the church geek

I’m posting today’s sermon, in lieu of preaching it, since our worship service was canceled. This is the 4th Sunday of Advent and the text is Matthew 1:18-25.

The other day I had someone in my office. We were chatting away about a number of different things when this person asked me a question I had a hard time answering.

They asked me why we call this activity we just did - up front here with the kids - Christmas Presents for Jesus. At first I said I wasn’t totally sure why, but that its name was something inherited from one of my predecessors; maybe Dr. Bob or somebody before that.

I then explained that since the presents people brought weren’t really presents for other people, but instead were given to support the mission and ministry of our church they were presents or gifts that people brought to God. In that sense they could be considered Presents for Jesus.

Later, the more I thought about that conversation, the more I realized that maybe in this season of Christmas it’s a really good question for us to struggle with: What does it mean for us to give a Christmas present to Jesus?

In this season we are so concerned with getting just the right gift for Aunt June, or we are hoping our kids aren’t sorely disappointed when we can’t get everything they asked for, or we ourselves are wondering what that strangely wrapped present underneath the tree is.

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This Sermon was for Dec 9th, the 2nd Sunday of Advent; the text was Isaiah 11:1-11

Imagine, as a preacher, getting up every Sunday morning to preach at the Duke University Chapel. Think about what it would be like to preach every Sunday before an audience of the best and brightest university students; well that wouldn’t be so bad, cause they probably wouldn’t be awake anyway.

But what about all those professors? Some of the smartest and most remarkable minds in all of academia would be a pretty tough crowd to preach to.

William Willimon, my favorite preacher, used to be that preacher at Duke University Chapel. Recently he wrote that during his first year of preaching, his advent sermons were some of the least well received sermons he ever preached.

He got an idea why that was so when he preached at another University Chapel during the season of advent and some one came up to him afterward and accused him of “promoting irresponsible passivity.”

That person went on to say, “You should remind us, that we are educated, responsible people who have been given the gifts to make the world a better place.” Willimon responds to all this by saying:

What was I to preach, stuck as I was with the repeated Advent gospel assertion that God really has come in Jesus Christ to do for us what we could not do for ourselves?

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Sermon for Dec 16th, the 3rd Sunday of Advent; Text: Luke 1:47-55

This morning, I want to share with you one of my favorite Christmas poems. It is written by John Shea. I love it because it captures the sense of wonder and marvel that the season of advent brings. It is called “Sharon’s Prayer” and it goes like this:

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity,
convinced every word
was revelation.
She said:

they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat
and they went a long way from home without getting lost.

The lady rode a donkey, the man walked,
and the baby was inside the lady.

They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass but the
Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.

Shepherds came and you could
Pet the sheep but not feed them.

Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?

Her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars.

The baby was God!

And she jumped in the air,
whirled around, dove into the sofa,
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

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A quote from Henri Nouwen as found in the Advent/Christmas devotional book Watch for the Light:

The whole meaning of the Christian community lies in offering a space in which we wait for that which we have already seen. Christian community is the place where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously, so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us that allows us to live in this world, without being seduced constantly by despair, loneliness, and darkness.

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One feature I enjoy on many blogs I read is a roundup of links to stories, resources, musings, etc. that people have discovered on the web. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to give it a shot myself.

In the past, I’ve done this rather passively by way of my google reader widget, Jim’s Shared Items, in the side bar of my blog, but I’m not sure many folks have taken advantage of that.

In the future, I’ll probably try to do these on Wednesday, but today I offer my first stab at it:

1.) The Jesus Manifesto is a blog that makes me squirm a bit by way of its provocative thoughts on the relationship between Jesus and Empire. This recent post Competing Images of Sacrifice offers an overview of Stanley Hauerwas’ theological argument on why churches should remove flags from their sanctuary. Summary: The flag for many Americans has become a more powerful symbol of sacrifice than Jesus’ own death.

2.) I enjoy just about everything that Carol Howard Merritt offers on her blog Tribal Church. Her recent post, Bearing God, describes how her first pregnancy helped her grow into accepting the role of pastor at her first call. It is a wonderful and moving advent devotion.

3.) Another favorite blogger, Jan Edmiston, offers some reflections in a post called Activism on how serving Christ and his Church may cause us minister to have to put aside our own pet agendas.

4.) And just to prove that I’m not all work and no play, I’ve discovered a new game site called Kongregate which features a host of interesting games. The most addicting one: the fancy pants adventures.

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A quote from Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt as found in the Advent/Christmas devotional book Watch for the Light:

The all important thing is to keep your eyes on what comes from God and to make way for it to come into being here on earth. If you always try to be heavenly and spiritually minded, you won’t understand the everyday work God has for you to do. But if you embrace what is to come from God, if you live for Christ’s coming in practical life, you will learn that divine things can be experienced here and now, things quite different from what our human brains can ever imagine.

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This is the 4th sermon in my Advent/Christmas sermon series called “He came down that we may have life.” An exploration of the six great streams of the Christian tradition and spiritual life.

Nicholas Herman was a clumsy young man, kind of like a bull in a china shop. Living in tumultuous times in 17th century France, for a few years Nicholas served in the army during the Thirty Years War, but he suffered an injury that forced him out of active service.

Later, he became a personal valet for one of the officers, but Nicholas ruined just about everything he touched. Frustrated and burdened by his clumsiness he decided to join a monastery, where he thought he might be made to suffer for his failures.

But God had other plans for Nicholas. During his previous service in the army, Nicholas had an encounter with God that set him on the path of a life of faith; that life blossomed within the halls of that monastery.

Taking on the name of Brother Lawrence, he was assigned kitchen duty. This of course caused just a bit of fear and trepidation within him, with sharp knives to lop off fingers, large pots of soup to drop, and other dangers of the sort.

Serving in the kitchen turned out to be the best thing for him.

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This is the 3rd Sermon in my Advent/Christmas Sermon Series called “He came down that we may have life,” an exploration into the spiritual life, looking at the six great streams of the faith. Through examining the story of the Shepherds, I explore what it means to live the charismatic or Spirit-filled life.

Just over a 100 years ago, an African-American minister from Houston Texas by the name of James Seymour, arrived in the city of Los Angeles to become the pastor of a small “Holiness” congregation. Seymour began to teach his new congregation about the work of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. Three months later the Holy Spirit began to move in their midst.

Some began to speak in tongues. Others fell into two or three hour long trances. Healings were reported. Crowds, curious to see what was happening, began to gather. After a few weeks, the meetings moved to an old building at 312 Azusa Street to accommodate the crowds. Every morning, noon, and night, that building played host to three straight years of revival meetings.

The cover story of the April 6th, 1906, Los Angeles Times said, “Weird Babel of Tongues, New Sect of fanatics is breaking loose, Wild scene last night on Azusa Street, gurgle of wordless talk by a sister”.

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This is the 2nd Sermon in my Advent/Christmas Sermon Series called “He came down that we may have life,” an exploration into the spiritual life, looking at the six great streams of the faith. Through examining the story of Joseph, I explore what it means to life the holy or virtuous life.

If you’ve followed the news in the Christian world at all over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Pastor Rick Warren has taken a lot of flak lately from a number of conservative religious folks; especially those involved within the Republican political machine.

First, for those of you with no idea who Rick Warren is, he is the pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, a large mega-church of about 20,000 people in southern California. He is also the author of one of the most hugely popular Christian books on the market, The Purpose Driven Life.

Recently, Warren organized and hosted an AIDS conference at his church. He did it out of his growing conviction that theologically conservative Christians must do a better job of being involved in addressing the various social issues faced both in this country and around the world.

As Warren puts it, Christians can’t ignore HIV/AIDS. It is history’s greatest health crisis. In fact, Warren has come to believe that this crisis may be the greatest opportunity the Christian church has ever had to demonstrate Christ’s love.

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This sermon is the first in a six part series for Advent & Christmas titled “He came down that we might have life.” Through looking at some of the biblical Christmas stories, I will be exploring the six great streams of the spiritual life as described by Richard Foster in his book “Streams of Living Water.” (Foster’s quotes in this sermon are from this book)

Let’s face it, some of the contemplatives or mystics over the ages have been a little weird.

Take for instance the story of Simeon Stylites. In the third century as Christians suffered persecution from the Roman Empire, many mystics moved out to live in the Egyptian desert. In the wilderness they lived lives of solitude, devoting themselves completely to God.

Simeon was one of these desert dwellers. At an early age, he got kicked out of his monastery for starving himself, so he went to live in a cave for three years. If that wasn’t strange enough, he spent the remaining thirty years of his life living on top of a 60 foot high column in the Egyptian desert.

To keep from falling off the pillar, he bound himself with a rope. At one point, it is said that the rope around his waist became embedded in his flesh. It putrefied around the flesh, which teemed with worms. Simeon would pick up the worms that fell from his sores. Now, I bet you think he ate them…well he didn’t. Better yet, he put them back where they came from and said, “Eat what God has given you.”

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Miranda at Presbyterian Bloggers highlights a number of on-line advent calendars. Go and check them out. I especially like the Praying Advent Calendar.

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