Whose You Are

Luke 3:15-17, 21, 22

You are my son; with you I am well pleased. 

YOU are my family.  YOU bring me joy just by being you.  We all need to know that we are loved. We need to know that we are accepted. We need to know that we belong somewhere, and whether we admit it or not, we all desire affirmation. 

You are my son; with you I am well pleased. 

God loves you.   God’s love for you is perfect.

Savannah and I at a Cross Country meet last Fall.

The perfect love of God is also filtered through the imperfect people around you.  And the love of God that flows through you also travels an imperfect vessel.  Who among us has not failed someone with the best of intentions? 

One time my dad was saying how some of his work colleague’s children were getting into a lot of trouble and how lucky he was that I didn’t screw up like that.  I took that as “You are my son; with you I am well pleased.”  That’s one of the things we have to do for each other. We have to listen for the voice of God behind the flawed human words and actions and hope others do the same for us.

God loves you and God’s love is perfect.   

In one of the letters written to the early Christian Community it says “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” 1 John 3:15.  If you hate, you have no eternal life in you.  That’s because when you hate, the Grace of God, the love of God is not flowing through you.  Think about it.  When you decide you hate someone, or decide that they are your enemy or you say to yourself “I just don’t like them”, nothing they do will be able to please you.

“Oh look at her, eating those crackers like she owns the place.” 

Think for a moment on the mistakes you have made in your life.  Think about the words you have used were hurtful.  And yet the Heavenly father says, “You are my child, with you I am well pleased.”

You might be thinking, “Now hold on God said that about Jesus, not me.”

He said it about Jesus so he could say it about you!

1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

God loves you and God’s love is perfect!

The fullness of God is glimpsed in today’s text.  Jesus of Nazareth the incarnation of God-God in the Flesh came to the Jordan to be baptized by John.  The Holy Spirit the very power of God came down and rested on him and the Words of the Heavenly Father affirmed it all.  You are my son; with you I am well pleased.”  All three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are present and in accord.  It’s a relationship.  It is unconditional love and unity. 

It was that unconditional love and unity that was extended to us when Jesus offered himself as an eternal sacrifice for us. 

Yes it was the Father who said to Jesus, “You are my son. With you I am well pleased.” But by spiritually joining with Jesus we join also in the Fathers pleasure. 

In his earthly life Jesus extended the invitation into this family of God.  His flawed and imperfect followers didn’t fully understand.

 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 

You are invited to be part of that family of God.  We all are!  God loves you and God’s love is perfect!

This Cross that we have at the front of the sanctuary, most of you know that it is made from wood from a part of this building and is now repurposed to Glorify God in a new way.  This cross or the one that is around your neck is a symbol of the lengths that God has gone through to show you love.  Just for a moment I want you to look at the cross.  I want you to look at it in a new light.  As you look at the cross I want you to see it as a lens.  The cross is a lens that God looks through to see us.  God sees us everywhere and at all times of course.  He sees all of our flaw and failures.  He sees wars and greed.  But when he sees us through the lens of the cross, when he sees us in light of Jesus he only sees the righteousness of his son in whom God is pleased.  When we join ourselves to Jesus we are made right with God.

"This is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness." Jer. 23:6

2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

If the cross on the wall is a lens through which God sees us, it must also be a lens for us to see God and indeed it is.    If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus and the Father are one.  When we know Jesus we know the Father and are blessed with the Holy Spirit. 

God loves you and God’s love is perfect.

God has gone to great lengths to show you his love.

God became human to relate directly to us.  Jesus started his ministry be being baptized not because he needed to be washed of sin but to relate to the people he was serving. 

I had a discussion recently about the necessity of baptism for salvation.  The answer that always comes up is that the thief on the cross that Jesus promised paradise was not baptized.  No ritual was needed only the unconditional perfect love of God. But to be baptized is to participate in an act that God has poured out his love publically to his son. What a wonderful thing.  When was the last time you said with a warm heart “I am baptized”? It’s a statement of identity.  It’s a statement of the power and the love of God to overcome the darkness of this world.

So how is it with you today?  Is the perfect love of God flowing through you? I want to challenge you to look inside.  Where ever you find resentment, fear, anger or hatred let the perfect love of God dissolve it so that you may have eternal life. 

Kneeling Before a Baby

Though we understand God to be
ever-present.  We symbolically understand
God to be present specifically at the altar.
Above is the Altar at the United Methodist
Church on Third Ave. In Big Rapids, MI.
That's my good friend Mike to the left. 

Matthew 2:1-12

They came and Knelt before a baby.  When you find God you kneel before him.  If you find Him in truth; if you find him in your faith; if you find him in your service you kneel before him.  Does that mean you actually take the posture of resting on your knees?  Perhaps, but what it really means is that you give God honor, you give praise, your acknowledge God’s presence.   We don’t always notice the presence or the action of God in our lives.  Not everybody is the type that walks around looking for the presence of God.  We are doing what we feel called to do.  There is work to be done.  So what do we do?  How do we find spiritual nourishment from the God who came as a human in the form of a baby?  How do we worship a God that lived as a human 2000 years ago in a region of the world that most of us will never see?   We look to scripture and we witness the action of the three wise men, the three kings, the astrologers the magi, whatever you want to call them, they came and they knelt before a baby.  This is a strange thing. 

I mean, love my kids, but kneeling before a baby?  Scripture says they paid homage to him. They brought gifts of Gold, frankincense and myrrh. To a baby!  Who were they trying to impress?  A baby doesn’t notice anything but its own comfort or discomfort.  The baby’s parents were a young couple traveling from Nazareth; they seemed to be no one special so why kneel before a baby?

Alex just had his 16^th birthday.  17 years ago I had very different visions of what parenthood would be than I do now.  In fact a lot of those visions were shattered about this time of year 16 years ago.  While we were waiting for Alex to arrive I had a chart hanging in the hall in the upstairs of Diane’s grandmother’s house where we were staying.  It was an illustrated diagram of the development of a fetus month by month.  I had written in Alex’s due date at the end of the fold out piece of glossy paper and I worked backward adding dates along the diagram to the current date.  I would look at it. And marvel at it as if it were an actual picture of our unborn child.  I didn’t realize then, just how clueless I was.

I wasn’t even the one that was responsible for feeding him and it wasn’t long before I felt exhausted.   Up several times a night crying.  He was hungry, so Diane fed him.  He was messy so we cleaned him. He got sick and we worried over him.  One night he wasn’t any of these things that I could tell and yet he was still crying and I irrationally asked him “What do you want? Just tell me and I’ll do it!” of course a baby cannot answer with words. A baby is not interested in your desires or your wellbeing.  As wonderful and as miraculous new life is, babies are the most selfish creatures on the planet. 

You’ll notice in the scripture the wise men didn’t stick around. They left.

They brought all this great stuff for Jesus.  Joseph may have been like, “Oh hey, why don’t you stay for a few weeks?”

Then (With the baby crying in the background) the wise men were like, “Oh, no. We really need to be getting back.  We gotta go to work.  You know astrology stuff.  Uh, take care.  Good luck with the Herod thing.  Enjoy the incense and the…balm. Hope the gold helps.”  Then they were gone!

By the way, I was asked about the gold that was given them.  Mary, Joseph and the baby almost immediately after this were on the run for their lives from Herod.  They lived in Egypt as refugees until Herod’s death.  I don’t imagine there was a lot of time for Joseph to find work.  I think the Gold was very useful and necessary during this time of their lives.  

The wise men gave their best.  They gave their gold, they gave their frankincense, and they gave their myrrh.   They came from Persia and they brought their best. We come to this place of worship to be in the presence of our God.  We come from Fountain and Ludington, and Scottville, and Pentwater, and Muskegon.  And we bring our best. 

What is our best? 

Back when I was in seminary I volunteered at my church as a Stephen Minister.  The Stephen Ministry is a congregational care program where people are matched.  Someone who needs care is paired with a caregiver.  It is spiritual care.  It is a relationship.  It’s a friendship.   I was paired with Wally. Every week I visited him.  I would sit in his home for an hour sometimes more seldom less.  We talked about all sorts of things.  He was a sports writer for many years so when March Madness came around our visits were mostly about watching basketball.  He had a stroke one day which meant that he couldn't stay in his home any more. He moved to a nursing home. So I visited him there.  I was going to school in Holland at the time.  In the middle of one of my theology classes I got a call that Wally wasn't doing well.  That the end was probably near.  So I asked to be excused.  I drove the hour and a half back to Greenville and when I got to the nursing home there was a worker in his room cleaning.  No Wally.  I was too late.  He was gone and they had already taken him away.  I didn’t get to say goodbye.  

I loved him. In all my pastoral classes they say that I should keep a professional distance from the people that I will serve.  I understand why they say that and to a certain extent I agree because if I took on everyone’s hurts, I don’t know if I could survive.  When Wally died I questioned if this was the right profession for me. I wasn’t sure I could endure that kind of pain on a regular basis.  But to not love, to not give your best, to hold something back, to hold back a blessing that God has for you, which He wants to give through you, to hold that back is a sad thing. So I said “okay” to God.  The same is true of each one of you. You each have blessings to give. You have your best to give. The commandment is to love one another.

Something may have happened that has prevented you from fully giving of yourself, which makes you hold back.  When that happens, the Adversary has a victory.

The wise men gave their best. They sacrificed everything for something unknown; for an unsure thing but they had confidence they would find it. They found it in a baby. They left that day. They couldn't take anything from the baby.  They didn’t get any material gain or imparted wisdom it was a baby! They just wanted to be in the presence of this hope, this potential, this promise that is only in the beginning of being fulfilled.  They gave their best not knowing how it would end.  Even if they would have stayed none of them would have lived long enough to experience anything of Jesus’ adult ministry.  But they came and they brought their best.  They knelt before a baby.

When Jesus was an adult just before he gave his life, he gathered his disciple for a meal.  He told them that the bread was his body and the wine was his blood.  Do this in remembrance of me. Jesus tells us, “Do this in remembrance of me.” 

This is my Body broken for you.  This is my blood of the new covenant shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus is present.  Jesus is here!  So come! Take this gift of his presence. If you haven’t noticed his presence in your life, if you are unaware of how God is working in an through you, then take this opportunity to receive Holy Communion and know that he is present and kneel before him and give him your best. 

A Note for the St. Paul family

Happy New Year my brothers and sisters in Christ. The long nights of winter are here. It is as if the earth begins its long winters nap around this time. Autumn was the season of gathering and preparing for this time and now its time to rest. The flourish of activity all culminating in the festive season has come to an end. The crescendo and cacophony of the holiday season has come and gone. We were reacquainted with friends and family as we celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ and now they are back in their homes and the tempo of life is begging to slow just a bit.

We turn our gaze inward. In just a few weeks we will enter into the season of Lent. We will prepare ourselves, spiritually for the celebration of the most holy, the most wonderful event in human history, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. The focus for the next three months in our worship, our Sunday school classes and our communion together will be that inward journey of self-examination. We will spend time looking at our own personal spiritual health as well as the spiritual health of St. Paul as a community.

Please take this time of and let God bless you. As a help and an opportunity, I am making a couple of things available. First, every day, Monday through Thursday I will be having prayer time in the sanctuary from 11:30-11:45. This is a time of worship that will be spent in scripture reading, prayer, and silence. Then beginning in Lent there will be a Thursday evening program of fellowship and spiritual formation. I will be leading a group through the book Companions in Christ (ISBN 978-0-8358-9843-0). If you have been through is book before it is is certainly worth doing again. These evenings are meant to be a help spiritually and temporally. Bring a dish to pass and we will have a fine meal together and you will only have one dish to clean at the end of the night.

I thank God for each of you. May this season be a blessing to you.

In His Love,

Pastor JonS