Time and Space for Essentials RED

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephens University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt.

One of the ideas that we have been asked to focus on during this section of learning is "remember" as it relates to time and space. I believe this is one of the most important things we can do as followers and worshipers of Jesus. The reason it is so important is that we have a tendency to forget what God has done and is going to do. People in our culture seem to be driven by the question 'What have you done for me lately?' Sadly, church folks seem to ask God this question, too. When life gets difficult or we don't 'feel' God's presence or things aren't as easy as we like there is the temptation to doubt God... to doubt his love or care. There is the temptation to believe that he is distant or tending to more important things.

So, we need to remember. We need to remember what God has already done. We need to remember the new life he has given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We need to remember he has placed his Spirit in us and has provided for us a new family. We need to remember that he has promised to never leave us or forsake us. We need to remember.

This is one of the reasons that our church community receives the Eucharist every week during our worship gathering. Because we live in a culture with fleeting and flaky desires and a tendency to forget, I want our church community to be reminded what God has done. I want us to know that in a world that is constantly shifting that we can count on this one thing: God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Jesus has been and will always be there for us no matter what.

I very much look forward to our church community experiencing the season of Lent together. My hope is that we can learn how we can be intentional with time and space as a means by which we can grow in our sense of need for God and recognize areas in our lives that need changing. I hope it will be a season that we can look back upon and remember.

The Least of These

This past week's sermon was from Mat 25. Jesus speaks of judgment day when he will return and divide people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep, the righteous ones, inherit the kingdom of God while the goats are sent to the eternal fire. The difference between the two outcomes has to do with what they did or did not do. The sheep cared for the "least of these my brothers and sisters" while the goats did not. Jesus expressed that by caring for his brothers and sisters in need is the same as caring for him.

To me, this passage communicates how important it is to Jesus that we take care of our fellow brothers and sisters, especially the ones who have the greatest needs. One of the ways we serve Jesus is by serving one another.

Beck and I were discussing some of these things and she shared some of the thoughts that came to her mind as she listened to the passage being read. She told me about how she believes the Lord takes delight in seeing his people take care of his children. A parent may be grateful for receiving help or care for themselves. However, when someone helps their child it means something even more. A loving parent is more concerned about the well-being of their children than they are about themselves. If the child is sick or hurt, how grateful and thankful the parent is to the one who helped the child. Serving the child, helping the child is like serving the parent.

Jesus expresses to us that the we way we treat others is connected to the way he feels treated. The way we love and serve our brothers and sisters is linked to how we love and serve him.

This Jesus

The Jesus of the Gospels amazes me. For the past 5 weeks our church community has been looking at various parables Jesus told about the Kingdom of God. The people of Jesus’ day had certain expectations about the Kingdom and what it would look like when God would send his Messiah-Deliverer. God did send the Deliverer, but he came in a very different package than what they expected and he preached about a different kind of Kingdom. To help the people understand the nature of this Kingdom, Jesus used parables, i.e., short stories using metaphor to make a point.

One of the things I tried to focus on during the sermon series was the historical context of these stories. How did the people in that day hear and understand what Jesus was saying? How does this affect our understanding of who Jesus is and what he was communicating about his Kingdom? Catholic author, Gary Wills, writes in What Jesus Meant:

To read the gospels in the spirit with which they were written, it is not enough to ask what Jesus did or said. We must ask what Jesus meant by his strange deeds and words. He intended to reveal the Father to us, and to show us that he is the only-begotten Son of that Father. What he signified is always more challenging that we expect, outrageous, more egregious. That is why the Catholic novelist Fancois Mauriac calls him “of all the great characters history places before us, the least logical.” Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor knew this when he reproached Christ for puzzling men by being “exceptional, vague and enigmatic.”

The more I study and think about Jesus’ actions and the words he said, the greater the appreciation I have for who he was and is. How he responded to both religious and irreligious people astounds me. This Jesus of the Gospels revealed God’s love for insiders and outsiders. He honors a woman identified as someone with “questionable morals” making her out to be a hero right in front of those who saw her as a disgrace. He invited God’s chosen people to embrace what God was doing in their midst knowing full well that they were going to reject him. He graciously opened the doors wide open to the least and lost of that society making sure they knew there was a place at his table for them. This Jesus challenges and convicts me. This Jesus, I love. I want to be more like him.