SCRIPTURE:1 Corinthians 7:29-31
TEXT: 29aI mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; 31bFor the present form of this world is passing away. THEME: Christ’s Aloha shifts us to live in God’s way. INTRODUCTION The culture in Hawaii is changing, its losing its local people and its Aloha Spirit. Its people are not able to afford to live in their home, so some have taken their families for opportunities on the Mainland. The writing of Paul, to the church in Corinth seem to be addressing a change to their culture with the concept of Christ’s love or aloha. Their lives are being changed by the concepts of grace, forgiveness, adoption, inclusion, and an acculturation with Christ’s love into their lives. Here in Hawaii, I like to call our version of acculturating the Love of Christ into our lives as ‘Christ’s Aloha.’ Taking the concept of Aloha and using Christ as its descriptor. The Corinthian lectionary themes can be seen as; Christ’s Aloha-Hanai, Christ’s Aloha-Church, Christ’s Aloha Body, Christ’s Aloha Change, Practice Christ’s Aloha, Live Christ’s Aloha, and Shine Christ's Aloha. We have Aloha as part of our culture, what we learn about Christ informs our Aloha and what we learn about Aloha informs our understanding of Christ. SCRIPTURE 1 Corinthians 7 identifies the age we are living in as the ‘last days’, because Christ has come into our world and now God rules. This ends the present age and begins something new, the reign of God. This theological perspective is called; ‘A Realized Eschatology’ (or last days) where the Kingdom of God is already (realized) present among us. This is why we say the eternal life God makes possible in Christ begins now, and not just after we die. This gets unfolded in the 5 focuses Paul highlights for change in this text; wives, mourning, rejoicing, buying and the world. Instead of our wife being the mission of a husband, we can have our spouse as a partner participating in the mission of God, as best we can discern, as God’s call of us. Instead of living until we die, we can begin to live our resurrected lives now. Living life without the fear of death and with courage instead of self-preservation. We can shift our focus from those things that make us happy towards those things that bring us joy. Eating bread with butter is a happy place for me, but it is short lived and filled with regret when I step on a scale, but the joy I have eating together with family/friend is long lasting and I will forgo dietary restrictions to spend time with them with no regrets. Instead of our self-worth coming from the things that we have or from the approval from the dominate culture we can have confidence in God’s acceptance of us and our belonging to the family of God. Christ’s Aloha forgives so nothing can separate us from God. One day Jann and I were walking through Target, we were holding hands as some married couples do, when a person saw us and had to give their approval of what we were doing adding that her husband wouldn’t do that and was someplace else in the store. (I was a little taken aback, thinking that she felt it was her place to give approval to our holding of hands). On another day, going through TSA precheck line, I went on ahead to blaze the trail for Jann and Samm to follow. In the gap between us, two people jumped in behind me. The Asian person stopped and bowed and readied herself to let my party catch up with me, while the other person intervened, gave permission to her to cut in front of me, as she also let herself go ahead. I told these two stories to illustrate how our actions and opinions can be condescending without knowing it when we are not considerate of other people’s stories. In the dealings of the world, we have a choice to pursue power to do what is good for us or love, to do what is good for others. The opposite of power is seen on the cross as Jesus give up all power, being able to call angels from heaven, to be all loving, by submitting to dying on the cross for love of us. Power gets people to do what we want, while love seeks to do what is best for someone else. Christ’s Aloha takes those things that are important to us and gives us a new perspective of their priorities, and what may be similar but of more importance and value to us and to others. APPLICATION How does Christ’s Aloha change things for us? One person can make a difference and change a church or community. I’ve been watching old episodes of Northern Exposure where young doctor Joel Fleischman finds himself paying off a scholarship obligation by being a doctor to a small town of Cicely Alaska. In a town made up of a host of characters he adds his own touches that enriches this community as well as being changed by these people. Two more stories. Last week as we made our way to Honolulu for a Dr’s Appointment, our flight was delayed. As we waited, we ate food we bought from 7/11, except I didn’t pack any napkins. When I volunteered to go get some, the local person sitting next to Jann said, “I have some in my package, I didn’t use them, here you can have them.” That is the Aloha Spirit that we have in Hawaii that we need to practice and teach other. She wasn’t ease dropping but she was observant and was willing to share what she had with us. Later when we boarded the plane, her seat was right behind Jann’s and said hello one more time. We live in a small world. The other story was in the Dr.’s office. As we entered was a sign that asked everyone to wear a mask while waiting. As we entered, everyone was complying with this except for an elderly couple who looked like Kamaaina’s but acted like Malihini’s and didn’t wear a mask. Although they obviously lived in Hawaii for a long time, they haven’t acculturated or exhibited the Aloha spirit towards the others in the room or towards the Dr’s staff. Our freedom gives us the power to consider Christ’s Aloha towards others over our own personal rights. CONCLUSION Pidgin English was needed for the cultural groups who lived in the Plantation Camps to communicate among each other. A little bit of Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, broken English and of course all of the ethnic names of the foods they ate. But without the plantation that mashed our cultures together and kept us local, we now have to learn to speak to the guest in Hotels, our Pidgin English may fade in a few generations, because ‘no need ‘em for talk to each other anymore.’ Language picks up the values of a community in the words its speaks; Pake, Lolo, momonas, bombucha, Bagoon, Patelle, baboose, Ohana, and Aloha. The Aloha Spirit is about being observant and considerate of others. It changes the way we live. It changes the community we live it. It can change an awful situation to a bearable one with compassion. It is willing to be generous and help someone in a loving way. When this loving Spirit is coupled with the love of Christ it matures, evolves, and becomes even more provocative as Christ’s Aloha.
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SCRIPTURE: Ephesians 3:1-2
TEXT: 10so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. THEME: Christ’s inclusion of all changes community of faith with rich variety. INTRODUCTION The season of Epiphany is one of enlightenment and lights. Those who studied the stars in the East mark their arrival at the birth of Christ. During this season we will be looking at the changes the birth of Christ brings to our understanding of God, our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of how we relate to others. We will be using the wisdom found the Epistles to unfold the depths of its meaning for our world. Jesus shows us that we have free access to God through prayer. We can talk to God without having a priest intercede for us. Prayer is not just for making requests, but for dwelling with God, to be in conversation with God, for us to be heard and for us to hear God’s perspective and and insight, that can strength, further our resolve and inspire our living. We will being using the lectionary readings from the Psalms as our Call to Worship. Kealahou, who will be filling in for me next week, did this as he created the Worship Bulletin for next Sunday, so I did some reverse engineering and decided to follow suit, by working the Psalms into our up and coming Call to Worships. To emphasize prayer during Epiphany, we will also be singing “Somebody Prayed for Me”. As we get into this song, feel inspired to write additional verses that we can sing together. When Jesus comes, he comes for all people, Jews and Gentiles. The Jewish way of viewing the world was in term of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Either you are a ‘us’ a Jew or you are a ‘them’ a Gentile Unfortunately this sometimes causes those of faith to be arrogant and judgmental. It was not a nice way to live out their distinctiveness as being God’s people. The wall that separated Jews from Gentiles is taken down in Christ’s creation of a new humanity. The new community of faith is blended together with stories of God’s grace. It is a collaboration of those who are Jewish and those who know God through Jesus. This is a radical idea. Imagine them having to rethink the theologies handed down to them, because of the grace displayed through Jesus’ love and life. This lends itself to the building of an inclusive community of faith, of which Paul finds himself called to be part of its building. SCRIPTURE Paul’s dedication to what he learned about God through Jesus changes this perceptions on faith. He used to think, “Who can forgive sin but only God. So when Jesus proclaimed ‘your sins are forgiven’ it rub him the wrong way. What an arrogant claim for anyone to make. Who does this Jesus think he is. Only God can forgive sin…unless Jesus is God. Then bam, bright light, knocked off the horse, blinded and the voice of the resurrected Jesus calling to him. Paul had a paradigm shift where he equated Jesus with God and everything made sense in a new way. Relationship with God is not only for the Jews (the ancestor of Abraham and Sarah), but for everyone. The prejudice he carried for Gentiles (those who were not Jews) was wrong and arrogant. This grace makes Paul passionate about bringing the Good News of Jesus to the Gentiles so they don’t fall under the same yolk of the Law that he was under and for them to share in the relationship he has with God as parent through Jesus. The Good News is found in the mystery of Christ which is all about the gift of grace for everyone. This Boundless riches of Christ brings a rich variety to the church. More than what Judaism could contain on its own. The church has its roots in Judaism, with the revelation of Christ, gifted with God’s grace and rich variety by all who come to make up the church. APPLICATION What are the characteristics and practices of an inclusive-collaborative community? What is being described in Ephesians is an inclusive community of faith, rising from its foundation in Judaism but having ability to accept anyone, no matter what their ancestral background might be. Living gracefully, the church is a community of those who have come to have faith in God and find grace together through the mystery of Christ. This brings a rich variety that includes different cultures, traditions, habits, practices, races and experiences. God is not limited to one people, but open to the experiences, insights and values that have influenced, molded and made them into who they are. As with anything, they need to be discerned, adapted, included or left behind. This is true with the church, one new member can changes the church with who they are, the gifts they share, their faith, love, grace, experiences and the needs that they have. This means that the church is always changing. There is a rich variety, that confirms the diversity of God’s love. This is harder on us, who like things to be the same. We evolve to a point where we have a standard to keep but a pandemic happens, the county fair stops, the flow of income changes and the cost of living increases. Our mode of operation is to dominate, to over power and have our way. But the way of Christ is to acknowledge the richness in diversity and then to work collaboratively; Judaism and Christ create the church. The church has evolved from Catholicism, to Protestantism, and Charismatic-ism and is moving into ‘what next'? When we moved from a chaplaincy model of the church towards being missional, it wasn’t because we were doing church wrong all of those years, it meant that the mission of the church was moving and we needed to shift gears with it. Sometimes it takes someone from here to go away and come back to notice the change in our demographics. We are a lot less local on Maui. And there is a lot less ‘Aloha’. Our brand of Christianity is very special, because of ‘aloha’. It can be lost if we don’t teach and practice it, not only to the next generation, but to those who have moved here from someplace else, who now call Hawaii their home. Can you imagine such a person moving to Molokai and wanting to change a Molokai Market to be like the grocery store they left on the Mainland. Moving into the new, there is a bit of letting go and a collaborative work of building something that holds our shared values together. Part of the flavor of our church is a little bit of many cultures. We don’t try to dominate but appreciate the diversity and blend, the fusion and collaboration into something special. But don’t stop there. God is on the move to the next and the new version of the people of God and the church. We have progressed and established ourselves, but what we have built is struggling to sustain itself today. Groaning to move into something new. Diverse collaboration blended we need to teach our values, life style to the new comers and the next generation so they can take what is special about us, into the future. This could be what our country is going through in trying to preserve the status quo, instead of changing into something more collaborative, blended and diverse. If we are not careful, we will be sacrificing our values and distinctiveness instead of embedding them into the future. CONCLUSION Paul learned about the Aloha of God, realizing that what he thought was too small. We need to teach ‘Aloha in Christ’ to everyone. A Hawaiian Style of being a Christian. If we teach our way of loving and worshiping God to others, then it won’t be lost to the future but it will finds its place, incarnated, in the next generation and the next evolution of the church |
Pastor robbSermons Archives
April 2024
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