Matthew 22: 36-40, 1 Thes: 4: 7b-8, October 25, 2020, Sermon

God’s Love and Change

Jim Kauth

36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt 22:36-40) 

Love God with everything that makes us who we are, love our neighbor with the same devotion and commitment we love God and love ourselves as we love our God and neighbor. 

Paul gives us a wonderful example in loving God; 

4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. 

And Paul also gives us a wonderful example in loving our neighbors 

But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. 8 So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. (1 Thes: 4, 7b-8) 

Jesus did not qualify His statement about the two greatest commandments of God. Jesus didn’t say love God, love your neighbor as yourself if it’s easy, if those around you agree with you, if no one objects, if it isn’t dangerous, if you feel like it, if you have time. No, Jesus flatly states You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. To enter into a relationship with God is to commit everything you are because God commits to you all that God is! Hear Psalm 90:

• Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
• Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
• Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
• Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands— O prosper the work of our hands!

(this last verse I misread once, I read as “let the flavor of the Lord our God be upon us – it’s not so far fetched, I like this reference to flavor. In The Message translation we hear about God colors, well, I also think we would benefit from God Flavor!!!) 

This Psalm is a lament, a plea for God to continue to care for us, this psalm is a lament with hope because God had previously proven God’s love for us, we pray for God to remember God’s commitment and love for us as God has loved us in the past. 

Now, let’s look a little closer at 1 Thessalonians. In our reading today we hear about an incident in Philippi. The crowd was worked up and went looking for Paul and Silas to have them arrested. In the Book of Acts, we also read about that same incident in more detail. Paul, Silas and others who traveled with Paul were always getting run out of town, arrested and jailed. Why? Because, what Paul was preaching pushed people out of their comfort zones. What Paul preached heralded change! 

Jesus was pursued by people who needed healing; physical, mental and spiritual healing. Jesus forgave sinners and called for a change of heart, a change of ways, otherwise known as repentance. He would say, “Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more!” Yet the Hebrew rulers - Herod, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all rejected the message of Jesus. Why? Because this message of God’s love called for change. 

People say us old folks don’t like change, it is true! But us old folks are like everyone else. None of us like change, even if change is for the better. Even when we feel we are in control of the change, we don’t like it! Change is new territory; change takes effort, energy, and change, to be permanent, takes commitment. And then there’s change where we don’t feel in control. We not only don’t like it, we don’t want it and we become hard-hearted and stiff-necked as we resist this change. Like the people in Philippi! 

For us, Disciples of Christ, we live in constant change as God perfects us, as God tempers us and makes us better tools for God’s use. As Disciples of Christ we are committed to this ever changing growth toward becoming “Christ like.” But there are times we don’t like it! Add to this continual “Christian change” we weather life’s changes. Changes that come with age, that come with retirement, that come with a new job or losing a job, that come with children being born or growing up and moving out. Then we must adjust to changes in our communities, changes in our town, our county, state, nation and most importantly in our community of faith. Many of these changes are not our doing, not our choice, but still we must adjust to these changes. 

Do we, as Christians, just get through change, just deal with change as best we can and then, at the first opportunity, revert back to our old ways? Are we like the church in Corinth? Who struggled to break their old habits, their old religious and cultural habits which allowed them to get along with others in Corinth but not to grow in Christ? Or are we like the Thessalonians who opened their hearts to the “Good News”, who learned to love as God loves, who practiced this divine love by loving their neighbors and who loved themselves as they love their neighbors. 

It is true, not all change is good for us. Paul praised the Thessalonians because they were suffering persecution and held to the truth Paul preached. Their larger community wanted to impose a change, wanted this young church to let go of the “Good News” and return to the old ways like everyone else. How did the Thessalonians recognize Paul’s preaching as good change and their persecution as an attempt to change them in a not good way? When the Thessalonians embraced the “Good News”, they were baptized, claimed by God. When they embraced the “Good News” and their baptismal commitment, they grew in Christ. When they grew in Christ they were open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit knows the difference between good change and bad change. 

How do we navigate this changing world? How do we recognize good, healthy, life affirming change? We stay connected to God! We grow in Christ! We pray continually, we hold to our baptismal commitment and we boldly preach, in words and action as we model our lives in the form of Christ to this world. We care for others as God cares for us and we care for ourselves. 

How do we care for ourselves as we care for each other and our neighbors? In addition to staying connected to God, we must allow the true story of this creation, as told in the Bible, to color and influence our culture, our society and how we see our lives. We must put our life into the Biblical story so we can put the Bible into our lives. We must live our lives in balance. You know, live a Goldie Locks life, not too hot, not too cold but just right! Now I’m not saying live life without passion like the Church in Laodicea (lay ahd ih SEE uh) neither cold nor hot as recorded in Revelation. But live a life that harmonizes with God’s desires balancing our care for others without excessive worry, giving of ourselves yet not draining ourselves, staying as physically active as we can without harming ourselves, eating healthy without letting food control us. 

In the Letter of James he says; “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” This is not just about confessing your sins so you remain humble it is also about sharing your struggles, it is about listening to our brothers and sisters attentively, this is about maintaining our mental health and validating or correcting how we see this world. Hear James; “Listen, open your ears, harness your desire to speak, and don’t get worked up into a rage so easily, my brothers and sisters. 20Human anger is a futile exercise that will never produce God’s kind of justice in this world.” These are healthy disciplines; listen attentively, guard our tongues, curb out fearful emotions. 

We must seek to accept those things we cannot change yet passionately pursue change for the benefit of our community and this world. How do we know when we can or cannot change things? Well, we come full circle, we return to our triune God, learning to love rightly and caring rightly as God loves and cares for us rightly, practicing this divine love and care with our neighbors and finally loving and caring for the most difficult person to love and care for rightly, ourselves. This is the seed of God’s justice and justice walks hand in hand with God’s peace. 

May God continue to shower grace and blessing on each of you, may you, in turn share God’s grace with others so God’s justice and peace may rest on this world like a warm and comforting blanket. Remember you are a blessing to this broken world. 

Amen. 

Philippians 4:1-9, October 11, 2020, Sermon

“Standing Firm” 

Pastor Randy Butler

Every summer when I was growing up in Sacramento we would pile in the car and drive two hours to the Sierra Nevada mountains to the family cabin near Truckee, California. As we took the exit off of Interstate 80 we started down an eight mile dirt road to the cabin. About three quarters of the way down that road, around a big wide bend, we always stopped for a view of the meadow below where you could make out the cabins and the clubhouse. Above the meadow there was a range of mountains, where the highest and most visible was Mt. Lyon, which stood against a background of blue sky as a kind of sentinel over the valley below. Mt. Lyon had always been there. It was there before I was born, it was there when I climbed its slippery rock slopes, and it will be there when I am gone. Mt. Lyon has stood without being moved for millennia, and it will likely go on in the same way, standing firm amidst all the changes around it taking place below.

The Apostle Paul is writing to the Philippians from his imprisonment and in this part of his letter he is exhorting them to stand firm: “Therefore my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved:” He is going to outline the way to stand firm. Another translation simply says, “This is how you stand firm in the Lord:”

The first key to standing firm is unity and reconciliation. Paul refers to two women who seem to be at odds – Euodia and Syntyche. And he encourages the others in the church to help them be reconciled. Reconciliation is the work of the whole church. We help each other in the work of forgiveness. And he is not judging these women. Paul recognizes that they have struggled beside him in the work of the gospel. They are his co-workers and he wants them to live in harmony because that is the way we stand firm. As Jesus said elsewhere, a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Abraham Lincoln knew the meaning of those words, when he said to a deeply divided nation, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Well, a church divided against itself cannot stand. If there is any disunity in our midst let’s work with each other to reconcile. Same is true of the larger Presbytery. And I want to take this opportunity to encourage a new and fresh relationship with the Eastern Oregon Presbytery. Many in our congregation feel hurt and neglected by our Presbytery, and that is legitimate. But a Presbytery is simply a fellowship of churches in a geographical area. There is no faceless Presbytery apart from the individual churches, pastors and elders who make up the Presbytery. We are the Presbytery. I am struck in this part of the passage that Paul names three individuals – Euodia, Syntyche and Clement, and addresses one more, one he calls his loyal companion. The Presbytery is made up of individual ruling elders and teaching elders who have other jobs and commitments, who are human beings with some faults. The Presbytery consists of living breathing human beings. It is not a faceless bureaucracy. I encourage us to move towards forgiveness of various individuals, some of whom are not even active in the Presbytery anymore, towards reconciliation and unity, so that the Eastern Oregon Presbytery stands firm with one mind in the work of the gospel in this part of the country. And we move on as a church from the past, and prepare for the future. We hope to share with you some practical ways to do this in the months ahead.

So unity is the first way we stand firm. The second is joy. Paul says, “Rejoice always, again I will say rejoice.” It’s like he is saying Rejoice always – I said it once and I’ll say it again – rejoice.” Joy is the second way we stand firm, fortified by gratitude and thanksgiving. Now this is a hard time we are going through in our nation. But there are ways to find joy even in the midst of pandemics and other challenges. We are not expected to rejoice specifically in our difficult circumstances, we are rather invited to rejoice in the Lord – whatever our circumstances. Notice how joy and gentleness and the nearness of the Lord all show up here in the same couple of lines. It’s like the Lord draws near in our joy and gentleness.

So unity and joy are two pillars of the church that stands firm. The third is peace. More specifically, the absence of worry. And again this is a worrisome time. In addition to our personal concerns there are national and international concerns that press upon us in a way they haven’t before. There is a lot to be worried about! I read a humorous re-interpretation of the famous children’s book, Goodnight Moon, recently. Do you know the book - the little rabbit who crawls under the covers to go to sleep and says goodnight to everything, “Goodnight room, goodnight moon, goodnight cow jumping over the moon.” Well the modern timely rendition shows the rabbit in bed, covers pulled up all cozy in the same way, now saying, “Good night moon, goodnight zoom, goodnight sense of impending doom.”

Paul encourages us to wrap our worry in prayer. Now Paul himself is concerned about the Philippians, even worried. In fact he says earlier in the letter that he is sending Epaphroditus to them partly so that “I may be less anxious.” That’s what he writes. So Paul is human – he knows worry. But he does not become consumed with worry. A couple of things I try to do when I am overcome with worry. First, I reduce my caffeine intake, coffee or tea consumption – some of this is very practical. I try to get some aerobic exercise, something that gets my heart going and lowers my anxiety. And I also adapt my prayer to my worry. I find it helpful to have a time of silence every day during prayer or another time. But here is what happens when I remove myself from the external noise of the world – I discover that I am very noisy inside as well. Our worry comes to the surface during the quiet of prayer. That is often why we avoid quiet prayer. We find it disturbing that here we are trying to pray and all we are doing is worrying. So what should we do? We make our current worry the subject of our prayer and give it to God in prayer. We don’t need to make a list of our worries and pray about them. Our worries show up in silence without much prompting. So if a worry arises as you pray, well that is now your prayer and petition, or supplication as Paul says, because it is in your heart and your life. That worry, right now is your life, so it might as well be your prayer. This is one way that prayer and real life connect. We don’t need to avoid worry, as if it is somehow unspiritual. We just use our worried life as the raw material for our prayer.

And when we can do that we eventually begin to experience the peace of God which guards our hearts and minds. This is not only the peace which comes from God, it is the peace of God, God’s own stillness, the very peace in which God himself reposes. Someone else calls it the tranquility of God’s own eternal being – for us and in us. The struggle of our worried prayer will finally be resolved in the peace of God.

This prayer which transforms worry, and gives peace, is yet another of the ways we stand firm. And the final pillar of the standing firm in church and life is positive influence and outlook. Paul encourages us to think about truth, honor, justice, purity, excellence and whatever is worthy of praise. This is more than just positive thinking. It is the guarding of our hearts and minds from the opposite influences. Very hard to do today. I recommend to you a Netflix documentary called the Social Dilemma. It is a very well done but disturbing piece on the effects of social media in our day. It is almost impossible to guard our hearts and minds so we have to exercise what the old desert saints called watchfulness – keeping watch over what gets inside our hearts and minds and souls, because if we aren’t careful we can be overcome by negativity about our world and ourselves.

Our translation says “Whatever is positive etc., think about these things.” Another translation says think on these things.” In other words fix our minds on whatever is true, honorable and so on. On a daily basis, what do you find your mind is fixed on? Paul encourages us to fix our minds on what can makes us stand firm as individuals and as a church.

Unity, the presence of the Lord found in joy and gentleness, giving our worry to God in prayer, and focusing on the best around us and in us not the worst. These are the pillars that fortify our lives, our congregation, our Presbytery and our world. They make us like the mountain – “Those who trust in the Lord, says the Psalmist are like Mt. Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.” This is the way to live. Amen.

Philippians 3:4b-14, October 4, 2020, Sermon

“Surpassing Value” 

Pastor Randy Butler

It is great to be proud of our achievements. Your third grade daughter does well on a spelling test. Good job! Your high school son’s football team wins the big game. Congratulations! You get a promotion at work. Way to go! You are celebrating fifty years of marriage. Wow! Fantastic. It is good to have these accomplishments and it is good to celebrate them. These things make us proud and give us confidence in life. Sometimes though, we can get carried away with our achievements. We start having notions of our own importance, the idea that we are better than others. And that of course is where the trouble is.

The apostle Paul knows this because he has experienced it. As he is writing to the Philippians he warns them to beware of those who place too much emphasis on religious rules and status like your birthright or ascetic feats – like fasting and other religious achievements and disciplines. And then he says, “Look, I was going down this same road. In fact, if anyone has reason for self-confidence and mentioning great achievements it’s me. I was proud of what I was and what I accomplished. And he names those things – his birth into the right clan and family, his symbol of inclusion – his circumcision. He points out that he is from a very prestigious tribe – the tribe of Benjamin.

This inclination to tribalism lives with us today I think. Some of us belong to this tribe and where this hat, others belong to that tribe and wear that t-shirt. We are very tribal in our day. Our identity and belonging to various groups is a big deal to us. We like to think that we are more sophisticated and civilized, but it is possible we are no different than the nomadic tribes of biblical times, raiding and killing each other out of revenge. Maybe we are really no different today than the Hatfields and McCoys were in the 1800’s.

So Paul points out his tribe, and then goes on to outline a couple of points of pride, his accomplishments. He chose to be part of that very strict and devoted party – the Pharisees. No one in that time took the fine points of the religious life more seriously. His zeal was so intense that he persecuted those who threatened their own views – these new followers of Jesus of Nazareth. And his following of the law? Well, he was blameless. But he also knew that he had been consumed with pride. He thought himself better than others.

So to be proud at times that is one thing. To be consumed with pride that is quite another. The Christian writer and thinker C.S. Lewis called pride the great sin. He suggested that pride was the source of every other vice and called pride “the complete anti-God state of mind,” “the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” And religious pride, that notion we that we are more spiritual than others, even closer to God than others, or more humble than others, that is a particularly insidious kind of pride.

I heard about a rabbi who, overcome with a sense of humility before God’s magnificent creation, threw himself down before the altar of the temple and cried, “I am nobody! I am nobody!” The worship assistant, seeing the rabbi from the rear of the temple was moved by the rabbi’s display of humility and he too joined the rabbi at the altar, “I am nobody, I am nobody!” And then the janitor, sweeping floors in the hall, heard the cries of these devout men, and he too was moved and joined them at the altar crying out, “I am nobody, I am nobody!” At which point the worship assistant turned to the rabbi and indicating the janitor said, “Look who thinks he’s nobody!”

Pride and superiority can enter just about any human action or endeavor. We are competitive, we are prideful and we want to be better than the other. But Paul made a discovery. He found something, someone, who was more valuable than all his status and achievements. He discovered what he calls the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ as his Lord. He met this Lord on his way to persecute followers of Jesus and his life was never the same. He underwent a complete realignment of his values. He once valued the prestige of his heritage and accomplishments. Now he considered those things garbage, compared to knowing Christ. He had devoted his life to less than the best, given himself to goals and purposes when compared to Jesus were nothing. In modern terms we would say he had been climbing the ladder of success only to discover that his ladder had been leaning against the wrong wall. How about you and me? Do we experience the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ?

Now in answering that question it is possible, even likely, that you haven’t had an undeniable conversion experience like Paul’s Damascus Road conversion. You may not have a sense of before and after, your life before you met Christ, your life after you met Christ. You may feel more like you live parallel lives – a life of faith in God and a life at work or in your family or among your friends. You are constantly toggling back and forth between a life of knowing Christ and the world you know at school or work or in the community. At our best we integrate the two, our Christ life with our work and family life. But often we feel a disconnect. It is hard – integrating our faith and life. So some say, “Well, that’s nice for the apostle Paul, after all he is St. Paul. It’s easier for him to place exclusive value on Christ. But I have a job, I have a family and I have other interests and other passions in life. I am not as single minded as he is.”

Well, I want to assure you that Paul himself felt this tension as well. In his letter to the Romans he confesses that he often does the very things he does not want to do, and doesn’t do what he really wants to do. In the context of our passage today we could say that he sometimes found himself valuing things he did not want to value, and was not always capable of valuing what he should. He went through this struggle himself. Public religious people experience this too. We pastors struggle with this clarification of values. It has been hard to know what is of most value in this uncertain time.

I heard a story about a mother who went upstairs to wake her son on Sunday morning. She said to him, “Get up and ready now. It’s almost time to go to church. Rise and shine!” He pulled the covers over his head, and turned away, “I don’t want to go to church today.” She said, “Come on son, we always go to church.” He answered and said, “I’m tired, I want to sleep in.” She answered, “You can sleep some other time, we are going to church today.” He bolted upright in bed and said, “Give me one good reason to go to church today.” And she said, “I will give you three reasons. First of all, it is good for you. Second, it’s a habit in our family. And third, you are the pastor.”

We all struggle with keeping our values and purposes and goals in life clear and focused. But God is calling, inviting, pursuing us, loving us. And our part is to keep moving forward. Paul, it turns out, still has ambitions. He has immense spiritual energy and vision. It is simply now channeled into life with Christ. He compares our lives to a race – a striving forward, leaning toward the finish line. He doesn’t dwell on the past – that is one of the great stumbling blocks in life. Dwelling on a negative past keeps us from looking forward. Paul has a lot of regrets but he keeps his eye on the goal ahead of him.

It may seem overwhelming this life with Christ, but we simply put one foot in front of the other in the direction of God. When Robert Scott and his crew were making their trip to the South Pole in 1912, on one occasion the weather conditions were so bad that a white haze blended with the unbroken whiteness of the snow and made the horizon invisible. There was just whiteness everywhere they looked. And so they couldn’t set their course on any tangible point. They went on and on and before long they were coming back round to their own tracks. Thinking they were going forward they were only going around in a great circle. To solve the problem they consulted their compass and began to throw snowballs ahead of themselves in the direction of true south. They would throw a snowball south, travel in that direction. When they reached that snowball they checked the compass and threw another one. That gave them something to fix their eyes on as they made their way, snowball by snowball, to the South Pole. Life can get pretty foggy sometimes, we lose sight of the horizon. It’s not winter yet, thankfully, but let’s keep throwing one snowball at time in the direction of Jesus, until we grow and become who God invites and calls us to be.