Month: June 2016

This weekend we looked at the next installment of our Culture Encounter Summer Sermon Series.  The sermon title was ENCOUNTER REFUGEES.

One of the passages we used was an obscure couple of verse from Leviticus
⁹ “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. ¹⁰ And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.  Leviticus 19:9-10

I love these verses for their practicality!  Since the days of Moses, God’s people were told to harvest their fields in a peculiar manner.  While their fields we rectangles God’s command was to harvest in an oval.  This left the corners of the fields with tall stalks of grain that were to be free for the poor and refugees in their midst.

Can you imagine the power of the tall corners of the fields?  People in trouble would see those tall stalks as monuments to love and concern for neighbor.  Many people who might have starved would have been filled with wonder and awe that a whole culture thought of poor they had not yet even met.

The question for us is this – What can our “corners” be in our culture today.  How can we communicate to people we haven’t even met yet that we love them, that we care about them, that our relationship with God makes their lives better?

Something to think about!

RECAPPING LAST WEEK

Last week, Pastor Jeff Browning of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Garden City New York led us through the book of Jonah and the topic ENCOUNTERING ENEMIES.  It was great to have him here, and a huge thanks to our friends in New York for loaning him to us for the weekend!

 

Jonah and the Whale By: Pieter Lastman

This week we have our third sermon in our Culture Encounter Series – Encounter Enemies.

We are blessed to have Rev. Jeff Browning of Resurrection Lutheran in Garden City, NY as our guest preacher.  I will post his sermon here in my next post.

But first, a thought on the book of Jonah and the story of Naaman that we covered a couple weeks ago.

In both of these stories the heroic figures are not the people we expect them to be.  Naaman NEVER would have gone to see Elijah if it weren’t for his lowly slave girl who told him, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

And even after getting there Naaman NEVER would have gone and done what the prophet commanded unless a loving servant of his reigned in his ego and said – “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

In the book of Jonah the heroic figures are those on the boat with the runaway prophet.  Even after Jonah says that HE is the cause of the stormy weather that is going to sink the ship, and commands them to throw him overboard, the crew members refuse at first.  They want to preserve his life.

I write all this so I can ask you, who are the unsung heroes in your life?  Who makes a postive impact on you in ways that maybe THEY don’t even realize.  And how can you make them un-unsung heroes by thanking them.  A call, a text, a handshake and a few words?  Think about it

John Paul Jones is best known for delivering that famous retort, “I have not yet begun to fight.”  It was the fall of 1779, and his ship, The USS Bonhomme Richard had just taken a blast from the 50 gun HMS Serapis.  The British commander asked if he would like to surrender.  John Paul Jones wasn’t ready to do that.  And of course, a few hours later, after some intense fighting, John Paul Jones sailed off in the HMS Serpis, having accepted the surrender of the British Captain and crew.

What I love even more than that story is what happened in April a year earlier.  John Paul Jones executed the only attack on British soil of the Revolutionary War.  On April 22, 1778 at around 11pm, John Paul Jones ordered his ship, the USS Ranger, to sail close to the half-moon shaped harbor of Whitehaven, England.

What amazes me is the audacity of his attack plan.  He ordered two rowboats (yes, you read that correctly) to attack the sovereign nation of England.  Jones was in one rowboat with 14 other crew members headed to take over the south fort of the harbor, and the other boat with 15 headed to take over the northern fort.   The rowing was tough, and took 3 hours.

Jones and his crew made it to their destination, while the other boat returned to the Ranger after being spooked by a “loud sound.”   I personally would be more afraid of Jones than any “loud sound,” and I certainly couldn’t imagine having to tell John Paul Jones that I turned around because something spooked me!

Well, Jones and his crew took over the southern fort and set it on fire.  What they didn’t realize is that the docks were very dry and just waiting to burn!  Not only did the southern fort burn down, but the fire spread all the way to the northern fort, and utterly gutted it.

We have some important lessons we can learn about encountering our culture from John Paul Jones.  First off, Jones knew what and who he was serving.  Because he loved freedom, and the people of the United States, he was willing to take a risk.  As Christians we know who we serve.  We have the joy of serving our God, and the people around us.  What risks are we willing to take to serve those in our communities?

Also, John Paul Jones had no idea how ready that fort was to be attacked.  I think too often we don’t consider how ready our culture is to have an encounter with the Gospel.  Just like that wood was dried and ready to be lit on fire, people are dried out from a culture that says they are disposable, that is full of “friends” but not companions, that offers dozens of ways to communicate but doesn’t tell us anything we are yearning to know.  People are longing for more.  More depth, more meaning, more substance.  They are ready for a blaze of hope and joy and purpose!

Try getting to know someone today, even getting to know a new name today.  It’s worth the risk.  As John Paul Jones famously said,  “It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk, cannot win”

I learned the name of a guy putting new siding on the church office this morning.  His name is Gus, and I pray that God can use our conversations to start a fire.

We kicked off the sermon series CULTURE ENCOUNTER, this weekend with an overview of what it means to engage PEOPLE (we always engage people formed by a culture, not culture itself).  We see how Paul had both a PASSION for what is right and true combined with a COMPASSION for real people.  The first sermon is called ENCOUNTER CULTURE.

After the sermon, a man named Chuck told me that a verse from John came to mind when listening to the sermon – John 1:14 – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

What a great insight!  As we engage the people around us, we look to Christ who doesn’t just balance Law and Gospel, Passion and Compassion, Grace and Truth, but is 100% both Grace and Truth at the same time.

While we fall so short of being 100% grace and truth at the same time, we have such great hope in God who is both for us and in our place.  I find it amazing that when we look to the cross we see both at work.  The truth of our sinful condition and it’s dreadful price, and the joy of the grace of God, paying that price in our place.

What a message of hope we’ve been given in Christ!

Who are you going to ENCOUNTER today?

LOOKING AHEAD

Wednesday is going to be big day!

It is the last day of School for St. Andrews and we start the day with a big party!  Then I lead closing chapel, which is always a mix of emotions.  It’s so much fun, but every year we say goodbye to some students, and this year we say goodbye to a couple of amazing teachers who are transitioning to new phases in their lives.

After closing chapel, I head to the Luther Home in Arlington Heights to preach on 1 Corithians 15:3-4 – ³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

After that, I head back to St. Andrews where I will be the graduation speaker.  It’s not easy to write a speech and not have it turn out too “sermony.”  So instead of preaching, I am going to apply a history lesson to them based on guy I really admire, JOHN PAUL JONES.

This one from the Revolutionary War…

not this one from Led Zepplin…

I’ll try to record the speech and post it here.