Bread for Today Vs. Bread for Life Eternal

This was my sermon for today. This past week was extra busy with party prep for yesterday's party. I also did some candidacy work and went to the church ad-council meeting. I feel pretty much like a pastor now, since I have done some visiting at the hospital, care center, and in member's homes.

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This week in our Gospel reading we are continuing with the account of Jesus’ ministry one day after he had fed the 5000. Jesus is trying to teach the Jews about his own nature and the Jews are doubting him. Jesus has told them that he comes from and was sent by God the Father, but they say, “Don’t we know this man?” “Don’t we know his father?” “How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’”
These people have gone from wanting to force Jesus to be there king, because he had fed the multitude with just the five loaves and two fishes, to now doubting Jesus’ teaching about being sent by God and even God’s plan for salvation. The people want a prophet that will keep their bellies full and dazzle them with even more signs and wonders.
Jesus is trying to turn their minds onto the things of heaven, that last, rather than earthly temporal things. Jesus teaches them from the old testament where it said that they would be taught by God. He tells them again that any people that has heard the teachings of God and learned them will be lead by the scriptures of the old testament to him as the promised Messiah.

Jesus is trying to teach the Jews that he is the way to eternal life, and he is trying to teach them a little bit about the nature of eternal life. When W.B. Hinson was faced with an illness that threatened to end his life on earth he set his mind on his spiritual life, on eternal life. Thinking of the fullness and duration of this wonderful life, W. B. Hinson, a great preacher of a past generation, spoke from his own experience just before he died. He said, "I remember a year ago when a doctor told me, 'You have an illness from which you won't recover.' I walked out to where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across at that mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked at the stately trees that are always God's own poetry to my soul. Then in the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps, and I said, ' I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great down pulling of the material universe!' " This eternal life is the life that should have been important to the Jews that Jesus was teaching, instead of their fleeting life on earth.

For the past month Jenny and I have been working more and more on putting together plans for a party to celebrate completion of major construction on the addition to our home and to thank all of the people that helped us to finish that work. We put this party together with a lot of prayer, just as we had worked on the addition construction project with a lot of prayer, asking God to lead us through it. Each day this past week we spent time cleaning up our house, and decorating and finishing off things in our new rooms. We spent time gathering groceries and supplies for the meal during our party. We spent the better part of the day Saturday from about 9 until 5 getting the final touches completed and the food presented and prepared. In fact, by 7 o’clock last evening, we were both so tired from working on the preparations that we both probably could have packed it in for the night and gone to bed. We put that party together by the grace of God and we were doing it with Christian hearts, but it was still just a temporal thing. We fed people their evening meal, plus all of the toasted marshmallows and s’mores that they could eat for one day. Maybe the fact that we started the party by thanking everyone there for their support of our building project through their prayers, blood and sweat and by thanking God for his many gifts and blessings was a witness that might lead some to think about their relationship with God and their need for eternal life, but otherwise it was a very temporal thing. The food that we ate yesterday, like the food that we will eat today will be burned up and used by our bodies, and then, eventually, we will be hungry again, but the bread from heaven, which is Jesus Christ, feeds us spiritually and we when have eaten of it, our spirits will never go hungry again.

Our neighbors from two doors down came to our party yesterday. In the summer of 1956 they were the ones that built the original part of the house that we now live in. They brought with them a photo album that had pictures of the house and what their life was like in it with their children 50 years ago. Back then it looked different, it did not have front door, it had one at the north end of the house. Back then it did not have a bathroom inside, it had a little house out back. It was very interesting to see what the house looked like fifty years ago when they lived in it and to see how it has been changed through the years as other owners and residents have come and gone. The addition that we built in the last year has probably been one of the biggest transformations to it., but all of this is temporary stuff it does not matter in eternity. The homes that we are living in now seem pretty important to us today, but the one that really matters is the mansion in God’s house that Jesus went to prepare for each of us for our eternal lives in heaven.
In this morning’s gospel Jesus repeats the teaching that he had given in the reading from John for last week, when the Jews had challenged him about how God had provided manna for the Israelites while they were in the dessert. He repeats the image of himself as the bread of life as he says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Here he is using the imagery of bread because it has been something that the people have just said that they want him to continue providing because to them it satisfies their hunger and sustains their lives. Jesus is trying to teach them very clearly that the important bread that God provide is the Savior that can redeem them from sin and provide salvation so that they can live forever with God in heaven. Jesus says, “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Do you think that the Jews will understand and accept this teaching? Will they be able to turn their minds toward heavenly and eternal salvation rather than earthly satisfaction of their physical needs? You can read on with this at home, or if you can wait for the next episode we will have a chance to continue with this record in next week’s gospel lesson. This same question is important for us today, Are our minds on heavenly things, salvation through Jesus Christ, the bread of life, that brings to us eternal life? Let us pray that they are. Amen.

Unity in the Spirit, Unity in the Body of Christ

This is my sermon text for the week 08/06/06. This was my first time leading a communion service. It was quite an experience and I felt that it went a long way toward building the pastor and congregant relationship.

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Unity in the Spirit, Unity in the Body of Christ

In a Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schultz, “Lucy demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn't. "What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?" asks Linus.
"These five fingers," says Lucy. "Individually they're nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold."
"Which channel do you want?" asks Linus. Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, "Why can't you guys get organized like that?"”

I wasn’t sure why I felt led to preach from this lesson on unity from Ephesians 4 today and then I thought about the political ads that are showing up in increasing numbers on TV and radio as we enter election season. As I thought further about it, I remembered the news coverage of the conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on the north end of Israel and in Lebanon. I also thought of the daily reports of terrorist attacks perpetrated by various terror groups in Iraq against American soldiers, and aid workers from countries around the globe, and average Iraqi citizens that really want nothing more than to go to work or school and live their lives in peace. Then it became clear, the world in which we live is filled with divisions. Us and them. Have’s and have not’s. But in the Christian church, the body of Christ, we are all united through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Savior and the baptism of water and the Holy Spirit.

John Wesley once said, “I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field.” I have not been here long, so I don’t really know if there are any divisive issues or feelings in our church. I do have a sense that this is a faithful strong small body of Christians, yet no two people here is exactly alike. We are all different ages. We have different family backgrounds. We have lived through different experiences in our lives. Even our stories of how we came to know God as our creator and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior are all at least slightly different. Many of us may have grown up in Christian homes and had parents that brought us to church and Sunday school almost every Sunday. There may also be other folks here that learned of the teachings of the Bible and turned to Christ for redemption later in life. Although we are each individual persons, we are all members of the body of Christ.

Let’s take a look at why Paul may have felt it necessary to write this passage on unity in his letter to the church in Ephesus. In Acts 19, we can read the accounts of Paul’s early experiences in Ephesus. Paul went to a group of believers there that had already accepted the baptism of John the Baptist and he taught them and laid hands on them and they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Then Paul went to the synagogue and spoke out boldly and the scripture says that some stubbornly refused to believe and spoke out against the Christian Church. So if it says that some stubbornly refused to believe, that must mean that others that Paul found in the synagogue must have become believers. So Paul left with those that did believe and went to a lecture hall. My Student Bible has a note about lecture halls from this time period. These halls were normally converted training rooms for Olympic athletes. There probably would have been quite a diverse group of people in that hall. So the Ephesian church is born with a congregation of different peoples, converted Jews, and converted believers in John the Baptist, and converted believers of pagan religions and idol worshipers. Later there is a riot because some of the Ephesians and others are turning to this new Christian faith and away from pagan worship of idols. The artisans and silversmiths that had made a good business of crafting those idols were angry because Paul’s teaching and preaching was bad for business. Do you suppose such a body of believers would experience any problems with differences of opinion or disagreements as they tried to continue to grow and learn and worship in communion with one another?
So Paul writes to them from prison to remind them that they have all been baptized by the Spirit and therefore they should approach each other in all gentleness and humility. He reminds them that they are all members of one body and one Spirit. Paul also teaches that God has given them all gifts and graces. They may come in different areas or forms, like teaching, preaching, or other work for ministry that builds up the church, which is the body of Christ. But no gift is more important or more right than any other.

So what does this mean for us?
In the book The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. The author wrote, “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
Differences in age, economic standing, or political beliefs are not what really matters when you get right down to it. Those are all superficial and temporal divisions. The issue that matters is that we agree on the basic values of the Christian church. In simplest terms, that means that we know that God created everything that exists, Sin entered the world through Adam and Eve and has been passed down to everyone that has lived since then except Jesus Christ. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus was the one and only Son of God. He suffered and died on the Cross to wash away our sins, and on the third day he rose again. He defeated power of sin and the devil. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father. Some day he will come again to judge all people, sending the unbelievers away from God’s presence to Hell and bringing the believers home with him to be in the presence of God in Heaven forever.
If we share these beliefs in common with one another, than it will be evident in the fruits of our faith, which is the way that we serve Christ through helping each other. Whether you teach a bible class, help with making crafts at VBS, send a card to a family grieving the loss of a loved one, give a shut-in a ride to a doctors appointment or the grocery store, or provide the bread and juice for communion, you are all using the gifts given to you according to the grace of God after being united in the washing of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

A Good Problem to Have

This is an outline for the second sermon that I preached at Middleton. This was for the service on 07/30/06. This has been the only time so far that I have preached from an outline without any manuscript. It was a different preaching and teaching experience working that way.

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A Good Problem to Have

I. The Feeding of the 5000 from John 6:1-21
a. What happened before this:
i. Jesus performing miracles
ii. Jesus sends out the 12
iii. The disciples returned to tell Jesus what happened while they were on their own
iv. Jesus called the disciples to come away with him to a lonely place so that they could rest.
b. Closer look at what happened
i. Jesus knew that they all could have used a rest, but the people needed to be taught and ministered to…
II. Illustration – VBS
a. What happened before this:
i. Deb Blaha and I were discussing new pastoral appointment
ii. Desire to have a VBS program before the end of July
iii. Everyone is very busy with family, work, and summer activities
iv. Outdoor service and hog roast
v. License to preach school
b. Closer look at what happened
i. Even though we were all tired after working and busy eventful days, we knew that a VBS program is an important event in the life of the church each year and the children need to be taught and ministered to…
III. Illustration – Pastoral Care / Hospital Visitation
a. Updates through Pastor Gordon and Deb Blaha
b. Attended worship to find out more
c. Updates through Nancy and Deb Blaha at VBS
d. Pastoral care concern for Blaha family
e. Hospital visitation for Loreta Warren
IV. Wrap-up
a. God knows the ministry needs that members of his family have and what needs members of the community have. God has given this congregation many gifts for mission, ministry, outreach, and witness. He knows what they are, even if I do not and even if you do not.
b. God also knows the things that we need to sustain ourselves. His grace is sufficient for all. When we are weak then God is our strength. Our rock and our fortress. When we offer up what we have. Whether it is. Five small barley loaves and two fish or a handful of volunteers and helpful parents with various gifts and talents, God can make it more than enough to do his work and meet the needs of his people.

V. What we learned at VBS
a. VBS song or songs
b. God loves you
i. The account of Naomi and Ruth
ii. Psalm 103:8
c. God treasures you
i. Jesus teaching that he is the good shepherd
ii. John
d. God is always with you
i. The account of the disciples waiting and praying in the upper room
ii. Matthew

Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response

This was my first sermon delivered at Middleton. This was preached at an outdoor service without any microphone. I had to use my outdoor big voice without any enhancement for the first time to preach this one. I am not really very good at picking names for my messages, so please forgive me for that.

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Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response

Sermon Text: Luke 11:1-13

“Dear Lord, are you really calling me into ministry for you? Are you sure that you have the right guy? I don’t like getting up in front of people and speaking. I prefer to sit back and observe everything that is going on around me before I open my mouth to say anything. I am much more of a listener and natural student than I am an orator, speech maker or preacher. It sure seems like you could pick any number of other people with more natural gifts for preaching than what I have. Besides I already have a job, and school and a pretty busy life.” This is an example of one of my recurring prayers over the last two years. Here’s an example of one of my wife, Jenny’s prayers that dates back to her childhood, “Lord, please don’t ever let me marry a pastor.” Well be careful what you don’t ask for, because you just might get it.

I took this sermon topic, Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response from A Guide to Prayer for all who seek God, a devotional book from Upper Room Books that uses the lectionary readings for its daily readings. I can think of some pretty audacious prayers from biblical times. Thinking of prayers as talking to God, or having conversations with God, I think of some of the conversations that Abraham and Moses had with God. I think of the account in Genesis 18: 16-33 when God told Abraham of his plans to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham new that his nephew Lot had settled there, and he therefore bargained with God. He asked, “will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a wicked thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. The Lord answered his plea and said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”.

They went round and round. Abraham negotiated with God, would you spare the city for the sake of forty-five, for forty, for thirty, for twenty, and finally for ten. And each time the Lord responded saying that even for the sake of just ten righteous people he would spare the city. Then only after finding that only Lot and his family were righteous among the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah did God send angels to lead them out of the city as God rained down burning sulfur on them and wiped them from the face of the earth. Abraham’s payers were pretty audacious and God had the perfect response.

In Exodus there are at least a couple of examples of audacious prayer conversations between Moses and the Lord. In the record of the burning bush meeting between Moses and the Lord, God told Moses that he was sending him to appear before pharaoh and to bring the Israelites up out of Egypt. How does Moses react? He doesn’t just say yes Lord, I will be your faithful servant, just let me get my family together and I will be on my way. No, he says, God why would they listen to me, who am I that I should go to pharaoh and bring you people out of Egypt. He asks God, what am I, of all people, supposed to tell the Israelites to get them to believe that you sent me and to get them to follow me? God gave him messages to deliver to his people in Egypt that would help them to recognize Moses as being sent by God. Then Moses asked God again, what if they do not believe me; and God provided him with signs like his staff becoming a snake, turning Moses’ hand leprous and white and then restoring it to health, and then taking water from the river and turning it into blood.

Even after all of that Moses still says, “O Lord I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” Audacious! It seems that Moses might be hinting here that God has forgotten to bless him with a silver tongue. It’s a little like in Cinderella when the fairy god-mother has given Cinderella a carriage and horses and a coachmen and footmen and has almost forgotten the dress. God’s perfect response was this, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say”

Even after all of this Moses has the audacity to say, “O Lord, please send some one else to do it.” Well, if even Moses has the gall to say that to God, there just might be hope for all of us. The bible says here that God’s patience was just about warn out by Moses here and his anger burned against him, but even at that he says, and I am paraphrasing here, all right then your brother Aaron the priest can speak well and he is already on his way out to meet you. He will be happy to see you. How about if you speak to Aaron and he can speak up for you and I will help both of you speak and teach you what to do. How would that be for you? So finally after all of that Moses went down to Egypt for God.

If we jump ahead a few thousand years we can read the account of how Jesus prayed for himself and for his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke the record states that Jesus became troubled and sorrowful as he must have been contemplating his passion. He prayed three times over that if it was possible, the cup of suffering and death for the sins of all people would be taken from him, but each time he prayed that these things would unfold not according to his own will, but according to the will of God the Father.

From the gospel of John the record of Jesus’ prayers before he was betrayed states that he prayed for God’s protection and guidance of his disciples as he was not going to be able to be with them much longer. Jesus prays that God would sanctify them as he has sent them into the world, just as God had sent Jesus into the world.

So Jesus prayers are a bit different than the prayers of Abraham and Moses. Abraham negotiates with God over how many righteous people would have to be found in Sodom and Gomorrah for God to consent to spare those cities from his punishment. This was probably motivated by Abraham’s desire to save his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. In the prayers of Moses, he is alternating between bargaining with God over God telling him what he should do and say and trying to God, hey, I think you have the wrong guy here. Jesus on the other hand shared his sorrows and worries with God as he was facing his betrayal, abuse, and crucifixion. He was open and honest about his feelings, but he still prayed that events would unfold according to God’s will. Even under that burden, Jesus, prayed for his friends, his disciples. He knew that his time as true man and true God on earth was winding down, so he prayed for his followers.

We could learn a lot from the way Jesus said to pray and the way the gospels show that he prayed. Our nature is to pray for what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. God listens to our prayers. He knows what we are thinking about and worrying about, but praying to God is not like rubbing a lamp and getting a the genie to grant our wishes. God knows what we need. God also knows what his plans are for each of our lives.

I have tried praying for and working for the things that I wanted, success at work, financial security, improving my life through material things. That never worked out, I felt like I was fighting an irresistible force and getting no where fast. It did not do my marriage any good either. I started to change my life and grow in my Christian walk with Jesus, but still my pride would kind of get in the way. I figured that I could trust God with my spirit, but I should be able to take care of the everyday stuff.

This not really what God wants. He knows all about our most basic and simplest needs. He created us. He can help us with everything that we have to do in a given day if we let him. It may sound to simple and easy to lay all of your cares and worries at the feet of Jesus, but it is an amazingly uplifting experience to do just that. It is in our human nature to worry about what we are going to do tomorrow. What are we going to eat? How are we going to get that project done at work? How are we going to get ready for retirement? Are we going to be able to get ready to go back to school or find a job, or find time to take a vacation. It easy to become weighed down by all of the things that we have to worry about. But the bible tells us that we cannot add an hour to our lives by worrying about what is going to happen next. God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field, and he has plans to take care of our needs as well.

I learned about putting everything in God’s hands five or six years ago. I had a condition known as mid-face hypo-plasia, in layman’s terms I had a severe underbite where my lower jaw stuck out prominently under my top jaw. I worked with an orthodontist to straighten out me teeth and it just made it more obvious that the problem was that my top jaw was too short. I had many problems from pain in the joint to difficulty breathing through my nose and sinuses because everything was restricted. I worked and worried trying to find the right doctor’s and treatments. I talked to a regular oral surgeon and he said that my case was too severe for him to correct. He gave my wife and I a couple of different options for referrals and we prayed about it and gave the issue to God because we were getting no where with it. God lead us to a team of surgeons and orthodontists in Chicago that had an innovative way to correct the problem. After we decided to put things in God’s hands much of the weight of this burden was lifted from our hearts and minds. I would not say that it was an easy thing to get through with two operations and many weeks of care at home and trips to Chicago for check-ups, but God worked everything together for our good so that we could feel his blessings on us.

Even in the last year my wife and I have learned more about trusting in God and following his will. My job has been under threat of being out of the country for the last couple of years. Last year my brother’s daughter our niece lived with us from October to February in our little one bedroom cottage of a house. We prayed deeply and repeatedly about whether we should try to get a mortgage to buy our house out of the five year old land contract and tap into accumulated equity to add on to it. God lead us to do it, and everything came together for us to increase our living space by 50%. Since we only used a contractor to build the shell of our addition that meant we were busy working on the inside many evenings and every weekend from August through March.

That addition project effected my pastoral candidacy and ministry training and work. After days of praying about it, I decided to sit out the lay speakers training weekend to work on the house. Once we passed our final inspection we prayed to God to thank him for getting us through the project and dedicated the added rooms to God. Since April we have hosted a bible study group in our home that we would not have been able to hold without the extra space.

As the school year wound down this spring and early summer, I was praying again for God to show me what his will was for my ministry. I have had a difficult time identifying a conservative United Methodist seminary. I had not met with my candidacy mentor since November of last year. I felt like even though my heart was still burning with a call to ministry from God, I was getting no where fast. I asked God to show me his will and let me know what he wanted me to do next. Then at the end of the first week of June, I received this call out of the blue from District Superintendent Allie about an opening for a pastor. He asked if I would like to be considered for it. I said a quick prayer and said that I would. Eighteen days passed and I had not heard anything, then just when my wife and I thought that the district must have decided to follow some other plan, Dr. Allie called to offer me the appointment and gave us 48-hours to respond with our decision. That evening we took a drive through a summer thunder shower and talked and prayed and meditated on it. The three of us, God, and Jenny, and I all decided that this church is the next step for our ministry and a clear sign from God that he is guiding our growth in his ministry.

Romans 8:28 says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I have heard this verse everyday this week because it was the verse of the week at the community Vacation Bible School program in Bancroft. It is not like making a wish and having it granted when we pray to God to work things out in our lives according to his will, but I can tell you that our Father in Heaven can bless us beyond what we would even imagine if we just lay our dreams and cares in his hands.