English Language Sermon – October 26, 2008

“Jesus of the Waves” (Matthew 14:22-33)

October 26, 2008

Rev. Dr. David Andersen, English Language Sabbatical Interim Pastor

The disciples had just witnessed Jesus feed five thousand from a few loaves of bread and few fish. They had tasted of the miracle. They had helped to gather the abundance that was left. Life was beautiful. This is the way life should be. Never do I hope you hear me say that life should not be embraced and richly enjoyed. To me, it is profane to have much, yet not enjoy it.

I think the disciples must have almost been giddy as they climbed into their boat. Their full stomachs were a result of a miracle, and they were close to and loved by the one who had performed the miracle. He had stayed behind to pray and they knew his prayers would include prayers for each of them. And they knew he would meet them the next morning on the other side. Life was beautiful.

They pushed out from the shore. They set their sail and put their oars in the water. They were blessed. All was well.

When I was a child much of my summer was spent on the water in a row boat owned by my grandparents. What amazes me in looking back is how young I was when my parents and grandparents allowed me to go out in the boat alone or with a friend. We swam off the boat. We fished off the boat. We used the boat for transportation to get from one side of the small lake to the other.

Although the Sea of Galilee is much larger than the lake I knew as a child, it is much smaller than any of the Great Lakes, probably about the size of Lake Chautauqua, where Sharon and I vacation every summer. For the disciples, the sea provided their livelihood. It was their highway from one side to the other. It cooled them on hot days. It provided them with irrigation and endless hours of calm repose and reflection as they sat at the waters edge and watched the sunset or rise on the other shore.

The boat the disciples used was bigger than my row boat but not nearly the size of the power boats that populate our lakes today. Their boat was primitive and much more vulnerable to the storms that could rapidly occur, unlike any of our lakes of comparable size.

The boat is the Church. From ancient times and probably even known to the writer of the gospel, the boat has been seen as an image of the church. It is the symbol of the World Council of Churches. It is seen in the architecture of various church buildings across the world. The boat is the church and I hope every child finds the same pleasure in the church as I found in my grandparents rowboat.

Thus the church takes the new born infant or the new professing Christian on board at a service of baptism, promising to care and nurture the child or professing Christian through his or her journey through life.

Some days, however, when I was out in the rowboat I would look down into the water. It was deep and dark yet I could see the weeds that in my child’s mind looked like the arms of a giant squid. It was frightening, but in the boat I was safe. I hope that is how every child feels in church. It is a safe place to be. I applaud the inviting, creative, child friendly atmosphere of North Shore, hosting a large day care program, sponsoring an after school tutoring program, and maintaining a gym that is in use from morning to late evening. But all of our building should be welcoming and child friendly. Children should feel this is a good place to be and if their fingerprints get left on walls or smudge the windowpanes, praise be to God, because those fingerprints reminds us of God who has known and loved the one whose fingerprint it is from the beginning of creation.

The church is the boat and the disciples climb aboard and set sail. They leave the shore, but what are these shores, the one they leave and the one that is their destination on the other side. In Galilee the terrain of these shores is beautiful. There are green meadows and slopping hills with little towns lit atop. But, if the boat is the church what are the shores?

On the one side are the blessings of life where Jesus gives of the bread we need to live and the miracle of love that always turns scarcity into abundance. In tradition the other shore is not a temporal location but an eternal destination. The other shore is heaven where the fullness of love is known.

But, what of the sea that in the story read this morning became so turbulent the disciples feared for their lives? What is the sea? The sea and the boat upon it is the journey of our lifetime. It is our encounter with the world, our pilgrimage through this world. The boat, Christ’s Church, takes us aboard, shelters and guides us through life, leads us through our journey, then when our destiny is complete, docks at the port on the other side, when the one who was once young is now an ancient mariner and ready in a service of resurrection to be carried ashore on the other side.

Out on the sea, before that shore is reached, however, I realize I was right as a child to fear the weeds beneath the surface of the water, and every parent fears for their child, aware that the calm beauty of a placet sea can become a raging storm before the night is through. The sea is the world and it is often a very turbulent place to be. What of the storm? What of the heartache? What of the turbulence? Here, in these questions, in the midst of the storm, is the most important point of the story ready this morning.

The disciples’ boat was being battered. They were far from land. They held the rails and clung to one another. We see the picture, and suddenly we realize, there is one more question we haven’t asked. “Where is Jesus?” The Gospel of Luke says, “…he came walking toward them on the sea.” The psalmist says, “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the might waters, yet your footprints were unseen.” The most important point of this story is Jesus on the water, Jesus in the midst of the storm.

This is what we want to teach our children. This is what we need to learn, over and over as adults. Where is Jesus? He is where people hurt. He is where lives have been ravaged. He is where oppressors have stolen people’s freedom, famine has taken people’s food, disease has halved their bodies, and corruption has stolen people’s resources.

Where is Jesus? Jesus is where he is needed. Jesus is walking the waves in New Orleans. Jesus is walking the waves in Iraq. Jesus is walking the waves in Jerusalem and Darfur. Jesus is walking the waves of the clinics in Africa that treat the epidemic of Aids. Jesus is walking the waves of poverty on the garbage dumps of Guatemala. Jesus is walking the waves of anxious waiting rooms in our hospitals. Jesus is walking the waves of every mental hospital and nursing home corridor.

Peter seeing Jesus, shouted across the waves, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” The Lord said, “Come.”

A part of every parent’s education of their child is teaching them how to step out of the boat and encounter the storm. Every parent wants the best for their children and I agree, but what parents must come to understand is that the best is not all contained in school athletics, dancing lessons, play stations, cell phones and personal computers. The best may be, as youth must be given opportunity to learn, clearing the yard of a homebound person, or visiting a nursing home, or participating in a mission trip to New Orleans…life found, not by always being pampered, but by being helpful.

I believe, as I said at the beginning of this sermon, that children and youth should find church to be a fun place and a safe place, but I realize the church cannot compete with schools and clubs and rock concerts in providing entertainment and amusement. But what we have is a vision of a wider world. We can provide like no one else is mission trips and work projects that begin to introduce our children and youth to the Jesus of the waves.

Peter got out of the boat and started to walk toward Jesus, but then he lost his faith and began to sink until Jesus reached out and took him by the hand. We will never know the hand of Jesus in that way until we are willing to enter the storms of life. Thus a part of helping our children to know Jesus as Lord and Savior is getting them involved in helping others, entering the chaos of life upon the waves and finding their faith in holding onto Jesus. And it is the same for each of us. The full meaning of life will never be found until we take the risks. Jesus calls you out onto the waves. He calls you to be mediators and healers. He calls you to be teachers and volunteers. He calls you to get involved. He calls you to enter the turbulence and when you do there you will find the God who as Job says, “…stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea.” (9:8)

The waves calmed and Peter and Jesus reentered the boat. You always need the church to return too. It is your abode during the storms. It is your transport from one shore to the other.

You are not expected to swim from one shore to the other alone. You are not expected to go it alone. You have the hymns of the church to sing. You have the Bible to train your mind and inspire your soul. You have the symbols of the chalice and the baptistry to remind you of the one you serve. You have one another to encourage you and support you. You have the church, which in the name of Christ embraced you at your birth and journeys with you across the sea, and one day will enter the harbor on the other side, the journey ended, and take your body ashore.

And there on that shore at the end of your life you will meet the one you call Father. He will raise you up and welcome you. He will embrace you in love and call you his child. And he will ask you, how was your journey? How was your pilgrimage across the sea? And you will tell him about your life on earth.

God will listen, but then one question will remain. He will ask you, “Did you ever leave the boat, did you ever walk the sea, did you ever meet My son upon the waves?”

Let us pray: God, thank you for the security of this hour, this ship of faith and that when we leave and enter again the world we go to meet your Son upon the waves. Amen.

English Language Sermon – October 19, 2008

“Jesus’ Best Friend” (John 21:20-24)

October 19, 2008

Rev. Dr. David Andersen, English Language Sabbatical Interim Pastor

When I was a young man I copied down two quotes about Richard Nixon. The card on which I typed them is now yellowed with age but the quotes remain important, not because of what they say about Richard Nixon but because they can be applied to all of us.

The fist quote was by Arthur Burns, whom President Nixon appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve. He once wondered “if he (Nixon) ever really had a good, close personal friend.” Sadly, he decided not, and said, “A friend like that could have saved him – from his lifelong isolation, surely, perhaps from his inability to trust.” The second quote was by Henry Kissinger who once said, “Can you imagine what Nixon would have been had somebody loved him?…He would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him.”

This morning I want to preach about friendship, particularly that rarified category of those we refer to as our “best friend.” It is an important subject because friendship is one of the models we are given for our life together as Christians in the Church and understanding the highest expression of friendship through what it means to have a “best friend,” the ideal of friendship, gives us an image to strive for and emulate in all friendship, particularly in the Church.

The Bible has some fantastic stories of friendship, but the one I want to focus on this morning is one that is seldom mentioned when we speak of Biblical friendships, and that is the story of Jesus’ best friend, John, the writer of the fourth gospel and one of the disciples.

Normally, we do not think of Jesus needing a best friend or even suffering the need of having friends in general, but if our creeds are correct, that Jesus was both “Truly God” and “Truly human,” and we profess that in the incarnation Jesus became in all ways as we are, then in Jesus in being truly human, he experienced in himself all the longings we know so well, including the longing for human connectedness.

Jesus was as susceptible to colds and flu bugs as we are. He would feel hunger the same way we do. When the soldiers beat Him he felt every b it the pain we would feel. And, as being fully human Jesus would also feel what it means to be lonely, but then also the reverse of that, what it is like to be loved and beyond a love for humanity, what it is like to have out of that humanity one person who stands next to him, closer to him than any other.

John was that person. John is the one disciple identified as the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” and John in his gospel refers to himself in that way, and for as much as the other disciples were confident in Jesus’ love for them, they knew that there was this bond between John and Jesus.

Now, what I would like to do is look more closely at this relationship between Jesus and John and what it meant to Jesus and what it means to us to have such a close friend and how from these friendships we begin to understand what it means to be in relationship with one another in the church. I particularly want to look at specific incidents where John referred to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved and see what is the possible meaning in these incidents for having a friend who as the book of Proverbs says, “sticks closer than a brother.”

We begin with the Last Supper. Jesus and his disciples are sharing a meal together. It is the evening in which Jesus will be arrested. John is seated next to Jesus. John writes, “One of his disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him.” Jesus announces that one of the disciples will betray him. The disciples are shocked. The burning questions is, who will it be. No one, however, wants to ask Jesus. Then Peter leans forward and says to John, you ask.

John asks the question. Mary, the mother of Jesus, can’t ask the question of Jesus; it would be too painful for her. Peter can’t ask the question, he is not close enough. It has to be John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who not out of gossip but because Jesus loves him, shares in the truth of Jesus life. John asks the hard question, and this is one of the provisions of close friendship. A close friend keeps us to the truth. A close friend keeps us tethered to reality. A close friend is someone who asks the hard questions of our life.

John could have attempted to be reassuring to Jesus, offering a false security saying to Jesus, “Don’t be silly Jesus, you know everybody loves you. You know none of your disciples would ever turn against you.” Or he could have said to Jesus, “I don’t want to talk about it. It is to painful. Let’s pretend it isn’t so.” This isn’t being a close friend. A close friend risks his or her own comfort and possibly even the friendship for the sake of the friend, for the sake of adhering to an honesty and forthrightness with the friend that possibly no other human being can have with that friend. Jesus needed someone in whom he could confide on that night. John gave him that opportunity by asking the hard question.

Praise God if you have someone in your life in whom you can confide and who will ask you the hard questions as you confront the sometimes extremely difficult issues and situations in your life.

Next, we turn to the crucifixion. Jesus looks down from the cross, and the gospel says, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disci9ple whom he loved standing beside her.” (19:26). John was with Jesus’ mother and Jesus before he died then entrusted the care of his mother into the hands of John. A best friend is someone you can turn to for help. It is not even a point of consideration. It is a given. Jesus is dying, but he has to know his mother will be taken care of. John, alone, is able to give that assurance. Sometimes we can’t let go until those kind of assurances can be made.

Everybody needs at least one other person in their life upon whom they can call. It doesn’t matter if it is a big thing or a little thing, this person can be counted upon. Now, you can’t expect this of everybody, but praise be to God, if you have that one somebody whose name comes to mind when you need help or assistance, and hopefully, the church, is this way for one another. Jesus carried the sins of the world at the crucifixion, but in a very human way he also carried the care of his mother, and you can say that in John there was someone there to minister to the human side of him, so that he could be the Son of God for the world. We need somebody we can call, somebody who will be there for us.

The third incident that reveals the relationship of Jesus to John follows the resurrection and occurs at the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were out fishing and a figure appears on the shore. The disciples had caught little, and this man on the shore calls out to them, “cast your nets on the other side of the boat,” he shouted. They do and their nets became full with the catch. The disciples are mystified as to who this figure is, but the gospel says, “That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’” (21:7).

Everybody needs somebody who knows their name and can call it out and say, “That’s my friend.” I like the definition of friendship I once heard from John Savage. He said, “A friend is someone who knows you really well and likes you anyway.” I don’t want to die with my life a secret. I want there to have been at least a few people who truly knew me, and in knowing me, hopefully still stuck by me. I want someone, out in the boat, able to recognize me on the shore.

This kind of knowing I am talking about is a special kind of knowing. It is a knowing embedded in love. John’s recognition of Jesus came out of love, because with love, even before the sun has risen and a mist still hover over the water, you see in the hues of the person on shore the one you love.

You recognize the little idiosyncrasies. You catch the inflexion of the voice. This person is alive to you in all the manifold mystery God has made him or her. This person is your best friend.

And this leads me to the fourth mention of John in the gospel as the disciple whom Jesus loved. It is in the last verses of John’s gospel. Peter turns, after his own discussion with Jesus and the gospel says, “He (Peter) saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them…” Then John writes, “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them.” John identifies himself at last as this disciple and says, I am the one who has written this gospel.

Jesus needed a best friend to write and speak his testimony. One of the privileges of being a best friend is that you can speak the praise of the one who is your friend, and as long as you are alive, even after the friend has passed this earth, that friend’s memory and presence will be known through you.

You carry his or her memory in your heart. You don’t let the presence of the one who was your friend be lost to the universe because of death. What you saw in your friend is what helps you make sense of the world and reveals to you more of what the world should be, so even though your friend is taken from this world, through you, she or he remains a gifted part of this world, especially to you. In life, you speak praises of your friend, and if death separate you, you don’t let the memory of your friend get lost.

Thus, there you have it, reflections on Jesus’ best friend, the disciples whom Jesus loved. He was the one who could ask Jesus the hard questions. He was the person Jesus could turn to in his hour of greatest need. He was the one who knew Jesus better than anyone else and recognized him on the shore. And, the love that bonded Jesus and John never ceased but remained alive and is alive today in the Gospel of John. John was the one who testified of his friend’s life.

I hope this speaks to you of the sacredness of friendship. I hope it tells you that if you have such a friend, apart from the gift of family, it is the most sacred and holy gift you will ever receive. I hope it tells you that all friendship is of God and this is the way we are to be to one another in church. And, I hope it tells you that if Jesus needed such a friend, the longing for human connectedness is Spirit driven and that its answer in having a friend is as well Spirit given. The gift of friendship helps form you into the person God created you to be.

But, I hope it does one other thing. In exploring John’s special relationship to Jesus Christ, I hope it causes you to ask about your own relationship to Jesus Christ and how close it comes to being like John’s. When we sing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” this morning, I hope you will consider your friendship with Jesus and how it parallels the friendship John had with Jesus.

How close does your friendship with Jesus come to being like John’s. Is Jesus a friend of whom you can ask the hard questions about discipleship and life? Do you use Jesus as an escape from life or does Jesus help keep you grounded to life and facing sometimes the hard questions? Are you a friend upon whom Jesus can call to help care for his mother and father, sister and brother or the stranger? Are you close enough to Jesus so you are able to recognize him on the shore or those times when he would reveal himself in the stranger or the person next to you or amongst the least of his children? And, do you testify of him? Do you speak his name and tell others what he has done for you?

But, this isn’t where I want to end. There is one last word that needs to be spoken and that has to do with Jesus’ relationship with us. John saw himself as being Jesus’ best friend, the disciple whom Jesus loved. It was a unique and special relationship, but here is what I believe. What John understood for himself is true for all of us. Each of us is the disciple whom Jesus loves. Each of us, in the eyes of Jesus and our relationship to him, is as a best friend. We are to Jesus, each of us, as though we were the only person in the world and all his love is poured into us.

The problem is, and the only difference between Jesus and us and Jesus and John, is that John accepted it, John understood it, John saw with his own eyes of the soul, what was really real, and that was that he was the beloved. It isn’t a difference of kind, Jesus’ love for John being of one kind and his love for us being of another kind. It is a difference of perception. John saw Jesus with his heart. John saw Jesus with the eyes of his soul and the more we allow ourselves to see in the same way, the more in faith we allow ourselves to believe, the more we will see what is really real and that is, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves you with the same love and the same depth with which he loved John, and all the qualities that applied to John in his friendship with Jesus, are the very same qualities with which Jesus loves us, asking the hard questions, being one upon whom we can rely, recognizing us from afar off, and always speaking sweetly of our name. Jesus loves you. Amen.

English Language Sermon – October 12, 2008

“IMPOSSIBLE – Not a Reason for Not Doing” (Philippians 3:12-15; 4:11-13)

October 12, 2008

Rev. Dr. David Andersen, English Language Sabbatical Interim Pastor

Today is the beginning of North Shore’s pledge campaign for the 2009 budget, culminating in a unity service on November 2 when all the congregations of North Shore Baptist will worship together, share communion and present their pledges.

I want to begin this campaign with a international focus, a focus that has been so much a part of this congregation. I want to begin on January 11, 1811 when Adoniram Judson set sail with three other passengers on a ship named the Packet. All of us here this morning are descendants of this one man for Adoniram Judson was not only the first American missionary and a Baptist, but ultimately, his field of service, for 37 years, would be Burma, which is now, Myanmar, and the homeland of all those in our Karen fellowship.

We are linked together in the story of Judson, a story that can still inspire and guide us as we consider our discipleship to Jesus Christ.

It begins on January 11, 1811. The destination on that day, however, was not Burma. It was England where Adonirm Judson under the direction of the Board of Foreign Commissioners was to consult with the London Missionary Society to see if a join venture might be undertaken and if the London Missionary Society would help finance the American mission endeavor. He was not yet a missionary but was attempting to find the support and financing to be a missionary.

On the way, because England and France were at war with one another, the ship was commandeered by a French vessel and Judson was thrown into the hole of the ship as a prisoner along with the crew. When they reached France he was imprisoned and only escaped when an American visitor walked out with Judson hidden in this large cloak.

Ask yourself, how you would have reacted in similar circumstances. Wouldn’t the temptation be to say, “This must be a sure sign I have misread the plan of God for my life. I am going back home. I am going to settle into a quiet existence in some small New England village and never be heard of again.”

Adoniram didn’t. He went on to England, received the support of the London Missionary Society and only then returned to America where within less than a year he set sail for India and the first assignment of a foreign missionary from American.

Today, I want to examine three aspects of Judson’s life which I believe made possible the great deeds he was to accomplish. I also believe these three aspects to his life can be emulated in our life, so there is about ourselves the same sense of divine purpose and fulfillment, whether it is in deeds of daring or the support and encouragement of those who attempt the great endeavors.

We begin with Judson’s faith. Judson was a man of great faith. His trust was in God. The success of his life was not dependent on the immediate circumstances of his environment or his life. He had a faith that lifted him above the present and grounded him in the eternal. He could sit in the hole of the ship, a young man, far, far away from any tangible evidence that he would ever get to be a missionary, and still have hope, because his faith was in a God who had brought life out of death, victory out of a crucifixion. His faith was in a God whose incarnation revealed His love for humankind.

Judson shared the faith of the Apostle Paul whose words he had probably memorized, “…I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want.” (Phil. 4:11,12)

Here is what we learn from Judson: Great deeds begin with great faith. In your own life you will face situations similar to Adoniram Judson. That is not to say you will end up in the hole of a ship or as a prisoner in France but there will be those times and those occasion in your life that will seem contrary to what you believe for yourself or the hopes you have for the future. We are all facing this in the present economic crisis, recognizing our vulnerability. But that bad news may also come from a doctor, or when some tragedy occurs , or a door closes, or an accident happens – the way you hold on, the way you get through, is having a faith that is centered not in circumstances but in a God whose love transforms circumstances, sometimes using us.

Your mantra is borrowed from Paul, “I can do all things in him (Christ) who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13)

Second, Adoniram had great support. He didn’t go it alone – ever. He always had behind him the support and the encouragement of other Christians who were praying for him and working with him.

When at last Adoniram sailed for India in 1812, there were a total of eight missionaries on two boats, the Harmony and the Caravan. After reaching India one of the missionaries, Luther Rice, became gravely ill and it became necessary for him to return to America. That was the end of his missionary experience but he spent the rest of his life encouraging others to enter missionary service and traveling the country and speaking in churches to raise funds to support Adoniram Judson.

Perhaps, this is our call: we are the ones who encourage and support the great deeds of others. Others will be the Judson’s, but through our pledges, and in every other way it is given to us to lend support to another, we can all be Luther Rice.

The apostle Paul in the same way was sustained by the support and prayers of others. In his letter to the Philippians he says, “…it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only; for even in Thessalonica you sent me help once and again.” (4:15,16)

God gives us to one another to be helpmates to one another. We are who we are because there are people working with us or behind us or for us. We get from here to there, even when it looks like a solo act, because there have been others whose yesterdays made possible our todays. Some of us forget this and when we get up against an obstacle or face a seemingly insurmountable problem or personal crisis, we exhaust ourselves trying to shoulder the weight alone.

Great deeds, seemingly impossible deeds, are accomplished when we work together.

When Adoniram Judson reached India he encountered stiff opposition from the British East India Company. This necessitated that he look for another mission field which was found in the country of Burma and to which he sailed on June 22, 1813. In Burma it was six years before he had his first convert to Christianity. It was six years of sitting by a roadside, underneath a thatch roof, inviting travelers to rest in the shade, and speaking to them of Christ…six years before anyone responded.

At one point he was arrested. The treatment he received was brutal. He was put in a cell without a window and with fifty other prisoners. At night a long bamboo pole was put between his ankles and he was lifted, feet first from the ground, and had to spend the nights with only his shoulders and head resting on the dirt floor where rats and other creatures accosted the prisoners. Next, he was moved to the death house where every day at three a gong sounded and a prisoner was taken and executed.

Adoniram Judson survived and was eventually released because beside him and with him was his wife, Ann. They sailed together from America. They endured together the disappointment that they were not wanted in India. And after Adoniram’s arrest Ann courageously met with officials to secure permission for visits and daily walked the two miles there and the two miles back to visit her husband, only missing when she gave birth to their first child. Great deeds require great support.

Third, Adoniram Judson had Great Vision. He saw what could be and that vision remained stronger than any obstacle he ever encountered. The vision of God’s love for the world and the Burmese people enabled him to endure the incredible suffering he faced through the years in Burma, including not only his imprisonment, but the eventual sickness and death of his wife and child and a period of sever depression.

The vision, though at times it might have seen as though it sunk beneath the horizon, never went out. Adoniram Judson produced the first Burmese-English dictionary. He translated the entire Bible into Burmese, and at the end of his life there were in Burma schools, mission stations, and churches where there had been none all giving testimony to a vision that was able to see what might be.

Sometimes we have the faith, sometimes we have the support, but what we lack is the vision. We have to be able to see what can be and we have to let it burn inside of us until it is branded upon our human spirit so that no matter what happens or what obstacles we face the impression is still there, reminding us and inspiring us onto what can be. The image of that vision should be in our pledge and the commitments we make in our life.

We will not all end up on the mission field but we can all help and we can all share in the vision. We can help to sustain the ministry of this church. We can serve as volunteers in our community. We can imagine the world as God loves it and let our lives be used so others can see that love through us.

When Adoniram Judson first sailed to England to gain the support of the London Missionary Society, he went because back home there was a lady by the name of Mrs. John Norris who underwrote the cost of the trip and later in her estate left $30,000 for missions. Her name may not be remembered on buildings and in books, but her faith, her support, her vision is written as a part of the legacy belonging to every Burmese Christian and to North Shore Baptist, where today we worship with our Karen and Burmese brothers and sisters in Christ as one body in Christ, sharing together a common heritage in the fulfillment of a journey that began in 1811 when that boat named the Packet, left the harbor, carrying a passenger named Adoniram Judson.

English Language Sermon – September 28, 2008

“The Two Sides of God” (Exodus 3:1-6; Philipians 2:5-11)

September 28^th, 2008

Rev. Dr. David Andersen, English Language Sabbatical Interim Pastor

To me there is a universe between the Old Testament passage we read this morning and the New Testament passage we read. The Old Testament passage represents the Otherness of God. God is not like us. God is apart from us. To be near God is to have to divert our eyes or risk blindness, and to take off our shoes because the ground we stand on is Holy Ground.

The New Testament lesson speaks of God in a different way. It focuses on the approachability of God. God is with us. God comes near to us. God’s presence before us is no more threatening than that of a slave, someone who has no authority, someone who has no power.

Two radically different notions of God, yet it is the same God. This morning I don’t want to synthesis the two, but to look at each and how the one follows from the other and how we need both in our understanding of God. We need to know both the Holiness of God and the Friendliness of God.

Let us pray:

God is not like us. God is above us. God is beyond our ability to fully comprehend or define. Whatever we might say about God we must recognize there is always more that could be said and even then we would not have exhausted all that could be said. God is God.

When orthodox Jews write out the word for God, they never fully spell it out because the word is too Holy, so in-between the first and last letter there is a blank. It is in that space we as well must recognize something so totally other we do not have the capability in our limited being to fill it in.

It is in that space we are filled with a sense of awe and mystery. It is there that we are left speechless. It is the sense of transcendence, the sense that life is more than its moments, that there is something beyond the veil that is terrifying and wonderful, fearful and enticing, all at the same time. It is this sense of the transcendent the architects of the Gothic Cathedrals sought to capture in their vaulted ceilings.

God is not like us. God is above us. God is Holy. Most of the psalms are hymns to the Holiness of God. Psalm 30:4 says, “Sing praise to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.” Psalm 99:5 says, “Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!”

The problem with a lot of our modern culture is that there is nothing transcendent about life. Life is flat. The reason that I believe we are so obsessed with sex is that there is so little transcendence in our life. There is so little beauty. There is so little mystery, so little awe, all elements of transcendence, that sex at least generates a little excitement. But, this sense of excitement cannot compare to the idea of the Holy, the sense of being on Holy ground as Moses experienced. It is so powerful that even though it speaks of what cannot be known it also illuminates everything around you.

Read the psalms. Also, become better acquainted with nature, for paradoxically, nature in its rawest form can lead you toward the Holy. All through the centuries there has been a correlation between sacredness and holiness and our awareness of the majesty and mystery and awesomeness of God and our human touch with nature.

I think every parent has experienced this in the birth of their child. It is at once the most earthly occurrence and the most sacred. Childbirth parts the curtain between us and the sacred. We stand in awe each time it happens. The speechlessness, that lump in the throat, that overwhelming sense of great humility in the presence of new life is transcendent. It is standing in the rays of God’s holiness.

I love the way Thomas Merton writes about holiness in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation. He says, “The forms and individual characters of living and growing things, of inanimate being, of animals and flowers and all nature, constitute their holiness in the sight of God.

“The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God…

“The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.

“The leaf has it own texture and it own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength.

“The lakes hidden among the hills are saints…The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints…”(p.30)

Nature in its holiness points to the holiness of God. If you simply read about nature and the advances in biotechnology and the latest animal to be cloned you can perhaps lose this awesomeness but if you do as I have had the privilege, watch a nest of eggs from a mother robin be hatched and see how the featherless birds grow, the mother feeding them and eventually encouraging them from the nest and to flight, if you are in nature and still enough, never will that sense of awesomeness leave you. The world is filled with lighting rods pointing to heaven and receiving the light from heaven.

Silent, empty churches can have the same effect. Places dedicated to the worship of God, places that have used the finest architects and the most skilled craftsmen and been inspired by the hopes and visions of a people can lead you into the realm of the Holy.

Why is the natural inclination of men and women to tone down their speech, speak in whispers or not at all when they enter a structure dedicated to the worship of God? What stills them? I believe it is in the idea of being the presence of the Holy. Someone told me of his mother, visiting a cathedral in Germany. Standing beside her was another woman who spoke only German. The two of them gazed upon the stone arches and stained glass and so overwhelming was it to them, they spontaneously embraced and tears came to their eyes.

It must have been something of the experience of Moses before the burning bush and the hearing of those words, take off your shoes for the ground upon which you stand is holy ground.

“O Lord, our Lord,” we sing, “how majestic is thy name in all the earth.

SONG

The God above us. The God of mystery. The God who can never fully be explained or defined. The God who is too Holy to have His name written out in full. The Unknown God, as Paul discovered written upon a stone in Athens. The God of creation. The God who was and is and ever shall be. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God who knew you before you were born. The God of the clapping sea and roaring thunder. The God who says to Job, “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

This God, the very God of gods, the God who gives you breath and counts eons as though they were seconds. This God who says no one can look upon me and live. This God who commands Moses to bare his feet. The God all knowing, all seeing, all powerful…is the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

This is the message of the New Testament. God emptied Himself. God became as we are that truly we might look upon Him and see Him as He is and live.

Sometimes in our palsy wellness with Jesus we forget who Jesus is. To take the holiness out of Jesus and make Him only our buddy is to diminish the role of Jesus in our life. We need a Jesus who is our brother but we also need a Jesus who is able because of Who He is to forgive our sins, a Jesus who can take us by the hand at our death out of death, a Jesus who while in every way was as we are is at the same time everything we are not. We need a Jesus both human and divine, truly one with us and truly God.

Then and only then can we truly respond to his invitation, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” Jesus is that bridge between the Old and New Testament image of God. I want a Jesus to whom I can not only talk but one who leaves me speechless. I want a Jesus to whom I can not only share my burdens, but one who can lift my burdens from me. I want a Jesus who can not only empathize with my weakness but a Jesus who can heal me with his touch.

Now, if Jesus is just a buddy, buddy, you might have a friend but you might not have a Savior. Jesus is both friend and Savior, and it is both His Love and His Holiness that makes Him such. Majesty and Love are combined in Jesus Christ; the Old and New Testament reveal one God and we see that God in Jesus Christ and that God’s desire is our well being. We know that by Jesus Christ and it is made possible by Jesus Christ in whom is pleased to dwell all the fullness of God – His majesty and His love.

This is the God you are asked to believe in. This is the God you are asked to place your trust in. The God of Moses who is the God you see in Jesus Christ, and to know that God is to know that the ground you stand on is sometimes Holy Ground.

God is Awesome. God is Holy. God is Love and you meet that God in Jesus Christ. Belief, trust, faith, it all centers in the Christ who emptied Himself, taking on human form, that you might know God in all God’s fullness, including both His Holiness and His Love. The only thing I can entreat you to do is to say Yes to the God you meet in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: God of the burning bush and the stark cross, God of Holy Ground and empty tomb, help us to come to a point that our word to you might always be one of saying Yes, both to Your awesomeness and Your love. Amen.