Lent: An Opportunity Holiness - Introduction

Since the first of the year, in our worship services we have been following Jesus from His infancy through the early stages of His earthly/bodily ministry.  We heard the wise men from the east ask the question so many before and after them have offered, ''Where is He?''  We followed Jesus from His hometown, Nazareth of Galilee, down to Judea where He was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. We watched as He moved northward back to Galilee where He would do the bulk of His teaching and miracles, assimilating along the way an inner core of twelve disciples as well as a large grass-roots following that unsettled the authorities, both religious and civil.

We saw his predecessor, the greatest prophet, John, imprisoned and ultimately executed for preaching the Kingdom of God.  With John behind bars, Jesus assumed his message and his followers, proclaiming everywhere He went the Good News of the Kingdom.  The lame walked, the blind saw and the dead were raised to life again - the crowds could only grow.  And grow and grow they did until He could no longer enter cities for the throng.  So He recessed to the rural places where the masses filled the open fields and seashores to be near Him. 

At the height of His popularity and in the midst of His busyness we followed Him, in the early hours of the morning, to a ''lonely place'' where He spent precious time in prayer.  We saw the disciples find Him there, reminding Him of the neediness of the people looking for Him.  He conceded, following them out of that devotional solitude into an encounter with a leprous man whom He miraculously healed, setting the Mosaic Law on its ear in the process.

Last week we moved ahead to the end of His Galilean ministry and observed Him take James, John and Peter up a mountain where He was transfigured before their eyes.  As if that weren't enough, they also saw Moses and Elijah appear from the netherworld to converse with Jesus about the implications of His impending death.  Upon descending the mountain, Luke said, ''He (Jesus) steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.''  We used that text to prepare our hearts for the Season of Lent, the season the Christian church annually sets aside for the purpose of refocusing, reflecting and realigning our lives with the purposes of the Kingdom of God.  I have high hopes that our GP community will take this time very seriously and in a few weeks find ourselves celebrating Resurrection Sunday with a renewed vigor and deepened commitment.

This Sunday we will do some good backtracking, chronologically speaking, in the life of Christ.  Immediately following His baptism and just prior to launching His Galilean ministry, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where, for forty days, He was tempted by Satan.  As far as I'm concerned, those are forty of the most intriguing days of Christ's life.  So intriguing are they, that we as a church have lifted the number of those days, imposing it upon the time we call Lent. 

The gospel writers say that Jesus fasted the entirety of those forty days and was ministered to by angels.  Furthermore, they say that Jesus went into the wilderness ''full of the Holy Spirit'' yet came forth ''in the power of the Spirit.''  While I'm sure I haven't fully wrapped my mind around the differences between those two phrases, I am sure that there are differences.  And I am also confident that the supremacy of Christ's latter relationship to the Holy Spirit was directly related to the forty days of special devotion He committed Himself to in the wilderness.

This confidence translates for me to a deep conviction that if we follow Christ's example we will enjoy the fullness of His life.  Come Sunday, and let's process this incredible text and story from the life of Jesus together.  It's one of my favorites, and I think you'll see why, not only as we study it together but even more as we LIVE it together.

See you Sunday,
Stan

Transfiguration and the Lenten Journey - Left Overs

This is an important message for all of us but especially so for those who were unable to be at our 10:15 worship service this past Sunday. The theme of Sunday's sermon was centered around preparing ourselves for the Season of Lent - the space of time between Ash Wednesday (tomorrow) and Easter; a season set apart by the Christian Church for the purpose of taking stock and spiritual reflection.

Preparation for this very meaningful seven week period includes, first, reminding ourselves of Lent's purpose and, second, deciding what part of our normal routine we could alter to serve that purpose. Remember, Lent is not just about giving up something for the sake of giving up something. A thousand times no! God doesn't need or desire those kinds of mindless sacrifices to appease Him or assuage His ''wrath.'' Instead, we delete, or add for that matter, something from our daily routine for the purpose of piqueing our attention, reminding us to pause and reflect on Christ and his journey to Jerusalem.

Admittedly, there are many spiritual needs, as well as the attendant exercises that address those needs, in the life of a Christ follower. One of these needs is to have a sense of purpose in life, to find and cultivate a sense of meaning. The Lenten Season is a wonderful exercise for this pursuit in that we are called alongside Jesus in His very intentional trek toward His purpose.

For these forty days we focus on our Lord, especially on the last few months of His earthly/bodily ministry. We pay careful attention to those days in which He resolutely made His way to the place of His betrayal, crucifixion and victorious resurrection.

I hope you will take this time seriously and commit yourself to the exercise of Lent. Find something to add or subtract from your life and allow the daily exercise of this alteration/discipline to serve as a tool, opening a portal to Christ and His example.

In the course of my message Sunday I mentioned a book, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, that applies powerfully to the matter of finding purpose in life. Two other books that I highly recommend on the same subject are: Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer and Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee. Any one of these three would be a great companion to you as we move with Christians everywhere along the Lenten journey toward Resurrection Sunday.

If you have questions or thoughts about the Season of Lent, as always, I would love to hear from you.

Sincerely,
Stan

Transfiguration and the Lenten Journey - Introduction

Per the Christian Church's calendar, this Sunday is the last Sunday of the Epiphany Season. Remember, the Season of Epiphany is the period of time between Christmas and the Lenten Season (Lent being the 40 non-Sunday days leading up to Easter). 

While epiphany generically means manifestation, for many centuries Christians have set aside the first few weeks of the year to commemorate the special manifestation of God through Christ, calling this time the Season of Epiphany.  During these days, special emphasis is given to the stories of the Wise Men from the East (the Magi), Christ's first miracle at Cana (water into wine), and His Baptism by John the Baptist. 

A large part of the Church marks the last Sunday of the Epiphany season by focusing on the story of Christ's transfiguration; an event that occurred towards the end of Jesus' Galilean ministry and just before ''He set His face to go to Jerusalem.''  Christ's journey to Jerusalem, the place He would meet His fate, has also served for centuries as the inspiration and model for our Lenten journeys.

This Sunday we will be preparing our hearts for the Season of Lent by joining churches around the world focusing on the gospel story of Christ's transfiguration (Mark 9:2-13).  While Christ's baptism is traditionally called the ''Great Epiphany,'' the Transfiguration is referred to as the ''Small Epiphany.''  They are thus recognized because of the express manifestation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit at both occasions.

I don't think it is coincidental that Christ's Lenten journey was preceded by such a profound, epiphanous experience as the Transfiguration.  I personally believe when life is healthy it has a rhythm to it, an ebb and a flow if you will, or, as I said a few weeks ago, a breathing in and a breathing out.  Life naturally and properly cycles through highs and lows, contemplation and action, fullness and emptiness, joy and sorrow, companionship and aloneness, etc., etc.

As we move toward Resurrection Sunday via the Lenten path, let's not do so haphazardly or thoughtlessly.  Let's join together Sunday with intentionality, preparing our hearts for a journey with Christ toward finding our purpose, our meaning in this world, just as He ultimately found His in Jerusalem.  Be thinking about how you might alter your normal routine   for Lent, not as a matter of mindless, meaningless tradition but as a focusing mechanism.  

Let's gather this Sunday to celebrate our epiphanies and transfigurations as we also commit ourselves to our Jerusalem/Lenten journeys.

See you Sunday,

Stan

On Cleansing and Shame - Left-Overs

Last week as I was preparing for yesterday's sermon I knew I would be using the story of the law-breaking leper found in Mark 1:40-45. The only real challenge I had with such a remarkable text was isolating just one theme for the upcoming message.

Last Tuesday, as I worked through the passage with some friends, I quickly realized it was overflowing with more insight and inspiration than one sermon could contain. From these six verses we identified several sermon-worthy ideas. Let me give you a couple of the sermon themes that you almost heard:

1) Perhaps the most intriguing one grew out of the leprous man's plaintive appeal to Jesus found in verse 40: ''If you want to, you can make me well again.'' Verse 41 says, ''Moved with pity, Jesus touched him and said, 'I want to, be healed!''' Instantly the desperate man was healed and the leprosy disappeared.

What makes this incident so compelling to me are the first four words of the man's petition: ''If you want to...'' Regarding those words, my mind is filled with some inescapable questions. Questions like: Does God want to heal us? Always? Is there ever a time when He doesn't want to? Why? When we ask God to heal us and we aren't, does that mean He didn't want to? Are there other possible reasons for our entreaties not being positively answered? What could some of those be?

Suffering with illness is bad enough without having the added trauma of thinking God doesn't care or Divine indifference. This story from Mark's gospel is especially comforting to me because of the first three words of Christ's response, ''I want to...'' He said. I deeply believe those words are indicative of the Father's heart, of a God who is anything but indifferent. Why we don't always get the desired outcome from our prayers is, admittedly, a mystery fraught with complexities we may never fully understand.

2) The next point of interest stems from Jesus' interaction with the Mosaic Law. It is often and correctly pointed out that Christ, by receiving and touching the leprous man, broke the Law. It must also be noted, though, that after healing the man, Jesus then observed the same Law he had just broken. By sending the man to the priest for the official sanction of his newfound cleanness, Jesus was joining the healed one in submission to the Mosaic Code.

Jesus would later speak to the possible confusion caused by this type of perceived contradiction, saying, ''Don't think that I came to destroy the Law, rather I came to fulfill it.''(Matthew 5) By Christ's estimation, breaking the law did not constitute destroying it and even in certain situations would be necessary to fulfill it! Jesus knew that there was a spirit or intent undergirding every individual law in the Law. He also knew that strict adherence to the technical details of the law did not necessarily indicate a transformed, purely motivated heart.

While the above is indeed true, it must also be noted that Jesus did not come as a raging iconoclast tearing down Moses teaching. As a matter of fact, He always was careful to observe the law, that is, until He saw it in opposition to human need. In those moments, He repeatedly seized the opportunity to teach a new Law - one that fulfilled all of the old.

That Law, the Apostle Paul later called, ''The Law of Christ.''(Galatians 6) A new standard ''written not on tablets of stone but on the fleshly tablets of the heart.'' A law of love, born out of a relationship, one that would not come merely from black letters on a white page, but would be conveyed by the whispers of God's promised Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.

Whew! I could write all night on that one but you better get back to your Tuesday and every one in my house is asleep on this cold Monday night so I think I'm going to join them and send this out in the morning.

Peace,
Stan

On Cleansing and Shame - Introduction

GracePointe family,

Last week our scripture text was from Mark's gospel, 1:35-38. In it, Mark described Jesus, at the outset of His Galilean ministry, stealing away from the crowds in the early hours of the morning to pray. Depending on the translation of the Bible you use, the place He stole away to is variously described as: a solitary place, a secluded place, a lonely place, a place where he could be alone, etc.

From Christ's example, we considered the clear benefits of finding a similar space in our own journeys. I think we all recognize this type of spiritual exercise is truly a non-negotiable if we want to live healthy, balanced lives. We all have a deep need for strategic aloneness, intentional solitude, a place where we can decompress and revitalize in God's presence.

Our text this week immediately follows last week's. 

Mark 1:40-45 reads:

40 A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. “If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean,” he said. 41 Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” 42 Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and the man was healed. 43 Then Jesus sent him on his way with a stern warning: 44 “Don’t tell anyone about this. Instead, go to the priest and let him examine you. Take along the offering required in the law of Moses for those who have been healed of leprosy. This will be a public testimony that you have been cleansed.” 45 But the man went and spread the word, proclaiming to everyone what had happened. As a result, large crowds soon surrounded Jesus, and he couldn’t publicly enter a town anywhere. He had to stay out in the secluded places, but people from everywhere kept coming to him.

Employing last week's metaphor of breathing, Jesus, having inhaled deeply in prayer, left the contemplative place of replenishment and was soon met by a man in grave need, a man in need of Jesus' breath. Obviously, the man was suffering physically and his healing by the hand of Christ remains legendary. But there is another point of interest in the story that I plan on teasing out this Sunday.

Via the life of the leprous man, we will focus on a type of aloneness quite different from the positive and planned kind. Whereas last week we addressed the benefits of chosen, purposeful solitude, this week we will be focusing on unwanted and unhealthy isolation; the type endured by leprous people in first-century Palestine and, frankly, the kind still experienced by even the busiest among us today.

Unwanted aloneness comes in many forms and derives from myriad sources. It can be imposed by others and it can also be imposed upon one's self by one's self. In any case, the resulting effects are painful and can be crippling.

This week, using the leper's story, we will consider the interrelated issues of loneliness, estrangement, shame, isolation, and exclusion as well as community, reunion, forgiveness and inclusion.

These issues, albeit to varying degrees, are experienced by all people - none of us are exempt. In Christ, though, there are answers, there is healing, there is reconciliation.

I hope you'll spend some time between now and Sunday reflecting on our gospel text and considering how this topic relates to your life. Come with your heart open and I have no doubt God will meet you there.

See you Sunday morning,
Stan

Stillness and Motion Left-Overs

It is a rare Sunday when I leave having said everything I wanted to say in the sermon. One problem I never seem to have is lacking material on a particular subject. So, instead of these ''left-overs'' continually going to waste, I thought I would take advantage of them by using these remnants to give you a quick reflection on Sunday's theme.

Yesterday our subject was ''Stillness and Action.'' Using the metaphor of breathing, the essential appeal of the sermon was that we all need to build into our lives times of ''inhaling'' or quietness/stillness/aloneness in God's presence. Employing this same metaphor, acts of service, compassion, generosity, and hospitality are all forms of exhaling. Healthy respiration, both physically and spiritually, requires a proper balance between the two.

One ''left-over'' from the untouched last page of my notes is a quote from one of my favorite authors, Thomas Merton. In it he speaks insightfully to this matter of spiritual breathing. Merton said,

''There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other people.
Once you have found such a place, be content with it and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be too quick to change it for another.''

For a good friend of mine that ''room'' is his beloved recliner. His wife says for years she has arisen every morning only to find him there, Bible open, eyes closed(but not asleep:) in quiet reflection before God. For sure, there is no ''one-size-fits-all'' place or time, but we all, like my friend, must find what works for us and commit.

So this week, I hope you will find that place and take the time, perhaps, in the beginning, no more than five or ten minutes, to quiet yourself and be still. I know it won't take long for you to begin sensing the benefits of deeper breathing.

Peace be with you,
Stan

Stillness and Motion Introduction

The legendary Dutch physicist, Neils Bohr, said, ''The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.'' What a great insight this is. So much of life expresses itself, to use Pastor Mark's recent sermon, in the form of tension - uncomfortable but healthy tension.

One tension that we all live with and try to maintain our equilibrium in the midst of, is the tension that exists between the competing poles of stillness and action, contemplation and business. I think we have a tendency to think of these two portions of our lives as contrary modes, enemies of the other. In reality, these two expressions are inseparable and incapable of reaching their full potential alone.

In this Sunday's text, Mark 1:35-38, we find Jesus confronted by this very tension. Attempting to steal away for a time of quiet aloneness, He is interrupted by His well-meaning disciples who inform Him, ''Everyone is looking for you!'' Sigh.... The poor Messiah can't get a moment to Himself. I think we can all relate. In lieu of the frenetic pace of our schedules, most, if not all, of us feel the need to enhance the devotional/contemplative part of our lives.

I hope you'll take the first step at doing this by joining your church family for corporate worship this Sunday. We'll spend some time looking at this theme and strategizing how, practically, we can all find a healthier place in this tension of stillness and action.

Looking forward to worshiping together,

Stan