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.

English Language Sermon – October 5, 2008

“How Wide Is God’s Mercy, How Deep is God’s Love?” (Philippians 2:5-11)

October 5th, 2008

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

When I was young I remember waking up one morning and walking down the hallway of our upstairs bedrooms and looking in the bedrooms of my family and seeing no one and hearing no one downstairs. A flush of panic overtook me. I thought to myself, what if Christ had come in the night and I have been left behind? If you have ever had such a thought you know it does not stem from a sense of God’s Love but God’s wrath. Yet, every Sunday I sat in a church that proclaimed Jesus Christ as personal Savior, and I had made profession of faith and been baptized.

So, where did this fear come from? It came in the restrictive way in which salvation had been preached and taught in my church. Salvation was for the few, the very few who made profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but even with such a profession the fear lingered, because how did you know you were believing in just the right way that would save you. Instead of being taught the wideness of God’s mercy and the depth of God’s love, I was taught the limits of God’s mercy and the restrictivism of God’s Love.

On the other hand, salvation can be taught in such a way that everybody is saved and nobody is left out. It is a very generous concept but in the end can lead to a relativism in which nothing matters, everything is relative and no theological statement or doctrine is any more true than any other and it really doesn’t matter what you believe because in the end everybody’s belief is as valid as anyone else’s. So, which is it, the many or the few?

There are these two extremes of restrictivism on one hand and universalism on the other hand, and you are left to choose between one or the other. I refuse to make that choice. I can’t make that choice, but I can tell that over the years my sense of God’s mercy and my awareness of God’s love has grown wider and wider, embracing more and more, and the way this has happened is by an increasingly greater appreciation for the work of the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation.

This is where my journey has led me and I hope by sharing it with you it opens up discussion and causes you to reflect more seriously on how you would answer, who are saved, the many or the few? This morning I don’t mean to sound autocratic. I am not trying to say, I am right and you had better listen to me and get all the right answers. Instead, what I am asking for is an attitude within the church that nurtures a spirit that allows for openness and freedom where we can truly become exploratory in our faith and allow for the open presence of God’s Spirit in the very act of discussion. The message this morning is prompted from a request by the Chicago Baptist that we focus this morning on the Holy Spirit in recognition of a national conference of American Baptist on the Holy Spirit that was held at our church this weekend.

I begin on an airplane. Sharon and I were flying into Athens, Greece, and the plane dipped down and was practically on the runway when the pilot for some reason revved up the engines and took the 747 back up into the sky. My heart raced and I held my breath, but we ultimately landed safely. Even before we landed, however, when I had gotten over my initial fear, what came into my mind as we had such a close view of the city from the air was the thought, can it possibly be that all these people below me, these millions of people I could almost see we were so close to the ground, can it be that all these people are doomed to an eternity of hell unless here on earth they came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and professed him as Savior?

I couldn’t answer. The thought that so many people would be lost seemed too horrendous to me. I think the reason the thought entered my mind in the first place was that we were entering the land of the Apostle Paul’s missionary work. If, however, this was the way it was, that only the few who made a personal decision would be saved, I wasn’t able to comprehend it. To me, such a theology inevitably meant that hell was gong to be a much, much bigger place than heaven ever could be. Most people are not Christian and never have been. This means that the work of Christ on the cross, for all the agony of it was only for a minority of people.

Is this fair to the redemptive, cost giving part of salvation? God gave His son, let Him die on a cross, yet, in a sense, in the end, you can say the devil won because even today if all souls professed Christ as Savior, you still have all the souls of history who never even heard of Him. Do we dare say, Christ died only for the minority of people, or do we profess, Christ died for the world?

Second, it is not just the numbers but the duration of time we are given to decide that haunts me and always has. Is it really Love that gives a person 60 or 80 years on earth to decide a fate that seals that person’s doom for all eternity? Can we say that a God who created the world out of Love and sent His Son to redeem that world then forgets for all eternity more than half of humanity when they die and never again utters their name because they didn’t utter His Son’s name in the brief moment of time that was theirs on earth?

I know if one of my children was lost to me, there would never be a day in my life that I would not carry in my heart the pain of that love. I cannot conceive that God could ever enjoy the fellowship of His children at the Messianic Banquet in heaven, knowing that while these children are celebrating most of the children He once loved are now doomed to the every lasting torment of separation from Him. It seems to me that if this was true, it would be in the end that God’s wrath trumps God’s Love.

The thing is in spite of what we are taught and in spite of what we say we believe, we find ways to ease the pain of it when it comes to thoughts of our own family and those we love who might have died without ever in anyway giving any indication to us of being a professing Christian. Something in us cannot give into the thought that someone we loved is right now spending eternity in hell. In our heart we profess a hope that somehow that loved one died knowing the Lord. The alternative is too painful. We have to somehow believe that God’s mercy is somehow deeper.

I think that hope within us is warranted and I will tell you why. It is because though Christ has chosen as His primary witness to the world, His Church, and this behooves us to be a witnessing evangelistic people, God is not limited to the Church. There is a third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is not bound, and everywhere on this globe and in every human heart the Holy Spirit is working to bring each person to an awareness of God and the Love God has for that person.

Sometimes the evangelistic role of the Church is not so much to take God’s love to the world, but to help people identify where God has been working in their lives long before the Church got there or long before they knew the name of Christ.

My daughter told me about a time in her life when she sat on a park bench at a bus terminal. All the money she had in the world was in her purse. A homeless person came and sat beside her. She was living in another city, but her apartment hade been destroyed by fire and she had lost her job and she didn’t know what to do. The homeless person started to talk to her and she told him her story. She said to him, “I don’t know whether to use this money to run away or if I should go home and start over. The homeless person said to her, “Honey, if I were you I would get on that bus and go home.” My daughter told me this story, which I never knew, the day of her wedding.

That homeless person helped to save her life and all across the world, that same Holy Spirit who worked through that homeless person is working to bring people Home.

I believe there is no other name under heaven whereby we are saved than the name of Jesus Christ. My theology is restrictive in that manner. But I also believe as stated by the Apostle Paul, “That at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

I haven’t put all the pieces together, but both my mind and heart tell me that in the end hell will be a lot less empty and heaven a lot fuller than any of us have ever imagined.

Zechariah 14:9 says, “The Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.”

Clark Pinnock, a Baptist theologian says, “God is Person, and people can receive the gift of his love without knowing exactly who the giver is or how much it cost. This is the way that holy pagans like Enoch, Melchizdek and Job were saved.” (p.1980)

Zwingli, the great Protestant reformer said, “There has not lived a single good man, there has not been a single pious heart or believing soul from the beginning of the world to the end, which you will not see in the presence of God.” (p.198)

Wofhart Pannenberg, the theologian, has written, “Others…without even knowing it and without knowing Jesus, honored Jesus and his teaching by the way they treated the needy and will participate in the kingdom of God.”

But, alas, it is Jesus, who most influences both my heart and mind. When I look at Jesus, I see God, and the God I see is a God filled with Love, a God all loving, a God who is Love. That love is not bound by my theology. That love is not bound by my human restrictive ways of sharing my own love. That love will find a way.

In the book of Isaiah there is an image of the end time which for him is expressed through a vision of a mountain and this is what he sees and it is with this vision I end. It is the same vision I read at Rev. Reyes installation:

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines…

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all face, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Is. 25:6-8)

How can this be? I don’t know, except to say, as I see when I look upon the face of Jesus and see God. “‘Tis mercy all.”