May 19, 2019 "Presbyterian Heritage Sunday"

El Monte Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23; Luke 18.31-34

Good morning and God’s peace to all of you.

It’s good to be here … 

Today is Presbyterian Heritage Sunday … 

We celebrate our corporate story, and quite a story it is … it’s a good story, and sometimes a sad story … we’ve done it all … 

From the best of it, to the worst of it … but this much I can say, and say to you with confidence: our Presbyterian story is mostly a good story … a story of faithful people doing their best, relying upon Christ, seeking to make the world better …

We’ve opposed war and sought peace … we’ve struggled for civil rights and these days, we work for environmental justice. 

We’ve built hospitals and schools around the world … we’ve blessed the world with our medical missionaries, educators, preachers and teachers … we’ve done much to touch the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We’ve done good.

But to every story, a story with many chapters … we’ve had our struggles.

The Presbyterian Church split over the issue of slavery … some of our Presbyterian brothers and sisters thought slavery was a good thing, something to defend … even as the  whole nation was torn apart by Civil War.

And it took us a long time to figure out that gays and lesbians are Christians, too … and have a place at the Table … one of the great joys of my life is that I can now officiate for all weddings, gay or straight.

I remember my first gay wedding … during the ceremony, there was a moment of revelation … “this is just another wedding” …  two people who love one another … who will face all the challenges of marriage and enjoy all of its blessings.

I’m grateful that we Presbyterians finally figured this out … it took us a long time, virtually of all of my career, too long I think, but we did it … we’ve done good on this one.

We’re doing good on immigration issues, too …

Because we Presbyterians recognize the great truth of God’s love for the world.

We are first of all Christians, and then we’re citizens of a nation.

Because we’re Christians first, we see people first, people, real people, mothers and fathers and their children, young people, old people … people, people hoping to find a better life for their children.

Is there anyone here who wouldn’t sacrifice everything for the sake of their children?

When we’re Christians first, before we’re anything else, then our eyes clear, we see people!

We see their hearts, their needs … we don’t worry about borders and boundaries … and for heaven’s sake, we don’t fret and fuss about legal and illegal … those are categories that have no place in the kingdom of God!

When we’re Presbyterians at our best, we rise above the usual ways that people and nations think … we think as Christ thought, as the great prophets thought … we think on a higher plane … we think and live the Kingdom of God.

And that means constant learning … throughout the centuries, we’ve learned a lot about the ways of God, and we are still learning, still growing … still discovering how deep and wide and broad is the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD.

One of the sayings that come out of our story is this: The church reformed, the church always reforming.

Because God is infinite, Jesus is always out there, ahead of us.

Jesus never said: Come and sit down here - no way … Jesus said, Come and follow me.

Always the road ahead, more to the story.

Our challenge in Christ: to keep on following, following Jesus, toward the Kingdom of God … thy kingdom come, we pray … seeking that which is yet to be … never satisfied with what is, but long for, working for, praying for, the better world.

The Presbyterian Story.

We begin in Geneva, Switzerland, with John Calvin … in the 1530s … and then with John Knox from Scotland … and throughout the British Isles … by the boatload, Presbyterians came to America, with bag pipes and energy … Presbyterians moved around the globe, from Asia to Africa, and throughout the Americas … we are a strong and resilient tradition … we’ve made our mistakes, and we’ve done right and good.

One of the key pieces of our story is a theological idea: the sovereignty of God … 

Whatever the task might be, God does the work, the heavy lifting … all along the way, God saves, God forgives, God paves the way, God opens doors, God gives new life … God at work in all things for good.

When the women came to the tomb on Easter Morn, they wondered who would roll away the stone … but fear not dear ladies, fear not dear people, God rolls away the stone.

I was privileged to attend a Christian High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan … a school of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, and one day, in a Bible class, a student from an evangelical church was arguing with the teacher about how salvation comes about … as most evangelicals believe, the student made it clear that he believed salvation is up to the believer … you hear the gospel, it’s up to you receive it, it’s up to you make Christ your savior.

The teacher then added something I’ve never forgotten, something that became a part of my life … the teacher said, Salvation is too important a thing to be left in our hands.

To even think for a moment that we had a hand in our salvation is an insult to the glory of God … never in my life have I ever said to anyone: Let me tell you how I accepted Christ. Because I never have accepted Christ. It was Christ who accepted me, embraced me, loved me, forgave me, and made me a part of God’s work … it was Christ who saved me, then and now, and forever, and it’s Christ still saving me unto to the finishing of God’s work of creation.

Because Christ alone brings about the great work of salvation … though it’s a mystery, it’s a mystery made clear in the love of God … God is trustworthy unto salvation … not only my salvation, but the salvation of the whole world, and our children, and our children’s children … we must never fear for their souls … because God is faithful to us, to them … faithful to creation, every bit of it.

Our hands are not strong enough, good enough, clean enough, to craft the wonder and the glory of our salvation. None of us could ever hang on a cross for the sake of the world … we could only hang on a cross, as did the thieves, as those deserving death; Christ alone hangs on a cross as the redeemer of the world, not deserving death, but giving life.

To God be the glory.

That’s why we practice infant baptism … when we bring a baby or a child to the water of baptism, we offer to the world the clearest picture of grace, a priori grace … the prior grace, the grace that comes before … before anything of our own being or doing … before we know anything about God, before we can do anything for God, before we believe in Jesus, God is already at work … faithfully at work, believing in us with a sovereign mercy … throughout the ages … forever and ever … 

And it’s true for a believer’s baptism … they didn’t decide to become a follower of Christ … that work was done in them already, a priori grace, the prior grace, before they even gave a thought. They didn’t decide to go forward; it was the Spirit that brought to Christ, and it’s Christ who’s brings us to the Father … and in the name the Father, the Son and the Holy, we baptize of any age, but particularly, infants and children, as a perpetual reminder that it is by grace, and grace alone, that we are saved, lest anyone should boast.

The Heidelberg Catechism says it best of all

That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.

He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.

Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Dear friends in Christ.

Dear Presbyterian sisters and brothers.

With you this day, I give thanks to God for the Presbyterian Story … 

The sovereignty of God … the power of Infant Baptism.

To God be the glory. Amen and Amen!

November 25, 2012, "New Heaven, New Earth"

Jonah 4.9-11; Revelation 21.1-8

We end our End Times Series today … 

I’ve tried to make it clear to you that the End belongs to God. Period! 

He’s got the whole world in his hands.

And good are the hands of God!

And good is God’s creation … a big universe ...ancient and wondrous … full of mystery and glory.

Billions of years old … billions of years to come … which is why Christian liturgies use the expression, world without end!

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a 165 million years, and disappeared 60 million years ago … hominids, our early ancestors, appeared 3.5 million years ago … homo sapiens, our specific ancestors, appeared only 250,000 years ago … 

We’re the new kids on the block … newcomers to God’s mighty creation … and we share 99% of our DNA with the chimps.

My wife knows this for certain - she’s always telling me, “Quit acting like a monkey!”

The universe is big.

The universe had a life all of its own before we showed up.

And long after we’re gone, the universe will continue to grow and expand … new life forms will emerge … many of those forms will be here only for awhile, and then go the way of the dinosaurs.

Things come; things go … it’s the way of life … God made it that way … yet God loves all life … you and me, and all creatures, great and small.

God makes that clear to Jonah!

I care for that great city of Nineveh … it may be your enemy; you may hate them, but I love what I made, and I want to redeem everything, make everything new … including animals … they, too, belong to me … the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and everything that crawls upon the face of the earth.

Jonah, what’s your problem?

Jonah’s problem?

Small thinking … Jonah lives in tiny world driven by friend and foe … Jonah hated Nineveh, and hated even more that God loved Nineveh - enough to send Jonah there - to proclaim the Word of the LORD, in the hope of repentance and new life.

Jonah wanted blood and death for Nineveh … when Nineveh repented, Jonah was furious, so furious he wanted to die.

What’s your problem Jonah? Jonah couldn’t think big!  

Christians need big thinking … big enough to encompass the whole wide world … Christians can’t afford little thinking … and the world can’t afford it either.

In the Book of Revelation, little thinkers have no place in the kingdom of God! 

You would think … of all the people on the face of the earth, Christians should be big thinkers … 

But sometimes Christians think small.

Folks fascinated by “end times” are small thinkers … they live in a small world, defined by the moment - calculations, hopes and fears; close their eyes to the big picture; refuse to see the glory of God … try to figure things out, pry into the secret things of God … then pretend to understand the deep mysteries of God … tell the world they have it all figured out … in the words of Revelation 21.8 - they are liars, idolators, they cast spells on their audience - they are small thinkers!

Creationists ignore science and preach an earth only 7000 years old - small thinkers.

Christians who believe that rape is God’s will, that a woman’s body has a mechanism to shut down when it’s “legitimate rape” - small thinkers.

Pat Robertson complains about atheists stealing Christmas - Robertson is a small thinker; if anyone has stolen Christmas, it’s corporate America and Wall Street … the American hymn of greed: buy, buy, and buy some more. 

Robertson says, “I missed God’s message about the recent election” … he’s missed a lot of messages … he’s a small thinker.

But enough of that …

Big-minded Christians look at the starry sky above, the wonders of Grand Canyon, and enjoy the immensity of it all.

We’re not afraid of being small … it’s okay to be small be … a tiny creature on the face of the earth, in a solar system tucked away in a far corner of the Milky Way … small as we are, we don’t have to be small thinkers.

The world is marvelous; we can see it, we can live in it, we can love it … we can love one another, we can love the creator who made us all.

But now a pastoral question - what about loved ones … what about those who have died?

Paul’s Letters to the Thessalonians make it clear - our loved ones are safe with Christ … they wait with Christ for the final trumpet, that great gettin’ up morning … body and soul reunited … flesh and spirit once again conjoined … the world made new … a new heaven and a new earth.

When will this happen, we ask?

It is not ours to know, and who cares when it will happen? What counts - it will happen! It’s happening right now, because God is at work in all things, in all things for good, redeeming God’s creation and making all things new. Can you not see it? Isaiah asks.

This earth is God’s beloved creation … God is saving all of it … all of its creatures, great and small … every tree, every rock, every drop of water … because it’s all good … God has no intention of throwing it away.

And neither should we!

If ever there is a reason for ecological responsibility, this is it - this is God’s world, God’s beloved world … and, yes, we can tap its resources, but do so with wisdom and care and restraint.

In the delta region of Nigeria, the Amazon forest of Brazil, the mountains of West Virginia, the spoilage is enormous … land ruined, water polluted, wildlife destroyed … whole areas uninhabitable - is this pleasing to God, when human beings trash the world God created? If a thief broke into our home and vandalized it, what would we think?

I think of the Good Samaritan story - a man beaten by robbers and left to die by the side of the road? Might we think of this as a parable of the earth today? Beaten bloody by robbers, who take what they want, and leave the earth dying by the side of the road? And who’s the Good Samaritan? ... but the one who looks with mercy on the earth, sees its wounds, goes to its aid, makes provisions for its care and healing. Sad to say - in the parable, it’s the religious ones who turn the blind eye to the beaten man.

Are Christians guilty of turning a blind eye when it comes to God’s good earth?

Christians can never turn a blind eye to any company, or any government, that despoils God’s good earth in order to make a profit for shareholders who live far away from the suffering, suffering created by the drive for wealth.

Christians have to think big … because God is big!

The Scottish National Museum, in partnership with museums in Malawi and Zambia, is celebrating the bicentenary birthday of explorer and medical missionary, David Livingstone, born March 19, 1813, near Glasgow, Scotland.

British explorers mostly served colonial interests, and missionaries often did the same thing - but not so David Livingstone.

Lovemore Mazibuko, director of museums of Malawi, said Livingstone was still venerated in southern Africa for his work as a missionary, doctor and educator, and above all for his bitter opposition to the slave trade prevalent at the time and his vision for legitimate trade and commerce for the region.

Mazibuko said: Livingstone brought an end to the slave trade and in that sense he is regarded as a liberator...he changed people's perception on the way people related to one another irrespective of tribe, irrespective of their colour, irrespective of their social status."

Livingston died May 1, 1873 - his heart was buried in his beloved Africa; his body, in Westminster Abby.

Livingstone’s remembered because he was a big thinker … saw the big picture … served a big Christ.

In our own Presbyterian ranks, I think of men like William Sloan Coffee and Robert McAfee Brown … women like Margaret Towner, the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church, 1954.

All of them, big thinkers - that’s why they shaped the church so powerfully in their time, and for years to come.

They beckon us onward … the cloud of witnesses surround us … whispering to us, Finish our work … get busy … get to it … think big … finish our work.

Dear Christian Friends, let’s finish their work, and finish it well … big in our thoughts and sensibilities … big in our prayers and big in our faith … let us think far and beyond the boundaries of our lives and our church - think outside the box … daring and adventuresome like David Livingstone, William Sloan Coffin, Margaret Towner.

Big enough to bless the world!

Big enough to serve the Risen Christ!

Amen and Amen!