Sermon from Acts 2:37-41 for May 27

Have you ever gone to a Dr.’s office? What do they do when they finally get you into an examine room? They take your height and weight, pulse and blood pressure, sometimes they take your temperature, look in your ears, eyes, nose and throat.  They check your eyes to see if they are reacting to light correctly.

Why?

Whether you are a child or an adult they are trying to see if you are healthy, growing, or if there is a problem, an allergy, illness, or perhaps a disease.

I have the unique privilege to being to see able to lots of Dr.s, remembering that in some places in the world seeing even one Dr. is a rarity.

This past year alone I have seen a General Practitioner, a Cardiologist, an Endocrinologist, a Urologist, a Dermatologist, and a dentist. So far, I have avoided seeing the General Surgeon, Orthopedist, Proctologist and Chiropractor, but there is time before December.

Doctors are wonderful. Being healthy is even more wonderful, and the quest usually begins, at least at the Doctor’s office with insurance, mounds of paper work, and then the check to see what your body has to say. Total cholesterol, good, HDH, LDL, Triglycerides, Glucose, A1c, and a host of numbers later, an “attaboy”, and an appointment to come again in 3 or 6 or 12 months.

Determining whether we are healthy is important. Dealing with illness and disease is essential. We get that, sometimes, about our bodies. But what about our own spiritual health?

Why, pray tell, is your spiritual temperature? Are you growing, maintaining, or actually showing signs of illness? Do you know? And what are you doing about it, in order to continue to grow, or if not growing to deal with your particular spiritual illness?

And going even further, what about that other body, the body of Christ, the church, this community of faith? Is it healthy, growing, becoming more effective, making a bigger difference, touching not only the lives of the people inside the church, but more importantly, folks outside of the church.

On Pentecost, Peter got up and preached to the people who had gathered to see what the disciples were all saying in different kinds of languages. What he said was powerful and convicting, so much so, that 3000 people decided to join in with the followers of Jesus that day.

The disciples were on fire, their faith was strong, their commitment was clear. They wanted to grow, they wanted to make a difference, and they were prepared to do what was necessary to follow Jesus and make more disciples.

They were not content to leave things as they were, to stay in the safe upper room. They wanted to make some noise for Jesus, and that meant breaking out of the walls of First Church Jerusalem and expanding the community of faith.

A friend recently did a demographic study and discovered that the most likely time and day to put an additional service in the church’s schedule was Monday night. Why? Because the folks that weren’t in worship on Sunday were most likely to watch the video of the worship service on Monday night.

They wanted to know what they missed!

They wanted to see what this church was like before they came to visit.

They knew Sunday wasn’t going to work for them, but Monday night could.

So he did a cost analysis to see what it would cost to do a Monday night worship service and presented it to the church as a new mission outreach, musicians, preaching, heat, lights, janitorial, and lots of advertising.

He said it terrified the session. So he asked what they thought the disciples on Pentecost would have done?

Jokingly some of our Christen friends call Presbyterians the “Frozen Chosen”. Why, because traditionally we Presbyterians have believed in a theological idea called “predestination” from where they get the “chosen part as in “chosen by God”.

The “frozen” part comes from traditional Presbyterian’s lack of emotion, not emotion inside us, there is plenty of that, external displays of emotion. We don’t clap our hands, raise our hands in praise, shout “amen” and “preach it”, when the pastor gets on fire, because our pastors don’t get on fire!

There is the story of the man who came to worship and shouted “amen” and then “Hallelujah” and when he then shouted “preach it” the minister took him to task, saying “we don’t do that here”. The man said, “but I’ve got the Spirit” and the pastor said, “well you didn’t get it here”.

Or the story of the Old School Presbyterian Church in Kansas that fired a minister who was discovered whistling on the way to worship, because they didn’t want “those kinds of displays of frivolity” damaging the youth of the church!

Are you on fire for Jesus? Is the church? How do you know? What is the evidence?

And if so, what can we do to throw another log ofn the fire, turn up the temperature, get even better in spiritual shape, and if not, what do we need to do to return to our first love, and be a group of disciples like those who reached out beyond the walls of the upper room and found 3000 more souls as part of their growing congregation.

Come Holy Spirit, we need you!

  

Amen.

Sermon from Acts 2:1-13 for May 20 Pentecost

Other languages are so cool. How many of you speak or can read another language? Did you know that almost everyone speaks at least one other language?

Any new moms or dads in the house? What the heck is a baby Keurig?  

Any musicians in the house? Why would music written in concert C be a problem for trumpet players in a group?

Any nurses in the house? Why would an up and coming grandpa need a Tdap booster, and where exactly am I going to get that shot?

Any movie watchers in the house? Why would I want to go see Dead Pool, and will I live through it?

Any contemporary music people in the house? Do you use Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora or something else, and why would Christina Agulera and Demi Lovato singing a song together be really big?

Language is the way we communicate. It allows us to talk back and forth to each other. But language can also take us deeper; it can give us insight into another person’s culture.

And there, in that intersection between language and culture, those of us who have come to believe that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, and the Lord of hope and joy, and all things that ultimately matter, can share that good news with others.

But talking to others about Jesus in languages they don’t understand, into cultures that separate us, using ideas and images that don’t translate doesn’t work. The reality is, the King James version of the bible was translated in 1592 and most people in our world no longer speak, “church”!

So along comes the Spirit, to blow away the separations.

Rabbi Marcus Rubenstein of Temple Sinai in Middletown spoke this week at the Middletown Kiwanis Clergy lunch talk about a trip the synagogue took to Israel. He also talked about the Hebrew language.

He said that after the Babylonian captivity, the Jewish people began speaking a language known as Aramaic, a mixture of Semitic languages, with Hebrew know by a relative few as a spoken language. Then, in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Vespasian and Titus and the Roman legions, Hebrew became basically an unspoken language.

The people of Israel were dispersed across the Roman Empire, even more so then they had been before, and in their new places of living, Aramaic slowly became mixed with other languages, like Russian/German becoming Yiddish, with Spanish becoming Ladino, and with Arabic, producing Yameni, Djerbian Arabic, and Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.

Hebrew was read but not spoken. That is, until a language lost was resurrected as Jews from across the diaspora came home to Israel. Hebrew became a living language again, so that now, as the Rabbi noted, there is a Hebrew word for Coca Cola and for cell phones.

Language is necessary for humans to communicate. But it also gives us shared culture. It is the way we share information, as well as feelings, ideas, and even truth.

So, on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came and filled every believer, what becomes the sign of God’s presence, even more than tongues of fire on the disciple’s heads, is the ability to communicate across the divide of language and culture.

“And at this sound (Luke tells us) the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.”

There is nothing more disconcerting that have someone try to explain something to you in a language you don’t understand.

Have you ever gotten a new unassembled piece of furniture, or an electronic device, or most recently a baby stroller or car seat or high chair and realized the instructions were in Japanese, or Swedish, or Russian? Or in what is purported to be English?

To understand what the disciples were sharing about the death and resurrection of Jesus needed to be shared in plain understandable words, not in Aramaic to people who spoke Greek or Latin or Arabic.

Think about it. One recommendation to all youth groups is that some adult in the group’s leadership speak movie (what did you learn about faith and mercy and leadership in Black Panther) and someone speak contemporary music, like why are Katy Perry and Taylor Swift at war, and someone to speak social media (what does it say about our world that of the top ten tweeters, six are pop music stars – Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake, and the other four are Barrack Obama, Ellen Degeneres, Christian Renaldo the soccer/football player, and Youtube)?

For sure, to share your faith, you need to understand it.

But to share your faith, you also need to be able to make it clear and simple and plain to others who most likely don’t speak “church”, but instead speak microbrewery.

Did you know that many of the hymns of the church during the Reformation and then in the Great Awakening were converted drinking songs? The Spirit speaking to contemporary culture about Jesus.

And that is exactly where the Spirit is at work today, in our community, enabling believers in Jesus to speak in new languages, to new cultures, so that they can share the good news that Jesus!

And that is why we have an app. Just saying!

Amen.

Sermon from Acts 1:12-26 for May 13

Take a look around the room. Who, in your humble estimation, is the greatest leader here today?

Just so you are sure, you are welcome to get up and take a good look. Some of the folks around you are very nice, but leaders? You really want to pick the best ones, and by-the-way, they may not necessarily want to be leaders. The point is you think they are great leaders!

So, who you got? Speak up!

By what criterion did you make your decision? Who is best looking? Smartest? Has accomplished the most? Has the most resources? The person you most want to be like?

Leadership, that is the task of leading, whether it be a group or an organization, requires an interesting set of skills.

Sometimes it seems to us the required skills are obvious. If you are going to be the leader of a surgical team it probably would help if you were a doctor, a surgeon, and in some cases a surgeon in for example orthopedics, or cardiology, or oncology.

On the other hand, sometimes, it is not at all clear what skills are needed. And in those instances, sometimes we resort to a system of picking leaders that is truly awful, we elect them.

Now before you moan and groan, I am not talking about national leadership, although that would be a lively if not, terribly painful debate. I am thinking instead about two beloved institutions: the family and the church.

Perhaps you have heard the old saying that you can’t pick your family or your relatives. They are what they are for good or for worse. Imagine the craziness in the hospital nursery as the babies in the basinets debated and chose which parent staring through the windows they were taking home.

“Oh, Oh, I want the one with the big … ears! Bat wings! That’s me for sure.”

Instead, your parents are who they are, the luck of the draw as it were, the people that made you. And some of them were ready and able to be parents, some were willing, some even good at it. To all of you who had darned good parents, God bless you, and God did!

But not all parents are spectacular. Many learned to be good parents, over time. As we have often said, Brian and Katie survived our parenting. A few drops on the head explain Brian, and high heels at age two explain Katie.

And some parents sucked at being moms and or dads, with no skills, no desire, no time or energy or intelligence, no imagination, and no love.

Today as a culture we celebrate moms, especially the good ones. But we know many of our moms were imperfect, lots were and are dedicated but true goofballs. And some, just never were made for that kind of leadership.

Of course, if you want, you can learn to be better at most things. Cook eggs enough times you can learn not to burn them. And choosing to be a better parent, can actually make you a better parent, investing time, energy and most importantly love, can overcome all kinds of disasters!

Try getting halfway across New York State for three weeks of vacation only to discover that your little girl has come down with chicken pox, discovered under her sleeper at 10:00am in the morning, and so mom choosing to bike you all over the hills of Alleghany State Park so that you wouldn’t infect the other kids camping at the park.

Leadership like parenting can be learned. By watching other lead well. By investing time and energy, by deciding to be better and better.

Even at leading the people of God.

Judas was dead. Luke doesn’t tell us he hung himself. Instead Luke tells us that he was found in a field swollen up so that his guts spilled out. The field, tainted with his blood and innards, was off limits to the community of faith, as was Judas.

So he needed to be replaced: a new leader found to replace him and bring the Apostles back to twelve.

The Apostles and the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and Jesus’ brothers talked. About 120 people had gathered to pray and decide. And they put forth one absolute requirement, that the  one chosen must have witnessed all that the other Apostles had of Jesus’ ministry, life, death and resurrection.

Two persons came to mind, Justus and Mattias. They had been there. They had seen. They had show their commitment and staying power and willingness to serve. And between them, they couldn’t choose.

So, they let God pick, God vote, God decide. They put both names in a hat or something like it and out came Mattias, the new 12^th apostle.

Leaders are essential. They help us grow as people and as a community of faith. Parents leads us, moms in particular into being amazing adults. Elders, Deacons, pastors and every kind of small group leader in the church enable to be the people of God and do what God has called us to do and to be.

It’s cool! It’s amazing! It’s always surprising!

Thank God for all our leaders. An thank God for great parents, especially moms!

Amen.

Sermon from Acts 1:1-11 for May 6

So…

Here it is Ascension Sunday (well actually it’s next Sunday but that’s Mother’s Day and nobody wants to mess with mom!) the day in the church’s life when we remember that before Pentecost came with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, according to Luke’s book of Acts, ascended.

It’s not like we spend a lot of time talking about it, which in fact is a little weird. A lot of our friends in more liturgical setting do, like our Catholic friends, and Orthodox friends.

Instead we talk a lot about incarnation and Jesus birth, which they do too, and by incarnation we mean the time in history when Jesus went from a spiritual presence in the Trinity to a physical presence here on earth, born from a woman named Mary in Bethlehem.

But after we talk about Jesus passion, his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and then resurrection, we kind of lose steam and move onto Pentecost.

Yep, Jesus rose from the dead and spent time with his disciples. But ascension, ahh, not sure about that. Why? Because we are really not sure what to do with ascension.

We kind of know what it means. Jesus went up. Because we are so concrete in our thinking we always assume that means physically up, especially when the text talks about clouds. Because clouds are up.

But it takes a bit deeper thinking to realize what kind of picture Luke is painting for us. What he is telling us is that Jesus who was enveloped by the Glory Cloud of God on the Mount of transfiguration, step into that cloud of God’s presence and returns to his normal and rightful place in the Godhead.

Jesus is not going up in a linear sense; he is going up in that he is returning to his natural state as God.

Which is why the angels had to tell the dumbfounded disciples where he had gone: home!

Jesus, like others before his had stepped through the veil for those of you who know what one of those is, through the portal, trough the wormhole that lands Jesus home.

The adventure is over. It means that like Enoch, who walked with God and then was gone, and Elijah who walked with Elisha and then was taken up in a chariot of fire, Jesus, having completed his mission has now moved into God’s realm.

And that is really good news, because Jesus is no longer encumber with the hassle of time and space but can once again deal with humanity from the eternal realm and see that humanity is adequately empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the work of the Kingdom of God temporally.

And sense I see your eyes glazing over I would add this, what it means is that though Jesus’ earthly ministry is complete, end to end, now he as God reigns in power and glory. Ascension brings the story arc to its competition.

Except, that while Jesus’ story arc is complete, ours isn’t!

You heard that, right! Jesus story arc is complete, ours is just beginning.

Because on May 20 we will celebrate a new incarnation: God’s presence in us!

Filled with the Holy Spirit we are to be doing all the things that Jesus has left us to do, all the things Jesus is leading us to do. Which explains the angels giving the disciples grief!

Read it this way, “Yo, disciples, what the heck? Why are you stand lhere looking into the cloud? Jesus is on the other side! You need to get busy!”

Doing what you ask? Exactly what Jesus had just told them to do.

“You will go into all the world and be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” No more sitting around, well, at least not after the Holy Spirit comes. No rest. No sitting on your laurels. No being satisfied with church as it is.

No, we are to stop staring and waiting! We are to stop being okay with things as they are! We are to stop acting as though we have completed our mission  and start doing everything within our power, everything with the power of God to share the good news everywhere and with everyone!

We need to be rigorous and energized to change what needs to be changed and to start what needs to be started in order to reach our new world with the news of God’s great love, shown to us in Jesus.

Ascension means the resurrection is complete, and now we are to get busy sharing the Kingdom of God in the world.

And how do we do that?

Consider these three: Pray! Do! Rejoice!

Amen.

Sermon from Ephesians 5:15-21 for April 29

So…

Paul’s advice for having a great life is: Let the Spirit fill your life. I can’t think of a better idea. But the challenge, how do we do that. Life is crazy and busy, so what can we do to make our rather boring pedestrian lives into ones filled with the Spirit?

Well, Paul it turns out offers three suggestions.

First, he says, when you meet, sing as you praise the Lord with all your heart. He even suggests three categories of songs:

Psalms, that is the traditional singing of the Jewish people, like the Psalms of Ascent, the words and tunes the people of Israel sang as they went from Jericho to Jerusalem (uphill by-the-way, how they became “Psalms of ascent”) getting people ready for worship.

One person noted that maybe we should follow that thinking and make sure that everyone sings some great worship music on the way to worship every Sunday. Christian radio has made that possible. And there is the slightly newer technology of CD’s. Even easier are the digital music apps that can stream great music into your car. Or you could go full out and sing your way to church, especially effective if you can’t hold a tune in a bucket and there are teenagers in your car to embarrass!

You won’t get the same feel as walking up to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem singing with thousands of others of God’s faithful people, which would have energized some of Paul’s readers as they remembered their experience, and as they imagined the day when the people of God gathered in the new heavens and new earth singing with full hearts.

But it might just get you ready for a great worship experience anyway. “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” is not a psalm, but it always puts me in the mood to worship!

Paul then says that God’s people ought to sing hymns. While the Psalms are the writings of King David and others about the experience of a Holy God and about living a life in service to the God of Israel and of course are scripture, holy and inspired by God, hymns are different animal altogether!

They are a testimony to our understanding of our relationship to God, a theological statement about what we believe and what difference it makes that we have been justified, redeemed, and sanctified by a loving, yet holy other God who has made the ultimate sacrifice in order to be reconciled to his creation and in particular to us mortals.

They are statements of faith, pure and simple and remind us of some very important things we are to remember and believe as we live our lives in him.

And then there are spiritual songs, songs of great emotion and energy that move people in new and different ways in each generation. ‘I Love you Lord, and I life you up…” Words that convey where our hearts are at more than our heads like in the bold statements of the hymns.

But that isn’t all, Paul secondly invites us to give thanks.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t. Why. Because as the Law of Moses makes clear, the fall has wired us not to be thankful. The law tells us to worship God. Why? Because we would rather worship ourselves. The law tells us to honor our fathers and mothers. Why? Because we think we are the center of the universe and we did all this by ourselves. As the child says, “I do it!”

The law reminds us not to murder each other, steal each other’s stuff, get sexy with each other’s partners, and covet, covet, covet. Why? Because we believe all of it should be ours – when all of it belongs to God who has given it to us as a stewardship to care for and use to God’s glory!

Say “thank you”! You’re welcome!

It’s really not that hard, but you’d be amazing at how little time we spend doing it.

In the Celtic version of the church that grew up in Ireland there was a practice of praying for everything, and prayers for all occasions.

It was fun reading some of the prayers. They were all Trinitarian, that is they all invoke the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But even more fun was the fact there was a prayer for baking bread, giving thanks for the flour, butter, milk, eggs, the fire, and even teeth to chew the bread.

And a prayer for doing the laundry, lighting a fire, and for every other task. Praise and worship, and more importantly to us at the moment, always a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s provision. Not a prayer just at dinner. Prayers all the time, seeing God’s handiwork in everything.

Imagine praying a prayer that you made enough money last year that you have to pay income tax. Try it; it will rock your world!

But that is Paul’s advice for Spirit-filled life! Learn to say “thank you” early and often, all day long as you remember who and whose you are!

And then third, for a spirit-filled life, you need to honor Christ, by putting others first. It’s not about you – it’s about Jesus, about living to honor the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Don’t think of service to others as an optional choice, but rather think of it as why you are even here.

We are to “make a difference”. And when we do, as Paul makes clear, we will be filled with the spirit!

Sing. Give Thanks. Put others first.

And then watch and listen as our praise and worship rises to the very throne room of Him who is Lord and Christ forever and ever.

Amen.