Prepare Ye the Way!

December 9, 2012
Advent 2
Fr. Philip Eberhart
 

Prepare Ye The Way

(click here for sermon audio)

 

Malachi 3:1-2;   Isaiah 40:1-8;   Philippians 1:3-11;   Luke 3:1-6

Have you ever noticed that, when you are personally in crisis or in pain, it’s really hard to “lift up your eyes” and see that there is a larger meaning and purpose in life?  …that there is larger meaning, even to our pain and sorrow! 

There is more to this than the messes we get ourselves into!

Now maybe I’m the only one who lets things get into a mess, but I don’t really think so.

Messes happen!  Life happens – and life is messy.

 

So what IS the larger meaning in our mess?

Well as you can well imagine I get to deal with a particularly wide variety of messes, almost weekly it seems.  And over time I’ve come to realize that there are similarities in the messes, and there is often purpose that can be found in the middle of the mess!

Our scriptures and the overall theme of this 2^nd Sunday of Advent is “prepare the way of the Lord.”  We’ve heard it several times already and will hear it some more this morning.

The phrase comes from the Prophet Isaiah, and he is quoted in Luke’s gospel this morning, as a pointer to the ministry of John, the Baptizer, Jesus’ cousin.

Advent is a time of preparation – but for what?

For the coming of Jesus Christ, - the remembrance of His first advent and the anticipation of His second!

But what I want to focus on this morning is the duty of preparation.  When life gets messy, as I mentioned, we tend to focus on ourselves, on our pain, on our dis-comfort, our dis-ease.  That is quite natural and quite toxic!

Most of us here in the state of Colorado, know the difference between mountain driving and driving on the plains.  The one is filled with curves, steep ravines, up and down, and in the right circumstances can be quite dangerous.  The other just the opposite, is straight, flat – a long drive in the same direction, to Burlington or to Kansas or Iowa!!  Believe me, I know!  For us, who drive we enjoy the mountains now, but the danger remains – just not to the same extent as those who were the first travelers through them.

I am a descendant of the pioneers for whom Donner Pass in N. California is named.  A wagon train party trying to make it to California that got caught in the snows of the Sierra’s north of Lake Tahoe – some 22 feet that winter.  They lived out the tragedy and danger of our mountainous terrain for those who are on foot or in a wagon. Even today, if one gets caught in such weather, in the mountains or on the plains, there is great danger involved.

The point of the story is that God uses the pathways that we are on to do His work in our lives.  I’m reminded that in the Chinese alphabet the word for crisis is made up of the two characters for danger and opportunity!

 
Paul said it well in his greeting to his friends at Phillippi:  “I am assured of this – confident of this one thing:  That the One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ”

No matter what road you are on, or where you are on that road, as long as your eyes are on Jesus, He is working to do the good work He purposes in your life, in spite of and even through the circumstances you find yourself in. 

Let me repeat myself:

No matter what road you are on, or where you are on that road, as long as your eyes are on Jesus, He is working to do the good work He purposes in your life, in spite of and even through the circumstances you find yourself in.

The fact of the matter is that the purpose of His good work in you is always the same.

Is has little to do with your circumstances or even your ministry; it has everything to do with YOU!

Paul prayed for the Ephesians with these words:  “I pray… that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…” 

In the Inner Man!  That is the focus of Christ’s work.  The outward circumstance of your life and the forces at play in your work, your school, your relationships, even in your marriage, are used by God to get at “The Inner Man.”

You remember Jesus railing against the Pharisees one time told them that they were careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they were full of robbery and self-indulgence!  (Mt 23:25-26)  The point of God’s work in our lives is the inside of the cup!

 

Look for a moment with me again at the epistle reading from Philippians 1.

Paul’s great love for this congregation which he founded and which partnered with him for the rest of his ministry, there and abroad, is very evident: 

For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

Paul was their pastor!  He was the one who prayed with them and for them as they struggled through their own set of difficulties and as God worked in and through them in that first century – pre-christian era.

Paul goes on:

“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” 

I believe that this is the direction that God wants to take us through our circumstances!

Overflowing love, always more and more

Knowledge and FULL Insight, no more groping around in the dark (ever feel like that?)

Pure and Blameless, the internal state of affairs of someone who has been formed into                 

      the likeness of Jesus Chris

Having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ

When I read that last phrase I was reminded of the reminder of the writer to the Hebrews in that famous 12^th chapter:

Looking to Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  You (on the other hand) … have no resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;  It is for discipline that you endure;  God is dealing with you as a beloved child; just as earthly father discipline us for a short time … God disciplines us for our good, so that we may share in His holiness.  This is not a joyful experience, but filled with sorrow, yet the discipline trains us and afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (sound familiar?)

 

Now listen to the Therefore!

“Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, (anyone?)

and MAKE STRAIGHT PATHS FOR YOUR FEET, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.  Pursue peace and sanctification; don’t fall short of the grace of God!

Friends, there is grace for us who are in the midst of the circumstance of life, who are ‘under the circumstances.’   And I know without doubt that some are suffering in their circumstances today, and I know also that most of us have been there, possibly ALL OF US!

If you are there – if today the pain feels like you are in a fire, then listen to the prophet Malachi one more time:

He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap;  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi (those who worship Him) and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

The God who created you is watching.  Not just watching but watching intently, the process that you are in.  When you feel you are in the fire, its because you probably are! But God is in the process too.  And He is carefully watching for something to come forth.

The refiner sits at the opening of the kiln and places the ore in the mold, begins to turn up the fire until the metal melts and as it melts the impurities that are on the inside begin to rise to the top.  The purifier takes a metal rod and scrapes off the impurities that rise to the top and discards them as dross.

So how can the refiner tell when the process is done?  Simple really.  When he can pull out the mold with the silver in it and look down and see himself in the reflection, the process is done!  He then pours the silver our of the refiner’s mold and into a cooling mold, in the shape He has determined.

That is the offering of ourselves that God is after, friends.  That He might see himself in the reflection of our lives and that he might mold us after His own image.  The dross, the impurities in our lives, act as a veil – a covering obscuring His image in us.

Listen to this one final verse from Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  But we all, with unveiled face (having the dross removed), beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

 

Let us pray!

Come, Holy Spirit, come among us here.  We who find ourselves in the fire of your workshop are being prepared for all that you want to do in and through our lives.  Look intently, Lord Jesus, on our lives that, having begun a good work in us, you bring it to completion.  Let us be transformed Lord, from glory to glory into Your image, through the fires of our lives.  And keep us mindful of your care and compassion in the midst of the fire.  Prepare in us today, the way for Your Advent in our lives.  Through Christ we pray.

Amen.

 

Juxtaposition - Here Now, Not Yet

Pentecost VII
July 15, 2012
Fr. Philip Eberhart

Juxtaposition:  Here Now – Not Yet

As I read through – wrestled through the scriptures we just heard read this week, I was so struck by the juxtaposition of two realities:

 The promise of Adoption and Peace, the inheritance of the Saints promised to us who believe and the violent end of St. John the Baptist, beheaded by Herod.  Why would these particular scriptures be chosen to be read together?

From the Psalm:

8

I will listen to what the LORD God is saying, *
for he is speaking peace to his faithful people
and to those who turn their hearts to him.

9

Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him, *
that his glory may dwell in our land.

10

Mercy and truth have met together; *
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

11

Truth shall spring up from the earth, *
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

12

The LORD will indeed grant prosperity, *
and our land will yield its increase.

13

Righteousness shall go before him, *
and peace shall be a pathway for his feet.

And from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Church:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places …

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…

In him we have redemption through his blood…

he has made known to us the mystery of his will…

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance…

In him you also … were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;

this is the pledge of our inheritance.

 Then we have Amos and John, the Baptist as bookends!

Amos, a herder and tender of Sycamore trees, sent to Israel and thrown out for the message he was given there.

 John, put in prison, and violently killed at the whim of a bitter wife’s command.

What are we to make of the juxtaposition?

 What are we seeing here?   Juxtaposition is placing two opposite things side-by-side for the purpose of contrast.

 Is that what we have here, two opposite things?

 Do we have the promises of God that we get to claim for ourselves and the reality of Amos and John, prophets who were despised, rejected and killed?

 Or do we have two sides of the same reality?

 On one side the promises of God, based on the gift and grace of Jesus Christ

   …we are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms …

 And yet …

   … the priest is instrumental in turning the king against Amos…
   … the daughter is instrumental in exacting her mother’s wishes from Herod,                             
          the death of John.

Juxtaposition!

In the midst of life, death.

In the midst of obedience, opposition.
In the midst of the Kingdom of God, the ways of men. 

Friends, we live in the in-between place.  The place of faith.

Until Jesus comes back to set it all right fully, we live in the place of faith.

We live like Abraham, journeying on the way to a better – a promised land.

We live like Moses and the people of Israel, in bitter struggle with our own sin

            Our brokenness and dis-ease are always right there with us.

We live like David, anointed by God, but told to wait – servant to Saul, hated and outcast.

We live like the Prophets, called by God, but living with unclean people and unclean lips.

We live like John, who saw the One who was to come, yet from prison, asked him again,             

           “Are you the one, or shall we look for another?”

We live like Jesus himself, at once Son of God, yet brought to Golgotha… to the place of                         the Cross.

 Juxtaposition!

 Not the comparison of opposites, but the two sides of our life in the Kingdom of God

Here now and Not Yet – the struggle to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling”

 To “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, didn’t take that as something to be grasped or held on to.”   He let it go in order to embrace us.  Jesus let everything that He was as God go, in order to take on our humanity – the juxtaposition itself.

 Why?

 Because what the Psalmist, what David said is true… what Paul said is true!

 It’s all true.

 And faith requires us to look past what we see, to something that is – as yet – unseen !!

 Will we see it in our lifetime?

 Will we see the fullness of the Kingdom in our midst?  Will we see the Revival we pray for each week, each month?  Will we see the consummation of our faith?

 Yes!!!!

 Before we die?    Maybe.

 God is not the great candy machine in the sky.  He isn’t a good short-order cook!  He doesn’t grant us three wishes, like Aladdin’s genie. 

 God is the creator, the master of the universe, and we of all people, know the extent and the expanse of that statement.  Many here ARE Rocket scientists, for heaven’s sake!

The “God of the Universe” should have fairly concrete meaning for us today!!  It should be even more awesome to us, than it was to the ancients who wrote the lines.  We can test the boundaries of His greatness and understand the limits of our smallness now, with just a couple of clicks on the computer!

 We live our life here and now, in the in-between;  in the “here now & not yet” – the Kingdom of God is among you and yet it is coming.

 The requirement of this time is faith.

The substance of things hoped for;  the evidence of things not seen.

    Heb 12:1

 And just a few verses later:   For without faith it is impossible to please God.  Those who come to him must believe that He exists (1) and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him diligently (2).

1.  Keep on believing …

God is here .. He is real … and He is not silent!

We are deaf, because we are loud.  God is soft spoken!  Be Still and Know!

 2.  Look for the fruit of His love, today.

Small ways – sunshine, rain, children, family, friends and loved ones.  Time together.

    All gifts from God … the list is long!  And we are all too busy with the gifts to give                  thanks to the Giver.  Stop.  Be aware of His hand extended toward you today.

The point of juxtaposition is perspective.

Even a tiny pebble that is placed close enough to our eye obscures all else.  Let us make sure that our “light and momentary afflictions” are not obscuring from us the view of what God wants to and is accomplishing through them, “an eternal glory that far outweighs then all.”

Let us pray…

Lord Jesus Christ.

You have given us yourself and in that Gift we have received all things.  Open our eyes this day to see through your eyes, what we have been called to and gifted for – the seeking of your Kingdom first and foremost, and help us by your Spirit to rest in the knowledge that all else that is needful will be added unto us.

In Your Name, Lord Jesus and for the sake of Your Kingdom here on earth, we pray.

Amen.

Commending Ourselves - God's Way

June 24, 2012

Fr. Philip Eberhart

4^th Sunday of Pentecost

Commending ourselves – God’s Way

As I read the lessons for this morning I was struck by the recurring theme of storms in life that are stilled by God, by the Lord Jesus Christ -  I was struck by the list of Paul’s hardships and then my eyes fell on the previous phrase, just before that list in 2 Cor 6:

Look at the reading with me for a moment:

“As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way:”

Commend is to “represent as worthy, desireable – to recommend”

Paul’s point here, and I’ll make it right up front today, is that we “commend” ourselves in the service of God by pressing through the hardships and the terrible circumstances that come our way as well as by pressing into the character of Jesus that these hardships duly produce in our lives.

This and other sections of Paul’s letters paint a picture that is uncomfortable for us in our western form of Christianity – great endurance; afflictions; hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.  Paul is recounting in shorthand, the tale of his apostolic ministry of church planting!

It’s interesting!  When we here in our day “commend ourselves” it’s usually in the form of a resume, while we are job hunting.  We list our accomplishments – we list what we excel at, what we’re good at, in order to show how we might meet a need that the employer has that we can fill. 

How differently Paul approaches “commending himself” as a servant of God!  We think that he should have used the list in Phil 3 here, instead of the list before us!  You remember the list right?

Circumcised the eighth day…

Of the nation of Israel…

Of the tribe of Benjamin

A Hebrew of Hebrews,

As to the Law… a Pharisee;

As to Zeal, a persecutor of the church;

As to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless!

Sounds like a great pedigree – there is much to commend Paul to his fellows here!!

But before launching into the list he says this:

(reading from the New Living Translation):    We who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised.  We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us.  We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could! Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!”

Paul is contrasting the attainments of the flesh in his lineage and life accomplishments as a Jew, a Pharisee and zealot in persecuting the church, with what he now knows to be the true basis for any “commendation” of his ministry.

He says of all his accomplishments – of his Jewish pedigree – “now I consider these things as rubbish – worthless – because of what Christ has done!”  Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ!”

As we turn back to our reading in 2 Cor 6 we can see that there are three distinct sections in the listing that Paul puts forward here as “commending ourselves”:

The section we’ve mentioned above of hardships preceeds, but is then followed by a listing that is reminiscent of other listings of the FRUIT of godly life, in both Paul’s letters and in Peter’s second letter:

“In Purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love,

In the word of truth, in the power of God, by the weapons of righteousness for the

Right hand and the left…”

Sound familiar?

Paul’s list in Galatians of the Fruit of the Spirit:

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”

And the list we find in Peter’s second letter:

“In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.”

It seems that for Paul (and for Peter), the commendation that they seek arises from  hardship in the form of the character of Jesus -- produced by the hardships themselves.  Our commendation in life, comes in the form of character, that Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus produces in our lives through the diligence of pressing through the difficulties that come our way and into the character of Godliness and “holiness, without which no one will see the Lord!”

And another interesting thing then happens in Paul’s description in our reading:  a third section. Let me read now from the New Living again:

“We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors.  We are ignored, even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we are still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed.  Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.”

Can you see the progression here?

Stage 1 is just hardship – yuk, going through the hard things in life as we all do, but the message is GO THROUGH

Stage 2 is God’s grace to use the hardships of our life, the times we are “UNDER the circumstances,” to create a new kind of life in us – a JESUS LIFE.  So we are being formed, almost pressed, into His image and likeness, day by day.

Stage 3 is where we begin to see God’s purpose of fruitfulness and character in the circumstances of our lives and we begin to see that those things only matter, to the extent that they are forming us into His image!

Two chapters earlier in this letter Paul makes such a reference, beginning in Chapter 4, verse 7:

“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

And Paul ends that section of his letter with this thought:

“For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!  So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Friends, how can we fix our gaze on things that can’t be seen?  There are a lot of changes going on around us, a lot of people who are in difficulty or in transition, a lot of people who are ill or suffering in some way, in body or mind.  And that’s just here at REZ!  Not to mention all that is going on around us in our world, at our jobs and in our neighborhoods.   What would happen if we began to see it all differently?

What would happen if, in the midst of the storms of life, we realized that Jesus is right here in the boat with us!! 

We seem to think that when Jesus woke up and calmed the storm, the metaphor can be made to our lives, and that He will simply command all the bad stuff to go away!  Isn’t that what all that means?  Hmmm?

Isn’t this to be read as a metaphor for the storms of our own lives?

I think it wasn’t a metaphor – it was a real circumstance!  One in which the disciples were fearful and despairing of their very lives, right?  They were actually incredulous that Jesus could be asleep during such a storm!!  And they did everything they could in their own power until finally, they gave up, and woke Jesus, and appealed to Him for His input.

Now there’s the metaphor for our lives!  We row and row and row and row against the wind and the waves, our sail gets battered and torn and our boat is about to sink, and THEN we come to Jesus for His help.  THEN we cry out to Him, “Save us, LORD.” 

What would happen if we learned the lesson that Jesus is in the boat!  That all the authority and power of the universe is right here in the boat with us!!!

At that point, the storms can rage all they want.  Sure the boat will be tossed, BUT JESUS…

BUT JESUS!

Jesus Christ stands in our boat today, friends.  In your boat!  No matter what the storm you are facing, be it trouble or perplexity or being hunted down, or knocked down, or suffering or in danger of death. 

Jesus Christ stands in our boat today – in your boat – through troubles, hardships, calamities of every kind: being beaten, put in prison, facing angry mobs, working to exhaustion, enduring sleepless nights, going without food.

BUT JESUS!!

Jesus is creating in us HIS LIFE and HIS CHARACTER!!  So we look to what is unseen.

The writer of Hebrews put it this way:

“…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.      AMEN.

Our Jesus-shaped Center

Life is typically hectic for most of the people that I know. Very few in our culture live a life of what I would call "peace" and/or "contentment." We are forever moving and striving for more and greater, especially in our "American Dream" culture and society. Not that these things are always bad necessarily, but on occasion we slow down or sometimes are stopped, long enough to recognize that the activity has left us empty.

When we discover that emptiness, we inherently try to fill it, often with more activity, sometimes with friends or family, sometimes with habits or addictions. Rarely do we allow the time to explore the shape of our emptiness. There is a bible verse where God says to "be still and know that I am God." What a challenge for most of us. Stillness is so foreign to our lives that it usually takes an "act of God" to slow us down; a disaster that uproots us, a disease that diminishes us, a job loss or a family loss. Yet in our times of loss and disaster, we tend to find that we have a center. Perhaps we call on God for help. Perhaps in the "grinding halt" we discover a purpose - a reason for it: God's desire to know us and for us to know him.

It's not that God doesn't know us, he does! All too well. Thus the need to get our attention from time to time - to allow suffering to encroach as it naturally does in all our lives because of fallenness in our world; to allow our brokenness to overtake us in some way. God in his mercy, uses the bad things in life to take us by the face with both hands and get us to look into his eyes - into the face of Jesus. When we do we find compassion, we find help, we find mercy, we find a strength we did not have before - but most of all we find a God of love. And we find our center.

Take time to find your Jesus-shaped center. Stop long enough to listen. Close your outward eyes and open your inward eyes - or at least take time to ask God to help you in this endeavor. In this way, you will take the small steps that are needed to be Willing, Available & Obedient to God today.

Padre Phil+