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December 25, 2008
“So Now What?”
Luke 2: 15-20
Christmas Day, 2008
Well it is finally Christmas. We have come to worship Jesus on the annual celebration of his birth. Presents have been or will be opened. Some of us have a busy day ahead with dinners and other activities. Some will be leaving soon for far away destinations or will be welcoming others from far away. But after Christmas and Christmas visits and the exchanging of presents, what will we do?
Some of us will begin planning next year’s celebrations. Some will be out first thing tomorrow morning purchasing Christmas decorations and other materials at a great post-Christmas discount for use next Christmas.
Some of us will continue to enjoy the Christmas decorations for a while yet, and then put them all away and get back to normal. But after Christmas, what is normal? Remember, Christmas involves celebrating the birth of a child, the Christ child. Our daughter is expecting a child in May. She is just now beginning to realize that after the odd time of her pregnancy, there will be no normal. Life will not return to the normal she has been experiencing for another 25 years or more. With the birth of a child, Normal does not return.
So what should life be like after celebrating the birth of Jesus? After contemplating the birth of our Savior, should we return to Normal?
Well, maybe we can find some guidance in the examples provided for us by the Shepherds and Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The Shepherds were among the first to hear about the birth of Jesus. On the evening of that day, Angels came to them singing to them and telling them about the birth of Jesus. They decided to see for themselves the Christ Child, so they went to Bethlehem that evening to see the baby whom the angels had told them about.
While they were there, they told the others present and probably those they met on the way all that they had discovered about this baby who was born in a barn.
They told them that it had been revealed to them that this baby was God’s promised Savior and the King of all Kings.
One of those they talked to was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She already knew who Jesus was. She had been talked to by another angel earlier, at the beginning of her pregnancy. But she did not discount what they were saying or file it dispassionately under the category of “stuff I already know”.
Instead, Luke wrote that Mary “Treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” She allowed the experiences of others, the knowledge that others had of her special son to add to and enrich what she already knew.
After we put our Christmas stuff away, we can still learn new things about God and his son from others who have met him. We can re-read the books of the New Testament and learn what the first century Christians learned about Jesus. Some of them had met him in person during his earthly life.
We can read the writings of the early church fathers and other Christians of the past and see how their encounters with Jesus changed their lives. We can also converse with Christians in our own day, and sometimes in our own church. We can listen to and tell each other things that we have learned about God and his Christ. And we can treasure all these things and ponder them in our hearts. We can allow the experiences of others and the lessons others have learned to add to and enrich and enlighten our own lessons and experiences.
The Shepherds also have a lesson for us. Luke tells us that after the shepherds left Bethlehem they returned to their flocks and the hills and perhaps their towns “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
Has your celebration of Christmas this year charged up your batteries so you will be glorifying and praising God for the months and years to come? Are you so exited about the birth and life and death of Jesus that you will be praising God in worship here and at home and giving him Glory and praise as you speak to others?
Perhaps we measure the quality of our Christmases all wrong. Perhaps Christmases should not be measured by what gifts we receive or give, or how many family members and friends we visit with. Perhaps we should measure the quality of our Christmases by how long we continue to praise God afterwards for coming to us in the baby Jesus, or how willing we are to tell others what God has done for us in Jesus.
Let us pray,
Father, help us to add to our Christmas celebration the treasures of your Scriptures and the treasure of the experiences and practices of other Christians. And help us to have a Christmas that will keep us glorifying and praising you for your wonderful works until we meet Jesus in heaven or at His return to earth.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2008
“Adjusting the Scene”
Luke 2: 1-20
Christmas Eve, 2008
This Evening as you prepare to take the Lord’s supper and as you prepare to participate in your Christmas festivities I would invite you to think on the Nativity scenes you have seen lately. I will be able to describe the typical Nativity set or scene to you rather well because my wife has her collection of Nativities displayed in our home.
First, I would like you to think about the Setting. Sometimes the nativity figures are displayed in a 3 sided structure that appears to be a stable or a barn. Sometimes it appears to be a little church.
The real nativity took place in Bethlehem and as far as we know it was in a cave that was used as a stable.
Joseph and Mary did not live in Bethlehem. They had come there for a rather unpleasant purpose. The Roman Emperor had required that all people return to the towns their families had come from to register for a census. This census probably was to place people on the tax rolls. In other words, Joseph had to go over 70 miles on foot to Bethlehem to sign up to pay taxes to the Roman Empire. I’m sure he was just as thrilled about it as we are to be put on more tax rolls.
Joseph took Mary along because he wanted to protect her from people who misunderstood what was happening in her life. She was about to have a baby. She and Joseph had not been married very long. Most everybody in their village would have known that Mary became pregnant before her marriage to Joseph. In fact, Luke says she was still engaged to Joseph.
Joseph seems to have been afraid that she would get no help in childbirth if he was not with her, so he took her along.
When they arrived in Bethlehem there was no room in the inn, so they stayed in the cave out back where the animals were housed. Since the inn was full of people, the cave probably had a lot of animals in it. Much more than you have in any of your nativity sets at home. This stable was crowded. And odiferous.
While they were in that crowded smelly cave, the Son of God was born to Mary. They wrapped him up and put him in the feeding trough. There they were; Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, and lots of animals.
Your nativity set probably has an angel hovering somewhere. There is no mention in the bible of angels being seen in the cave. Shepherds saw and heard Angels out on the hill nearby, but not in the cave.
Your nativity set probably has wisemen, the Magi. They came later, but not on the day or night of his birth.
Your nativity set has Shepherds. Alright, there were shepherds there in the cave. They had been invited by the angels. But I wonder how Joseph and Mary felt about their being there. The last thing new parents usually want just after the birth of a child is a room full of strangers. Even a roomful of family members can be a bit overwhelming immediately after the birth of a child.
So there they were, Mary Joseph and the baby Jesus, in a cave full of animals and strangers.
What a strange nativity scene. But scenes don’t convey the words that were spoken. The shepherds talked about the things the angels had sung and said about this baby. And Joseph and Mary could confirm what the Shepherds said. Mary and Joseph had also been talked to by angels about Jesus.
The real first Christmas was not quite the way we like to envision it. Joseph and Mary probably felt that all the powers of the universe were conspiring to make this the most miserable event in the history of the world.
But the Baby was still the Son of God. He was impossible to recognize without some inside information from God through angels. But he was still the Son of God. And he continued to be unrecognized by most people all through his life. He was so unrecognized by the Priests and Pharisees in Jerusalem that they had the Romans Kill him.
But in his birth, in his life, in his death, in his resurrection, and in his ascension he was the Son of God. And when he returns he will be the Son of God.
God’s greatest blessings aren’t always easily recognized. Think about that as God continues to bless you in your life. Think about that as God brings new people and events into your life.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2008
“Mary and Her Son Jesus”
Luke 1: 26-38
December 21, 2008
It was around 7 or 6 BC, and God seems to have been keeping the angel Gabriel busy in those days. God first sent Gabriel to Jerusalem to inform the priest Zechariah that he and his wife would finally have a child. Zechariah had a difficult time believing the angel because his wife Elizabeth was beyond the age when women give birth. But be that as it was, she did conceive and bear a son, John the Baptist.
While Elizabeth was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, God Sent Gabriel to a small town 70 some miles north of Jerusalem to a village in Galilee about 24 miles east of the sea of Galilee. There he was to visit a young engaged woman named Mary. Actually it may be a stretch for us to call her a woman. Most scholars seem to think that she was about 13 years old.
Gabriel’s opening line to Mary is recorded in verse 28. He said: Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. And, according to verse 29, Mary “…was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” When I read that verse I want to pause and say “Gee, do you think?” Of course she was perplexed. There she was, performing her normal household tasks in the home of her father, or running errands in the streets of Nazareth, and she is met and spoken to by an angel of God. She is afraid and wonders what this is all about.
As it turns out Mary was not to be the only one who would be perplexed about the greeting of Gabriel.
Some Christians, mostly of the Roman Catholic persuasion, have misunderstood the greeting and the human nature of Mary. They read the greeting as saying “Hail Mary, Full of Grace” instead of “Greetings, favored one. Now favor and grace are both legitimate translations of the Greek word here, but in using Grace, the Catholic Church began to misunderstand the nature of Mary. They came to misunderstand that she was a dispenser of Grace and they began to appeal to her for help and blessings and to pray to her.
The truth about Mary is this, She was a totally human person, born of the same sinful nature that we all share. She was not born without sin as their doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary states.
The truth about Mary is more wonderful than that. The truth is that she was a pious and God-fearing young woman/child whom God chose to elevate to the highest honor he would bestow on any human being. She was chosen to be the mother of his Holy Child, Savior of all of God’s Chosen ones.
Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she would bear God’s Son. She seemed to understand that he was implying that she would soon be bearing God’s son, because she raised the logistical problem that she was not yet married. I think this response implies that Mary and Joseph were not planning to marry for quite a while yet.
Gabriel’s reply is given in verses 35-37. He said: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of most high will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
I have to tell you that at this point in the Gospel Narrative, my twisted mind begins to think of Bill Cosby. In his early years as a standup comic, Mr. Cosby did a routine about Noah’s conversation with God about building the Ark. In Cosby’s version of that conversation Noah often says the word “right!”. In that conversation, the word right is just a response that Noah gives to let God know that he is still there. It does not imply any understanding or agreement.
I think that there is an element of this “right” in Mary’s response. How could she understand the mystery of the virgin birth of Jesus from the description that Gabriel gave? Many Christians today and some Christian leaders in our time with much more information about it still don’t understand it and some don’t believe it.
Mary did not understand her part in the marvelous Christmas Pageant that God was about to put on, but she trusted in God. She said “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”. She was saying “I don’t think I understand exactly what God is going to do with me, but I am his humble servant and I am honored to be a part of his marvelous plan.”
What a great lady, what a marvelous servant of God. She is to be revered and honored for her faith and her cooperation with God. She had no Idea what God’s plan for her would do to her upcoming plans to marry Joseph. She had no Idea how God was going to work all of this out, but she trusted in God that he would use her for his glory and protect her best interests.
When we don’t know where God is leading us but know that we need his help we need to remember Mary. She is a good example of Trust in God without complete understanding.
We need to thank God for Mary. She is the one through whom our Savior came into this world. Mary was not immaculate or superhuman, she was a normal fallen human being whom God elevated to the highest degree. I believe that the Roman Catholic doctrine does a disservice to Mary. She was just like us, and God used her to bring his son into the world. How great a miracle is that?
But before I finish, I want to direct your thoughts to the Son of Mary. He was what she was not.
Listen again to the words Gabriel spoke to Mary about her son. In verses 32 –33 Gabriel said about Jesus: “He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. and in the last half of verse 35 he said, “…the child to be born will be holy; will be called the Son of God.
Jesus is God in human flesh. Jesus is The King of all kings. Jesus is the king of God’s eternal kingdom. Jesus is Holy, sinless and eternal. He is the Son of God.
He is also the Savior. His name “Jesus” is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “The Lord Is Salvation”.
As Christians, those who believe in Jesus the Christ, we honor Mary. We honor her because she was chosen by God for the highest purpose of being the Mother of God’s Son. Through her God brought salvation and grace for us into our world.
We honor her because she trusted God and chose to play her part in God’s plan without understanding all that would be involved.
We honor Mary, but we Worship Jesus, our Savior and King, our Eternal Master, the Son of God who gave us a part in his eternal kingdom.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2008
“Zechariah’s Song”
Luke 1: 67-75
December 14, 2008 (Cantata Sunday)
Since the theme of the day is Christmas Music, I thought I would present one more Christmas song to you. Don’t worry, I am not going to sing to you. In fact, I just read the lyrics to you. The song that is the subject of my meditation this morning is the Song of Zechariah.
Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist. He had a little tiff with the angel who told him that he and his wife would have a son, and the angel left him unable to speak until John was born. When he was able to speak, he was moved by the Spirit to prophecy, and as was often the case among Jews in those days, his prophecy is in the form of a Hebrew Psalm. In the 6th century, some churches put music to this psalm and it was used in their liturgies.
We are only looking at the first stanza of Zechariah’s song this morning. The second stanza, which begins in verse 76 deals with the part that John the Baptist would play in God’s soon-coming work of redemption.
The first Stanza, the text we are looking at, describes the quickly-coming work of salvation that God was about to complete. This stanza uses Hebrew Old Testament terminology and concepts because Zechariah was a priest and Old Testament Scholar.
This morning I want to lift up and explain some of these concepts so we can appreciate what God has done for us in Jesus the Christ.
Zechariah began his Psalm by announcing that God has come to redeem his people. To us this should serve as a reminder that Jesus was God on earth and that his purpose was to redeem God’s people.
But in the NRSV translation that we are using this morning, one of the more colorful and powerful images in this passage receives an unfortunate translation. If you look at verse 69 you will read: “He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David,”
The words “mighty savior” is a mild translation of a very interesting Hebrew phrase. The Hebrew phrase, translated literally into the Greek in the gospel is “a horn of Salvation”. This Hebrew phrase comes from the imagery of a bull. The bull is a powerful animal, full of muscles from end to end, but when the bull attacks or defends himself, the power of all those muscles are focused through two small points on the top of his head, the points of his horns. So the phrase “horn of salvation” does mean “powerful or mighty Savior”, but that translation deprives the phrase of its beautiful imagery. And in a song or poem, imagery is the name of the game.
In referring to Jesus the unnamed son of David, as a horn of Salvation, Zechariah is making an interesting theological point. He is saying that Jesus is the main point of the revelation of God revealed in the Old Testament and in Zechariah’s time to be revealed in the New Testament. Jesus is the one in whom all the power of God and commandments of God and prophecies of God described in the Old Testament is focused. Jesus is the main point of God’s plan for fallen humanity. All of the saving power of God is channeled into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
If you are ever asked what is the point of Christmas, the answer is Jesus. If you are ever asked what is the point of Christianity, the point is Jesus. Jesus is the strong horn into which all of God’s power for salvation is focused.
In verses 70 & 71 Zechariah said that this horn of salvation that was coming in the family of David was prophecied from of old to save God’s people from our enemies and from all who hate us.
For the past few years, Christians and people living in the US have been made aware that there are people who hate us and want to destroy us. But I think that the Bible is clear in teaching us that in many ways, our greatest enemies are ourselves. Our fallenness, our sinfulness keeps trying to get us into trouble with God and with each other.
Jesus came to save us from all people and forces that would hurt us or destroy us, including our own evil inclinations. He came so we could have the power to live lives that are pleasing to God. Or as Zechariah said in verses 74 & 75, “That we,… might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
Because of the salvation won by Jesus on the cross, we are able to live our lives in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, without fear of being rightfully destroyed by God. And we can live lives that are holy and righteous and acceptable in God’s sight, because our sins, though in some cases were and are many, have been forgiven.
The phrase that should be in all Christmas songs is “that we might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all our days.” Since Jesus came, we have been living before God, in plain view of His Holy Spirit. And we are supposed to be living lives that are pleasing to Him.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2008
“A Pavior for the Savior”
Mark 1: 1 - 8
December 7, 2008
Even in a nation the size of the United States, our leaders can be anywhere except Alaska and Hawaii within 6 hours. So when it is necessary for our president to travel to various parts of the country, arrangements can be made quickly.
In 600 BC, the days of Isaiah the prophet, such was not the case. Travel had to be done on foot, in boats or by horse drawn vehicles. So rulers rarely left their capital cities. Occasionally there was a pressing need for rulers to travel to other places in the kingdom or outside the kingdom. In such cases, it took months or years of planning. Sometimes new roads had to be built or old roads needed to be repaired. Sometimes dangerous valleys had to be filled in so roads could be built over them. This is the kind of endeavor that Isaiah was referring to in our first reading. He was looking forward to a visit to Earth and the Holy Land from Almighty God, the King of all kings.
As he contemplated the visit to earth by God he suggested that God’s people needed to make some preparations. Some of the rough places on earth needed to be smoothed out to prepare for the coming of the Lord.
600 years later, As he wrote his Gospel, Mark identified John the Baptist as a Kindred Spirit to the prophet Isaiah. Mark understood that John the Baptist was the one whom God sent to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus.
Luke informs us that John was a distant relative of Jesus and was about 6 months older than Jesus. Mark informs us that John started his ministry before Jesus began His. There are two interesting things about John’s ministry that are recorded here. One is that he seems to have stayed in the wilderness or brush covered area around the Jordan River. Jesus would later tour villages in Galilee and Judea. John did not. He stayed in the Southern part of the Jordan River valley and people came to him. How he became well-known enough for multitudes of people to travel to the wilderness to see him is not disclosed.
The other thing that was unique in John’s ministry was his use of Baptism. Baptism and ceremonial washings were sometimes applied to Gentiles who became Jews. The baptisms were applied to them as a symbol of their being cleansed from their unclean Gentile ways and heritage.
For John to have insisted that Jews be baptized was a bit of an insult to many Jews. It implied, No, it clearly stated that the Jews too needed to be cleansed from their unclean ways and heritage.
Yet for a few years John was tremendously popular and many people made the trek to the wilderness to hear him and to be baptized by him.
John’s message was simple. He said that God was about to visit in the form of the Messiah, the promised one, and that all people, even the Jews needed to get ready for the visit. John’s Baptism was a part of the message. Mark tells us that Johns Baptism was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”.
The way to prepare for the coming of God was to repent of one’s sins. The Greek word used here and usually translated in the bible as repentance means much more than just expressing sorrow for one’s sins. The word is Metanoia. And as you may have suspected from the first syllable Meta.. it denotes a major and deep change, as in “metamorphasis”. Metanoia denotes a change of Mind, a change of outlook, a turning away from former ways and turning to God. That is how people need to prepare for the coming of God. John’s baptism was a sign that the baptized person had turned from his sins and turned toward God to prepare for God’s arrival
John was a pavior for Jesus. He prepared the road for him, he paved the way. (Pavior is a Middle English word for those who paved roads with paving stones.) (Since it rhymes with Savior I just couldn’t help but use it in the sermon title.)
But the road John paved with his message and his baptism was not for Jesus. Jesus was coming on his own path through Mary from God. The road that John was paving was so people could get to Jesus. He was preparing their minds and hearts so they would accept Jesus as being from God.
God still needs paviors to help people come to the Savior. Some preach the gospel, others give testimonies of their faith, others show the love of God through acts of kindness and deeds of mercy.
But the road to Jesus still involves repentance for those of us building the road and for those of us traveling on it.
We all need to turn from our previous evil ways and turn to God and his ways.
Let us now repent of our sins and come to the Lord’s table. Then let’s live our lives as paviors for the Savior.
Let us pray. Almighty God, make us aware of our sins as we come to your table. Break our spirits with grief and restore us to a relationship with you through the body and blood of our Savior. Then help us to pave a way for others to come to Jesus.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)