August 2008; November 2008; June 7,2009, November 2009

August 2008

First reading: Isaiah:49:8-16a

This is what the Lord says: “At the right time I will hear your prayers. On the day of salvation I will help you. I will protect you, and you will be the sign of my agreement with the people. You will bring back the people to the land and give the land that is now ruined back to its owners.

You will tell the prisoners, “Come out of your prison”. You will tell those in darkness, “Come into the light”. The people will eat beside the roads, and they will find food even on bare hills.

They will not be hungry or thirsty. Neither the hot sun nor the desert wind will hurt them. The God who comforts them will lead them and guide them by springs of water.

I will make my mountains into roads , and the roads will be raised up.

Look, people are coming to me from far away, from the north and from the west, from Aswan in southern Egypt.

Heavens and earth, be happy. Mountains shout with joy, because the Lord comforts his people and will have pity on those who suffer.

But Jerusalem said, “The Lord has left me; the Lord has forgotten me.”

The Lord answers, “Can a woman forget the baby she nurses? Can she feel no kindness for the child to which she gave birth? Even if she could forget her children, I will not forget you.

See, I have written your name on my hand. Jerusalem, I always think about your walls.

Second reading: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5

People should think of us as servants of Christ, the ones God has trusted with his secrets.

Now in this way those who are trusted with something valuable must show they are worth of that trust.

As for myself, I do not care if I am judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.

I know of no wrong I have done, but this does not make me right before the Lord. The Lord is the One who judges me.

So do not judge before the right time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light things that are now hidden in darkness, and will make known the secret purposes of people’s hearts. Then God will praise each one of them.

Gospel Matthew 6:24-34

“No one can serve two masters. The person will hate one master and love the other, or will follow one master and refuse to follow the other. You cannot serve both God and worldly riches.

“So I tell you, don’t worry about the food or drink you need to live, or about the clothes you need for your body. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes.

Look at the birds in the air. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds.

You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it.

“And why do you worry about clothes? Look at how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t’ work or make clothes for themselves.

But I tell you that even Solomon with his riches was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers.

God clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today but tomorrow is thrown into the fire. So you can be even more sure that God will clothe you. Don’t have so little faith!

Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ ore ‘What will we wear?’

The people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things, and your Father in heaven knows you need them.

Seek first God’s kingdom and what God wants. Then all your oth er needs will be met as well.

So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Our Gospel reading today from Matthew is telling us we can not serve two masters at the same time. We can not serve God and worldly riches at the same time. With this part of the Gospel reading Matthew is trying to get us to remember what is really important in our lives, what is it that truly satisfies us?

The standards imposed on us by society should not be hat rule our actions or our decisions.

But, it is easy to wander off the path when following the trendsetters. What to wear, what kind of car to drive, where you should live, what “things” do we buy to have on show around our homes and offices? These are the worldly riches that are trying to confuse us, to keep us from focusing on a better way to satisfy our needs.

If we expose our inner ego to ourselves, and we are honest with ourselves as to who and what we are we can exist without a lot of those worldly “things”. For the past 15 years I’ve been calling them earth weights – and I will admit I have a bunch of them. Even a garage sale wouldn’t put a dent in the number of earth weights I’ve collected.

Matthew goes on to remind us how well God has provided for us. Not only with ou r basic needs, food, water, clothing he has also reminded us not to have so little faith.

We’ve become a society stretching ourselves beyond our limits. We worry about almost everything. We worry about:

Work

raising a family & their needs

Remembering someone’s birthday or anniversary.

Getting ready for a graduation party

you need to order the cake, prepare the food,

get the house in order, is the back yard ready?

Where will you get enough tables and chairs from?

And as each idea pops into your head there is cause for

more worry. Will there be enough pop? The list goes on

These are all real feelings of anxiety and worry. Our Gospel reading reminds us God is and always has been there to provide for us. He clothes the flowers in the fields. He says we will have food and water if we would just put worry aside.

And remember in our second reading Paul writes about judging ourselves and judging others. His message was about knowing ourselves well enough to feel comfortable being who we are and who our faith and trust is in.

If we look at all that we worry about, are we worried about how others are going to judge us? Paul’s letter in 1 Corinthians is telling us we shouldn’t care when others judge us personally or if they are judging our homes, or what we wear - - remember the only one to truly judge us will be the Lord.

If we take time each day we can look around and I don’t know about you but I know I get overwhelmed with praise and thanksgiving for what our Father in heaven has given us.

Stop for a few minutes – quit doing what you are doing for a few minutes. Look around you, look at the trees, the grass, the new leaves popping out. Look at the beauty in the flowers at the nurseries.

Last Sunday we listened to God creating the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, the seas and the land. And, do you remember he said let there be plants to make grain with and plants to carry seeds to make more plants. Our Father has provided for us from the beginning of time.

If our faith and trust is in God, then God is our only Master and only God can judge us. So, what will he judge us on? Will it be on the way we dress, the car we drive or the house we live in – or all those “earth weights” we couldn’t live without? I believe judgement will be on our faithfulness to follow God, on our compassion for others, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Have you let the trendsetters and society persuade you into worrying about “stuff” and serving “worldly goods” or have you been following our Master in heaven?

When I relax and put all my trust in the Lord, and I do not worry about what or how I’m going to juggle everything today, I am comforted knowing it will all happen. Just like the leaves need to pop out and the flowers need to bloom in all the colors of a rainbow. It will just happen.

November 16, 2008 Sermon by: Jeanne Rasmussen
Proper 28 (Year A)
Old Testament:  Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18
Psalm 90
Epistle Reading:  1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11
Gospel:  Matthew 25: 14-30

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.  Habakkuk 2:20

I feel I was privileged to be a part of our 2008 Diocesan Convention in Rochester this past October.  And, I want to say thank you to each of you for choosing me as your delegate for Christ Church.  This was my 3rd year and I have to admit I felt a little panicked when I realized that my 3-year term was up.

I started to feel a sense of belonging to the larger church, the connection with all the other delegates, the other priests, the re-uniting with John Peters, with Graham and Jill Fenton.  A real sense of being a part of what we are about and where we’ve been and where we are trying to go. 

The Bishop shared with all of us his desire for each congregation to focus on our Gospel readings.  As Disciples of Christ we should ask ourselves after hearing the Gospel three questions:

1. What stands out for me?
2. What is it saying to me?
3. What is the Gospel asking me to do?

As I thought about these questions, I also felt it would be important to incorporate the readings and the Psalm.  After all they are a part of the service; they have a message too.

So here goes:

1. What stands out for me?

First of all I think I zeroed in on the 3rd slave.  He was the one who buried his talent – and by the way a talent was worth about $1,000. – and I wondered what’s this all about?  He was being 100% sure the money his master entrusted him with would be safe and he buried it.  He hoarded the gift of money.

Next my mind went to the other two slaves.  What is it that makes them any different from one another?  I’m told they each received a different amount of talents AND very importantly stated that they were not given any more than they could handle.

1. Then I asked myself what is the Gospel saying to me?

I sorted out all the ideas and feelings I had about how I was deciphering what was just said.  Here’s what my thoughts are;

1. Jesus gives each of us gifts – but not more than we can

handle.
b) Jesus gives us each plenty of time and space to share our  gifts.

1. Our gifts multiply when we give them away.
2. It is important not to hoard or squander what has been given to us.  If we do not share we will surely die.

This was such an easy parallel for me to see Christ’s Church in Grand Rapids.  We’ve decerned each of our gifts.  We took plenty of time reviewing and living into those gifts.  We are finding our gifts are multiplying because we see new people among us, new faces, and new births.  We have given away to others with our “pass it forward” rummage sale.  We are truly blessed by receiving back so much more.  We have a family that is growing in Christ.

Ok – so now I review those readings again and they each have messages that really do coincide with our Gospel reading.

First we have a reading from Zephaniah.  Zephaniah was a prophet – this would have been around 640 BC.  Zephaniah’s goal was to shake up the people of Judah.  They were worshiping idols and not focusing their trust and faith in God.  Just as the 3rd slave id not put trust or faith in anyone else, just himself.  Zephaniah tells them to repent, to change or the wrath of God will be upon them.  Again, just as the 3rd slave was thrown out to where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Zephaniah kept proclaiming the coming of the Lord would happen soon.

At this time the Israelites had just arrived in the promise land and they were influenced by the Canaanites.  The Canaanites still worshiped idols as their Gods.

The thing to remember about idols is they were treated with more reverence than God.

On a twentieth century interpretation we can say we have some people in society that worship money, power, or only trust in themselves instead of knowing the one true idol should be God.  That God is first, not those other things.  Those other things can’t give you security.  Those are worldly things, they really don’t count at all.  There is a higher being that we will all answer to, for God will show mercy to all that have been faithful to him.

The meek and the humble will survive because they believe and trust in God.

When I review what Psalm 90 is saying to me I think of Moses reminding all of us there are no restrictions on time for God.  Only us.  We are here for a very short period of time --- when you compare it to God’s existence being eternal.

The Psalm tells us God knows everything about us.  We can not hide anything from him, so what are we going to do here on earth to make a difference.

Then we get into Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians.  Again Paul refers to times and dates.  Again, we are here for a short period of time.  What Paul really is talking about is when the “day of the Lord coming” happens what will God find you doing?  How are you living?  Paul tells us how important it is to live in faith, to live in love for one another, to give to one another, to give our gifts freely.  If we do these things we will receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. What is the Gospel asking me to do?

To be humble.
To trust our Lord and Savior because I know he will always provide for me.
I should never cast doubt on the depth of love Jesus has for each of us.
I need to live each day faithfully just as Zephaniah’s prophesy says “God will show mercy to all those who have been faithful to him.”

And, I think I am asked to share my gifts with everyone.  When I gve to others something happens to me.  The Holy Spirit works in me just as I believe the Holy Spirit works in each of us if we just let him.

Our gifts to give one another are too numerous to count.  Gifts aren’t about materialistic things or money, it’s about giving of ourselves to others.

The more we give the more that comes back to us.  Thanks be to God!