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Be Ready!

11/27/2022

Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44 1st Sunday in Advent
I have many directions I'd like to go this morning. Today marks the start of a new church year. It is the first Sunday of Advent. It is the Sunday following our Thanksgiving Day celebrations. We begin this new year and note another Advent; but instead of the story of the birth of Jesus, we get Jesus giving a description of chaos and violence and warning. The heart of the message is to be ready, but it doesn't feel much like an invitation to celebrate the coming of Jesus as a baby. Thanksgiving Day, now there is a good place to focus our attention. So, I thought, maybe I can find a Thanksgiving message in the epistle. But Romans another message to be ready with these ideas smack dab in the middle of our passage: reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy. Now Paul is not encouraging these actions, but pointing out that these things ought not be in the life of a Christian.
Nothing of Christmas, nothing of thanksgiving, nothing particular encouraging in these readings. So I'm gonna say that it is important to be ready and to avoid those pitfalls. And I'm going to tell you that one of the best ways to be ready is to live a life of giving thanks; and a life of thankfulness will help us grow in our faith.

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Patience is a Virtue

11/13/2022

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Isaiah 65: 17-25, Luke 21:5-19
It was a dreary fall day. The kindergarten teacher was worn out as the kids didn't get to go outside for recess and they had a bit of cabin fever. Finally, the end of the day came. This was a few years ago and so rather than tennis shoes on a rainy day, each of her 32 students had galoshes. And they needed help to put them on. So 32 kids, one at a time, got her help. The last one was finally done and the little girl looked up at the teacher and said, “You know what teacher? These aren't my galoshes.”
Wearily she removed the galoshes and the little girl said, “They are my sister's. She let me wear them.” The teacher quietly put them back on her student. That is patience.
I want to talk about patience today in light of our readings. Both talk about a future time, a time where we get both good news to anticipate and not such good news that gives us pause.

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Our Legacy of Creeds

11/6/2022

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Today's a special service as we recognize Reformation Sunday, a day when we celebrate how the church has grown and changed as it seeks to be Christ's body on earth. This church we know and love today, First Presbyterian church of Litchfield, did not come about by accident. We stand on the shoulders of countless generations who have sought to love and serve God and work out their faith in their particular day and time. This service celebrates their legacy by taking a journey through the PC(USA) Book of Confessions. The confessions are, simply, statements of faith; the efforts of various people at various times to make some kind of coherent summary of what Christianity calls us to say and do. These confessions are part of our constitution as Presbyterians, meaning they guide and shape our life together. Pastors and elders vow to be guided by them. They are not scripture, and we do not believe or follow every word they say; but they do witness to the journey our ancestors have taken in gifting us with the church we know today.

Franklin is closing in on his confirmation to join this body of Christ. One of his tasks is to be lectionary reader. As part of our special service today, he will lead us in reciting the Nicene Creed. First a little background, the emperor Constantine had in the fourth century declared Christianity the one true unified religion of the Roman Empire—but Christianity was anything but unified. He had already convened one council to try to bring some order to this unruly young religion, without success. But in 381, Constantine organized another council which adopted the Nicene Creed, which shares much language with the Apostles’ Creed. We will share it together responsively with Franklin leading us:
(Franklin) We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again according to the scriptures.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Over the next eleven hundred years, that Catholic church grew and spread across the globe, and while it underwent change and transformation, it managed to mostly hang together until a reformation occurred. It was sparked when 525 years ago, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 complaints to a church door in Wittenberg. That act would eventually lead to new and even more diverse ways of being the church.
There were still divisions and questions about how the church should be the church. A reformation confession, The Scots Confession was written in 1560. In a time of political turbulence, it declared God’s everlasting power over the Kirk— the Scottish word for church—and indeed the whole world. This is what our ancestors proclaimed:
As we believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so we firmly believe that from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be, one Kirk, that is to say, one company and multitude of people chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace him by true faith in Christ Jesus, who is the only Head of the Kirk, even as it is the body and spouse of Christ Jesus. This Kirk is catholic, that is, universal, because it contains the chosen of all ages, of all realms, nations, and tongues, be they of the Jews or be they of the Gentiles, who have communion and society with God the Father, and with his Son, Christ Jesus, through the sanctification of his Holy Spirit.
In Europe proper, Lutherans and Reformed Christians—Reformed, that is what we are as Presbyterians—they were fighting over the proper understanding of the sacrament of communion. And so theologians from each camp sat down together in Germany, then the center of theological study, to find words of unity and peace, and to remember that despite faithful disagreements, they ultimately all belonged to Christ. They wrote their confession as a series of questions, formally called a catechism. These questions invite us to proclaim for ourselves the trust we have in Christ. It is known as the Heidelberg Catechism, one some of you may have used in your confirmation. So let us respond to their first question, 1. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I am not my own, but belong— body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of evil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Our final “Reformation” confession was written in 561, designed as a practical guide for living out this renewed faith. It was called the Second Helvetic Confession (Swiss). It teaches that we are not saved by our faith, but by God’s grace, which we come to know and feel and experience through the faith God gives us.
Christian faith is not an opinion or human conviction, but a most firm trust and a clear and steadfast assent of the mind, and then a most certain apprehension of the truth of God presented in the Scriptures and in the Apostles’ Creed, and thus also of God himself, the greatest good, and especially of God’s promise and of Christ who is the fulfillment of all promises. But this faith is a pure gift of God, which God alone of his grace gives to his elect according to his measure... And he does this by the Holy Spirit by means of the preaching of the Gospel and steadfast prayer.
A generation after the Reformation, a group of English theologians gathered to create a new confession. Over the course of more than a thousand meetings (how Presbyterian!), they created the Westminster Confession also in the form of questions. Before we share part of that, here's today's scripture from Ephesians 1:3-8
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us.
Using the words printed in your bulletin, let us answer for ourselves three of the questions our ancestors asked:
Q. 1. What is the chief and highest end of humanity? A. Humanity’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.
Q. 33. What is justification? A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.
Q. 34. What is adoption? A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all privileges, of the children of God.
Historians talk about the Reformation as a closed era in the past, but we who tell God’s story know that God is always forming and re-forming the church. We are jumping forward now, to the modern confessions, that wrestle with a changing world. In 1934 the Nazi Party was on the rise in Germany, initiating a reign of cruelty, hate, and terror. Most German Christians found no problem with Hitler’s actions, declaring that their faith and their patriotism went hand in hand, and that Hitler’s rule was God’s will. A few Christians, however, resisted. Representatives from the Reformed, Lutheran, and United churches gathered to create a confession of faith to send to their fellow German Christians. This confession made clear that the church was not meant to be co-opted by political forces, but clings only to Christ. Listen to the words of our ancestors in the Barmen Confession
The Christian Church is the congregation of the people in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit. As the Church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.
The 1960s turned America upside down (some of you remember those days!). In the midst of so many different cultural tensions and conflicts, the northern Presbyterian Church adopted a new confession based around the idea that in Christ, the whole world is reconciled to God. Share now the words of the Confession of 1967:
God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of humanity’s life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate. It includes humanity’s natural environment as exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished from his creation... Already God’s reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in people and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption. With an urgency born of this hope, the church applies itself to present tasks and strives for a better world.

In 1986 apartheid, the separation and treatment of people based on race, raged in South Africa. Some white Christians used scripture to justify this system, and so the Dutch Reformed Church wrote the Belhar Confession in protest, insisting that God’s vision for humanity was one of liberation, equality, unity, and communion. This is the most recent addition to the Book of Confessions. We share a portion, translated to English from the original Afrikaans.
We believe
• that God has revealed himself as the one who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among people;
• that God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged;
• that for God pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering;
• that the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Today's sermon is certainly different, but an historical look at just how the church reforms and our faith journeys grow. The church is reformed and always reforming. It is a journey and we now sing of the journey in which we each participate as we act as the body of Christ.
Hymn: Come Sing, O Church, in Joy! 430 PH
Prayers: Ruth Townsend
Regan (Franklin's friend)
David McLaughlin and Laura and Sue

Offering
Communion
Hymn: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God 260 PH
Charge:
It was 1983, A Brief Statement of Faith reminds us that the church is not meant to be a hiding place from the world, but a blessing to the world. And so, as we go forth to carry on the legacy of our ancestors, and to write a new chapter in God’s story, let us use the words of our ancestors as today’s charge.
In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior... In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives, even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth, praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!” A Legacy of Faith Reformation Lessons and Carols Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett © 2021

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To Tell the Truth

10/23/2022

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2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Most of us here are old enough to remember the old TV show, To Tell the Truth. In it, four panelists had to select which contestant was telling the truth about their occupation and which were lying. I bring this up as I consider today's gospel account, two men went to the temple to pray, one told of his great piety and faith and worthiness in God's presence. The other told of his need for mercy because of his sinfulness. As panelists, which would you say is closest to the truth... as God sees them? If we were on the panel and overheard the prayers of the two men in our parable, we'd certainly be able to tell who was a sinner and who was righteous, right? Wrong. One is convinced of his righteousness, the other of his sinfulness. From all outward appearances, the answer is simple; the Pharisee is righteous, the taxman is a sinner. But Jesus has a way of turning what seems obvious into a lesson for us all.

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Be Ready!

Patience is a Virtue

Our Legacy of Creeds

To Tell the Truth

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