7-26-09

Sex and the Kingdom of God

This week Ruffin will expand his previous sermon on adultery (Matt.5:27-30) into an exposition on what place sex has in the kingdom of God. This can be a tough topic but one certainly worthy of our attention as God has made us sexual creatures. 

As such our liturgy will focus on being whole in Christ.  It is in Christ that we find our fullness and in him we find healing. Because of the ravages of sin we are all plagued with unhealthy views of human relationships and that includes sex.

To start our  service our meditation this week is a quote by Hans Rookmaaker:

Christ did not come to make us Christians…but he came to make us human in the full sense of the word.”

In Christ we find our place as God made us and can find the full expression of our humanity. As Richard Middelton says here, “the distinctive way humans worship or render service to the Creator is by the development of culture through the interaction with our earthly environment (in a manner that glorifies God).” Our cultural understandings and views of sex, whether healthy or unhealthy (sinful or not) are a part of our culture. We therefore should be about seeing our sexuality redeemed in the person of Jesus. Further, we need to embrace our humanity because that is who God made us. We need to also understand that our humanity has been impacted by the fall, through our own sin and others, and again it is in Jesus that our culture finds redemption.

As we come to worship this Sunday let us realize that God calls us sinners to come to him, find our rest and our peace, and the redemption of our whole lives.

7-12-09

Several weeks ago Brian Scott led worship for me while we were leaving for Austria.  That day he sang a song called Beautiful, Scandalous Night. This week I’d like to introduce it into our repertoire as a congregational song. It will be a little different than the link I have proved to hear it but it gives you an idea of how it will go. The song has a wonderful folk fell to it and I think it will complement our singing and congregation very well.

Filling the pulpit this week is Jon Talley, RUF director at Washington and Lee. He will be preaching on Philippians 2:1 – 11. This is a fabulous passage that speaks of Christ work and his relationship to the father and ultimately his exaltation over all. It is because of what Christ achieved on the cross and in the resurrection that we can therefore be reconciled to others and consider them better than ourselves. In response to Jon’s message we will close with the well loved hymn And Can it Be?

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, should’st die for me?

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, should’st die for me?

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, should’st die for me?

Austria

Yes, it has been along time since I last posted. The recent mission trip to Austria obviously consumed a lot of my time. It was an amazing trip and I am astounded by how God is using our work there. Much of our work was centered around teaching and performing in local schools and with local musicians. Our week in the Stubaital (Stubai Valley) culminated with a performance with the local church choir in a Catholic church in Fulpmes.

The musicians were astounded at the whole event that night. Several commented that they had never seen the church that full…ever! It was standing room only on the floor and in the balcony. People were everywhere and it was filled to the brim.

Kelly Dehnert, the whole mastermind behind Arts in the Alps, taught both our choir and the local choir an Malawian worship song, Palibe Ofana. He had all kinds of hand and body motions we were all doing which made it a lot of fun. Halfway through the song in the concert that night he stops that choir and turns to the audience (all Austrian mind you). He had them get our of their seats and into the aisles where they proceeded to dance right along with us.  It truly was a delight.

It is good to be back though and all of us who went look forward to sharing about our experience there.

Will Lee has a great post over at his blog on the whole trip.

6-7-09

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,  for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

As we focus on this verse this week our attention should be drawn particularly to the call of Jesus to share in his sufferings. He has said that if we follow him the world will hate us and revile us. It seems to follow then that if there is no resistance to our message, either by our deeds or words, then perhaps we need to examine our lives to see if we have merely adapted the culture we live  in rather than seeking to transform it. It is not that we should be known for being confrontational or just plain cranky but instead our deeds of love and mercy, our lives of integrity should shine like stars to this world. As Paul says in Philippians:

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out he word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.

5-31-09

In preparation for our services this week it would be good to read the Beatitudes again. Ruffin is back in the pulpit this week after a much needed two week vacation and since we have finished up our Colossians study, which was rich beyond compare, we will return the book of Matthew. 

If you remember we were in the Beatitudes when the nine week Easter series on Colossians started. As we get back in them our verse this week is Matthew 5:9:

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.

If you’ve been around for much of the past eight or nine months you can probably guess where Ruffin will be going: Blessed are the shalom-makers…

What a great way to see that passage, to see and labor for God’s wholeness and peace to be shed over all the earth.  Truly, a great privilege for those who have been called according to his purposes. In one sense this is the Great Commission of Matthew 28. As we go and make disciples we are spreading the hope of God’s fullness and faithfulness to the world in that he will bring redemption to bear upon creation through the death and resurrection of his son. 

As part of our service this week we will read the Nicene Creed.  Yes, it is a bit long but it is rich in theology. As we  read it pay close attention to the language and particularly the last line.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

In response, or better yet anticipation, we will be learning a new song this week by Andrew Peterson. It is the song All Things New. You can download it here or on iTunes.  

 

5-24-09

This weeks service focuses on the work of the covenant community on the raising and support of the coming generations.  Our responsibility to nurture our children and raise them int he   the Lord is a crucial responsibility. It is a high calling to have them reconciled to God through Christ. Hopefully, for us, this calling arises out of our own recognition for our need for grace rather than blind duty. It should be because we see our need for the continual renewing power of God’s grace in our that we would want to see our children be brought up in that grace.

David Dickson will be delivering the sermon this week and he has requested that we close with a great hymn in response to this very topic. Since it will be an unfamiliar hymn to most of us I am posting it here as a PDF file so it can downloaded.

Our Children, Lord, in Faith and Prayer

Andrew Peterson

Yes, it has been a few weeks since I last posted. It seems that Easter took it out of me :^)

Anyway, I am back at it and I wanted to post up a link to someone whose music I have just recently come across. Some of you may know my problems with the whole Christian Music Industry and the perpetuation of much of the baggage that comes with it. But, in an effort to make sure I am not missing something I have been going and listening to some of the folks who come through Nashville machine. Much of my presuppositions have been confirmed by doing so BUT I have also had some pleasant surprises.

One such surprise comes with the musician Andrew Peterson. I have found a freshness to his music that is often lacking in much of the music put out. (On a side note I do think his music suffers at times from being over produced but that is not often.) Anyway, I thought I’d post a link to his site and hope you enjoy his music. I hope soon to use All Things New as a song in our worship.

His name is Andrew Peterson and here is his web site:
http://www.andrew-peterson.com/

3-29-09

As one who plans worship week in and week out I find that there are many issues involved in the choices I must make regarding readings, songs, prayers, and so on. If you took my Sunday School class on worship or have sat through my brief time in the Welcome to Westminster class you know that I try and hold two things together in order to help shape our worship, God’s transcendence and His immanence.This is not to say that these poles are exhaustive but are only guideposts for me as I plan for our upcoming corporate worship.

Transcendence speaks to God’s otherness, boundlessness, holiness, and the many other characteristics that help inform this quality. It is God who is the creator and we who are the created. He is the one who transcends time while we are held captive to it. It is this creator God who exhibits true holiness, defines true love, and remains faithful to His covenant promises while we in our feebleness can only “see through a glass, darkly” to catch a glimpse of these things and hope in some small way to see them borne out in our own lives.

But Biblical Christianity does not leave God out there, separated from us as does Islam. We see in the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit the immanence of God Himself. It is in the Son that He has drawn near to us so that we may touch Him, walk and talk with Him, and ultimately dine with Him. It is by the Spirit that God indwells us and empowers us to live lives that are pleasing to Him. We find in the Spirit the ability to proclaim the truth of I Corinthians 15 that death no longer has a hold on us and that the sting of sin has now been cast aside.

Unfortunately I find that many in the larger Body of Christ today tend to focus on one of these attributes at the exclusion of the other. Many in Reformed circles want to focus so much upon God’s transcendence, His greatness, His majesty, that there is little room for His closeness to us. On the other end of the spectrum, and this is by far the most prevalent view in the Church today, there is a focus almost primarily upon the immanence of God at the exclusion of His transcendence. We love to sing about how Jesus loves me (which He does), how He died for me (which He did), and how I love Him for it (hopefully we do). If you notice I purposefully chose to use the words I and me. In the past few years I have been perplexed at how so much of the music that is generated for the “worship industry” is so “ME” focused. We have lost the vision of worshipping as a Church and instead worship as distinct individuals who just happen to be in the same room together. We have also lost the focus of the impact the cross and resurrection have on the whole of creation not just our personal lives. The music in the church for the last several hundred years has lost this vision.

As such, I think we find worship in the Church in America driven by individualistic, consumerist tendencies rather than being shaped by a true Biblical vision of worship. This kind if thinking can be heard when we include hymns to give those who like them and then get to the contemporary stuff so those folks can have what they like, too. It is a shaping of the Church as if it were just another option to add to our already busy lives rather than integral aspect to our relationship with Christ and the community of believers. It doesn’t matter if one prefers contemporary over traditional or the other way around. The perspective that the Church needs to meet a certain demographic criteria misses the point that the Church is a community of believers held in bond together by the Spirit.

In light of all this I came across this article by Sally Morgenthaler that I found quite intriguing. It is worth giving a read as I think it pinpoints some of these same concerns. It is also quite refreshing to hear from her perspective how she thinks she contributed to some of the problems inherent in modern American churches.

Easter Meditation

In the cosmic newness revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we find the promise and foretaste of our own transformation. We are privileged to be participants of the divine nature. Therefore the church celebrates the resurrection of Christ and of the whole creation as the center of a weekly cycle, every Lord’s day, and as the center of an annual cycle, every Easter.

- Laurence Stookey, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church

Maundy Thursday

Prayer of Confession

Most holy and merciful Father, we acknowledge and confess before you our sinful nature—prone to evil and slothful in good—and all our shortcomings and offenses.

You alone know how often we have sinned in wandering you’re your way, in wasting your gifts, in forgetting your love.

But you, O Lord, have mercy on us, who are ashamed and sorry for where we have displeased you.

Teach us to hate our errors, cleanse us from our secret faults, and forgive our sins for the sake of your dear Son.

And O most holy and loving Father, help us, to live in your light and walk in your ways, according to the commandments of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.