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Out of the Depths

3/29/2020

Out of the Depths
Psalm 130; 1 John 1: 1-5; John 8: 12
March 29, 2020 Zoom
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, an the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 8: 12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

I've been drawn to the Psalms as we face the fear and uncertainty and threats of the corona virus. According to the Cliffs Notes website, “The Book of Psalms is a collection of poems, hymns, and prayers that express the religious feelings of Jews throughout the various periods of their national history. Here, we find a revelation of the hopes, the joys, the sorrows, the loyalties, the doubts, and the aspirations of the human heart.” This range of emotion is why it makes such a connection to people of faith, even today. And today's Psalm starts in such a way that we understand that the writer—we don't know who that was—the writer was expressing despair and doubts. “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.” This does not mean that he is standing in deep water in the sea or a pool. It is an emotional pit or valley in which he finds himself. He cries out to the Lord in his despair and fear.

Can't we relate? There is a lot of that going on these days. The sense of the unknown we face is unique; or it feels unique. We have never known what is coming day to day. The future has always been unknown. But Covid-19 is new, the professionals are still learning its traits, its life cycle, its weaknesses; we in the pews...well your chairs at home... understand even less than the pros. We listen to them, follow the protocol, keep our social distancing, meet via Zoom, stay at home... but it still can feel like we too are in the depths of the despair
Yet, even in the depths, the Psalmist called upon the Lord. “Lord, hear my voice;
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.” And so we call upon the Lord as well, “Lord hear our prayers.”
A characteristic of the depths is generally darkness. In the bible, the writers often contrast the light and darkness. Light is good, darkness is not. One of the claims of Jesus we read this morning, “I am the light of the world.” That's from John's gospel, the beginning of which we read. “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus came bringing light to the darkness.
There have been a lot of facebook quizzes and such going on with everybody stuck at home. One that our family did had several choices for us to choose from; cats or dogs, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, steak or seafood, Pepsi or Coke. One was sunrise or sunset. I chose sunrise but I was far, far in the minority. That interests me. I'm sure the beauty of the sunset was the reason for choosing sunset. But for me, the hope, the new beginning of another day is such a strong element of the sunrise. And it seems the psalmist would agree. He wrote, “4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.” And I've written and spoken about hope quite a bit in the last weeks. But how and when does the psalmist wait? “My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” The dark of night is often when our fears are the worse. The psalmist compares that waiting in despair with a watchman at the gate, a sentry if you will, waiting for the morning light. He stresses this desire for the Lord, repeating the phrase, “more that watchman waiting for the morning. A sentry puts in long nights, they wait anxiously for morning and the end of their long, dark duty.
The psalmist compares this longing to our longing for the word of the Lord. When we are in a dark place, a pit, a valley, we long for the light. When we are in a spiritual darkness, we long for the Lord. We wait for the sunrise. By the way, while I was working on this sermon I wanted to lookup the psalm in a different translation. I accidentally entered Psalm 30, and that Psalm says, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” That's a picture of the hope of the sunrise, the hope of joy. Here's another word-picture of the desire and hope the sunrise brings. It comes from the devotional 100 Days of Praise, but no author is listed, “Waking up to a beautiful sunrise is so promising. The air is quiet. Birds are beginning to stir in their nests. The moon is fading away as the sun’s rays quietly take over the sky. It’s as if God hit the restart button and we are powering up for a new day, a new beginning. Our batteries are charged, the things of yesterday are gone, and God is unveiling a chance to start anew. Today is a blank page in a journal— crisp, clean, and ready for a beautiful story to unfold. (This next part seems especially appropriate as we are home bound, living in close quarters with our loved ones) Every day, we have the chance to be more patient, more forgiving, more kind, more understanding, and more generous. We can right our wrongs, learn from yesterday’s mistakes, listen more, argue less, put down our phones, look at our family, and start over. We will still make mistakes; (another insert from me, remember what the Psalm says, “For there is forgiveness with (the Lord)”; but God gives us grace, again and again, until we are finally made new.”
Jesus is the light of the world, the Sun of Righteousness, the bright and morning star. We find our hope in him even in the depths of a pandemic, the depths of fear and worry, the depths of wondering where the Lord is. The Lord is with us. Jesus brings us light in our darkness. He brings us hope in despair. He brings us forgiveness in our failings. He brings us community in our loneliness. He brings us grace that makes us new, and grace to face these days with compassion and hope. Amen.

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Lenten Limericks

3/15/2020

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Exodus 17: 1-7; Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42
March 15, 2020

Limericks have gotten kind of a bad name. They can convey humor, often off color, but also real truths in 5 short lines. There is a pattern to a limerick. As I said, 5 lines with this pattern: Line 1: 7-10 syllables and this must rhyme with Line 2, also 7-10 syllables. Lines 3 and 4 have 5-7 syllables and rhyme with each other. Then Line 5 goes back to 7-10 syllables and rhymes with both lines 1 and 2.
An example:
An elderly man called Keith
mislaid his set of false teeth
they'd been laid on a chair,
he'd forgot they were there
Sat down and was bitten beneath.
I found that on the internet. My sermon will be sprinkled with limericks, a couple original to me. So here's my first one:
Our church family is Presbyterian,
Tunes- our pastor can carry none,
so his songs are a problem,
but his jokes are all awesome,
So his sermons are such very fun.
I headed this direction because a couple years ago, the publisher of The Christian Century, Peter Marty, wrote a few limericks for Lent. He both asked and answered the question about the propriety of using limericks in the body of a limerick:
Are limericks suited to Lent?
Yes indeed, in both form and intent;
They're a well-designed ploy
to bring insight and joy,
with a final uplifting event.

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Skill/Will

3/1/2020

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Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
March 1, 2020 1st Sunday in Lent

If you drive around town, any town in central Minnesota, what do you see in most every window; especially fast food establishments? Help Wanted or Now Hiring! There is a shortage of workers for so many fields. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top six jobs in demand right now are : 1. Personal care aide. 2. Fast Food preparation and serving worker. 3. Registered Nurse. 4. Home Health aide. 5. Restaurant Cook, 6. Applications software developer.
Only two of these jobs pays over $25,000 per year. The top 4 skilled job openings, 1. Truck Driver. 2. Carpenter. 3. Electrician. 4. Plumber; and all range between 45-55,000 dollars.
Why am I sharing this information? My inspiration for the sermon this week came from Amy Ziettlow in The Christian Century. She explained how a job review system works, call the skill/will matrix

And she then looked at how that compared with the experience Jesus had in the wilderness in today's gospel reading.
The skill/will matrix measures the intersection of the employee's skills and abilities with their will, their motivation for the job at hand. She wrote that the skill portion of the equation was relatively easy to fix, they could always give more training to the employee. But the will part, the employee's motivation is trickier. An employee could have all the skill in the world, but if they were unmotivated there was little the employer can do other than replace them.
What does this have to do with Jesus in the wilderness? The temptations that Jesus faced can be looked at with this matrix. First, the devil challenged the skill of Jesus; his ability to perform the miracle changing stones into bread. “If you are the Son of God...” Jesus could do that; he knew he could, we know he could, the devil knew he could. So the question became not about the skill, but about the will.
So why wasn't Jesus motivated to do this task. He was certainly hungry, he'd been fasting a long time. Have you ever thought about what state he would be in after such a fast? I just finished reading the book “Thirty Pieces of Silver” by Carolyn McCray . The title deals with the price Judas received for betraying Jesus but the book was a Dan Brown sort of dissection of the gospel stories. I want to share paragraph describing Jesus returning from his fast. It hit me as I'd never really considered what kind of shape Jesus would be in after this experience. Hungry yes, but to what level? “In the distance, a slim figure stumbled in their direction. Without a word, both men hurried into the desert as Jesus fell to his knees, then onto his side. When they reached him, Judas could feel his friend's very bones, and his skin was like a reed after a drought. Yet somehow, Jesus had survived. If it was not a miracle of God's grace, then it was a testament to his friend's faith.” So weak and hungry; wouldn't Jesus be highly motivated to turn stones into bread?
The other temptations were, briefly, to test his will to trust God's protection and to test his willingness to follow through with God's plan. The temptations were not about God's ability to provide for and care for Jesus, the temptations were to change course, to change his will from God's way to an easier way.
Jesus had just been baptized and commissioned for his mission. He'd spent forty days preparing for his mission. The mission was laid out and the question was if Jesus was willing to stick to the plan. The skill was there, the will was being tested.
After this, Jesus went into the world, he chose his twelve disciples, he worked on carrying out the plan. It appears that the disciples ranked high on the willingness scale; they dropped their nets, their tax records, their jobs and followed immediately. But the skill to be an apostle took some time. They had to hear God's word through the mouth of God's Messiah. They had to witness God's power for themselves through the works of Jesus. They had to test their own skills when Jesus sent them out on missionary trips. They were tested, and failed, at the time of the Passion of Jesus. But in the end, their skills caught up to their willingness and the world came to know the love of God through their words and work.
So what about your skill /will matrix? How are you doing at your job as ambassador for Christ, as a loving child of the heavenly Father, as a disciple living out the great commandment? We face daily challenges or temptations; not as obvious or direct as the ones Jesus faced. 1) But we have times when we want or expect God to take care of our daily needs - turn our stones into bread. 2)There are times when we want God to prove by a miracle that we are loved and protected, we say, “if you are God, fix this, heal this...prove you are God.” We want proof of the Psalm the devil quoted, “On their hands (God's angels) will bear you up.” 3)And there are times when we want the easy way out--”worship me, Satan, and I will give you the desires of your heart.” And so, like Jesus, our will—our trust and faith are in question. But remember this, it is not our skill that saves but the power of the loving grace of Jesus. We are sufficiently skilled for any challenge through the power of Jesus Christ in our lives. Our devotional yesterday quoted the often misused verse, Philippians 4: 13 “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” The skill is from God; a gift. It is the will which we need to wrestle under control. And the will is challenged in the temptations we face. We grow up with simple challenges; “there's a candy bar on the shelf, no one is watching, I want it; why don't I just take it?” Our skill in denying those kinds of temptations grows through the influences in our lives and the Holy Spirit working. But the temptations grow in scope and seriousness. “My friend has cancer. God, you have the power to fix it. Fix it or I choose to no longer believe.” We have the will for the healing, but not the skill. As in the desert with Jesus, God has the skill, the power to do this. But the will is about God's eternal plan. We are not privy to understand the whys of life's issues. And so it is by an act of the will that we choose to trust God's will in this world. Is it easy? Was it easy for Jesus to deny his hunger and stay true to the plan? No. And for us, trusting God in the toughest moments of life will not always be easy. And so our “skill” in trusting grows as we nurture our faith in the good times, in the fellowship we share here, in studying God's word, in following the Lord in the good and the bad.
The strength that Jesus gained through his experience in the desert played out in his mission in the world. He refused to turn the stones into bread for his own benefit, but later he will feed thousands in the wilderness with a few loaves and fishes; and he will teach us all to pray for our daily bread.
Jesus refused to test God by hurling himself from the heights, but ended up trusting God's power to save when he is raised up on the cross.
He refused the political advantages in the kingdoms of this world offered by the devil. But through his resurrection he offers us the eternal kingdom of heaven by grace.
We face a lot of challenges in this life. The simple challenge of aging and the gradual loss of skills like memory and getting up out a chair can cause concern. The world situation with our own political environment and the corona-virus situation can be frightening. Even faith can be challenging; we don't always get the answer to prayer we hope for. Loved ones get sick and die. Churches face scandals, face the loss of membership, and face unsure futures. Loneliness, financial concerns, hunger.... But understand that Jesus has the skill and the will to walk with us through anything. One thing this story of the temptations in the wilderness can teach us, we will not face any desolate place or any challenging situation where Jesus has not been or that Jesus has not faced himself. He shows us that we can face anything in the power of the Lord. It may not be easy, but it is what life is made of; challenges, fears, worries, troubles. Jesus never said he came to remove these things, but he is here to help us face those things.
There is an interesting sentence in our reading from Romans that can encourage us that in Christ, we do have the skills to face the troubles and trials we face. “much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” I take dominion here to mean victory in the trials that life brings us. The Greek is sousin which means reign. Jesus Christ is the source of our victory over sin and death. We receive that promise to reign over the power of sin here and now and and forever in glory. God's kingdom is not just a future in the sweet by and by. God's kingdom is here and now. May we turn to God in a focused way this Lent. Lent is not about what we give up or what we do; it is about Jesus and making room for Jesus in our daily routine. Refusing temptations is not about following the rules, it is about growing closer to God in Christ. Last week Mariah shared a story about the commandments, “God rules are (God's) gift to us. God wants you to rely on Jesus' record, not yours-- because Jesus has already done everything the rules required.” That's the skill we need: rely on Jesus. May our will bring us to lean on Jesus for our strength when we are weak.
And our skill, the prayer for that is expressed in our next hymn: may our skill come as Jesus guides our feet, holds our hand, and stands by us while we run the race of life as part of the kingdom of God. Amen.

Hymn: Guide My Feet 354 PH

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Out of the Depths

Lenten Limericks

Skill/Will

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