Saturday, July 13, 2013

Word & Table Pt. 2

   Jesus continues his walk to Emmaus with the two disciples. He begins to explain to them from Moses and the prophets and psalms all the things that God has done to prepare us for life. He addresses the concerns and points us to a greater understanding in the words of the good book. Reading Scripture and the sermon or message, is one way we can hear Jesus tell us what we need to know to address our needs and concerns as we walk in life.

   The worship service has two parts, the Word and Table. The Word section follows the ancient pattern that came to the early Christians from the synagogue services that they were used to. There were prayers and then reading of the selection from the scrolls, the Old Testament as they knew it and the rabbi would explain or direct them to understand what had been read to them at that time. The Word portion of worship is like that. We hear from the scripture and we receive an interpretation or explanation or direction for what to do with God's word for our lives.

   I was chatting with someone the other day who asked about the scriptures that are chosen for the worship services. I have been a lectionary preacher, one who follows the multi-denominational church common text lectionary of three year guided lessons to cover the major stories of scripture over a three year period, most of my ministry. But since coming to Liberty Grove I've gone to short series or preaching on a list of major Bible stories to cover the essential moments in Biblical formation. This summer I'm preaching on the book of John Wesley's 8 Essential Life Enriching Practices, in order to remind us of the habits we United Methodists should be following if we want to grow spiritually.

   The scripture lessons come out of the book to show us the relationship between the practices of habits we should be following and God's instructions about that. Last week we were looking at the walk to Emmaus scripture from Luke 24 because it shapes how we worship.The middle section of that story is the power of the interpretation of the Word into the concerns and the life of Jesus.

   The early Christians added to the synagogue component of weekly worship, the Table section of the Last Supper that Jesus gave his disciples in the Upper Room and commanded them to keep remembering to share this with each other. In Methodist circles John Wesley insisted that only a duly ordained clergy person could administer the sacrament in order to keep it's meaning and importance as clearly connected to Jesus as possible. In the early days of Methodism, the clergy person would have 15 to 18 churches and would only be by to offer communion once a quarter or so. We kept that pattern of quarterly communion way past the time when most United Methodist churches have a regular ordained pastor who was there each week.

   Moving to monthly communion, on the first Sunday of the month, has taken a while to be adapted as a usual practice among us. John Wesley thought it should be available every week, but he was talking about a two to three hour service each week as well, and it was possible during that time. We who are so time conscious now, can't manage a two to three hour services, so the monthly communion fits our schedule a little better.

   When Jesus finished the interpretation of the scriptures concerning his death and resurrection, the two disciples had arrived in Emmaus. They begged Jesus, the stranger still, to stay with them for dinner. He accepted. When Jesus took the bread and gave thanks and broke the bread and gave it to them, their eyes were opened and they recognized him. He immediately disappeared from their sight. Their hearts were so strangely warmed by all of this, that they knew he was risen, and they jumped up from the table and ran to share with the disciples in Jerusalem, that he was risen indeed, and they had recognized him in the breaking of the bread.

   It is my hope that every time we move toward the portion of worship that we receive the bread and the cup that our eyes will be opened to see and know that the Risen One is with us. And we should rise up from the table and be ready to share our faith in the Risen One with others too. Hopefully we see Jesus is with us when we break bread and can let that shape who we are and what we do, from then on.

   May the worship with Word & Table be a powerful tool to help you grow spiritually. You can see why this is so helpful to growing faith. Come and worship. Go find a church to share in the habit of gathering to hear God speak to you and sense his presence with you always.

Blessings on each of you

Pastor Jeff

Thursday, July 11, 2013

8 Life Enriching Practices: # 3 Word & Table

   If you want to see some progress in your spiritual life, if you would like to know that your prayers are getting through, if you would like to have the help Jesus promised for those who follow him, then you would get a lot of help in worship. The worship that focuses on presenting the story of God in Scripture and an invitation to experience real grace, love and forgiveness at the Table of the Lord.

   This Sunday I shared the story of the Road to Emmaus, which is normally read around the Easter season, because it's about Easter afternoon, when Jesus joined up with Cleopas and a second disciple on their walk home to Emmaus, a village about 7 miles away from Jerusalem. It's an awesome story because it helps us to see how and why to worship. The story is found in Luke 24: 13-35. Go read the story and come back to this blog.

   The story begins with Jesus joining up with the two who are very down trodden. I don't know if Emmaus is down the hill from Jerusalem or not, but they were down trodden from the grief of seeing Jesus nailed to the cross and the confusing rumor about his rising from the dead. That part had not yet been confirmed. So Jesus asked them what's the matter, why are you so discouraged.

   They began to pour our their heart about their concerns, about the grief they felt. They had such high hopes and the death of Jesus really put the squash on their hopes and dreams. I proceeded to invite the congregation to share why they might be discouraged. It became a sharing of concerns and prayer requests, and one of the teaching moments about asking for prayer when we worship. It's very similar to Isaiah 6:1-8, when Isaiah heads for the temple in his grief over the death of King Uzziah. He poured out his heart to God and he felt God's comfort in that place. The reassurance, the touch on his lips declaring him forgiven and his hearing the word to proclaim God's story is powerful too.

   Our worship time gives us a chance to put into God's hands the things that discourage us. We shared about a mother in the last stages of cancer, of a woman in our church who lost both father and mother within a very short time. We shared about the challenges of dealing with aging parents and the grief their dementia was giving to their children. Jesus was walking along the road with us there for sure.

   Then we began to listen to what Jesus had to say about the events of that Holy Week. He began with Moses and the prophets and the psalms to tell the story. He related the words of God in scripture to the events they were experiencing. That's what scripture can do. Relate the events, concerns, challenges we face with help from God. If there were time travel available, that's my first stop, the road to Emmaus, to hear Jesus put all the events and the scripture together about what he went through. That would be the most awesome opportunity to listen in that I can imagine.

   I'll get to the rest of the story real soon.

Our congregation serves a community meal the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month to all who come, there is a free will offering basket available, but you can eat for free. It's a good time to fellowship with others, to sit down and let someone else do the cooking, it's a way to stretch your budget, spend time with family, whatever..... Join us sometime. I need to go, the smell of tonight's soup is pulling me into the fellowship hall. I'll tell you the rest of the story soon, I promise.

Pastor Jeff

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Rachel Held Evans has some thought provoking things to say

I would like you to go to Rachel's blog for a moment and think about what she has to say on our picking which people and sins we like to clobber with spiritual and scriptural verses.

rachelheldevans.com/blog/

I would also like to say she missed a really big set of clobber verses, you can't jump on them all or we will be at the bottom of a landslide, but she missed the clobber verses, which are numerous, on the lack of tithing by God's people. This is called ganging up or pilling on.... and I try to be more gracious and patient and understanding of the challenges of living today.

So I hope you go read Rachel's blog. She has thoughtful things to say. We don't always agree completely, but that is one of the unique and powerful gifts being a John Wesley follower gives us, we can be accommodating and respectful with a difference of opinion when we need to be. With charity/love towards all, if your heart is with my heart, lend me your hand. John would say.

Blessings on your exploring and thinking.

I'll have more to say about our series of sermons later.

Pastor Jeff

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Life Enriching Practices # 2 Reading Scripture

   I promised resources to help you with your reading the scripture devotionally as you develop habits that will help you grow spiritually. So here are a few I mentioned in the sermon, plus a few others that I hope you will find helpful.

   If you Google Bible Reading Plans or in Bing you will get pages of them, you can pick any number of good ones that are there. The one I use is from You Version (www.youversion.com) it has several reading plans based on what you are looking for and you can select the version of the Bible you want to read that in. The One Year Bible can come in King James, or New Living Translation for instance.

   you can also go to Bible.org, or BibleStudyTools.com, or one of my favorite resources for Bible study material is Biblegateway.com. There is also a great resource now called Glo Bible that can come as an app for your tablet or iPhone as well as a home computer version. It features pictures, maps, videos, and all kinds of charts for learning more about the area or the time of the story in Scripture.

   John Wesley was really concerned that we hear what the Bible says to us to help make a real difference on our discipleship. He wanted us to really focus on questions that would allow us to explore and understand the message from God to us and our circumstances. He tells us to pray before we read, that the Holy Spirit would speak to us in the reading and pray afterwards, that we might apply what we have learned. Jesus taught us that in the Upper Room, that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher and help us to remember what Jesus had taught us.

   The questions he would suggest to us are these. "What is God saying to you in this passage?"  "What in your reading seems especially striking? Comforting? Challenging? or convicting?  What implications does this have for how we live? our values? our commitments?, our relationships? or our activities?"

   Another way to look at it is to ask, "What does this passage tells us about God? What does this passage tell us about ourselves? What does this passage tell us about our relationship to God and to each other? What sins are we to avoid? What commands are we to obey?  As St. Paul wrote to his protege Timothy in 2 Tim 3: 14-17  This passage we are reading has teachings for us,  rebuking some activities, correcting some ideas or thoughts, and training for how we can grow spiritually. Asking ourselves these questions in the passage or section we are reading will help us begin to make the connection between the message and our lives.?

   Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church and the author of the Purpose Driven Life teaches us about questions we could ask when we read as well. He always comes up with acrostics to help us remember the questions. He uses SPACEPETS in this case.
   S - sins to confess
   P - promises to claim
   A - attitudes to change
   C - commands to obey
   E - examples to follow
   P - prayer to pray
   E - error to avoid
   T - truth to believe
   S - something to praise God for

   Any of these ideas will give you something to work on that will help to place the Bible and God's direction into your life, you thoughts, your habits, your attitudes, and will help you to become more Christ like in every aspect. That is the main goal anyway, isn't it?

   I know that the Bible can be a daunting and overwhelming challenge at times, and we are trying to make it more accessible to you. Find a One Year Bible in your local bookstore or order it online from AMAZON or others. Find a translation/version that you are comfortable with and understand the words it uses. Decide you are going to take a few minutes each day to spend time with God. As we talked about last week, prayer is a two way conversation. We find it easy to tell God what we want, reading the Bible is God's way of telling us the answers to our questions or telling us what God wants in this relationship.

   May God help you find some exciting insights and revelations in your reading journey. And if you have questions don't hesitate to comment here or send me a question by email. (macpastor@gmail.com)

   Blessings

Pastor Jeff