Good Morning Covenant Presbyterian Church … Welcome Back … summer is done, and we’re home from our travels … the kids are back in school, and if we have a garden, we’ve got tomatoes … so many tomatoes, we put them in a bushel basket, bring them to a neighbor’s front porch, ring the doorbell, and run!
Good Morning Covenant Presbyterian Church … Welcome Back … welcome to a new season of ministry … welcome to all the things that make for a church – Sunday School and Session meetings … church budgets and Stewardship Campaigns … fellowship dinners and mission trips … projects and propositions and possibilities.
Good Morning Covenant Presbyterian Church … Welcome Back …
Things that sustain us in our walk with Christ - prayer and study and fellowship and worship …
The Christian life needs tending …
Like a garden needs weeding …
Like a lawn needs mowing …
The Christian life needs tending …
We help each other with that …
We help each other stay focused …
Focused on our task, the high calling of Christ: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Thy will …
On earth …
As it is … in heaven.
We all live with standards of excellence.
When we cook a dinner, we know what it should look like and what it should taste like …
We use a ruler to measure a piece of drapery, so that it fits the window.
The carpenter uses a level when building the shelf.
The engineer uses sophisticated software to run the computations again and again, to be sure it’s right.
The physician has her textbooks and the latest medical journals.
And Christians have heaven … thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus gives us heaven.
The level for the shelf.
The tape measure for the drapery.
The textbook for the surgery.
An image of life …
Life intended by God …
Life as it should be …
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven …
Life guided by high purpose …
Life guided by faith, hope, and love …
Life guided by grace, mercy and peace.
As it is in heaven.
And how is it in heaven?
And how shall it be on earth?
In heaven, there are no lost causes.
In heaven, God never gives up.
A sheep is lost?
God sets out to find it.
A coin misplaced?
God lights a lamp and sweeps the floor.
The intensity of God’s love.
There is never a lost cause.
The sheep is found and returned to the flock.
The coin recovered and all is well.
As it is in heaven …
Angels rejoice.
Heaven throws a party.
Kick up your heels and pop a cork.
Throw a steak on the grill, and invite the neighbors.
Donna and I attended a groundbreaking yesterday for a new Habitat for Humanity project … three new homes in Lynwood …
Three families soon to have a place of their own … safe and comfortable.
Lynwood’s mayor was there … a city councilman … the families approved for the project …
And a bunch of Presbyterians …
We all donned hardhats and grabbed a shovel … with cameras rolling, folks clapping, the first dirt was turned on this new project.
As it is in heaven.
God doesn’t sit around wringing God’s hands and complaining about lost sheep and misplaced coins … the sheep isn’t scolded … nor the coin condemned.
God just goes to work.
Because there’s always a way.
It may take awhile.
It may take days and months and years … and setbacks and disappointments … to rebuild New Orleans … to rebuild lives shattered by an exploding gas line in San Bruno … none of this is easy; all of it hard.
It takes a heap of livin’ to make a life.
Love and marriage … gay or straight …
Children and family …
Illness and mortgages …
It takes awhile, and the work can be hard.
The shepherd must have said, I know where the sheep is; I know where to look … but the lost sheep wasn’t there … and on to the next place, and the sheep wasn’t there either … but the shepherd doesn’t give up … the shepherd keeps on looking … until the lost sheep is found.
Heaven possess confidence …
Lost sheep are found …
Lost coins recovered …
Homes are built.
Communities transformed.
Lives changed.
As it is in heaven.
Jesus gives us heaven so that we can live well …
On earth as if it were heaven.
To remember:
There are no lost causes.
To remember:
There is always a way.
To remember:
Moaning and groaning never solve the puzzle.
Just stay with it …
No matter how many disappointments.
Keep on looking.
Keep on praying.
Keep on loving.
Confident in our labors …
Confident in God’s love at work in all things …
Confident that love prevails over hatred …
Confident that for every Terry Jones who wants to burn the Quran and fuel the fires of hatred, there are millions who choose the better angel … who build bridges rather than dig chasms … who extend the olive branch rather than the sword …
Confident that folks like Terry Jones haven’t a clue …
And if we want clues about life …
We have a cloud of witnesses surrounding us.
Folks at Habitat for Humanity know the truth …
People bagging groceries at LAX Food Pantry know the truth …
Folks at a downtown soup kitchen ladling out beans and rice know the truth.
People who go to Nicaragua and build bridges of understanding know the truth …
Folks who come faithfully to worship … who sing and teach … who write the checks and give of themselves a thousand times over – these are the folks who know the truth.
A man like Terry Jones wants us to remember backwards … always looking backwards … to the moment the Towers fell … remembering only the horror and the pain … stoking the fires of anger and vengeance …
But it’s a poor memory that only works backward.
There is a memory that claims the future.
A memory that leans forward.
On ABC this weekend … a remarkable story about some of the 9/11 children who lost a father … the children were but infants at the time, so all they have now is their father’s eyes, or his smile … and the mementoes of a man they never knew.
The children grieve as only children do.
Purity in their tears.
Innocence in their hearts.
A holy innocence.
An innocence that we’ve got to protect!
Men like Terry Jones tread upon these children with dirty shoes …
The American landscape right now is full of people with dirty shoes … preachers and politicians and pundits who want us to remember backwards … to remember the pain and cuddle the spirit of vengeance.
Preachers who bemoan the day, and claim that America is going down the tubes.
Pundits who want to “restore America’s honor” they say.
Politicians who want us to look backward … “to a better day,” they say.
But better days are ahead of us, dear friends.
Better days, different days, to be sure.
Nothing stays the same.
The world changes.
We can’t hold on to yesterday.
So why even try?
A memory that works backward is a poor memory indeed.
But in places like this, our memory works forward.
We have something coming toward us that leads us onward.
The kingdom of heaven.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
I can see a new day … a new day soon to be.
Welcome back, dear friends, welcome back.
We start anew.
We start again.
We strain ahead to the high calling of Christ.
Our eyes are on the prize.
As it is in heaven.
Dear friends in Christ:
There are no lost causes.
God never gives up.
God goes to work.
God shoulders the cross.
Because the work ain’t easy.
And we shoulder the cross, too.
Because there is no Christ without a cross.
There is no faith without a lot of hard work.
But this we know.
This we believe.
Sheep are found.
Lost coins reclaimed.
Thy will be done on earth … as it is in heaven.
Amen and Amen!
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