Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone! I hope you get a chance to enjoy the blessings of this time. I’m thankful to have family in town and plenty of meat to grill. On days like these, I’m reminded of how blessed I am. It’s a feeling I want to put in a bottle and pull out whenever life doesn’t go so well. I hope this sermon addresses that topic in some way. Have a great week! 

SCRIPTURE – Matthew 6:24-34

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 1So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 3But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

SERMON
No Need to Worry
Matthew 6:25-34
May 25, 2008

One of Molly’s favorite books is “Wemberly Worried” by Kevin Henkes. Wemberly is a little worry-wart. The book says, “Wemberly worried about everything. Big things, little things, and things in between. Wemberly worried in the morning, she worried at night, and she worried throughout the day. She worried about the tree in the front yard (what if it falls on our house?), the crack in the living room wall (what if it gets bigger and something comes out?), and the noise the radiator made (what if there’s a snake inside?).”

Wemberly obviously never read the sixth chapter of Matthew. While Jesus is giving the Sermon on the Mount, he shares a few lessons for Wemberly: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear, or about your living room wall or what’s in your radiator. Do not worry.”

This is one of those “yeah but” passages for me. Sometimes I read something Jesus says and I say, “Yes, Lord. You got it. Preach it, Messiah!” And then other times I’ll read something, scratch my head, and say, “Yeah, but…” “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” Yeah, but… “You are the light of the world and the salt of the earth.” Yeah, but… “Do not worry.” Yeah, but…

On the surface, Jesus’ words seem almost irresponsible and dismissive of the difficulty of life. It’s like the Bobby McFerrin song that was so popular in the late 1980s. “Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note. Don’t worry, be happy.” Easy for you to sing when you’ve got hit song that sounds like it was written by a second-grader.

How can we not worry? The very virtue of being alive produces worry in us. We worry about our finances, our kids, our health. I read recently that a scientific study has proven that worrying about getting cancer…causes cancer. We live in a world that creates and nurtures opportunities to worry on a daily basis.

In fact, you could argue that worrying is a part of the very fabric of who we are. John Ortberg talked about a New York Times Magazine article that said worrying could actually be genetic. There’s a certain gene that has both a short and a long version. People with the short version are more prone to fear and anxiety. People with the long version seem to not worry as much. Now, are you worrying that you have the shorter version?

The examples Jesus lifts up to keep us from worrying don’t help me much. He talks about how God cares for the birds of the air and clothes the flowers in the field. But I’ve accidentally weed-whacked enough flowers and hit enough birds with my car to know that not all of them live to their fullest potential. So how can Jesus, speaking to a group of people who probably were struggling to make ends meet, say with a straight face, “Do not worry”?

I think we should consider where our worry comes from, because I believe that’s at the heart of what Jesus is getting at here. There is rational concern, and then there is worry. Someone once said that worry is fear that has unpacked its bags and signed a long-term lease. When our concern begins to contaminate our thinking and control our lives, it has become polluting and negative, and we become Wemberly Worried, whose life was controlled by what she was afraid of.

As human beings with free will, there’s a lot in our lives over which we have control. We control which bills get paid, what food goes into our bodies, and how we react to certain situations. We control the temperature of our house, the position of the seat in our car, and which channel the TV is on, unless we have kids. Especially in our affluent culture, there are a lot of things we control.

But even here, there are a lot more things over which we don’t have control. We don’t have control over the aging of our bodies, not matter how much we exercise and take pills and replace joints. We don’t have control over the economy or the price of gasoline. And we don’t have control over what other people think and do. And yet, we still worry about these things.

One commentator I read this week went so far as to say worrying was a sin. At first I said, “Yeah, but…” Worrying, a sin? That seems a bit harsh. But then I thought, “If sin is anything that separates us from God, would worrying fall into that category?” Which immediately made me start worrying that I worry too much. If worry isn’t a sin, it’s at the very least unfaithful, because at its most fundamental level, worry is a lack of trust in God’s provision and care.

Rick Warren says, “Worry is the warning light that God has been shoved to the sidelines.” And it causes us to do one of two things: It either paralyzes us and keeps us from moving forward and gives us ulcers, or it makes us try and take things into our own hands, which usually ends up badly. Jesus says to the crowd, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” In other words, the pagan, the unfaithful, the non-believer is characterized by their worldly pursuits, their obsession with eliminating worry from their lives by filling it with things.

But for believers, we are called to a higher level of trust than that. That’s what Jesus is talking about here. If God cares for a bird, if God cares for a flower that’s here today and gone tomorrow, how much more will God care for us? We are more than what we eat or what we wear or where we live. We may care for ourselves and care for others, but God cares for us all. We live by God’s grace.

Now, let me pause right there, because you’re probably thinking what I was thinking, which is, “Yeah, but…” If we live by God’s grace, why are people still living out of cardboard boxes? Why do we need oncologists and chemotherapy and overflowing medicine cabinets? We think God has failed us because our world still gives us plenty of reasons to worry.

But God never promised to take away our fears. God promised to help us overcome them. The truth is there will always be something to worry about, if we so choose. When we were baptized or made our confession of faith, we were not promised an easy life. What we are promised is the endless, unremitting, unconditional, loving care of God over every aspect of our lives. And that, Jesus says, is why we shouldn’t worry. Our attitude should be defined, not by what we see, but how we see it and respond to it. A crisis can be an obstacle or an opportunity. A difficulty can be a roadblock or a lesson. We choose how to respond to life; we control that. We can worry, or we can trust.

As usual, Jesus gives us the blueprint for how to do this. “Seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you, as well.” Worry starts to consume us when we take our focus off the priority of loving and serving God. If we truly believe that God is God, then we trust that no matter what happens, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s what we wanted or not what we wanted, God is with us, loving us, holding us up, encouraging us.

We all have plenty of opportunities to worry; that’s life. We’ve all had times in our lives when we’ve thought, “I’ll never get through this. Things will never be the same. My life has changed forever.” We lose someone we love, and life changes. We get a diagnosis, and life changes. We get downsized from our job, and life changes. If you’ve gone through those things or something like it, you know that feeling of despair, hopelessness, paralyzing worry.

Let me give you a more light-hearted example. In the public speaking class I teach, I usually get a number of students who are petrified of public speaking. The first night of class, they have the word “anxiety” written on their foreheads. They are already worrying about how they are going to pass the class. Then their teacher tells them he’s a pastor, which usually doesn’t help things.

So I do a few things. First, I tell them that just because I’m a minister, if they fail a speech, that doesn’t mean they are going to Hell. Second, I have them come up to the front of the class in groups of threes to present each other. Then, when everyone is finished, I have them take their pulse. To this day, after six years of teaching, I’ve yet to have a student who didn’t have a pulse. In other words, everyone has survived.

So have you. You know what it’s like to be in the valley, don’t you? I’ve been there with some of you. It’s scary down there. You feel at times like you won’t make it out. But guess what? You’re here. You made it this far, didn’t you? You may not be the same person you were, but you are here. We’ve been enabled to bear the unbearable and do the undoable and pass the breaking point, but not break. That’s God’s grace at work.

We don’t always control what happens to us, but we do control how we respond to it. We can respond to it with worry, or we can respond with trust, trust that the God who feeds the birds and clothes the flowers also looks out for us. That doesn’t mean it will always be easy, but it does mean we will never be alone. Seek first God’s kingdom in your life, and you may just find you don’t have as much to worry about.

Hi everyone! This past Sunday was not only Mother’s Day, but it was also Pentecost, the day which marks the birthday of the church. We looked at the story of Pentecost and how it relates to our lives today as believers. Have a great week!

SCRIPTURE – Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ” ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

SERMON
The Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
May 11, 2008

Did you know that today is the third most celebrated day in the Christian year? And yet, what do you say today? Merry Pentecost! At Easter we say, “He is risen!” so today should we say, “Your hair is on fire!”? I’m guessing you didn’t put up your Pentecost tree and your kids didn’t go to sleep last night anticipating a visit from the Pentecost bunny.

And yet, Pentecost is a defining day in the history of the church. I think the reason we don’t give it more prominence is that its central actor is the Holy Spirit, and that scares us a little. You know, it’s only two letters from “Pentecost” to “Pentecostal.”

I remember one of my first church experiences growing up was being invited to a local independent church by a friend of mine. The church had a reputation for being “weird,” but I was curious, and also didn’t want my friend to think I was a yella-belly, so I went. The church was more like a big auditorium than a sanctuary, the music was very un-church-like, and everyone sang and clapped. But what was really interesting to me was how the people acted. They danced and threw their hands in the air like they were doing the Holy Hokey Pokey. I remember one guy two rows in front of me had a massive comb-over, and he got so into the music that he started bouncing up and down and his comb-over started bouncing right along with him. At one point it flopped completely over and stuck out like he was signaling a left turn, but he kept on singing. Now that was weird!

But then things moved from weird to scary for me. People started talking and shouting, but it was no language I had ever heard of. It’s like they were possessed. Then a lady next to Floppy Comb-over Guy fell on the floor and started writhing around like she was having a seizure. I was terrified. A few men sat next to her and held her arms down until she slowed down and finally stopped. As we left the church, I asked my friend’s father what was wrong with that woman. And I’ll never forget what he said. “Aw, nothing’s wrong with her. She was just filled with the Spirit. Don’t worry, Kory. If you’re a believer, it will happen to you, too.”

I didn’t go back to church for a long time. And I still shudder at that memory every time I read today’s passage about Pentecost. Because of my church experience, for a long time I thought the Holy Spirit was something frightening that did strange things to people’s comb-overs and gave people seizures, and I didn’t want anything to do with it, until I got a better understanding of what the day of Pentecost was all about.

Pentecost was a festival 50 days after Passover during which the Jews celebrated the gift of the first five books of the Bible and the reaping of the spring harvest. Jews from around the region were gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, and many of them would have witnessed what happened to the disciples: the tornadic wind, the tongues of flame, the speaking in different languages. Even Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, took to the pulpit and delivered a speech so powerful that 3000 people were baptized.

I think it’s interesting that the Spirit appeared as fire. Fire was a common metaphor for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, but when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we tend to think more of wind, like when Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” But at Pentecost, the Spirit appears as another uncontrollable natural element. And what this tells us is that a person filled with the Spirit is a person who is on fire, who burns to serve God, who is able to bring light and warmth to a cold, dark world. A church filled with people on fire for God is the kind that attracts people to it. When a church is on fire with God’s Spirit, people want to see where the smoke is coming from.

In other words, a believer is a person who is under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The observers at Pentecost thought the disciples were under the influence in a different way, but Peter clears that up by saying that these guys weren’t drunk on wine. They were under the influence of the Spirit. If you are a believer, the Spirit that is in you should influence what you say and do in your life.
Peter goes on to explain to the crowd how they will know the Spirit is at work within them. He says, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy.” You know what it means to prophesy? It means to tell someone what God will do. When Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied, they told the Israelites what God was going to do if they didn’t shape up. But prophesying isn’t only about proclaiming God’s judgment. Prophesying can also mean to share the good news of God’s work in our lives. I like the fact that Peter doesn’t say, “And your pastor, in his flowing robe and colorful stole, while standing behind a wooden pulpit, will prophesy.” It’s not only my job to preach. It’s yours, too.

The famous theologian Martin Luther once said, “Everyone, by virtue of baptism, is called to preach. All baptized Christians are expected to speak the Gospel to their neighbors, to testify to the mighty works of God, to tell people about Jesus. The thing is, on Sunday morning, we can’t all possibly speak at the same time and be understood, so some of the baptized are designated to be preachers. They are the ones who speak on Sunday morning so that the rest of us may speak about Jesus Monday through Saturday morning. The preacher preaches, so that the congregation may preach.”

The challenge you face is to take God’s word tomorrow into your homes, your neighborhoods, your businesses, your schools and share it with others. Not in an in-your-face, confrontational way. That won’t do anything but scare people off. The best way to share the power of Christ in your life with others is to tell them your story. Tell them what God has done for you. Tell them what the church has done for you. Invite them to come and see what God can do for them. You have the power to changes lives with your story. Share it with others. Tell them about God’s work in your life. The Spirit has been poured out on you, and it’s pretty hard to stay quiet when you’re on fire.

How has being a believer changed your life? I can think of dozens of situations where being a part of this church has had a tremendous impact on someone’s life. I’ve seen it happen on mission trips, through our Stephen Ministry and Crisis Committee work, through the web of prayers that extend from this place. Lives are being changed as Christ works through us. People are smelling the smoke. Our challenge is not to stay quiet but to stay open to the Spirit’s working as it calls us in new and exciting directions.

God has not called us in this way without giving us the necessary equipment. The Bible makes the point repeatedly that the Spirit is very generous, because it’s given each of us a gift. I know, not only because the Bible tells me so, but also because I’ve seen it in each of you. Paul names several of these gifts: speaking in tongues, prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, and showing mercy. These are not personality traits or idiosyncrasies; these are gifts of the Holy Spirit. When you serve someone, when you teach someone, when you encourage them or show them compassion, you are letting God’s Spirit work through you to touch the other person. You have that gift. And if you pass up a chance to teach, or to encourage, or to lead, how are you using the Spirit’s gift in you?

A poet once wrote, “Sure as the sound of leaves rustling lets you know the wind is there, like the smell of smoke lets you know there’s fire, an ever-expanding circle of believers lets you know the Spirit is there.” We’ve been blessed to add 17 people to our church family in the last couple months. That’s the Spirit at work through us. Our openness to the Holy Spirit’s movement in our church will create an ever-expanding circle of believers, a community of faith, in which we can welcome people with love, in which we can equip people with a faith that works in real life, and in which we can share God’s love for us through compassionate service to others.

Like the disciples at Pentecost, we are at a crossroads. As we implement a new constitution, as we move in new directions with our staff, the future is unknown. But we have the Holy Spirit, in us and around us, working with us and through us, calling us forward to do great things in the name of Christ. We each have God’s Spirit in us, helping us know right from wrong, helping us live out our faith. If we each strive to do this individually, then collectively our gifts are multiplied exponentially. You have a gift. I dare you to dream about what we can do in God’s name if we all share our gifts together. How many people can we help? How many people can we serve? How many lives can we change? Go ahead. Imagine. Think for a few seconds about what this church will look like if we stay open to God’s Spirit. Picture it. Dream it. Vision it.

Wait…do you smell something burning? It’s us. It’s us.