember that several years ago we conducted a tournament to see who the favorite Bible character of the Wheatland Parish was.  Mary, Jesus’ earthly mother, won the tournament.  Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, got knocked out a couple of rounds in.

            And that’s kind of the way we think of Mary and Joseph.  Mary gets all the publicity.  There’s way more in the Bible about Mary than there is about Joseph.  Joseph is around for the first couple of years of Jesus’ life, and then he’s never mentioned again.  Oh, there’s that story about Jesus at age twelve being left behind at the temple and his parents looking for him, but Joseph is not named in that story.  Mary is, but not Joseph.  

That’s really how the Bible tells the story.  Mary is the main parent of Jesus.  Joseph is just kind of an afterthought.  The gospel of Mark does not even mention him.  The gospel of John only makes a couple of references to “Jesus, the son of Joseph”.  

And here’s another thing.  When you read the story of Mary in the gospel of Luke, you get a lot of statements from Mary.  In fact, the gospel of Luke gives us an entire song from Mary.  You know how many quotes there are from Joseph in the Bible?  Zero.  None.  We are not given one sentence, one word, not even one syllable uttered by Joseph.  For all the Bible tells us, Joseph might never have said a word in his entire life.

But here’s the thing.  We may not know anything Joseph said.  But we know several things Joseph did.  And every time we’re told something Joseph did, Joseph obeyed God.  He did not hesitate.  He did not ask questions.  He simply did what the Lord told him to do.

Look at our reading for today.  Joseph finds out that Mary is going to have a child.  He’s not sure what he should do.  An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go ahead and take Mary for his wife.  And we’re told, “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”

Joseph heard from an angel a couple of other times.  When Herod is trying to have the young Jesus killed, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream again and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and go to Egypt.  And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt.”

And when Herod died and it was okay for them to return, an angel again appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go back to Israel.  And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.”

We’re never told anything Joseph said.  We’re never told anything Joseph thought.  We’re never told anything Joseph felt.  But we are told what Joseph did.  And each time, what we’re told is that Joseph was obedient to God.

I have to think that there were times Joseph really did not want to do what the angel was telling him to do.  In fact, I suspect that after a while, Joseph really did not want to hear from the angel any more, because every time the angel appeared, it told Joseph to do something hard.  After all, it could not have been easy to take Mary for his wife.  Even assuming he loved Mary, there were still going to be all the questions, all the rumors, all the gossip about the two of them, with Mary getting pregnant before they were married.  

It could not have been easy to take Mary and Jesus and go to Egypt.  Think about it.  They were leaving behind everything they owned other than what they could carry.  And probably they had to carry Jesus himself a lot of the way—he’d have been at most a toddler at this time, maybe still a baby.  They were going to a foreign country, to a place where they probably did not know anyone.  They may not even have known the language.  Would they be accepted there?  What were they going to do there?  How would Joseph make enough money to take care of his family?  Where would they find a place to live?  This was quite a thing Joseph was told to do.  And he got up and did it.

And it could not have been easy to go back to Israel, either.  We’re not told how long they were in Egypt, but people think it may have been up to two years.  Think about that.  They’d probably gotten established in Egypt by that time.  Joseph may have even had a good business for himself as a carpenter.  And now, here they are, having to leave everything behind again.  Yes, they were going home, but it had been a long time since they’d been there.  Would they be accepted when they came home?  Would Joseph be able to re-establish his business?  Were they going to have to find a different place to live, again?  But again, Joseph did not let any of that stop him.  An angel of the Lord told him to do something, and he got up and did it.

Joseph did not know what was going to happen when he did all these things.  The angel did not tell him the future.  The angel does not say that after Jesus is born they’ll need to go to Egypt, and they’ll be there a couple of years, and then they’ll be able to come home again.  In fact, the angel does not give him any assurances at all.  The angel never says, “Don’t worry, God will protect you.”  The angel never says, “God will reward you for your faith.”  The angel never even says, “God will be with you wherever you go.”  The angel just tells Joseph, “Do this.”  And Joseph gets up and does it.

And when you think about it, what we get up and do is really the bottom line of our faith.  It’s not about what we say.  It’s not about what we think.  It’s not about what we feel.  It’s about what we do.  Faith is acting in obedience with what the Lord wants us to do.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Our words are important.  But if our actions don’t back up our words, our words are meaningless.  Our thoughts are important.  But if we don’t put our thoughts into actions, our thoughts are meaningless.  Our feelings are important.  But if our feelings are not translated into actions, our feelings are meaningless.

This is what the apostle James was getting at when he made the statement, which I’m sure many of you have heard, that faith without works is dead.  It’s important to have good thoughts and good feelings, but if we stop there, our thoughts and feelings are worthless.  They don’t do anyone any good.  Our thoughts and feelings are only worth something if they’re translated into actions.  Our faith itself is only worth something if it’s translated into action.

You’ve probably noticed that I often pray for God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and inspire us.  I believe that God wants to lead us, and guide us, and inspire us.  But God leading us won’t do any good if we don’t follow where God is leading us.  God guiding us won’t help if we don’t go the way God is guiding us to go.  God’s inspiration won’t change anything if we don’t follow up on what God has inspired us to do.

It’s not always easy.  It was not always easy for Joseph.  It’s not always easy for you and me, either.  It takes a lot of faith to truly put our lives in God’s hands.  It takes a lot of courage, sometimes, to do the tough things God sometimes asks us to do.  It takes a lot of trust to go wherever God wants us to go, to do whatever God wants us to do.  That’s especially true when as with Joseph—and often with us—we have no guarantee of what the outcome is going to be.

Joseph followed where God led him.  Joseph went the way God guided him.  And these were some incredibly important things God was leading Joseph to do.  Think about it.  The Bible does not tell us anything about Joseph’s background.  I mean, it tells us his genealogy, but it does not tell us if he was old or young, rich or poor, intelligent or average.  But there’s no indication that Joseph was anyone special or powerful or important.  As far as we can tell, Joseph was a fairly common, ordinary man.  And here he was, this common, ordinary man, trying to protect his family.  Protecting the life of the Savior of the world!  And who was he protecting them from?  Common, ordinary Joseph, this one guy, is protecting his family from King Herod!  A powerful king with a big army who would’ve had Joseph killed without even thinking twice about it.

The Bible appears to treat Joseph as an afterthought.  But if you think about what Joseph did, you can see that he was not an afterthought at all.  God chose Joseph to be the earthly father of Jesus.  God put every bit as much thought and care into the selection of Joseph as God did with the selection of Mary.  The obedience of Joseph, the faith of Joseph, were incredibly important in the story of Jesus.  Joseph’s faith, expressed through his actions, is every bit as amazing as the faith of Mary.

There are things that God wants you to do.  And there are things God wants me to do, too.  We may not always know what they are, but a lot of times, we do.  We probably don’t know our entire future, just as Joseph did not know his entire future.  But a lot of times, we do know what the next step is that God wants us to take.  The question is what our response would be.

Once Joseph found out the next step, he got up and did what God wanted him to do.  May we have the faith, and the courage, and the trust, that Joseph had.  May we be obedient to God.  May we see what God wants us to do, and may we get up and do it.

Joseph and Mary: The One Thing We Know

It’s less than a week to Christmas as I write this.  As I think about the Christmas story as given to us in the Bible, it’s always remarkable to me how little we know about Joseph and Mary, and how even some of the things we think we do know are not actually in the Bible.  There seems to be somewhat of a mythology that’s grown up around Joseph and Mary, as if we have a need to fill in the gaps somehow and get a fuller picture of who they were.  In doing so, though, we run the risk of making them who we want them to be rather than who they really were.

For example, you’ll hear it stated as a fact that Mary was very young, a teenager, maybe a young teenager.  That could be, but the Bible doesn’t tell us so.  The Bible says nothing about Mary’s age.  It says nothing about Joseph’s age, either--you’ll hear people say that he was older than Mary, but the Bible does not tell us that, either.  We know nothing about how old either of them were.

You’ll also hear it stated as a fact that Mary and Joseph were poor.  Maybe they were, but again, the Bible does not say so.  The Bible says nothing about their economic status.  They were not out in the stable because they were poor and could not afford a room.  They were there because the small town of Bethlehem was overcrowded due to the census and there were no rooms available.  We know Joseph had a trade--he was a carpenter.  Maybe he made a good living.  Now, had they been rich, they might have been able to offer an innkeeper enough money to kick someone else out and let them have a room instead.  But maybe not--maybe Joseph and Mary were not the sort of people who’d kick someone else out into the cold so they could be comfortable.  We simply don’t know.

There are lots of other things about them we don’t know.  We don’t know if they had siblings.  We don’t know how they were regarded in the community.  We don’t know if they were short or tall, good-looking or plain.  There’s really only one thing we do know about them.  We know that they were people of great faith.  They believed in God.  They trusted God.  And they would do what God wanted them to do.

I suspect that’s the only thing the Bible tells us about Joseph and Mary because that’s the main thing we need to know.  That’s the reason God chose them.  God knew He was asking them to do some really hard things.  Some things that, in human terms, were impossible.  God knew that it would take people of tremendous faith to do those things.  That’s why Joseph and Mary were chosen.  They were not chosen for their age, the economic status, their reputations, their looks, or anything else.  They were chosen because of their incredible faith.

That faith is an example to us.  You and I are called to have that kind of faith.  We’re not likely to be called to do the things that Joseph and Mary did, but we are likely to be called to do some hard things.  Some of you have already had to do hard things, maybe many hard things.  Some of you are doing hard things now.  And some of you will have still more hard things in your future.  So the question is, can we have enough faith to do those hard things.  Can we trust God that much?  Can we trust God enough to face hard things, and follow through with them, even when we don’t want to, even when we don’t understand, even when we don’t know what’s happening or what the outcome can be?  Can we trust God that much?

As we approach Christmas, let’s remember the faith of Joseph and Mary.  And let’s ask God to help us have that kind of faith.  

Endurance and Hope

This is the message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday night, December 8, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Romans 15:4-13.

            Hope.  The expectation and desire that something will happen.  But not just anything.  Something good.  Something we really want.  Hope is a belief that things are going to get better.  No matter how things may look now, even when it seems like things have hit rock bottom, hope is a belief that somehow, in some way, things will get better again.

            Hope is an important part of Christmas.  When we’re little kids, we hope we’ll get the toy or the game we want.  As we get older, we hope for time with family and friends.  Sometimes, we hope for a few days to just relax and rest and not have to do much of anything.

            Hope is very important to our Christian faith as well.  In fact, in First Corinthians we read that hope is one of the three most important things, along with faith and love, that God has given us.  We sometimes refer to Advent and Christmas as a season of hope.  And in fact, we sometimes refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is very important to us in our lives and in our faith.

            But the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, does not refer to God as a God of hope.  Hope is involved with God, certainly.  But listen to how Paul describes God.  He describes God as a God of endurance and encouragement.

            Endurance and encouragement.  That’s how we get hope, according to Paul.  He tells us that everything that was written in the past, all the words of the prophets, all the words of the law, everything that appears in the scriptures, was written to teach us.  And it was written to teach us endurance.

            Do you ever think of the Bible that way?  Do you ever think of God’s Word as having been written to teach us endurance?  That’s what Paul says.

            But when you think about it, it does kind of make sense.  Because endurance is one of the things that helps us keep our faith.  We could not have faith if it was not for endurance.

            Because the truth is that life throws a lot of hard things at us.  You don’t need me to tell you that.  Everyone here has experienced plenty of hard things.  Things that discourage us.  Things that knock us down.  And it can happen in all kinds of ways.  It can be material setbacks.  It can be health setbacks.  It can be things that damage our reputation.  It can be things that cause us to lose friends and feel alone.  Sometimes it might be our own fault, but sometimes it’s not.  You know, they say everything happens for a reason, and maybe that’s so, but there are plenty of things that happen that I’ll be darned if I can figure out what the reason might be.  And I suspect that’s true for you sometimes, too.

            And when those things happen, we make a decision.  We either continue to believe, we continue to have faith, or we don’t.  And that’s why the Bible was written to teach us endurance.  It was written to give us examples to follow.  It was written to give us guidelines and rules to live by.  And it was written to show us and tell us that, no matter how bad things get, God will always be there.  And God will, eventually, make things get better.  If we did not have those examples, if we did not have those guidelines, if we did not have those rules, if we all we had to rely on was ourselves and our own ability to hang on to faith, we’d never make it.  It’s those examples and guidelines and rules that were set down in the Bible that give us the ability to hold on through those tough times.  The Bible was, indeed, written to teach us endurance.

            Paul says it’s the encouragement that those passages provide that gives us that hope.  Think about all the people, all the great heroes in the Bible, who had times when things went against them.  Joseph--the Old Testament Joseph--was sold into slavery in a foreign country.  Job loses everything for no apparent reason.  Daniel was thrown into a den of lions just for worshiping God.  Jesus himself was killed even though he had done nothing wrong.  

But God never left them.  God stayed with them, and God saw them through their bad times.  Joseph eventually became the number two man to the great Pharaoh and saved his people from starvation.  Job kept his faith and got everything back and more besides.  Daniel not only survived the lions’ den but was able to bring many people to faith.  And of course, Jesus rose again, conquering death itself.  All those people, and many others, endured.  They kept their faith no matter how bad things got.  Their endurance teaches us to endure.  Their endurance encourages us to stay strong in our faith in bad times, too.  And that encouragement gives us hope, again, that things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God.

But is that all we get?  Just this vague hope that somehow, sometime, in some way, things are going to get better if we just stay faithful to God?

No.  We get more than that.  Because remember what we said hope is at the start of this message.  It’s not just some vague wish.  It’s an expectation.  It’s confidence.  It’s trust.  We trust that our faith in God will be rewarded.  We are confident of that.  We expect that.  We don’t just wish that things will get better.  We know things will get better.  We know that because we know we can trust God.

Now, as we’ve said before, that does not mean we’ll get everything we want.  Things will get better, but maybe not in the way we wanted or expected.  In fact, it’s my experience that God quite often acts in ways that never even would have occurred to us.  But of course, God’s ways are always better than our ways.  And sometimes I think that God enjoys surprising us, making things work out for the best, but in a totally different way than we ever would have thought of.

And as we’ve also said before, we don’t know when things are going to happen.  That’s another way endurance comes into this.  We’d love it if God worked on our time schedule, but of course God never does.  But again, God’s time is always better than our timing.  And again, I think God enjoys surprising us, making things happen at a time we were not expecting.

But what we get from this endurance and encouragement is more than just hope.  If, because of that endurance and encouragement, we really do trust God, what happens?  Paul says it this way:  “The God of hope [will] fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

What an awesome thing!  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will be filled with joy and peace.  If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not always easy to have that much trust in God.  But again, that’s why the Bible was written.  We have all these examples of people who held on to their trust in God, even when it was not easy.  All these examples of people who endured in the faith, and whose endurance was ultimately rewarded.  We’re shown that endurance to encourage us in our faith.

But we have other examples, too.  I suspect we all know people who had or have a strong faith, who held onto that faith no matter how many times life knocked them down.  Their endurance is an example to us as well.  And that endurance can encourage us in our faith.

But we also have the example of our own lives.  As I said earlier, I know that everyone here has gone through some hard things in your lives.  Think about the times that those things happened, and yet you remained strong in your faith.  Think about the times you endured, despite everything.

What happened as a result?  How did things work out?  In some case, of course, things have not worked out yet.  You’re still waiting to see how things are going to work out.  But the things that have worked out, what happened?  Do you feel like it was worth it?  Do you feel like your endurance was rewarded?

I suspect the answer is yes, or you would not be here.  And the result of that endurance can give you encouragement that it will happen again.  Whatever it is that you’re still waiting to see how it works out, be encouraged.  Know that God has been there for you before.  And let that knowledge encourage you to know that God is there for you now, too, and will see you through whatever you’re going through.

The endurance taught in the Scriptures, in the lives of people we know, and in our own lives gives us encouragement.  That encouragement gives us hope.  May that hope fill us with the joy and peace that comes with trusting God, not just at Christmas time, but all the time.

Struggling to Feel Joy

It’s Christmastime.  A time when we’re supposed to feel joy.  After all, one of our favorite hymns is “Joy to the World”.  The angel said to the shepherds, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.”  Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy.

And I hope it is.  But I know there will be people reading this for whom it is not.  There may be a lot of reasons for that.  Some people are grieving the loss of loved ones.  Some people are undergoing serious health problems.  Some people have lost jobs or have other financial difficulties.  Some people feel very alone and lonely.  I’m sure there are other things going on in people’s lives, too.  When you feel these things, it’s very hard to feel joy.

And society, deliberately or not, sometimes makes it worse.  Because everywhere we turn, we get that same message.  From Hallmark Channel movies to Christmas parties to concerts to lots of other things, we’re told that we should feel joy.  And so, a lot of times people will pretend to feel joy even when they don’t.  They’ll paint a phony smile on their face and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, even though inside they feel like crying.

If you’re struggling to feel joy this Christmas, know that it’s okay.  You don’t have to.  Whatever you’re feeling is okay.  I mean, I wish everyone could feel joy.  I don’t want anyone to be miserable.  But sometimes we just can’t, and nothing the calendar says is going to change that.  And trying to pretend we feel something that we don’t, or trying to pretend we don’t feel something that we do, can just make things worse.  Sometimes, the only way to get past a feeling is to allow yourself to feel it.  As the saying goes, sometimes you just have to feel the way you feel until you don’t feel that way anymore.

Also, if you’re struggling to feel joy this Christmas, don’t be afraid to reach out.  The reason God put us into communities and churches and other groups is so we can be there for each other.  But it’s hard for people to be there for you if they don’t know what they’re going through, so don’t be afraid to tell them.

And if you’re not struggling to feel joy this Christmas, please keep your eyes and ears open for people who are.  Try to find a way to be there for them.  Let them know you understand.  If you don’t understand, let them know that you care anyway.  Let them know that they are not alone this Christmas.  Share your love and the love of God with them.

Joy is a wonderful thing, but love is even better.  May all of us know the love of Christ this Christmas, whether we feel joy or not.  May God’s love surround you during this Christmas season.

Take Them To Our Leader

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 8, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 11:1-10.

            Most of us like to complain about our leaders.  It does not matter who’s in power or what they’re doing, the chances are we’re going to complain about it somehow.  It’s just what we do.  And it’s not just what we do in this country.  In pretty much every country in the world, people have complaints about their leaders.  And whoever’s at the top, whether you call him a king or a president or a prime minister or whatever, is going to be the one complained about the most.  It’s just human nature to do that.

            So let me ask you--what would a perfect leader be like?  Whether it’s a perfect king or a perfect president or a perfect prime minister or whatever.  What would he or she be like?  What are the qualities that this perfect leader would have?

            Well, it would be someone with credibility, right?  I mean, we don’t want some nobody off the street to be our leader.  We want someone who’s respected, someone who has the resume a leader should have.  Someone whose background makes them appear qualified to be a leader.

            This person would probably need to be wise, don’t you think?  That might be the one of the biggest qualities we’d want from this perfect leader--wisdom.  They’d be someone who understood people.  Our wants, our needs, our fears, our desires, all of that and more.  They’d understand what we go through in our lives.

            They’d probably be someone who knew how to help people.  I’m not necessarily talking about help by giving away things--that might or might not be part of it.  I’m talking about helping people by teaching them to live a good life.  A life that does not just make them happy but helps their family and their friends and their town and society at large.  A perfect leader would probably be able to do that.

            They’d also have strength of character, right?  They’d be someone you could trust.  Someone who meant what they said and said what they meant.  Someone who you knew had your best interests at heart, and not their own.  Someone who’d never let you down.

            They’d not be easily fooled, either.  You would not be able to pull the wool over their eyes.  A bright smile and a slick line of BS would not impress them a bit.  They’d know better.  They’d make their decisions based on what was right and on nothing else.

            And they’d be someone who had faith in God.  Someone who believed in God, who loved God, who tried to live a life pleasing to God.  Our perfect leader would be someone who loved the Lord with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, and who loved their neighbor as themself.

            So, why am I going through all this?  Because that’s the person Isaiah described in our reading for today.  

            Isaiah starts by saying this person would be “a shoot...from the stump of Jesse.”  That means this person would be a descendant of Jesse, who was the father of King David.  King David, of course, was the greatest leader Israel ever had.  So, the descendant of King David would have instant credibility.

            Isaiah describes someone who has “the Spirit of the Lord” resting on him.  And what kind of a spirit will that be?  It will be a Spirit of wisdom.  It will be a Spirit of understanding.  It will be a Spirit of counsel and of might.  It will be a Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.  In other words, the Spirit of the Lord will give this person all the qualities we talked about--wisdom, understanding, helping people, strength of character, all of that.  And you cannot fool this person.  He will not judge by what he sees or by what he hears, he will judge with righteousness and with justice.  

            And this person will be a person of faith.  In fact, this person will “delight” in the fear of the Lord.  And with the Lord’s Spirit resting on them, how could they not?  

            As many of you know, the person Isaiah is talking about is Jesus Christ.  Jesus is that perfect leader.  Jesus, in his earthly lineage, was descended from King David.  In fact, that’s why a couple of the gospels go through the ancestry of Jesus--to show that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah that Isaiah, and later some others in the Old Testament, had predicted.  And of course, Jesus has all those other qualities that Isaiah said the Messiah would have.

            Isaiah was the first of the Old Testament prophets to predict the coming of the Messiah.  God gave Isaiah this prediction at a time when things were not looking good for Israel.  They had enemies on just about every side, enemies who were all more powerful than Israel was.  They were in constant fear of being taken over by one of those enemies.  This prediction God gave Isaiah would’ve given a lot of hope to the people who believed it.  It would’ve told them that things were not going to be like this forever, that there would come a day when God would raise up a leader who would save them.  And God gave Isaiah a description of what that leader would be like, so they’d all be able to recognize him when he came.

            And yet.  And yet so many of them did not.  There were a lot of reasons why.  One of them was probably just the passage of time.  The book of Isaiah, as far as we can tell, was written somewhere around 700 to 750 B. C.  In other words, it was written between seven hundred and seven hundred fifty years before Jesus the Savior actually came.  

Think about how long that is.  Seven hundred years ago was the year 1319.  That’s before the coming of Christopher Columbus.  That’s before the invention of the printing press.  It’s before Newton discovered gravity.  

Think about believing in a prophecy that long.  Since 1319 until today.  Is it any wonder some people gave up?  When you think of it that way, it’s probably more amazing that some people actually still believed in the prophecy.  It takes a lot of faith to believe that something that was predicted seven hundred years ago will actually happen.

But even among some of those who believed in the prophecy, there were people who did not recognize Jesus when he came.  Think of how sad that would be.  To have believed in something all your life, something that your parents had told you, and their parents had told them, and their parents had told them, and on and on and on back seven hundred years.  And then, it comes in your lifetime--and you miss it.  You don’t see it, even though it’s right in front of your eyes.  There are not a lot of things that would be sadder than that.

We cannot do anything about those people who missed out two thousand years ago, of course.  But here’s something to think about.  How many people are missing out on the Savior right now?  How many people have the ability to read Isaiah’s description of the perfect leader, the Savior?  And how many people have the ability to read about Jesus in the gospels, and see how what Isaiah wrote fits Jesus perfectly?  How many people have the ability to do that--and yet don’t do it?  How many people are missing out on knowing Jesus as the Savior, even though he’s right in front of their eyes?

That’s a sad thing.  There are not a lot of things sadder than that.  I trust, and I pray, that none of us here are missing out like that.  If anyone is, please come and talk to me.  But what’s also sad is that I do know some people who are missing out.  And so do you.  If you get out and about in this community at all, you know some people who do not know Jesus as the Savior.  In fact, some of us have people in our own families--either our immediate family or our extended family--who do not know Jesus as the Savior.  At the very least, you know some people whom you’re not sure know Jesus as the Savior.

That’s a sad thing.  If we believe the words of Jesus Christ--that no one comes to God the Father except through him--then this is a matter of eternal life and death.

And here’s the thing.  And I’m not saying this is how it works, but just think about it.  What if, someday, we stand before the Lord.  And the Lord goes through the names of all the people we know who do not know Jesus as the Savior.  And then the Lord asks, “What did you do about that?”

What would you answer?  What would I answer?  Do we have a good answer?

If it seems like I talk about this sort of thing a lot, this is why.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  We cannot force anyone to accept Jesus.  Each person makes up their own mind.  But I think God expects us to do what we can.  Jesus said to go and make disciples.  And as we’ve said before, Jesus did not make that optional, and he did not give out exceptions.  He said do it.  Period.  

I don’t mean to imply that no one is.  Maybe you have a good answer to that question.  I’m not here to judge you.  I just know I could do more.  And I suspect I’m not the only one who could.

Now, we’ve talked before about how we need to be careful in doing this, that we don’t want to come on too strong and turn people off.  And that’s still true.  But at the same time, that’s not an excuse for doing nothing.  For a lot of us, our problem is not that we come on too strong.  For a lot of us, including me, our problem is that we don’t say enough, and we don’t do enough.  And so, if the Lord asks us that question--what did you do about that--we may not have much of an answer.

Isaiah gave everyone a description of the perfect leader, the Messiah.  A lot of people back then missed it.  A lot of people are missing it now, too.  We have the ability to show them that perfect leader, Jesus Christ.  So, what are we going to do about it?

Celebrating Advent

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent, of course, is the time of preparation before Christmas.

We tend to want to rush past Advent.  We want to get right to the payoff, to get right to Christmas.  We all know a dozen or more Christmas hymns--there are maybe two Advent hymns that we know.  There are any number of Christmas movies--the Hallmark Channel has been running them for over a month already.  Have you ever seen an Advent movie?  I’ve never even heard of one.

If we rush past Advent and go right to Christmas, though, we miss out on a lot.  We cheat ourselves.  We don’t get the chance to fully appreciate what a miracle the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus truly is.

You see, as Christians, we sometimes take the fact that Jesus is our Savior for granted.  But humans lived for hundreds, thousands of years before Jesus was born.  For much of that time, they had no idea that there would even be a Savior.  Then, when there finally were prophecies of a Savior, the people had to wait hundreds of years for those prophecies to come true.  They had to wait hundreds of years for the Savior to be born.

Think about that.  Waiting hundreds of years for the prophecy of the Savior to come true.  Relying on a promise made to your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.  Trying hard to keep the faith.  Trying to fight off the doubts that inevitable crept in.  Sometimes giving in to those doubts.  Wondering--is this really going to happen?  Is there really going to be a Savior?  Or is this just a story the old folks tell to try to give us hope?  Being tempted to give up that hope.  Hearing all the nay-sayers, all the doubters.  Having to always struggle to keep your faith strong.  It would be a really hard thing to do.

But then, think about the joy when it finally happened!  Think about the incredible feeling when the Savior finally came!  Yes, salvation is available to everyone, and if those who gave up changed their minds and accepted Jesus they would be welcomed.  But think of how much more intense the joy must have been for those who had not given up, for those who had managed to keep their faith through all the years, despite everything.  Think of how it must have felt to have that faith finally rewarded.  It must have been incredible.

That’s the joy we miss out on, too, if we skip Advent and go right to Christmas.  Christmas is still a wonderful thing, of course.  But going through Advent, thinking of the years of waiting, thinking of the miracle that this truly was, makes Christmas even more wonderful.

So this year, take some time to celebrate Advent.  It won’t take away from Christmas.  It will make Christmas even better.

Are We Ready?

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 1, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Romans 13:8-14.

            The calendar says that this is the first Sunday of Advent.  That’s why we lit the first Advent candle today.  And of course, that’s something that’s being done today in Christian churches all over the world.  We light the first Advent candle and celebrate the first Sunday of Advent.  And we’ll continue to celebrate the season of Advent for the next three Sundays, up until Christmas Eve, when we celebrate the birth of Christ.  Then, Advent will be over and we’ll go on to something else.  And so will all the other Christian churches.

            But you know, that’s wrong.  Every Sunday should be a Sunday of Advent.  Because after all, what does that word “advent” mean?  It means the arrival of something or someone.  Not just any something or someone, of course.  Something or someone really important or special.  And if you think about it, that’s what we’re doing every Sunday, right?  Every Sunday, and in fact every Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and every other day, we are waiting for the second coming of Christ.

            In the official church season of Advent, of course, we do all kinds of things to get ready for the celebration of the birth of Christ.  We’ve decorated our sanctuary.  We brought out the Advent hymns, the ones we only sing at this time of year.  Soon we’ll bring out the Christmas hymns, too.  We’re planning our Christmas Eve services.  And in our personal lives, we’re decorating our homes and buying presents and planning family gatherings and Christmas parties and all sorts of things.  And a lot of us get really excited about all that.  We pull out all the stops to get ready to the coming of Christ.

            But what about the second coming of Christ?  What are we doing to get ready for that?

            I would suggest that, for most of us, the answer is “not much”.  And I include myself in that number.  I cannot honestly say that I’m doing much of anything to prepare for the second coming of Christ.

            And maybe you’re thinking, well, why do we have to do anything?  After all, we’re told that we’re saved by our faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  Our salvation comes from faith, not from what we do.  So, if I have faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior, I should not have to do anything to get ready for the second coming of Christ.

            Well, maybe.  But let’s look at what Paul says in our reading from Romans for today.  Now, Paul would’ve agreed that we are saved by faith in Christ and by nothing else.  In fact, earlier in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he writes at length about how it is not our actions, but our faith from which we get salvation.  But he also says that our faith is revealed by our actions.   

            Paul uses the example of Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, to God if that was what God wanted.  Maybe you remember that story--Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had been praying for God to give them children, but they remained childless for many years.  Finally, God gave them a son, Isaac.  But then, God told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son--to kill him.  And Abraham was willing to do it.  It was only at the last minute, when God saw that Abraham really would go through with it, that God called it off and saved Isaac.  

The point is that it was not the act of sacrifice of Isaac that was going to please God--it was the faith of Abraham that was behind it.  But at the same time, Abraham would not have been prepared to undertake that action if he had not had faith.  The two go hand in hand.

And so, when we say we are saved by our faith and not by our actions, that’s true.  But our actions reveal our faith.  If our actions don’t show that we have faith, then our faith is at best suspect.

So, I ask again:  what are we doing to get ready for the second coming of Christ?  In what way do our actions reveal our faith in Jesus as the Savior?

Now, I want to make clear that I don’t believe that the answer is “nothing”.  I don’t believe that there are no ways in which our actions reveal our faith in Jesus.  And in fact, this is not a question I can answer anyway.  Each of us needs to look at our lives and provide our own answer.  And it may not be an answer we can come up with right away.  We probably should take some time and really think about it.  And pray about it, too.  Because, ultimately, what we think the answer is does not matter.  What matters is what God thinks the answer is.  But I can tell you this much--the time to start working on this is now.

We don’t know when the second coming of Christ will be, of course.  And in that way, we’re in the same situation as the vast majority of people when Christ came the first time.  There was a very small, select group who knew what was going on.  Mary and Joseph, of course.  Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth.  Eventually the shepherds and the wise men.  But that’s about it.  

Now, the rest of the people--at least, the rest of the Jewish people--knew the Messiah was going to come.  There had been prophecies of it for hundreds of years.  And if you look at what most of the people at that time were doing to get ready for the Messiah’s coming, the answer again would probably be, “Not much.”  Yes, there were people who were attending the synagogue or the temple regularly.  And there were people who said they believed in God.  But to what extent was their faith revealed by their actions?  What were they doing to get ready for the coming of the Messiah?

Again, I’m not suggesting that the answer for everybody was “nothing”.  I’m sure there were some people whose faith was certainly revealed by their actions.  And again, my answer to the question does not really matter anyway.  It’s God’s answer that matters.

But I suspect there were a lot of people who were not too concerned about the coming of the Messiah.  Yes, they knew the prophecies.  They knew he would come sometime.  But it had been hundreds of years, and nothing much had happened.  And so, while they claimed to believe in the Messiah’s coming, that belief did not really affect their lives to any significant extent.

That’s why Paul’s words that we read today are so important.  Understand the present time.  The hour has come for us to wake up.  Our salvation is nearer than ever.  The night is nearly over.  The day is almost here.

Do I know when it’s coming?  No.  You’ve heard me say it could be ten million years from now.  But it also could be ten years from now.  It could be ten months from now.  It could be ten days from now.  We don’t know.  That’s why it’s important that we do what we can to be ready for whenever that day comes.

What can we do?  Paul tells us.  Love our neighbors as ourselves.  Put aside the deeds of darkness.  Behave decently.  Live in a way that we don’t worry about whether people know what we’re doing.  Clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.

It sounds simple.  And in a lot of ways, it is simple.  Sometimes it can get complicated, though.  And you know why?  Most of the time, if it gets complicated, it’s because we’ve complicated it.  And usually, we’ve complicated it because we’re trying to come up with a way to justify doing what we know we should not do or justify not doing what we know we should do.

So how do we uncomplicate it?  By clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the best way I know of to do that is to stay close to Jesus, to try to feel the Lord’s presence with us.  And the best way I know of to do that is through prayer.

I don’t know how many of us pray regularly.  I know some of us do.  I hope all of us do, and maybe we all do.  But I’m not talking here about a quick prayer before a meal or at bedtime.  Those are good things to do, don’t get me wrong.  But if we really want to stay close to Jesus, if we really want to feel God’s Holy Spirit with us, if we really want to clothe ourselves with the Lord, we need to take some time.

At least, that’s how it works for me.  If I have not spent enough time in prayer, I feel it.  I feel it in my attitude.  I feel it in my emotions.  And it shows up in my actions.  I’m not as close to the Lord as I should be.  And it’s not the Lord who drifted away.  It’s me.  And the only way I can get back is to spend that time in prayer again.  Maybe that’s true for you, too.

The calendar says this is the first Sunday of Advent.  But for the Christian, every Sunday is a Sunday of Advent.  We are waiting for the second coming of Christ.  We don’t know when it will come.  But if we pray, if we stay close to God, if we clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, we’ll be ready.  And we will able to celebrate that second coming even more than we celebrate the anniversary of the first coming.

The Thanksgiving Habit

This is the message given at the Onida community Thanksgiving service on Wednesday, November 27, 2019.  The Bible verses used are Philippians 4:4-9.

There’s a saying going around that you may have seen.  It goes, “What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?

Now, I don’t think we need to take that literally.  I don’t think we need to thank God for a long list of things every single day.  But it does give me a little pause for thought.  How many things have I received that are blessings from God?  And how many of those blessings do I just take for granted?  And how would I feel if God, for whatever reason, decided to take some or all of those blessings away? 

When you think about it, every good thing we have is a blessing from God.  We’re tempted to say, “Well, I earned this with my hard work.”  But God gave us the ability to work hard.  We’re tempted to say, “I earned this because I’m so smart.”  But God gave us the ability to think.  We’re tempted to say, “I deserve this because I’m so good.”  But as Jesus said, no one is good except God alone.  Every good thing we have or ever will have is a blessing from God.

            And the thing is that thinking of those good things as things we’ve earned leads us into trouble.  It can do that in a couple of different ways.  For one thing, it can make us arrogant.  If I’ve earned things because I’m so smart, and if I deserve things because I’m so good, what does that say about people who do not have as many blessings as I have?  Well, they must not be as smart as I am.  They must not be as good as I am.  I must be better than they are. 

None of that’s true, of course.  We do not receive blessings because we’re so good.  As Jesus told us, no one is good except for God.  God looks at each of us and sees the same thing—a sinner in need of forgiveness and salvation.  But if we arrogantly believe we’ve earned blessings from God, if we believe we deserve them, that can keep us from asking God for the forgiveness we need.  We put up a wall between ourselves and God, because we don’t recognize how great God is and how small we are.

And what that leads to is taking God’s blessings for granted.  And we tend to do that a lot.  We take so many of God’s blessings for granted that we sometimes we don’t even think of them as blessings.  I think almost all of us are guilty of this to one degree or another.  We’re quick to blame God when things don’t go the way we want them to go.  But when things go the way we think they should go, well, we don’t really even think about that very much.  We just take it for granted.  Why should we thank God for that?  That was just things happening as they should.  And even if God had something to do with it, well, that’s God’s job, to make things happen as they should.  Why thank God for that?

But the thing is, God does not owe us anything.  God certainly does not owe it to us to make things go the way we think they should go.  God does not owe it to us to give us any good things at all.  In fact, God does not even owe it to us to give us mediocre things.  God does not owe us anything.

There’s another reason that thinking we’ve earned good things can lead us into trouble.  If the good things we have are the result of things we’ve done, what can happen?  We can lose them, right?  And so then what happens is that we start to live in fear of losing them.  We start to hoard our blessings.  We’re afraid to share them with anyone else, because we might not have enough.

In other words, we do the exact opposite of what Paul tells us to do in our reading from Philippians.  Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord!  Paul tells us not to be anxious about anything, but instead to simply present our requests to God through prayer.  Trust that God will know what to do, that God knows what we really need, and that God will give us what we need when we need it.  As Jesus also said, God knows how to give good gifts to God’s children.

And when we do that, what happens?  We get peace.  We get, as Paul says, the peace of God, which transcends all of our understanding.  That peace of God will guard our hearts and will guard our minds.

And the way we get that is to realize that all of our blessings have come from God.  When we realize that, we can rejoice in the Lord.  We can stop being anxious.  We can feel that peace.  Because if God has given us blessings before, we can trust that God will give us blessings again.  Not because we deserve them, but simply because God loves us that much.

But that’s the attitude we need to keep.  An attitude that says I trust God to give me what I need, not because I deserve it, but because I trust in God’s love.  I don’t take for granted that God will give me what I want, I just trust that God will love me enough to give me what I need.

Now, the truth is that if God took away every blessing God has ever given us, we would have no legitimate cause to complain, because we have done nothing to deserve them in the first place.  We have no right to demand God’s blessings, and God does not owe it to us to give us blessings.  When you think of how awesome and holy and perfect God is, and how small and imperfect and sinful we are in comparison, it’s a miracle that God takes any notice of us at all.  We are not owed God’s love and God’s blessings.  What we really deserve is punishment for our sins.  And we would get that, if not for the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in dying on the cross took the punishment that should have gone to us.  If God took away our blessings, we would be getting no more than what we deserve.

But the awesome thing is that God would never do that.  God loves us too much to take away all of God’s blessings.  God could do that, because God is God and God can do anything.  And again, if God did choose to do that, we would have no good reason to be angry with God, because we had no right to those blessings to begin with.  But we can be confident that God never would do it, because we can be confident in God’s love.  As the Apostle Paul said, nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.

            But the point is that, because we have no right to demand God’s blessings, we need to be more grateful to God for giving them to us.  We need to spend more time thanking God and praising God.  We should do that all the time, of course, but we need to start sometime.  And here we are in November, on the eve of Thanksgiving.  What better time could there be to start a habit of thanking God and praising God, a habit that lasts well past Thanksgiving and continues for the rest of our lives?

            But let’s not just say that.  You know, every year at this time, every pastor in town talks about our need to thank God.  And maybe we remember to do it on Thanksgiving day, and maybe even for a couple of days after that.  And then, a lot of times, we forget about it and go on about our business until next year, when we go through the cycle again.

            So here’s a suggestion.  Every night, before you go to sleep, just take a minute to think of all the blessings you received that day.  Think about all the things that went right.  Sometimes it may be a big list, sometimes it may be a small list.  But almost every day, we can think of something if we really try.  So think about those things, every night.  And take the time to thank God for them.

            It may seem a little strange at first, but keep at it.  Because if we do, this feeling of thankfulness will become a habit.  And then, it will become a lifestyle.  It will become natural to us to give thanks to God.  And the more it becomes a habit and a lifestyle, the more things we’ll find to thank God for.  We’ll start to notice all these small things that we used to take for granted.

            And when we do that, we get what Paul writes about.  We’ll get peace.  We will stop being anxious, and get the peace of God.  That peace of God will be in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls.  That does not mean everything will go perfectly.  It means that we’ll be able to trust God with the stresses of life.  We’ll trust that God has always been there for us, and that God will always be there for us.  Knowing that is what gives us peace.

Each of us has received numerous blessings from God.  Let’s make sure we thank God for those blessings.  And let’s make sure we continue to thank God, at Thanksgiving time, at Christmas time, at Easter time, and all the time.