SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians
TEXT: THEME: INTRODUCTION At Fuller Seminary, one of my professors believed that God’s motivation for doing all that God does is glory; to attribute renown, honor, high achievement, magnificence, great beauty to God’s self. He argued that we wouldn’t know how great God’s love for us was without the creation of evil. Sort of like the argument that we can’t know what ‘Good’ is without ‘Evil’. This would make God a glory egomaniac in my mind. This was one of the theological theories from seminary that I set aside. From today’s reading I would say Our relationship with God reveals God’s glory. Adam and Eve reveal God as Creator and steward of the earth. The relationship that Abraham and Sara have with God reveals a God of promise, future, hope and commitment to work with us. Our doubts and wrong actions don’t disqualify us from God’s love or promises. The relationship of Moses and the X-slaves with God, reveals God’s glory in being more powerful than any earthy ruler, as deliverer and liberator of the enslaved and transformer of lives in the wilderness. Then in the relationship of Jesus with the Disciples, reveals God’s love being more powerful than any force that is out there even death. God is not the great judge out to get us, but rather a loving parent, friend, helper, co- creator, steward, nurturer and Savior. With these relationships we can see Degrees of Glory, to further degrees of glory. Each relationship reveals something else about God. What this means is that some former version of glory needs to be set aside for another degree of God’s glory to be lived by us. This brings us to Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth. SCRIPTURE As Paul discusses the church, with its variety of members and abilities, he also begins a hint of leaving perishable ways of living aside, for the imperishable ways of living. Shifting our focus off from the cross and onto the resurrection helps us to make this transition. To live not as people who have achieved salvation, but to live as people in relationship with God and with a new reality, not motivated by the fear of dying but of being loved by God and loving others. Paul takes this concept a little further in the letter to the Corinthians as he talks about glory. The church in Corinth is relatively new and yet its members have brought with them an assortment of glory into the church. What they have experienced and know about God should give them a boldness in living for God, but in order to do that, they have to be willing to let go of some of the Glories of the past. Paul reminds them of the story of Moses. Meeting God face to face and receiving the 10 commandments. As Moses leaves the presence of God, his face glows with the brilliant of the sun. So much so, it was impossible for people to look upon him. So, he Macgyvered a veil to cover his face. But after the glow had faded, he continued to wear veil, pretending to have the glow of being in God’s presence continue. God had moved on to something else, but he wanted to baste in a past glory. In one sense, Moses misrepresented God and kept the people of God stuck in one degree of glory longer than they had to be. Paul describes this as Moses ‘keeping the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.’ (13) We are not to use cunning or trickery when it comes to being prophets of God’s truth. Our job is to be faithful witnesses of God. Even if we don’t agree with God, or if we don’t understand what God is doing. We don’t get to say what we want, or what people want to hear. Our job is to speak the word of God. It is easy enough for us to get stuck; stuck on the 10 commandments, and stuck on dietary foods, stuck on sacrifices for salvation, stuck on how we have come to believe, unwilling to let go of Mr. Okada’s Sunday school lessons for what the Bible is saying today. Can we put aside our focus on the cross for salvation, to focus on God’s loving mercy found in the resurrection? APPLICATION When our actions, aligned with God’s ways, we have a bold Hope. We want God to be the same through the ages, but what if it our understanding of God changes through the ages. Those relationships with God, with those understandings are of one kind of glory while when we learn something new or understand things from a different perspective are of another glory. It is not that we are abandoning the faith but building upon our spiritual heritage. In recent history we have changed our views on slavery, the ordination of women, white supremacy, same sex marriage, homosexuality, the ordination of LGBTQ? We are not protecting our salvation on the cross, we are living into the resurrection. How do we set aside one glory for the mercy God is bringing today? The church is changing. The Pandemic has accelerated the change that was already taking place. At yesterday’s Leadership Event, put on by our Hawaii Conference, it created a forum for us to talk about the church, the pandemic and the future. Going back to the glory days of the church is not an option. God has moved from there in much the same way, the worship of God moved from a mountain to a tent, from a tent to the temple, from the temple to the church. And today from the church into a coffee house, bar, an upper room, pizza parlor, laundromat, food pantry, choir, bible study, and small group. Today God is moving the church to where the people are. if we can’t see the end of one glory, we won’t be willing to move on to another. We don’t know what the future of the church will be like. Some churches in our Conference are bemoaning the fact that although they have been having in person service, their congregants prefer staying at home and watching the service in their pajamas, on their couch or at another time. We could be critical of such people, or just be glad that they are worshiping with us. To set aside the glory of how the church once was and to accept that this is the new church that is being formed and to move into what do we do to be loving in this setting and foster our people into a loving community of faith. CONCLUSION This week as I tried to stop weeds from replicating themselves by not allowing their genetic programing to drop into the soil and resurrect as a plant, I listened to the most recent pod cast from Krista Tippet’s on Being as I weeded. She interviewed Gal Beckerman. He is a senior editor for books at the Atlantic. He said that before the internet, the way people would create a change in society, would be to engage them in conversation. Often times by forming petition and in explaining what the petition was about, engaging them in a conversation and ending with a signature. This also was done through letter writing, which reminded me of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth. It may very well have been several letters written to the churches in that area. Engaging this church community in this conversation of what it means to be the church, as the people of God. This format later moved to a person on a bull horn. Laying the groundwork for a change in a society against common morays that continued an inequality for a segment of the population and serving the interest of a few. These ideas were embedded for years before they began to get traction Beckerman said, “People can’t move into a new reality if they can’t imagine it.” When we stop imagining, we stop. We get stuck, but as we let our imaginations think “what if…” then it gives our faith room to set aside a past glory for a new glory that God is unfolding for our future.
0 Comments
SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
TEXT: THEME: The essence of who we are passes from this life into the imperishable. INTRODUCTION Paul began his letter to the church in Corinth about how diverse the members of the church are compared to Judaism; He also described the variety of ways we all have a part in the church and the gifts of God’s Spirit that enable us to do different things. We need to recognize and appreciate each other, treating everyone with respect. Being loving is the key for the church to participate in the continuing mission of God. God is building upon the spiritual heritage of the past. A key component to this is to live as resurrected people. This shifts our focus off of the cross and on to the resurrection. When our focus is on the cross, we are concerned about our salvation. We are balancing our sin with forgiveness to keep us in God’s good graces and merit eternal life. Sometimes it causes those who live their faith this way to feel righteous in what they do over how other have come to live their faith. I had lunch with a friend who ate only Kosher foods. He took pride in how he followed those dietary rules of the Bible and boasted that if Jesus were to come again and were on Maui that his house would be the only place that Jesus could eat properly prepared foods. So, what if God’s good grace was more abundant and generously distributed than we imagined and even covered all of the foods that we eat. Imagine Jesus’ death on the cross, sacrificial, but not as a sacrifice to settle our sin debt with God, because there is no such thing, but as a consequence of not forgoing love for us, that spurs him on to teach, heal, proclaim and minister, instead of Self-preservation. And that the focal point of the resurrection is the key for our living as Christians. The Architects of this sanctuary had this in mind as the central figure of the stained-glass windows point to the risen Christ at the empty tomb. The original cross of this building was 2 1/2 feet tall, before it was replaced in the 70’s with an 8-foot cross. With this, we continue with what Paul has to say about living as people of the resurrection, instead of people who are trying to save their lives through forgiveness paid for on the cross. SCRIPTURE “How does the resurrection take place?” A legitimate question. But when we don’t know the science behind it, we hate questions we don’t have answers for. So, what do when we are asked such a question? We make the inquisitor the problem. There may not be any stupid questions, but Paul calls those who pose such a question “Fools!” It has something to do with when we die and the perishable being raised imperishable. This is God’s doing. Last week I used the illustration of the caterpillar and the butterfly. I cannot explain to you what happens in the chrysalis other than telling you that the caterpillar creates this around itself (again I don’t know how it does this) and a transformation takes place while in there, for a butterfly to emerge. Paul uses the illustration of the seed to explain the resurrection. A plant produces a flower that yields a seed. Contained in that seed is all of the DNA instructions, its assignments, its genetic information, its programing, its essence, its spirit, its soul to be buried in the ground and germinate into a new body of its own. The essence, spirit and soul in our perishable body is buried and resurrected and our essence, spirit and soul inherit an imperishable, heavenly, powerful body. This is what God does. This is how we get butterflies and how seeds grow into plants. APPLICATION Our spirit breeches earth and heaven, alive in these bodies and in resurrected ones in heaven. Our souls breech our humanity into resurrection. Our personalities breach the physical body into our heavenly bodies. How does our focus on the resurrection change the way we live today? We live with a new reality that Jesus initiates through his own resurrection, that our spirits pass through these amazing bodies, when they are unable to keep on living and our essence continue in bodies raised in glory. Death is not a finality but has become a departure. Our essence, spirit, personality, persona, humor, soul is planted and alive in a heavenly body. What is a soul? I don’t know how to explain what a soul is, except in this way. Our copyright permission is given through a company called CCLI, you can select a song, and if you don’t know what it sounds like, there is a feature that plays the melody line, technically accurate in pitch and timing but robotic, as if played on a toy piano. It lacks soul, feeling, passion and an interpretation of the music. It is our soul that brings music to life and makes our life a unique expression. This part of us, is given a new body when the one we are wearing reaches its limit. Other Parts of our spirit are humor, compassion, caring, kindness and are lived in relationship with each other and God. These are lived now and don’t go away in the resurrection. God has these characteristics, why shouldn’t we expect our selves to, in God’s glory? We don’t have to wait until we die to begin to be transformed by the resurrection. The nature of our resurrected life is in relationship. We can do the work of reconciliation now, we can engage in the work of justice, equality, and human rights as we move from being self-centered towards loving others. Respect, appreciation, love, healing, caring, sharing and stewardship are practices in this life transformed by Jesus love in the resurrection. The work of liberation, freedom, evolving society, and building better communities is the work of resurrected people living their lives now. We create, imagine, work, play and worship together. CONCLUSION When we focus on the cross our scope is very narrow if it is only for the payment of our sins. But when we see the love of Christ that leads up to such a tragic event, then we see our inspirations for living transformed lives in the resurrection. In doing the research for this sermon I read an interview by Walter Brueggeman and a blog post by Marcus Borg. They both traced their words for compassion or mercy from the Hebrew word that means womb. Being nurtured in the loving, life giving womb of a mother we are transformed to live resurrected lives, giving oneself away for the sake of neighbors. SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
TEXT: 20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died THEME: The reality of the Resurrection moves us into living in new ways. INTRODUCTION So far in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, there are a variety of people; Gentiles and Jews who make up the people of God. This means that there are varieties of culture, habits, practices, styles, values, understanding, perceptions and ways of believing and expressions that are all right. We don’t have to conform to be one way but can use our creativity, and imagination to express our faith. Through the Holy Spirit there are a variety of gifts for varieties of services. We all have something valuable and different to contribute to the work of God in our world and our life together. We are all special to God, and love God and each other, in our own unique and precious way. We all have a different relationship with God and with each other. We all have our own stories and adventures of faith with God to tell. So, in the new reality of resurrection from the dead, we all have a variety of ways to live our resurrection lives. SCRIPTURE This part of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth is a “We are to be pitted” Sandwich. The bread on the top is “If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? “With the bottom slice being “20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” The filling in between is “if there is no resurrection then Christ is not raised, If Christ is not raised then what we proclaim is in vain, if our faith is in vain then we have misrepresented God. If Christ is not raised, then the dead are not raised. If the dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised. If Christ is not raised then our faith is futile and our sins remain and the dead in Christ are dead, and we are to be pitted.” A pity sandwich. The second coming of Christ is taking longer than anticipated. Some of the faithful in Corinth have died, leaving them to wonder, with doubt and in need of an explanation. Paul’s theological hope is hinged on one solitary unseen, Christ is risen from the dead. APPLICATION The resurrection of Jesus creates a new reality for us in death. Our bodies reach a time when they can no longer keep living but we are raised imperishable. The resurrection reframes the way we look at our past, our present and our future. The resurrection creates a new way for us to think, a new way for us to be, a new way for us to understand who we are and what is important. The resurrection creates a new way for us to live as our future hope informs how we are living today. How do we manifest the resurrection in our lives? Think about it, Jesus was not trying to do Judaism better, but builds upon this foundation to create something new. This is where we begin to realize something new. We are good at preserving what we have. We like to keep thing the same. It gives us a sense of roots, and security and stability. We spend a lot of our time trying to recreate the golden glory days of our past. Almost like in the same way we want to return to our youthfulness. But what if God is calling us to move beyond the past and towards something new? Building on the foundation of the past, not trying to reduplicate it, but to create something with new imagination and vitality. From the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve inhabited the world. From the Homeland of Ur Abraham and Sara travel to the Promised land and establishment of a nation. From the threat of demise in Canaan the Holy family flourished in Egypt. From bondage of Egypt the people of God rediscovered their God and identity in the wilderness. From their captivity in Babylon Israel reestablished themselves in Judea to receive the Christ and a faith beyond the ruins of the temple. When does our resurrected life begin? We used to think that we have to wait until we died to begin to live our resurrected lives. Then maybe with forgiveness of sin we would be granted salvation and welcomed into heaven. This is dead talk. That is living as if the resurrection didn’t take place. That is if Christ was not raised from the dead then we are dead kind of talk. If when we die, we are given a resurrected body made of the imperishable stuff and are welcomed into eternal fellowship with God and the rest of the citizens of Heaven, because Christ is risen from the dead. Then Maybe we don’t have to wait for us to die before we begin to live forever. The relationship we have with God today, through Jesus, has eternal consequences. God’s grace is for us to use today, right now. Imagine being loved so profoundly by God that nothing we do could ever disqualify us from a relationship with God. This would move us away from an accounting of sin and debts to living into a deepening, relationship with God. We need only imagine ways of expressing our faith, listen to what God is calling us participate in, use the variety of gifts and talents God enriches our lives with to build and complete this church to love our neighbors. When the focus of our faith is on the resurrection, it takes the focus off of ourselves and our deficits of sin and frees us to focus our faith on living. When we focus on our sin, all we do is think about how to escape death. but when we focus on the resurrection, we can imagine the possibilities of living in relationship with God and others in loving communities. For a long time, the church has beckoned people to come inside, there is a shift where the church is taking to the streets and is going to where our neighbors are instead. One way has been by being on the internet. Iao UCC has been active during the pandemic with food distributions, PPE kits, having meals available, setting up a vaccination clinic and more. We continue to distribute food at our Food Pantry and continue the work to develop 48 affordable rental units on the Mission Grounds with our partners from the County, State, Community, EAH, consultant Hoku’Iwa, and developer PBR. We have had to form a relationship with a Law firm to help us navigate the legal challenges and we are continuing to look for an accountant to shore up our financial practices. In every relationship we enter into, we witness to the God who loves us and loves them. We are on our best behavior, showing diligence, hard work, respect and moving towards sharing God’s love in this way, through these relationships. CONCLUSION The certainty of resurrection gives us a confidence in living that helps us to take the focus off of our self-preservation and place our focus upon God and others. Love, mission, relationships become important elements in our lives. Helping our neighbor is part of this. I am running through my yard trying to keep my weeds out of my neighbor’s yards. Last night one of my neighbors had a loud yelling argument. I wasn’t going to go over to intervene, but I prayed for them. Last week a friend from the mainland called about a couple of parishioners he has who were vacationing here on Maui. Something happened that they needed help. So, I called them, let them know I was available to help, texted them a prayer and recommended a vendor who could help them. Maybe living a life with the certainty of the resurrection is like retirement. We can put aside one aspect of our lives and find that we now of the opportunity to be creative and imaginative in living in another way, not that I would know anything about retirement, but so I imagine. There are varieties of ways for us to live our lives today with the certainty of the resurrection. SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 5: 1-11
TEXT: 3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. THEME: We all have stories with God to tell. INTRODUCTION During the season of Epiphany, the sermon series has been on Variety: The Variety of Members: Jews and Gentiles, the Varieties of Services: with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the parts of the Body of Christ, we need love to treat each other with respect and appreciation. The Variety of Love: desiring the very best in Christ Jesus for each other. And today the Variety of Stories, of ways we have come to faith. We all have stories of pastries that we like to share. Someone told Jann and I about this shop that opened in Kahului that makes malasadas better than Zippy’s and Homemade Bakery. What? She decided to share her new find with us. She said that the malasadas have a hint of lemon flavor just like how her grandmother used to make them. I was sold. I have a few things that are greater than my restrictive no carb diet and malasada’s on Fat Tuesday is one of them. Sooo. Off we went. Sugar Beach Bakery is alongside of Ulu Lani Shaved Ice close to Safeway. They are only open in the mornings from 6 to noon. After our five-dollar shopping at Safeway we turned towards Sugar Beach Bakery. As we got out of the car, a stranger standing outside of her car asked if we were going to the bakery. She was eating a bacon cheddar and chive scone as she said “This is so good! They warmed it for me.” I said it would be good with coffee. She said that is how she ate her first, blue berry scone. This was her second. When we discover good pastry, we don’t keep that information to ourselves, we even share it with strangers. This is ‘pastry-evangelism’. This is what Paul does with the Good News of Jesus, he shares it. SCRIPTURE In this passage there are several stories of how people have come to faith in Jesus and relationship with God. The first story is that Paul proclaiming a convincing truth that the Corinth congregation. Paul is sharing from his experience. His experience changed the way that he understood the scriptures. His new understanding of Jesus as the Christ is consistent with the scriptures that he once understood in another way, as well as discovering other scriptures that seem to have been invisible before. He now believes the stories of first-generation witnesses of a resurrected Jesus. He believes the critical mass stories of believers who had the same experience of the resurrected Jesus, all at the same place and at the same time. He also believes the resurrected Jesus also appeared to other believers and apostles. So, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, it pulled all of those previously deniable testimonies as credible. All of these stories became undeniable accounts of the risen Lord. For believers there have been many different stories that have led them to faith. APPLICATION The Bible is a collection of people’s stories with God. Our church is filled with the stories of people’s lives with God. What stories has God given us to share, to touch the hearts of others so they can believe? We come to Christ in many different ways: Sunday school, adversity, answered prayer, loving family, irrefutable argument, good preaching, faith experiences, a community of faith, the conviction of people of faith…all of these are legitimate stories of faith. When I went to College, I became a religious studies major. There were courses on Zen Buddhism, Chinese religion, a survey of world religions, and the professors were very astute to an array of beliefs, yet every one of these professors were Christians, with a couple them serving as UCC pastors. This helped me shore up my faith when I had doubts. Scripture gives us insights into the heart of God. Again, it was at college when my collegians would ask me where I found my theological beliefs in the Bible. Often time I just picked stuff up people told me without cross referencing it with passages of scripture. Such as ‘God helps those who help themselves’. That’s not found in the Bible. We had the same experience when we were going through the New Creation Initiative. We would read the Bible and discover what it said and then be challenged to change our lives by what the scriptures said. I listened to an On Being Pod cast this week, where Krista Tippett interviewed Trabian Shorters, He talked about building community with stories of “Asset Framing” instead of “problem framing”. This is looking at the assets of people first, rather than seeing them as problems that need to be fixed. Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that the way we were taught we share Christianity? First by seeing people as the problem or sinners and the by introducing salvation by believing in Jesus who died as a payment for your sins. Maybe we should introduce them first as good pastry and then identify the challenges in their lives and not the other way around. We can change the church community by approaching people as assets rather than sinners. This is more of the approach God has, loving the world so much that we are given God’s very best, in Jesus. (Jn3:16) Then imagine the stories what we tell each other about how God had become real to us; because of love, because of acceptance, because of caring, because of prayer, because of healing. Imagine a church who is willing to give up a parcel of land to the community to use for Affordable Housing, because they want to do something loving for their good neighbors, so that those born and raised on Maui could have an opportunity to raise their families here. That is good pastry. A church who loves their community so much because God loves them. CONCLUSION Evangelism comes from the Greek words ‘Eu’ which means ‘good’ and ‘angel’ which means ‘messenger’. Putting them together it is sharing the good news or witnessing. So, we took a box of malasadas home, with and assortment of scones. We had different flavors and fillings, and some were hits while others were misses. But the sugar, malasada, blue berry scone and bacon cheddar and chive scone were winners. Share your stories of Jesus with others, not as ways to fix someone’s life, but as a story of where to find good pastry. |
Pastor robbSermons Archives
April 2024
|