The Road to Bethlehem: The Mountainside

Our journey to Bethlehem continues this week. We have left the comforts of home behind in Nazareth, we have walked into the Jordan River Valley, past the place where one day a man John will baptize people, and now we are approaching the Sea of Death, about ten miles to the south. Joseph and his young wife Mary, who is riding on the donkey and looking very tired, is still with us. We are over 1300 feet below sea level. Another hundred foot drop in the last part of the River will take us to the Dead Sea, the Sea of Death where fish quickly die because of the salt, the lowest place on the surface of the earth, the end result of all those who refuse to climb the mountainside out of the valley.

But now we leave the Jordan River and follow a small stream up the hill a couple miles to the West. We are going to Jericho, perhaps the oldest city in the world. Jericho, the first conquest made by the Israelites in the promised land, the city where the prostitute Rahab lived, an ancestor of David, an ancestor of both Joseph and Mary, a woman who trusted in the God of Israel and was saved from the destruction of Jericho when the walls fell. She is the poster child of God's grace.

Jericho, at 864 feet below sea level, about 400 feet above the valley floor, was founded as a city because of the great spring that lies at the base of the mountain, with a flow of over a thousand gallons a minute. This water was used to irrigate the rich soil brought down the Jordan Valley by the River’s floods. And here, Herod the Great was building his palace. It is the lowest city on earth, but is one of the most beautiful, fertile places on the planet. If only the King didn’t live here, for he is violent and selfish, a tyrant. But he has provided for travelers with a place to spend the night. 

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Luke 1:39-55 
We stop for the night. Fruit and vegetables and flour are for sale by the locals. We could stay here. Some have stayed, working for King Herod in his town. We’d gradually become his slaves, though, as many have done when they choose comfort over the journey. We spend a pleasant evening in a pleasant place – but the toughest part of our journey is ahead. We must get on with our journey to Bethlehem, our journey of life.

For we must climb up the mountainside road, the road that leads out of the valley up through the dry, bare mountain walls, up, up, up almost 900 feet to the level of the ocean, then another 2500 feet to Bethlehem. After the 400 foot climb we made today from the valley floor to Jericho, we must climb another 3400 feet – almost 3800 feet altogether, over four times the height of Seneca Rocks. And we will do it on a rocky path, on foot. Mary will ride a donkey.

Who is this girl, Mary?

She is a cousin of Elizabeth, who is the mother of John, Zechariah’s son. Zechariah is an ordinary priest in the Temple, they live in a small village near Jerusalem. 

Like most women in that day, Mary will have her first child in her middle-teens, at age 15 or 16. But she will not be alone, for she spent several months with Elizabeth, and Joseph and Mary will travel to Jerusalem for the great festivals three or four times a year and probably stay with Elizabeth, for Elizabeth’s home is an easy day-walk from Jerusalem.

The road onward from Jericho is steep, rocky, and dry. Here things get difficult, just as in our real lives there are times which are difficult. 

Children are born and must be raised. Even the best children cause tremendous stress for their parents, for they are individuals, with the ability to act independently, the ability to think independently, the ability to sin – just as we have that ability.

We always want to raise our children in our own garden of Eden, don’t we? We want them to be safe, to grow, to explore, to learn good. But in the Garden beside the Tree of Life was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the gardens we build for our children, we strive to give our children life – and we want to teach them the difference between good and evil. But the problem with this is that evil is an attractive part of the fruit. We can’t just eat the fruit of the Knowledge of Good, for with that fruit comes the Knowledge of Evil, it’s a single package, one fruit. To know what is Good, we and our children must understand Evil. And to know what is Evil, we and our children must understand what is Good. The serpent will always sneak in to teach about Evil.

Will we spend enough time teaching our children what is Good by reading to them from the Bible, by talking about those stories and readings, by helping them see how the Bible stories can apply to their lives? Or will we rely upon Children’s church, a half-hour a week? Sunday school can more than double that time. Kid’s and Parents time can add more as adults can take some time at breakfast or lunch or supper to read a half-chapter from the Bible to the family and then all can discuss it. If you want to start this, start now, for it is easier to start the tradition with young children. It’s hard to start when they are 17 and ready to leave home. Start today, for the serpent is slithering into your Garden.

We continue up the mountainside, the children turn into teens and the serpent talks to them. He comes into their lives in the disguise of their best friends, their popular classmates, the teacher who has always rebelled against religion. That 's why it's important they make friends who are godly - and the way they do this is to spend time in a church when they are young, when they are teens. But even still, the serpent whispers in to their ear, you come home one day, and they have decided not to listen to you. It is a dry day on the side of the mountain when this happens.

But there is comfort in this: You didn’t listen to your parents about everything. There were times you turned away and listened to the serpent. If you have taught them about good and evil, about sin – and most importantly about forgiveness and redemption – they will one day be able to break free, just as you have returned to the God you loved when you were young and living in the green valley of youth.

And God knows where each of those children are, just like God knows where you are this minute.

You look back over the edge and almost fall, for the Valley seems to call to you. You wobble on the path, trying to regain your balance. There is wisdom in the old warning to not look down. And you remember the warning from the angel to Lot’s wife – don’t look back! And far over the valley, on the other side of the River is the mound that is said to be Sodom of old.

Yet there is also beauty in looking back. The trick is to accept the beauty of what you came through, and not stop on the trail, leaning over so far to see our old life that we fall back into it. For Bethlehem is not at the bottom of the mountainside in the rich, beautiful, fertile valley, but is in the cool clear air at the top of the mountain of life. There is where we will meet the Babe.

When we honestly look back, we see that in addition to the pleasant downhill walk that was our time beside the River, there were mudholes, snakes, and fallen trees that blocked our path. Yet, there were also beautiful sights. A mixed bag.

Yet where we are going takes us up, up, up! We must travel up and not look back too much, or we may stumble and fall. And so we take a quick peek from time to time at the view from on high, looking over the Valley as we walk along a mostly flat ledge. Knowing where we’ve come from can give us courage for the climb – but focusing on where we’ve come from for too long can trip us up and make us fall. And so we relax for a couple of minutes on the ledge.

But there are other steep places to travel over. So we look back to the path and walk onward.

The path goes nearly vertical. At least it isn’t completely vertical. Experienced mountain climbers have found that it is absolutely critical to test what they hold onto before putting weight on it, to make sure that the rocks they hold onto are solidly part of the mountain, and not merely loose boulders that will come loose given fifty or a hundred pounds of pull.

You slip on loose stones and almost fall over the edge of the mountain. We all come to places where we loose our footing in life and slide down, down, down and teeter on the edge. Sometimes, it’s because we trusted too much in a job. Sometimes, it’s because a relationship breaks, like a rock slipping from under our feet. Sometimes we lose our footing because of an accident or a sudden illness. And we slip and slide and stumble, trying to find something stable to hold onto. And at that point, the breeze from the East blows hard against us, shoving us back onto the path, giving us a chance to find that stability again. And you remember again that the same word in the ancient languages means wind, breath, and spirit. Was that breeze the Holy Breath, the Holy Spirit of God saving us from falling, putting us back on course? Were you listening for a message as that breeze hit you?

Losing our stability from time to time is natural in this world. It happens because we make the wrong choices in our lives, choosing to treat the unstable as stable, the temporary as permanent, the sand as a rock-solid piece of the mountain. We hold onto people, to things, to jobs as though they were the solid Rock of Christ. And then, we are disappointed when they break loose. Think about it, what gives you stability in this life? Is it a job that could be eliminated, a company that could fold, a government program where funding could be cut, a person who could die or leave, a house made of wood that could burn in a night? Or is your stability based upon the solid relationship and faith between you and the Creator of the Universe? We have to remember that sometimes the insubstantial, invisible wind can bring us the most stability if it is the Holy Breath of God, the Holy Spirit speaking to us about the right course, what to hold onto and what to let go. Hold onto God’s Spirit, God’s Breath, God’s Holy Breeze, for it is more stable than earthly rocks.

But it is also wonderful to have good earthly relationships, people who treat us as they treat themselves. For there are many times on the trail to the top of the mountain where we are dry and dusty and thirsty, and someone gives us water, giving us the strength to climb a bit further. Our good friends give us water – yet there are always those who like to make fun of our thirst, pouring perfectly good water in the dust in front of us, laughing at our inability to talk through dry lips, our coughing when the dust hits, people who pour water on the ground in front of us to taunt us. And there is spiritual water as well as physical water, which takes a dry, dehydrated soul and gives it new energy, new endurance, new life! And, of course, there are people who listen to us and dry us out spiritually even more, making fun of us instead of making fun of the rocks, laughing at us instead of the shared journey, piling on their life problems instead of lifting our spirits with a shared uplifting story. Have you given someone else spiritual water recently, or have you poured it out on the ground in front of them, letting that spiritually boosting water soak into the ground? Have you lifted someone up over a steep part of the journey? Or have you kicked sand in their face? Are your relationships uplifting and supportive to others or do you pull people down, drag them down, threaten to pull them over the edge down into the valley again?

Mary and Joseph and the donkey worked together to climb the path. She rode, the donkey carried, and Joseph guided the donkey. And sometimes Mary got off the donkey and walked. They worked together to climb the mountainside. Perhaps it’s the same in your relationships. Perhaps not. A marriage is part of climbing the mountain. Sometimes it can be steep – other times, it is a relaxing walk along a wide ledge that slowly climbs the mountainside, allowing an easy passage up the mountain.

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians Chapter 5 gave good advice. He said for both the husband and wife to submit to each other as if they were submitting to the Lord. And this is important, for each spouse where possible to do for the other, to defer to the other, to submit to the other to help each other.

But there are times traveling up the mountainside when two different paths offer a way to travel. Both look good, but both are risky. Husband and wife talk it out. They hash out the good and bad of both courses. And when they’ve done this, eventually he says go left and she says go right. And, because they have the donkey, they must both go the same way. So they talk more and still can’t figure it out. And so, according to Paul, the wife makes the decision. She goes in the direction that the husband wants, respecting him, knowing that he loves her like Christ loved the church – which means he’s ready to die for her – which is also how Paul says a man should love a woman. As Christ loved the church.

Both the man and woman understand that he makes the final decision. But both the man and the woman understand that she has the holy duty to point out the risks, the advantages of the other course, that she simply must ask him, “Have you considered this?” And he understands that she is not nagging, not causing trouble, but is truly trying to help him make the best decision possible. And then, he makes the decision because he loves her and wants what is best for her. And she goes along because she respects him.

And if it goes wrong and the donkey falls over the hillside, she steps in to tell him that there is no one she’d rather be sitting beside on this hillside than him, no one who could have made a better decision, no one she respects more. And he looks at her, glad she was not on the donkey, because he loves her and she respects him. And he listens a bit more to her the next time, but for now, they keep climbing the hillside. Together.

Good earthly relationships help us climb the mountainside. But those relationships should not define us, like the woman who was completely lost after losing her husband of fifty years. “He did everything for me”, she said. God said back, “It’s time for you to grow and do with Me. Stick with Me, and the three of us will be together again one day soon.” Soon? How many years and decades is “soon”?

Remember Mary’s reaction to the angel Gabriel when he told her that she would bear the Son of God? “I am the Lord’s slave,” said Mary. “May it be done to me according to your word.” Her relationship with God defined her for all time. It was far more important to her than her relationships with her friends, family, the older women around who said things behind her back. It was even more important to her than her relationship with Joseph – And God rewarded her obedience, for God took care of her relationship with Joseph, making it strong by sending Joseph an angelic dream.

Perspective. We look up at the mountainside above us and it seems like such a long hard climb ahead. And then we turn and look out and down, and we realize that we’ve already covered most of the distance, that the valley is far, far, below us. And this terrible, terrible climb for us - to the eagles who circle above it is nothing.

Altogether, as we climb from the Jordan River to Bethlehem, we will climb 3800 feet, over four times the height of Seneca Rocks, over three times the height of the Empire State Building. But that is still less than a mile. And the diameter of the earth is about 8000 miles. From space, this part of the earth is smoother than a marble.

Perspective is everything. Our terrible climb on the mountainside of life is 60, 80, a hundred years. But from the point of view of Heaven, it is nothing compared to eternity. Our legs ache now – one day, we will remember the flash that is this life in an easy chair. What will be important about this life ten thousand years from now? Will the fact someone dented your car at Walmart matter? Will it matter if the chicken in the refrigerator spoiled and had to be thrown out? Does the color of your fingernails matter, the exact number of points on that buck you shot, whether you are paid $14 per hour or $15 per hour? None of these things will matter – only the people you brought to an understanding of Christ will matter. It will all boil down to this: Did you climb the mountainside? Who did you lead up the mountainside?

Perspective is everything.

And the clearest perspective is from the top. I have it on good authority that the first 84 years are the toughest. This from a woman who died at 84 ¾ years of age. Perhaps that’s why so many pastors tell people considering becoming pastors that they wish they’d started pastoring 20 years before they started. Perhaps perspective is why so many older Christians move to be with their grandchildren instead of moving away from family. Perhaps that’s why we don’t remember our old pastors and Sunday school teachers by their charge conference forms, their paperwork, the songs they picked, their bulletin boards, the order of their worship service. We remember old pastors and Sunday School teachers by the times when their sermons, their talks, their teaching, their advice helped us climb over those steep, scary patches on the mountainside of life.

Mary had perspective. One day, many years after her journey to Bethlehem, she had to wait at the foot of a cross and hear her favorite son tell her that His student John was now her son, and that John would now take care of her. 

Another twenty or so years later, she told a kindly man named Luke about everything that happened when that favorite son was born, how she had traveled from Nazareth down the Valley and up the steep mountainside to Bethlehem. But that journey didn’t seem to be nearly as important in the retelling as the visit from Gabriel, the arrival in Bethlehem, the boy’s birth, and the shepherd’s visit. It wasn’t nearly as important as the later visit from the travelers from the East. It wasn’t nearly as important as the day her son died – and the morning He lived again. The climb up the mountainside on a donkey’s back was just about the ordinary struggles of her life, soon forgotten, not important.. Her Son’s story was about all of our lives, eternally. Of immense importance.

And so we reach the top and look back. There is the Valley, way back there. There is the Dead Sea, the Sea of Death we would have gone to if we had decided to stay in the Valley by continuing the easy path by the River. But the journey up the steep mountainside to Bethlehem is about avoiding the Sea of Death.

But now? Now that we are at the top, the wind is blowing again, a cold wind that swirls around us. It’s time to head south overland to Bethlehem. For the Babe will be here soon and we don’t want to be wandering, lost on the road when the storm arrives. 

Consider the story I’ve told, for The Holy Spirit has a story to write today – a story in our hearts. What will your story be? Take a moment to pray to God and find out...

The Road to Bethlehem: In the Valley

Last week, we began our journey from Nazareth in Galilee and started to take the journey to Bethlehem because an emperor in a far off land called Rome has ordered that we be counted. And so, we have to return to the town of our ancestors, a little village called Bethlehem. Walk with me this morning as we travel in our minds, in our imagination.

We’ve left our comfortable homes in Nazareth and are beginning the hundred-mile walk to Bethlehem. After walking for a day, about 15 miles, we reach the Jordan River where it spills out of the Sea of Galilee, and begins the 500 foot downhill travel to the Dead Sea through fertile farmland. But the descent is slow and the river road meanders back and forth like the river. And we begin to think, “this won’t be such a bad trip!”

he river sounds pleasant, and there is humidity in the air, we can smell it, a welcome change from the highlands near Nazareth. And so our journey to Bethlehem begins like our life, a journey that is mostly pleasant and comfortable in the time of our childhood and youth, not understanding what we are missing because we have been mostly comfortable.

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Luke 3:1-6 
We grow thirsty and take cool water from the river. There are fish in the River that have drifted down from the Galilean Lake. Wide farms line the banks of the River – trees are plentiful, unlike anywhere else in our land. And so we take our time, enjoying the trip, talking to old friends, making new friends, laughing, for we are twenty years old and our life’s journey is ahead of us. We meet young men and women, and begin to chat with them, eventually settling with the most interesting one. And we walk together down the valley beside the River, the early spring flowers growing beside us, the birds singing, the water bubbling over some rocks. The leaves are green, the sky is blue, and the sun is bright. This is the beginning of the Jordan Valley; This is the beginning of our lives.

The first days are joy-filled and carefree, for we have left the farm, we have left the workshop, we have left the daily grinding of flour and baking of bread, we have left the fights with our neighbor over the land, we have left far behind the thorns of our field, the dryness of Nazareth hill. We have even left behind the constant presence of the enemy, the Romans who walk or ride into Nazareth almost daily. We have forgotten that the enemy would take our lives in a heartbeat if we stood tall to his soldiers. We have forgotten that the enemy would burn our homes, take our livestock, destroy our crops. For we are on holiday, even though this trip was commanded by the Roman leader himself, we have chosen to make this a holiday, and the beautiful river beside us helps us to forget that we will have to come back to Nazareth someday. Someday soon. And so we don’t see that the walls of the valley are rising slowly as we walk south, down toward the Sea of Death. We don’t realize that the valley is becoming a prison, the beautiful river leading us toward Death. We don’t realize that at the end of the River is a place where even worms die painfully. And so we ignore and forget what is ahead because we are enjoying life, the walk, our friends, the pretty girl or handsome man who walks beside us, the flowers, the green leaves, the river.

Over the centuries, thousands, even millions of people have made this trip. The only thing that makes the trip different this year is that the Emperor has commanded it. Even the man leading his donkey and his very pregnant young wife on the donkey are common sights every time we travel the journey. There is nothing special about him and his beard, his strong muscles, his calloused hands. There is nothing special about her, the weary eyes still smiling after a day and a half on donkey back. There isn’t even anything special about the donkey, walking easily down the road. Even their names are common. Y’sef. Miriam. Joseph, Mary.

Where are they headed to? Bethlehem, The House of Bread, it means in the language of the day. The village was the hometown of King David and had a great history. It was where Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel was buried, where Ruth and Naomi moved to after the famine killed their husbands in Moab, where Ruth married Boaz and had a son Obed, who had a son Jesse, who was the father of King David. The village is over 2500 feet above sea level, and there are many limestone/sandstone caves in the area. David hid out in one of those caves.

Back to the road beside the river...

The next day, during the walk beside the river, we come to a place which is known through history as the place where John baptized people. Of course, this was thirty years after Joseph and Mary’s journey.

John was a real character. His father was Zechariah, the temple priest who gave us the lovely song from Luke 1:68. Did you notice what Zechariah said about John?

And child, you will be called
a prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord
to prepare His ways,
to give His people knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins.

Sometimes people get confused, for there are at least two Johns in the New Testament. There is John, the son of Zechariah, who baptized people at the Jordan River – including Jesus at the beginning of His ministry. And there is another younger man also named John, who was a student of the older John, and who became one of the chief disciples of Jesus. This younger man is celebrated as the author of the Gospel of John, and probably also wrote the three letters, I John, II John, and III John, and also likely wrote Revelation when he was a very old man.

But let’s go back to the older John, John the Baptist, or, more accurately, John the Baptizer, who was the cousin of Jesus.

Zechariah said his son would be called a prophet of the Most High, a prophet of God, for he would go before the Lord and prepare his ways. He would give people a knowledge of salvation, an idea that they needed to be saved and that they could be saved through the forgiveness of their sins.

So many people today who do not regularly attend church fall into one of two categories. First are the people who believe they are good. They don’t understand their need for salvation, for they believe that all people except those who are Hitler types or serial killers end up in Heaven. They believe that they are basically good enough for Heaven, that God looks at people on balance – They think: "Today, I cussed out a telemarketer, but I also held the door open for an old lady, so that probably balanced out. I smiled at my kids, so I’m ahead for the day." 

So many people believe that when we get to the end of our lives, God adds up a ledger of good and bad deeds and decides if the good deeds outweigh the bad to decide who gets to go to Heaven. And most people believe that they are so much better than the murders and Hitler, that God will let them into Heaven – assuming they “believe in God”. And they do. They even pray occasionally to God. So they don’t worry – in their minds, they don’t need salvation, for they believe they already have it. You may have once thought this yourself.

The second common category is the set of people who look at their lives and are acutely aware of the sins they’ve committed. They realize that Hitler was worse than they are, but they also realize that they have some sins they commit over and over and over again. In their mind, they have done so much bad that God will never forgive them. Sometimes it’s because of a life full of different sins, committed daily…other times it is one BIG sin in their lives. And they believe that God will send them to Hell and there is nothing that can be done about it. They know they need salvation, but they don’t see how they can be saved.

John the Baptizer began to speak of the need for salvation. He spoke mainly to the “good people”, the people who believed they were good people, destined for Heaven, doing all the right things, for the "good people" were more numerous and more difficult to convince. At the top of the list was the fact they made a sacrifice every year. Every year they went to the Temple and did what was asked of them. Still other people simply looked around and concluded that since God had clearly blessed them – they had nice clothes, a nice home, good food, spoke well, were educated, had some money – then this was proof they were good people. To them, God’s blessings meant they were good and going to Heaven.

Do we still do that today? Do we still assume that because we live in a nice house, we mostly pay our bills, we dress well, we speak well, we have a car that we can count upon – Do we assume we are good people? And do we assume that the man begging at the intersection is "bad" because he doesn't have these material things? Maybe we do and maybe we don’t, but I’m sure we each have friends who assume this. We all have friends who assume they have no need of salvation because they are already good enough for God. Or if they aren’t, they believe that’s because God is mean and not good enough for them.

John spoke directly to these people. He called them out to repent, to re-think their relationship with God.

He then said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones!”
Just like the Jewish crowds, who assumed that because they were Jewish, God’s Chosen People, descended from Abraham they would each be saved, don’t we often say to ourselves, “But I am a Christian, descended from Christians. Of course I’m good and will be saved.”

John continued: “Even now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees! Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 

What is the fruit? Could it be leading others to the love of God through our piety, our good deeds, our clear love for others? Could the fruit be results, actual results that comes from helping others?

“What then should we do?” the crowds were asking him.

He replied to them, “The one who has two shirts must share with someone who has none, and the one who has food must do the same.”
And John spoke on and on about what it meant to be a good person, the daily sacrifices that had to be made, the need to stop being so comfortable and selfish and the need to personally help those who did not have those comforts.

And John offered to wash away their sins with the water of baptism. John offered to give them a chance for a clean start, a chance to start over doing what was right instead of living comfortably, assuming they were good because they were comfortable.

Are you comfortable?

When a pair of eagles is about to lay eggs, they build a nest. They start with big sticks and then gradually move to smaller and smaller sticks and then twigs. Then, they put in leaves. Finally, the mother eagle takes the soft down hair from her chest and she feathers the nest with it so it will be soft and cozy for the eaglets that will soon be hatched, so they will be comfortable.

Is your nest soft and cozy? Have you ever thought about when your nest is feathered enough? How much feathering of your nest are you going to do?

Then, after they are hatched, they grow and grow and finally, there comes the time when they need to fly from the nest. So mother eagle begins to pull those soft down feathers out of the nest so the nest bottom will become sharp and poky and uncomfortable for the eaglets. They move up to the edge of the nest and one day they fall over and have to fly.

Perhaps your world has become sharp and poky. Perhaps it is becoming uncomfortable. Perhaps that’s because God knows that it is time for you to stop hiding in that soft, cozy, comfortable nest. Perhaps God knows that it is time for you to FLY! Perhaps it is time for you to go into the world and achieve the godly goals God has for you!

John made things uncomfortable for his listeners. And many of them chose to rethink their relationship with God. They began to understand that, despite the fact they were good and successful and comfortable by the standards of the world, they needed to change. They needed forgiveness. They needed to grow closer to God.

There were many people in that crowd that didn’t take long. They were the people who already understood their sin. They were the people who already knew they needed forgiveness, they needed salvation, they needed a new start. Others in the crowd walked away and went back to their comfortable homes, to their servants, to their pleasant lives where no one reminded them that God wasn’t looking at their ancestry, but at their lives, where no one reminded them that God wasn’t looking at the sacrifices their grandparents had made, but what they had given up, where no one reminded them that God was a jealous God who wanted to be worshiped far more than they worshiped their comforts, their homes, their money.

And those who went home…they missed the main event, the big show, the most important part of what happened in that spot there beside the Jordan River in the Valley. For John was just the warm-up act. John was the carnival barker attracting the crowd to the Big Tent. John was the pre-game show, who said He wasn’t even worthy to untie the sandals of the One who would come after Him.

Imagine being there that day. Imagine you can see what is happening...

The vision forms...John has been speaking in the heat that morning…and you can smell the sweat from the crowd. The water looks cool and inviting before you. A gentle breeze is blowing from the East and it bring the mixed smell of flowers – and animals. It is the smell of life blowing in. It reminds you that the same word is used for wind, for breath, and for spirit. God’s Holy Spirit, God’s Holy Breath, God’s Holy Breeze.

A fly buzzes near your head, trying to distract you from what John is saying. A group of well-dressed young men from Jerusalem have been asking John what to do and finally, in disgust, they decide to leave. But several men and women go forward, down into the water for John to baptize them, and they all come up from the water filled with joy! Again, the breeze blows from the East.

And then, as if He came in on that breeze, a taller man walks down to John. They look similar – there is a family resemblance. But where John is roughly dressed, the new man is middle-class. Where John’s skin looks like leather, the new man’s hands are rough and calloused. Where John seems like a wildman – the new man seems almost kingly in bearing.

They talk in the water. John shakes his head no. The other man insists. And John baptizes the man in the water. As the man comes up from the water, a dove descends on his shoulder, and the crowd says “OO!” And you realize something important has happened, you just don’t know what. But you hope you’ll find out. You’d like to talk with that man. Maybe someday. And the vision fades away…

But all of this is years in the future. Is that what it is like to be a prophet, to see a vision? It’s something to consider later. For now, we have to follow Joseph and Mary and that donkey down stream, deeper into the valley, closer to the Sea of Death, having Faith that one day, that new man who seems so kingly will actually come to the River to meet with John. For we have days and many miles to travel until we get to Bethlehem. And the worst part of the road is still to come. We all have to walk into the wilderness in order to escape the Valley and reach Bethlehem.

This week, I ask you to come to prayer with the question of comfort on your mind and on your prayer lips. Come to God and ask what comforts in your life are keeping you from God. For instead of being comforted by STUFF, God wants to be your comfort. Ask God what comforts you need to give up so that you might fly before the Holy Wind of God, the Holy Breath of God, the Holy Spirit of God. What comforts are holding you back, keeping you from being free?

The Road to Bethlehem: Leaving Home

Last week, we faced the question of whether Jesus was our Lord – or merely our friend, an interesting man from history, an idea that gives us comfort. I asked you to come to the altar and, if you felt this way, to state that Jesus is Lord, understanding the full meaning of those words, that you were acknowledging that Jesus was more than a friend, more than an ordinary man, that Jesus was indeed your commander, your leader, your guide, and that you were doing more than studying Him, but were following Him. The Apostle Paul once wrote to a church he loved, the Thessalonian church. These words express how I feel about your response last week to the question of “Is Jesus your Lord?” Paul wrote:

How can we thank God for you in return for all the joy we experience before our God because of you, as we pray very earnestly night and day to see you face to face and to complete what is lacking in your faith?

Now may our God and Father Himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you. And may the Lord cause you to increase and overflow with love for one another and for everyone, just as we also do for you. May He make your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. Amen.
Your response last week filled me with joy.

And now we turn to Advent, the time of preparation for the Lord’s arrival. We want to jump ahead to Christmas, but for now, we will wait in Advent, preparing and waiting...

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; Luke 21:25-36 

Yes, we will talk about the arrival of Christ on earth as a small baby. But we will also talk about the next arrival of Christ on earth at the head of the greatest army the world has ever seen. And we will also be talking about the arrival of the Lord into the lives of individuals, the time when someone realizes for the first time that Jesus is still alive, that being called Son of God has a meaning that Jesus is also God in the flesh, God walking upon the earth, that Jesus and Holy Spirit are here to bring us into a relationship with God the Father.

As many of you know, I once owned an orchard. Apples, peaches, pears, cherries, even persimmons grew in my orchard. When the derecho came through, I lost a small apple tree and a large pie cherry tree went down. I cut that cherry tree off about two feet above the ground, because that was where it broke.

Over the next months, a green shoot grew up from the trunk, using the stored energy from the roots to send out new leaves, for the heart of a tree is in the roots. The energy is stored in the roots, the power of life is in the roots. Left by itself, the shoot would develop into an entire tree, as strong as the first one. In fact, every year, to ensure that orchard trees and grapevines continue to bear well, the old wood is pruned off, cut off, and new shoots are encouraged to grow. With many grapevines, it is common to cut off 90% of the old growth and only leave 10% as a basis for the new growth, for it is on the new growth that the fruit grows.

In ancient Israel, the greatest the kingdom of Israel ever grew to was under the leadership of King David and his son, King Solomon. After that point, Israel became weak and divided. Eventually, even Jerusalem was conquered and the people taken into captivity. Jeremiah saw this destruction, but God spoke to Jeremiah:

“Look, the days are coming”—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
“when I will fulfill the good promises
that I have spoken
concerning the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
In those days and at that time
I will cause a Righteous Branch
to sprout up for David,
and He will administer justice
and righteousness in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved,
and Jerusalem will dwell securely,
and this is what she will be named:
Yahweh Our Righteousness. 

Jeremiah spoke of a branch of the family tree of David sprouting up from the roots like that shoot growing from that cherry tree. And so the people of Israel began to look forward to a coming Messiah, a Savior, a man who would rescue Israel and make Israel great again, a place of peace, a place of safety, a place of beauty.

Around the year 4 BC, a man and his young wife began the journey from Nazareth, a village near the Sea of Galilee, to Bethlehem, a village about 3 miles from Jerusalem. What? Not in the year zero, you ask? No, for the monk who 400 years later would calculate the date made a mistake, but by the time the mistake was discovered, it was over fifteen hundred years too late.

The man was named Y'osef and his young wife was named Miriam. Later people would Romanize the names to Joseph and Mary. Both were descendants of King David, the king who had lived some 1000 years earlier. Mary was pregnant with her first child, so tradition has it that Joseph put her on a donkey. Their family was still missing something – a child. They had a journey of about a hundred miles to travel on dirt roads that would scarcely hold a single cart.

Galilee is the land around the freshwater Sea of Galilee. The lake is fed by snow melt from the mountains north of the sea, in modern day Syria and Lebanon. But the surface of the lake is almost 700 feet below sea level, about 13 miles long north to south, and about 8 miles wide from east to west. The Sea is about 140 ft deep and contains many fish. To the south flows out the lower Jordan River, which leads to the Dead Sea. It is down the Jordan Valley that the road lie to the Jerusalem, because it was down this valley road that people could count on having water.

The land around the lake has long been a farming area. The land is well-watered, and the low elevation means that the area stays warm even in the winter. In ancient Israel, Galilee was considered to have some of the best farmland in the Holy Land. By ancient standards, living in Galilee was comfortable. But the journey down the Jordan Valley would not be comfortable. Mary’s discomfort began the day she realized she was pregnant, for at that time she was not married. And her society was much less tolerant of single mothers than our society, for they blamed the mother for everything, never thinking about the responsibilities of the father. But the Father of Mary’s child would always be with her, even after Joseph accepted her pregnancy. But for now, Mary was not comfortable.

In our lives, we live in comfort. However, just like Josef and Mary, we often discover that we are missing something in our lives. We have an emptiness in the comfortable lives we live. We work – but why? To make money to keep our comforts? We spend tremendous time and money on leisure activities – watching television, on social media, looking at our phones, preparing food for family get-togethers. But what is our purpose?

Joseph and Mary knew they had a purpose. At one level, their journey to Bethlehem was simply following the order of the government, an order to return to the home of your family to be counted, and since Joseph was from King David’s family, he was to return to Bethlehem, the home town of King David. But Joseph and Mary both knew that their baby who was soon to be born was special, perhaps even the promised Messiah, the Savior of Israel. They had a purpose, a purpose they would not fully realize for many years as that son grew and ultimately began his ministry to the world. Their purpose was to protect God on the earth.

Each of us needs to journey to Bethlehem from our comforts in Galilee. We need to find our purpose, our calling, our life which God has planned for us. Each of us needs to understand why God is sending us on journeys that are difficult, that take us out of our comfort, that beat us up as we walk over difficult roads.

But there is a purpose to leaving home. No one has ever become great who did not leave the comforts of home. No tool of metal ever became tough without being placed in fire and beaten by the hammer of the blacksmith. No tree ever bore good fruit without being pruned.

Jesus left His comfortable home in Heaven to be vulnerable among us, to be hungry in a cradle, to walk barefoot on the earth, to experience the cruelty of children to each other, to work and sweat and thirst, to be taunted by people, to be beaten, to bleed, to hang upon a cross, suffocating, and to die. He had a purpose in leaving home – that we could become reconciled with God the Father once more, that we would live forever in comfort instead of suffer eternally in pain. That’s why Jesus left his comfortable home and came to be with us. That was His purpose.

As we look forward to the arrival of Christ once more, I ask you to take your Bible out of the bookcase, to open up to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to read a chapter in each – one every morning, one every evening. And ask – Lord, what is here for me this year? What is my purpose over the next twelve months? What shall I do for you, Lord?

As we join in Holy Communion. I ask you to come to prayer with those questions:

Lord, what is here for me this year?

Lord, what is my purpose over the next twelve months?

Lord, what shall I do for you?

And listen for the answer in all reverence.

The Lion, The King, and The Children

One day, many years ago, there was a young lion. The lion lived in a cage alone. It was a nice, comfortable cage. Everyday, his keepers tossed a large piece of meat into the cage. There was always fresh water. When the weather was bad, there was a cave he could walk into. And there was a section of the cage that looked like he could just walk out, but the air there was sort of shiny and when he touched it, it was hard and smooth. And just beyond the hard air, there were humans, looking at him, knocking on the hard air, and making faces. They were very annoying. And so, every day, he walked around his comfortable cage, alone, ate some food, drank some water, and tried to sleep so he didn’t have to look at the humans...

A long time ago, there was a king. The king was still a young man. The funny thing was, he was the only person – other than his mother – who knew he was a king. Instead of living in a palace, instead of ruling people, he lived in a small house and worked with his hands. He made crude furniture, farm tools, and repaired broken tools. Every day, he got up early, had breakfast, went to his shop area, took wood and made another piece of furniture. Men came to him during the day, bringing wooden shovels, wooden hoes, wooden yokes for their oxen to be repaired. He talked with them pleasantly, asked them about their lives, their children, their farms, and repaired their tools and they paid him, usually with food from their farms. It was hard work, but then again, everyone worked hard in those days, working from sunrise to sundown. But he lived a bit more comfortably than most, for he knew he was a king because his mother had kept a chest which had a large quantity of gold that had been given to him when he was about two years old because he was a king. He also knew he was a king because his mother had told him who his father was. And finally, he knew he was a king because he just knew.

And so, every day, he worked his comfortable job, alone, ate some food, drank some water, and at night tried to sleep as he awaited the time when he would announce himself to the people around him...

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4-8; John 18:33-37 

A few years ago, there were two children. They lived in a town in the foothills of the mountains. They thought they were ordinary children, for they did not realize that they were a prince and a princess. They lived an ordinary life for children of that time. They woke, they ate breakfast, they went to school. They came home, they played, they did homework, they watched some television – this was before smartphones – and they went to bed. Their parents loved them, but sometimes their parents punished them – especially when they misbehaved, but usually, if the children were honest with each other, it was because they had deserved their punishment. When Thanksgiving came, they ate turkey, when Christmas came, they had presents. It was a comfortable life and eventually they grew up, got jobs, found love and married, and had children of their own. But they still did not realize that they were a prince and a princess...

One night, something happened at the lion’s cage. The ground shook terribly, throwing around the lion. There was a great sound of shattering, and the hard wall broke into pieces. The lion walked over and sniffed at the pieces. They looked sharp – one piece cut his paw and it bled. But he walked through the hole in the hard air and into the area where the humans stood during the day. He walked beyond and into the night. Soon, he found himself in a deep forest.

The next day, he was still in the forest and he was starting to get thirsty. But he heard the sound of running water and there was a stream of cool water. He drank. He kept walking, enjoying the smells of this forest. He had never walked so far and he had never seen such beautiful sights. He had never smelled so many different smells. He was beginning to enjoy this! Birds saw him walking and screamed an alarm. A few hours later, he began to get hungry. Very hungry. About that time, a deer happened to dash near him. Not really knowing why, he leaped at the deer, grabbed her, and bit her. Soon, he was eating the most delicious meal he had ever eaten. The forest had gone silent. He looked around at the forest, the land where he ruled, and he thought, “This is good.”...

One day, the young man who was a king heard of that his cousin was becoming famous. Many miles to the south, the king’s cousin was teaching people in the wilderness by a river. The young man spoke to his mother, who lived with him, and they decided that he should go and meet with his cousin. So the young man walked to the south and met with his cousin. His cousin grew excited when he saw the young man. His cousin was taking people, speaking to them, and then dunking them under the water in the river. That evening, the young man met with three of his cousin’s students – they followed him to his camp and they talked a very long time. The next day, the young man asked his cousin if he, too, could be dunked in the water. The cousin said at first that it wasn’t necessary, but when the young man who was a king insisted, his cousin dunked him. It was at that moment, that a dove flew down upon the young man, a symbol of peace and the Spirit of God, and the young man walked up out of the water and went into the wilderness, where he had a very uncomfortable time for over a month. Finally, he went home, where his mother told him of a wedding that she was managing in the next town...

The two children who were now grown each lived comfortable lives. Oh, they complained of money troubles, they complained of working long hours – they had arguments with their spouses, they had arguments with their children – but they lived in big, comfortable homes, ate at restaurants twice a week, had dishwashers and microwaves and cars and plenty of running water and food, had air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter, television and now smartphones. By the standards of most of the world, they were extraordinarily wealthy. They called themselves “middle class”.

Over time, they began to go back to church. They had gone when they were young, but stopped when they left high school. Now they began to go back again because they realized that going to church was good for their children. And they learned stories of God and Jesus and Moses. They learned rules for living. And they began to get an idea of sin and freedom...

The lion was now free. Every day, he walked around the forest. He went where he chose, he drank from whichever stream he chose, he ate when he was hungry. No animal in the forest dared to challenge him. He even found a cave to go to when the weather was bad. He was now the king of the forest and he realized that he was exactly who God intended him to be – not caged, not comfortable, but living free, ruling the forest...

The young man who was a king found students to follow him. For three years, he traveled around the countryside teaching about his Father, who was God almighty. He told people that whoever followed Him would receive eternal life with Him and His father. He eventually entered the capital city at the head of a great crowd of people riding in peace on a donkey’s colt. Later that week, he was arrested, accused of claiming to be God’s Son, and executed for the crime of blasphemy. He died on Friday with the sign “King of the Jews” posted over his head. But Sunday morning, his Father brought Him back from the dead, and He began to speak to his students and followers over the next month, more than five hundred saw Him alive. And then, He went to be with His Father, to return someday riding on a white horse at the head of his supernatural army of angels to rule the entire earth as the rightful King, the only perfect and just ruler that has ever been called a king. And kings will bow down to him and pledge their allegiance to Him. And He will rule for ever and ever!

And the children?

Part of what God told the students of Jesus the King was that those who choose to follow Jesus – not those who merely believe in his existence, not those who just “accept Him into their hearts”, but those who choose to spend the rest of their natural lives trying to follow Jesus and His example of how to live – those followers of Jesus will become adopted sons and daughters of God, princes and princesses of the kingdom.

You are those children. If you choose to follow Christ, you will become adopted sons and daughters of God, princes and princesses of the kingdom.

You will become members of God’s family, royalty on earth, part of the God's Firm.

There are benefits and duties associated with being a prince, with being a princess:

Your father loves you. Your Father protects you, Your father has a plan for your life.

In return, you represent your Father, you represent His policies, your behavior reflects upon Him, and you have a duty to advance the interests of the kingdom.

Jesus told us during His last day on this earth that all power in Heaven and on earth has been given to Him. He tells us this at the end of the book of Matthew. Do you believe this?

He then says, giving a command to us: Therefore, go and make disciples of all groups of people, baptizing them and teaching them all he has commanded.

Princes and Princesses of the kingdom, this is our daily work! Go and make disciples of all groups of people, baptizing them and teaching them all he has commanded.

Our job is not to invite people to church. That command is found nowhere in the Bible. We don’t get off that easily. We are to lead people to become students, followers of Jesus. We are to lead them to baptism. We are to teach people everything that Jesus has commanded. I am to do this, yes, but so are you!

• We are to talk to people about what Jesus has done for us – his teachings about loving God and loving other people, His Golden Rule, His turning the other cheek, His giving respect to all people no matter how poor or broken they are simply because they are the created images of God. 
• We are to talk to people about how God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die as a perfect sacrifice upon the cross so we could be reconciled with God forever. 
• We are to talk to people about how all is forgiven if we ask to be forgiven by God, if we choose to follow Christ. 
• We are to talk to people about how God doesn’t love us for how good we’ve been, but loves us despite how bad we’ve been. 

In short, we are to talk to all people about our great King, how wonderful and forgiving He is, how choosing to follow Christ was the best thing that ever we did and how it can be the best thing that anyone can do.

We are to lead people to Christ, to the point where they are asking to come to church, to be baptized.

And then, if you bring them here, I’ll baptize them.

This is our task.

We ourselves? We are to move beyond studying Jesus to following Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are to confess to one another that “Jesus is Lord”, and those words mean something. In school, we studied different men, some for good examples and others for bad examples. We studied George Washington, we studied Abraham Lincoln, we studied Franklin Roosevelt, we studied Adolph Hitler. Hopefully, we don’t follow all the people we’ve studied. We don’t state that they are our Lord.

Paul, commanded by God, asks us to state that "Jesus is Lord". If Jesus is your Lord, are you ready to obey? If Jesus is your Lord, will you jump if He says jump? Will you study His commands and teachings, and follow them?

• If Jesus is your Lord, will you go to all groups of people, make disciples of them, baptize them and teach them all that Jesus has commanded? 
• If Jesus is your Lord, why won’t you tell your children? There is nothing sadder than a funeral where the children don’t know if Mom or Dad was a follower of Jesus, where the pastor has to take the family out of grief by telling them that, yes, indeed, the dear departed was a "secret" Christian. Talk to your children and grandchildren about your faith, your Lord. 
• If Jesus is your Lord, why won’t you talk to your neighbor, your friend, your relatives about Jesus and what He has done for you? He commanded you to do this in Matthew Chapter 28. Don’t take credit for God’s work when your neighbors think you are “just a nice person” because you never mention Jesus your Lord who changed your life. 
• If Jesus is your Lord, why don’t you spend a second hour a week in a group Bible study, a Sunday School class, a second service? 
• If Jesus is your Lord, why haven’t you ever considered starting a small group, or taking a district class in church leadership, or walking into my office and talking about how you can learn more about Christ and follow Him more closely? I’ve taught the Basic leadership class at the district level. There are 17-year olds and 70 year olds, and everybody in between. 

Royalty has a freedom of action that ordinary people don’t have. The lion became king of the forest when he left his comfortable cage. Jesus became King of all people when he chose to leave his ordinary life and show us the sacrifices that a true king should make for His people, when He chose to sacrifice Himself upon the cross to pay for all of our sins and crimes against God.

And we become princes and princesses of the kingdom, stepping into the role that we have already been adopted into, when we step forward out of our comfortable lives and begin to represent our Heavenly Father, our great King His Son Jesus Christ, and speak with the power of the Holy Spirit that we were given at our baptism about the greatness of our Father and His Son. Will you step forward as a prince or princess today?

One day, Jesus the Christ will return as King. He will no longer walk from town to town, He will no longer come in peace on a donkey’s colt, He will ride on a white horse at the head of the most powerful army the world has ever seen. The prophecy is that every knee will bow, including those of the kings of the earth. Every tongue will confess, speaking aloud that Jesus Christ is Lord.

But for many, when that time comes, it will be too late. For almost all people around the world have heard of Jesus, the story of Jesus has been written and is available in almost every language, the Good News is found online and in Bibles, and in many books and movies. Yet many people have chosen until today to ignore, to disparage, to put down the idea that Jesus is truly God’s Son, even the idea that a supernatural God exists. Yet the evidence is there, strong and powerful to anyone who holds an open mind.

In studies beginning this week, I’ll be presenting the direct evidence we have that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. Come, listen, take notes, and learn so you, too, can help bring your family, friends, and neighbors to the love of Christ.

Next week, during the service, we will begin our Journey to Bethlehem, a series of sermons that help us to understand how and why the baby Jesus came to earth that cold Christmas night.

But today, it is time for each of us to declare if Jesus is Lord – or merely a man we study, perhaps a friend, perhaps an interesting idea from history. So today, I’m asking you to do something unusual. If Jesus is your Lord, bow your head, and state out loud. “Jesus, You are my Lord”. You may kneel, or if your knees don’t work so well, stand. You can continue to pray for yourself or for friends, neighbors, or family. But it is time to make a decision. Is Jesus your Lord? Or merely a man, a friend, an idea?

The Long, Long Journey

Thanksgiving is coming. We think about turkey, about sweet potatoes, about pumpkin pie, about Pilgrims.

We think about how the Pilgrims were fleeing from a country that had made style of worship a political issue. We think about the great fights that were going on at this time in Europe between Catholic and Protestant, the fights in England between the High Church of England and the dour Puritans. As the Crown changed, the acceptable religion changed. Imagine being put into jail because you believed in praise bands and they were outlawed. Or five years later they were required by law and choirs were outlawed. And it all gets confusing, for the Pilgrims were none of the above. They were neither Catholic, nor Anglican Church of England, nor Puritan. They were Separatists, a tiny group with no political power, but only a half-dozen or so small congregations in their denomination.

We know that they left England in 1609 and moved to the very tolerant country of Holland. Just like the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea, they had crossed the English Channel. And they were happy, for they could worship as they thought best. Just as Moses and Miriam sang (Exodus 15),

“I will sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
But after a few years, they saw that their children were becoming Dutch – and they did not want that. They were English and they wanted to stay English. They faced a problem much like the Amish do in Ohio today. But because they were so small, and because they remembered the problems that happened to the Israelites who settled next to the Canaanites, they chose a different solution – they decided to move as a group - to Virginia, where a new colony was getting started.

“The LORD is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
You know that they sailed from Holland to England, where they picked up remnants of another congregation, and that they started for America in two small ships in September, very late in the year for such a journey. And when the Speedwell sprung a leak and the two ships were forced to return to England, they decided to crowd everyone on the tiny Mayflower and continue onward to Virginia.

Well, as we know, God made the winds blow them farther north than they expected and they found themselves off of Cape Cod in early December, in the snow, where they landed, explored a bit, and finally found a clearing and built a small village of tiny huts for the winter. And they began to die from cold, from starvation, and from scurvy sickness because they did not know about the necessity of consuming Vitamin C in their diet, and they had no preserved fruits. It had been a long journey from England, and most of the Pilgrims died that winter. More than 4 out of 5 Pilgrims died that winter.

And once in a while in this story, we remember a guy we remember as “Squanto”.

You remember Squanto. He was the Native American Indian who walked out of the woods one day in March of 1621, after that first terrible winter had killed most of the Pilgrims. He was the guy who taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn, by putting minnows in the hills with the corn seeds during planting. He spoke English!

Did you ever wonder how it came to be that an Indian in that country spoke English? And did you ever wonder why he chose to help the Pilgrims, instead of simply letting them die like most of his countrymen were willing to do? Have you ever wondered where God was in all of this?

Let me tell you his miraculous story today. It is another story of a journey – a long, long journey, much longer than that of the Israelites or the Pilgrims. Many parts, we don’t know for certain, but this appears to be what happened, as far as I can piece it together.

He was born around 1590. In those days, many Europeans ships were coming to fish off the coast of New England. After fishing, they would often dry and salt their catches on the beaches and trade for furs and food with the Indians, who in those days were very numerous in Massachusetts.

In 1604, when Squanto was about 14, he voluntarily sailed with an English vessel that came calling, to England, where he lived for a few years.

Enter Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame. Smith met Squanto and took him back to Newfoundland, in Canada to assist with a new colony there. There, Squanto learned the problems with establishing English colonies in the New World. He learned how much trouble the English had with the winter – and the lack of fruit – and growing food. He saw mistakes made and he saw what fixed the mistakes.

Who among the gods
is like you, LORD?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?

Smith got the bright idea of using Squanto to set up trading relationships with his village back in Massachusetts. So Smith arranged for Squanto and Captain John Hunt to visit the Cape Code area.

In 1614, when Hunt and Squanto reached the area, Hunt lured about 27 Native American men on board his ship (including Squanto) and kidnapped them. He sailed to Malaga, Spain, where he began to sell the men as slaves. One story tells us that a group of Dominican friars found out what was going on and broke up the slave selling, taking the men (including Squanto) into their monastery. There, Squanto became a Christian.

“The LORD is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
After a couple of years, Squanto was able to leave Spain and catch a ship for London, where he lived for a few years with a man named John Slaney. Squanto was Slaney’s servant and walking, talking, museum piece.

Meanwhile, in America, things were happening.

When Squanto was born, there were over 100,000 Indians who lived in New England, perhaps as many as a million. His village had over 2000 people. Europeans had thought about establishing colonies there, but there were far too many people already living there. However, that all changed when a French ship wrecked at Cape Cod in 1616. There were five survivors of the wreck – and one had smallpox, which spread to the locals who rescued them. Within three years, the population of Massachusetts had dropped to about 10,000 Indians. Entire villages had been destroyed, including one large town that formerly had over 20,000 inhabitants. Southeastern Massachusetts lost almost all its inhabitants in the great plague.

The chiefs of Edom will be terrified,
the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling,
the people of Canaan will melt away;
terror and dread will fall on them.
By the power of your arm
they will be as still as a stone—
until your people pass by, LORD,
until the people you bought pass by.
You will bring them in and plant them
on the mountain of your inheritance—
the place, LORD, you made for your dwelling,
the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established.
Squanto once again came back to America with another English captain, Capt. John Dermer, in the late spring of 1620. This time, after arriving in Massachusetts, Squanto and Dermer discovered that Squanto’s home village was gone. Completely. 2000 people had died. There were skeletons all over the place. The homes were still there, the grain was still where they had stashed the corn. But stillness. A great stillness. No one remained alive.

Imagine coming home to discover that all of your home town and state were wiped out by plague! Homes empty. Bones glistening in the sun where people had died and not been buried. Weeds growing over everything. Food still in pantry cupboards.

Squanto was devastated. After all his journeys, crossing the ocean repeatedly, he had arrived home and there was no home to come to. He must have hurt deeply. But despite this, God was not through with Squanto. God had a plan and a purpose for Squanto.

Squanto spent the summer and fall living with a neighboring village, the most powerful one remaining in the area. He became friendly with the chief of the village and with other villages in New England.

In early December, members of the tribe watched Englishmen and women land and settle close to Squanto’s old village. The English had a bad winter. They did not have enough food, nor the right kinds of food.

And so, in March of the next spring, after a hard winter that killed all but one of the women and all but 19 of the men, when everyone was sick and starving, when there was serious question whether or not the strength could be found to even begin farming - imagine the blessings when Squanto, speaking fluent cultured English from his years in England, understanding the problems of colony planting from his time in Newfoundland, and understanding Christianity from his time with the Dominicans, walked out of the woods to teach the Pilgrims how to survive and to help negotiate a peace treaty with the Massachusetts Indians that lasted for 50 years. He even brought them a basket of eels – something many Englishmen were used to eating - as a present and taught the Pilgrims how to catch eels in abundance.

In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling.

For you see, God had been involved all along.

· He had cleared the way for the Pilgrims by decimating the previous inhabitants.

· He had provided a clearing – Squanto’s old village - with good land ready for planting corn. Those of us that have lived in Marietta, OH know the story of how the first corn crop at Marietta failed because it took too long to clear the huge trees, and the crop failed for lack of sunlight.

· God had provided a stock of seed corn and seed beans in the old village.

· God had provided a teacher, with the perfect background.

· God had also provided an interpreter who had the connections to be a diplomat.

· God had used Captain Hunt, the would-be slaver.

· God had used Captain John Smith from Jamestown.

· God had used the Dominicans in Spain.

· God used unknown sailors who gave Squanto passage from Spain to England.

· God used John Slaney, at whose home Squanto lived for those years in England.

And God used even the smallpox germ. You see, we know that the land was already cleared and vacant when the Pilgrims arrived – we see that. But do we also see that the tragedy which took Squanto’s friends and family from him also set him free to serve God completely and gave him a purpose for all those wanderings? Just as our tragedies can set us free to serve God completely and give us purpose?

Well, we know the story of the next few hundred years. We know how the Pilgrims were soon overshadowed by a huge number of Puritans who moved to America. We know how New England became the most populous part of America – and the part that led the rebellion against England. We know how the descendants of those rebels eventually went back to Europe and saved England in a huge, devastating war with Germany. Twice.

And we know that the descendants of those Pilgrims and Puritans spread throughout the colonies, preaching and teaching and making America a Christian nation. It was a descendent of those people, by the name of Jonathan Edwards, who preached a great sermon in Connecticut which was written down that caused people to wail and moan and beg for God’s mercy. A man back in England, John Wesley, heard about the sermon and asked why the church in England couldn’t be half as excited about the salvation of God and so he began a movement that eventually became the Methodist Church. And those Methodists and their German-speaking friends, the Evangelical Brethren established small churches in nice little hollows between the hills in West Virginia, one of which is the place we are meeting at today. And someone heard this story today and historians of the future will record that he or she did great things on behalf of the same God who brought Miriam and Moses through the water, who brought the Pilgrims over the water, and who brought Squanto into the village of Plymouth in March of 1621.

“The LORD reigns
for ever and ever.”
As for Squanto, he lived with the Pilgrims for about a year and a half. Then, while on a trade mission with the Pilgrims to the Rhode Island area, he died of a fever, most likely the same disease that had killed the other members of his village a few years earlier. Captain John Bradford, head of the colony, wrote that Squanto asked that prayers be said to the God of the English to allow Squanto into the English Heaven as he lay dying.

But Squanto did not die until a year after the Pilgrims celebrated their great thanksgiving feast – which they shared with their new friends, the Native American Indians and their joint friend, Squanto. Each person in the colony now had three bushels of corn to survive the next winter. A week of wild birds could be shot in a day. They now knew which plants were edible and which were poisonous. And they had a peace treaty with their neighbors, a peace treaty that lasted 50 years. They had much to be thankful for.

Give Him to the Lord

Around the year 1050 BC, the loose confederation of tribes that were known as the Israelites were well settled into the Promised Land, that land which one day would be known as the countries of Israel and Jordan. For centuries, the people of Israel had been united by one thing – the worship of Yahweh, God Almighty, who had led them out of slavery in Egypt. Although from time to time they had to come together under a military leader, or “judge”, the people of Israel also recognized that a descendent of Aaron, their first High Priest, was the High Priest of God, of Yahweh, and this man was accorded special respect and reverence, for it was he who decided what sacrifices were acceptable to God, it was he who made the sacrifices, and it was he to whom God spoke.

In the hill country north of Jerusalem, where the descendants of Ephraim had settled, there was a man named Elkanah. He had two wives. The first named Hannah and the second Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah was childless.

Every year, when Elkanah offered a sacrifice at Shiloh where the Tent of God was located, he always gave portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to each of her sons and daughters. 5 But he gave a double portion to Hannah, for he loved her even though the Lord had kept her from conceiving. At a time when sons were required to work the land and to help defend the land, sons were valuable – and a childless woman was considered a drain on the family. But Elkahah loved Hannah, and took excellent care of her.

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Mark 13:1-8

Her rival Peninah would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving. Whenever she went up to the Lord’s house, her rival taunted her in this way every year. Hannah wept and would not eat. “Hannah, why are you crying?” her husband Elkanah asked. “Why won’t you eat? Why are you troubled? Am I not better to you than 10 sons?”
Remember also, that at this time, the average life expectancy was between 30 and 40 years. Men and women died young – many women in childbirth. But Hannah was looking very practically – if she did not bear children, she could expect to outlive her husband – but Peninah would throw her out, and then she would be forced to beg or prostitute herself for food, for it was difficult enough for a family to work the land without tools, without even iron shovels and hoes, but only wooden tools. An older woman would not survive long without a husband or son to provide for her.

9 Hannah got up after they ate and drank at Shiloh. Eli the High Priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s tabernacle, the Tent of God. 10 Deeply hurt, Hannah walked to the Tent and prayed to the Lord and wept with many tears. 11 Making a vow, she pleaded, “Lord of Hosts, if You will take notice of Your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.”

Hannah made two promise if the Lord would give her a son. First, she would give him to the Lord. God could do anything God wanted with her son, she just wanted to have a son. And second, she made what was known as a Nazirite vow.

The details of this vow are found in Number 6. The person, man or woman, who makes this special vow promises to avoid wine and beer. He or she will avoid anything that comes from grapes – grapes, raisins, seeds, skin, grape juice, wine, vinegar.

He or she promises not to cut any hair or whiskers on his or her head – the hair grows long. He must not go near a dead body, even if his family member dies.

In essence, the man or woman sets himself or herself apart for God, separating from the world. This could be for a specific time, such as 6 months, or until a task was fulfilled such as a wall being built, or it could be permanent.

We see these promises made regarding two other important biblical characters – Before Hannah, there lived Sampson, whose famous long hair was tied to a Nazirite vow. And there was Jesus, who famously vowed to stay away from grape products after passing around the cup that He said was His blood on the night of the Last Supper.

Hannah was making a permanent Nazirite promise for her son – if a son came from God.

While she continued praying in the Lord’s presence, Eli watched her lips. Hannah was praying silently, and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. Eli thought she was drunk and scolded her, “How long are you going to be drunk? Get rid of your wine!”

You know, when you focus upon the Lord, the people of the world can begin to think you are a bit different – because you are. In this case, Eli, the High Priest, who should have known better, mistook Hannah’s praying for the babbling of a drunk.

“No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman with a broken heart. I haven’t had any wine or beer; I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord. Don’t think of me as a wicked woman; I’ve been praying from the depth of my anguish and resentment.”
It is here that we understand how deep Hannah’s faith was. Hannah had “anguish and resentment”. Toward whom? Clearly, she was upset at her rival Peninah, but she was also upset with God for leaving her childless. Yet she prayed to God, pouring out her grief, her anguish, her resentment, her broken heart to the God she knew could make things better.

How well do we react when how hopes are down, our enemies taunt us, our family doesn’t give comfort? Do we lash out in anger at our enemies, our family, at God? Or do we do like Hannah did, finding a place to pray quietly with God, trusting God even more because God is in our life, coming closer to the God who made us and is right now walking beside us, sitting beside us, listening to everything we say and watching everything we do?

That day, Hannah told Eli that she was praying, and not drunk.

Eli responded, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant the petition you’ve requested from Him.”

“May your servant find favor with you,” she replied. Then Hannah went on her way; she ate and no longer looked despondent.
Hannah had unburdened her soul. She had turned the greatest issue of her life over to God – she had decided that what she wanted most in the world, a son, was not hers to possess, but only hers to hand over to God.

Do we do the same? You know, the Buddhists hold that our desires are the root of all suffering and to eliminate suffering, we must eliminate all desire. Christianity looks at it a bit differently.

We believe that suffering happens when we put our desires for earthly things ahead of our desire for God. It is not necessary to eliminate our desires – only to reprioritize them, recognizing that we aren’t very good at sorting out which desires are best – but God is excellent and supremely wise at granting us desires. Our desires, we believe, unbalance us. Only God can balance our spirits once more.

Hannah, talking with God, chose to take her greatest desire, her desire for a son, and let God have control of that desire. And she walked away from her prayers back in balance in her life. She ate and no longer looked despondent.

The next morning Elkanah and Hannah got up early to bow in worship before the Lord.
The account doesn’t mention Peninah and her children. Apparently, Elkanah and Hannah went together to the tabernacle, the Tent of God, to worship. There is something special when a man and woman worship together, whether in church, or together on knees beside a common bed, or simply sitting together at lunch, praying together for each other to God. Do you and your spouse pray together? Do you pray for your spouse – Does your spouse pray for you? Can you imagine how that can bring you together?

Afterward, Elkanah and Hannah returned home to Ramah. Then Elkanah was intimate with his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her.
What a comment! “The Lord remembered her.” Have you ever prayed for something and after a few days or weeks, the prayer was granted? Did you notice? The Lord remembers all of us – we are just too busy much of the time to notice.

Our culture, of course, looks at things differently. In our American culture, we are strangely of two minds. On the one hand, our American culture is much more religious on the surface than the rest of Western culture. In Europe, weekly church attendance runs about 5% while in America it runs around 25%. About a quarter of Americans go to church every week. You’d think we are a religious society.

Yet American religion tends to be shallow. In our American culture, we are encouraged to leave God in the church, or, if you are a fanatic, leave God at home. Our television shows rarely feature a church-going character – and if they do, that church-going character is the weird person, the strange person, the dangerous person. Think about the show from a few years ago, “The Office”. Dwight was the only character who attended church. Think about “The Big Bang Theory” – Howard occasionally mentions going to a Jewish synagogue – when he was young. Of the major shows, only NCIS has a likable major character who is known to attend church regularly – Abby, who also wears skulls and sleeps in a coffin.

Growing up in America, we’ve been taught to leave our Christianity behind at the house or even at the church.

And so we come to our second American culture thing – our successes are said to be all due to our hard work and smart thinking – with a bit of luck. Because we left God at the church or at home, it is difficult for our pride to remember the prayers we’ve said, the times we’ve asked God for help, the times when God remembered us and gave us our desires. Only in football – particularly in college football and some other athletics do we publicly acknowledge that God gave us the victory.

Have you acknowledged God in your work this year? Ever?

Perhaps the reason we don’t is partially because we’ve bought into the culture, preferring to live in that culture rather than talk about the God who is there beside us every day. We feel guilty talking about God because there are those in our society who intentionally make us feel guilty talking about God, because God-talk makes them uncomfortable. God-talk, you see, reminds them that God exists and has very definite opinions about what is right and what is wrong. God’s very existence is a threat to some people, because that existence is a reminder that we don’t really have the independence and control that we’d like to think we have. For on the day of our death, who has control, who has independence, who decides what happens next?

Hannah had little control in her life and she understood that. She understood that she did not determine whether or not she had a son, she understood she could not control what her rival said to her and about her, Hannah understood that even her husband’s love for her was not enough to give her the son she so desperately wanted. But she also understood that God loves people, that God has the power to do anything, and most importantly, that God would listen to her in her time of sadness. And so she asked God to intervene – and left her sadness at the Tabernacle of God.

After some time, Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, because she said, “I requested him from the Lord.”
The word Samuel sounds like “Requested from God”. What a name! The boy arrives, Elkanah asks, “what shall we name him?” and Hannah replies, “Let’s name Him “Requested from God”. Samu-el.

In your life, there is likely a desire that you have, a dream you want, a wonderful place you’d like for your life. If your desire, your dream, your place is something that is good for you, the Lord already knows this. But sometimes, God wants your assurance that you understand Who is in charge of dreams. Our culture would have us believe that we can do anything. God tells us that, indeed, we can do all things thru Christ who strengthens us. For desires to be satisfied, for dreams to happen, for us to end up in wonderful places in our lives, it is necessary, absolutely necessary to ask the Creator to create those places, those dreams, and to satisfy those desires.

For if God decides to grant those prayers, then we will know that we are on the right path. If God decides not to grant those prayers, they were misguided – WE were misguided, following a path that leads to death instead of life. And sometimes, God grants us prayers so we will learn lessons about what to ask for, like when we want a hot new car and pray desperately for the loan to go through, the loan that will stretch our finances, and then God allows the loan to be approved – and for the next six years, we struggle to make those payments just so we can have a car our friends “oo and ah” at.

In the teacher’s restroom at Parkersburg Catholic High School, when I worked there, was a poster. It read, “If a problem is big enough to worry about, it’s big enough to pray about.” This applies to personal problems, to work problems, and to family problems.

And if you pray about a problem, an answer will come. Many people have started prayer journals over the years. Take a simple notebook or open a Word document. Every time you pray, put the date and the request into the journal. Every so often, go back and see how those prayers have been answered. You will be pleasantly surprised by how God has answered your prayers.

As you grow in the Lord, though, there is a change that you should make in your prayers. Most of us begin with simple prayers, prayers where we ask God for something. That is normal. That is fine. Those simple prayers are okay.

But as you grow in the Lord, begin to think of prayer as a two-way conversation. We ask for something, and we ask questions. We ask God to answer these questions, so we ask – and then, in silence, we listen for the still, small voice that is God’s reply to us. We pray before bed and await the dreams sent by God. We LISTEN and WATCH to see what God has to say to us. And God will speak to us through the Holy Spirit.

And then, as we grow even more, we gradually stop asking for anything except guidance, because as we walk on the path of holiness, we begin to realize that we shouldn’t want anything that God doesn’t want for us, and so we begin to ask, “God, what do you want of me? What should I do? What should I ask for?” And God will also answer those questions.

And then, as we truly realize that we don’t need anything but God, we can pray the ultimate, but very frightening prayer – “God, please take away all my desires except the desire to do Your will, to make Your will, my will.” And if you are truly praying for this, if you really want this deep down in your soul, if you want this to happen, God may choose to give you that, also. For that is the end of the path of holiness, complete sanctification, when our will is simply to always do God’s will.

Jesus, who was so obedient to God that He died upon the cross voluntarily for our salvation, has told us part of God’s will. God’s will is that we go to all groups of people, baptizing them and teaching them all that Jesus has commanded. And He has promised to be with us until the end of the age if we do this.

In our conversations this week, in the stores and around the Thanksgiving table, let us remember to speak of what Christ has done for each of us. Tell the basic story of Christ’s sacrifice and tell what Jesus has done for each of you to your family, friends, and neighbors this week. And you will be doing the will of God.

Hannah’s greatest desire was that she wanted a son. But that day, she learned that giving her son to the Lord was what made her happy. And within the year, her son arrived, “Requested from God”. Samu-el.

What will you ask for and give to the Lord? What will you name “Samu-el”?

Flour and Oil

I’m going to start with a bit of history today.

After the Israelites moved into the Promised Land, as detailed in the Book of Joshua, for a period of about 400 years they were a loose confederation of tribes. When trouble came, God would raise up an individual to lead them. The term used was for the leader was a “judge”. The judge would lead the people of Israel for a period of years or decades, then they would go back to being a loose confederation of tribes.

Around the end of this time, the High Priest of Israel was a man named Samuel, who everyone recognized as being godly. The story of Samuel is told in the Books of 1 and 2nd Samuel. The people had decided they needed a king like the surrounding people did. After all, they never could see God – but they knew that the kings surrounding them had armies.

God and Samuel talked about this. Samuel said to God “I know this is a bad idea”, and God said, “You’re right, but they need to learn. Warn them what a king will do, but then we’ll find them a king.”

And Samuel told them of the costs of having a king. He would take their money to pay for soldiers, draft their sons to be soldiers, and take their daughters for his court. But they wanted a king, so God and Samuel found them Saul, a big tall guy, about 6’ 4” tall at a time when the average man was 5’ 4”. And Saul led Israel for many years until he disobeyed God and David took over.

After David was Solomon, and during this time, Israel controlled the land from the Euphrates River, beyond Damascus in Syria, much of Lebanon, most Jordan, and even most of the Sinai.

But soon after Solomon, Israel had a civil war. The Northern Tribes formed Israel. The two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin formed Judea, based on Jerusalem.

And this continued for a couple of hundred years.

1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; 1 Kings 17:8-16 

It was toward the end of this time that a great prophet appeared – Elijah the Tishbite. His great enemies were the king and queen of the northern kingdom of Israel – King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Jezebel was the daughter of the King of Tyre, near modern day Beirut Lebanon. She brought the worship of Baal to Israel, a cult which required infant sacrifice and priests who cut themselves during worship. King Ahab began to allow and even support Baal worship throughout the land, so Elijah the Tishbite, following God’s orders, walked into Ahab’s court one day and announced that because of the Baal worship, there would be no more rain in Israel until he said so. And then he walked out and went into the wilderness, while King Ahab searched high and low for Elijah because the rain did stop. Now recognize that when you don’t have any rain, that meant in that day that you didn’t have any food, because donkey carts aren’t going to bring food from hundreds of miles away like our railroads and tractor-trailers bring food from California and Florida. No rain means no food and that means famine. For everyone. But Elijah had found a spring and God commanded the ravens to bring him food.

And now we have reached the time of our Old Testament Reading from 1 Kings 17.

Elijah heard from God to go to a small town in Lebanon near Sidon where he would have a widow ready to provide for him. This area was mostly a Baal-worshiping area near Queen Jezebel’s home town.

So Elijah strolls into town and there is a poor widow gathering wood. Now we need to remember that in a time of drought, in a time of famine, it is the poor who suffer first, because they don’t live on the good land and they can’t afford to buy food when the prices go up. But Elijah says, “Could you get me a cup of water?” And she goes to get it. As she is going, he yells after her, “Can you also bring me a piece of bread?”

That stops her. She turns and tells him, “Look, buddy. I don’t have bread baked. I’ve only got a little bit of flour and oil. I’ve been gathering sticks here so I can bake that up, feed it to myself and my son, and then we’ll die of starvation.”

But Elijah has been listening to God and Elijah has faith in God. Elijah tells her. “Bring me a little cake, a biscuit. Afterward, you may make some for yourself and your son, for this is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘The flour jar will not become empty and the oil jug will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the surface of the land.”

And the woman showed her faith in God and Elijah, because that is just what she did. Notice that she made the biscuit for Elijah FIRST – for God FIRST – and then she made it for herself. And then the miracle happened.

The woman, the boy, and Elijah ate for many days, for months – and they did not run out of flour or oil.

How did this happen?

A literal reading says that the flour and the oil miraculously appeared in the pantry. God may have done that.

A more skeptical reading says that Elijah bought the flour and the oil and put it in the pantry every so often. Perhaps he did. But does that make it any less a miracle, just because Elijah bought and brought the food?

I don’t think so. Look at the situation from her point of view.

One day, she is just about out of food. The prices are high at the supermarket – She has no husband, only a young son, she’s out of money, she doesn’t have any food stamps, there’s no garden because there’s no rain and she doesn’t have any running water. She has to walk probably hundreds of yards with a heavy ceramic jar to draw water from a deep, community well.

I’ve seen photos of these wells. Maybe you have too. The women – and it was always women who did this – had to walk down slippery, muddy steps ten or fifteen feet to where the water level was. And then, carry that forty-pound jar back up the steps with two or three gallons of water in it, then back home with the water. A couple times every day. There’s no way to plant a garden. And there’s no food left.

But God had spoken to her about a man who would come and rescue her. So she decides to trust this man and his God. She makes him a biscuit.

And now, for weeks, there’s flour and oil in the pantry.

Does it matter to her whether God directly put the flour and oil in the pantry or whether the man God sent put the flour and oil in the pantry? NO! It’s a miracle either way. She lives – and her precious son lives and grows with food. Does it matter? She becomes a believer in God over those weeks and months.

And then there is the day almost a thousand years later when Jesus and His disciples are sitting near the Temple treasury, watching people drop coins into the box. Rich people were putting in large collections of coins. But a widow came by and dropped in two lepta, the smallest coins in circulation in Judea at the time. We can think of them as two pennies. And Jesus praises her. Why?

She could have said, “I can’t give twenty pieces of gold, so I’ll just go home rather than take the chance someone might see me put in just two cents.” She could have said, “What I do won’t make any difference.” She could have said, “I need those two cents far more than this big temple needs money.” But she didn’t. She gave. And Jesus praised her for it.

The rich people gave from their surplus – what they had left over. The widow gave everything she had. She was like the widow from Elijah who gave away some of the little bit of food she had left to live on before making the meal she thought would be her last.

In both cases, the widows gave to God a critical amount. If God doesn’t step in, bad things will happen in their lives. But they trusted God – and they believed that God would take care of them. They weren’t worried about the future – God would take care of the future – and God would take care of them.

In our culture today, we are bombarded with advertising that talks about preparing for retirement. The question is asked over and over again – do you have enough money saved for retirement? Our fear is fanned with the commercials. Soon, we have visions of having our house foreclosed upon, of moving into the mission, or worse yet, living with our children because we can’t pay our bills! We think about living in a tent somewhere in Randolph County because we can’t afford a home, we eat venison and ramps and berries that we’ve picked. And we shiver as the snow flies around us.

But the reality is that God still takes care of us. Because of the impact of Christians a hundred years ago, we have Social Security and Medicare. We have access to food stamps, so much food at such low prices that our problem is not starvation, but that we are overweight. Those who are truly homeless in this area for more than a few days are almost always homeless because they have chosen to spend money on chemicals rather than on food and shelter – or because they have become unwilling to live agreeably with others in our society. Oh, there are those who find themselves suddenly without a job, without support, in poverty because of the choices of others. But we have the systems to help people in those situations – if they will humble themselves enough to follow the rules for a while.

And this is one of our culture’s great problems. Pride. Most of us don’t want to accept help from others. Most of our financial problems are because we think we need something like the wealthy people we see on television. We can’t drive an old car, we can’t live in a small house, we can’t wear hand-me-down clothes. We must look better than other people.

I know of people who simply won’t shop at Wal-mart because of pride. We must have the smart iPhone – never the old flip phone. We must have the cable television package with three or four ESPN channels – never the rabbit ears. We must have the SUV – never the four-cylinder used car with rust.

The way of Jesus is different. He calls us to follow Him. And His way is to become homeless – yet always have a place to sleep. His way is to not have any money – but always to have food. His way is to walk from place to place – and to talk with the people He met. There are only two times he is recorded to have ridden – and both times it was on a donkey, the most basic transportation of the time. And one of those times, he was still being carried in His mother’s womb. Jesus didn’t believe in prideful things. He awaits the future to ride on His white horse. He trusts in the Father to provide, as the widows trusted in the Father to provide.

And this emphasis on being humble goes beyond material things.

Our culture urges us to consider education and training and expertise for every job. We have bought into the culture’s idea that only nurses can nurse, only teachers can teach, only certified mechanics can fix cars, only doctors have any idea how to fix illnesses, only musicians can sing, only preachers can preach. Deep down, we sort of believe that the only people who can do certain jobs sort of fall out of the sky – even though we know that they mostly just went to classes for a few years to earn the right to handle the job.

I have seen this with the things I can do well. People say, “Some people just understand math, others don’t”, as though some people are born knowing algebra, completely disregarding the hours spent working homework problems. People say, “Some people can sing, others can’t”, as though the hours spent singing poorly in choirs didn’t mean anything. People say, “Some people can teach, others can’t” as if some people started teaching when they began speaking at 18 months of age. And people say, “Some people can preach, others can’t”, implying that preachers all know that they are preachers from about age 6.

I’m good at math. But it took me a year, working homework every evening, to learn Algebra – which, amazing enough, is how long the course lasted. I can sing well. It took me about four years of singing in choirs before I could sing well. It took me another couple of years of trying solos in choirs before I had the nerve to sing a solo without a choir to hide in. I can teach well. It took me five years of teaching in a classroom before I felt confident in my teaching. I can preach – I’m still learning how to preach well. The first time I preached, I was 50 years old. I’ve been doing carpentry work since I was twelve years old. So far, I have one piece of furniture that I think looks good. All the other things I’ve built are rough-looking, functional, but they look like a teenager built them. I occasionally do carpentry work for myself, but I don’t do that work for others.

Can you imagine if our veterans had all looked at the world this way? Can you imagine all those young men and women saying, “I don’t know how to drive a tank, so I won’t join the Army?” Or “I can’t fly an airplane, so I can’t join the Air Force?” Or “Some people are just born knowing how to fire artillery, and others don’t know.”

Can you imagine if Christ had looked at the world the way our culture looks at the world? He could have said, “I think that because my Father is God the Father, I’ll just take over this world. Anything less would be denying my abilities and background.” And instead of dying on the cross for us, He might have taken over. But thank God that He did not. For Christ was humble enough to know that His purpose was greater than His body, that dying on the cross for all of us sinful people was more important than His pride.

Our culture is wrong. We do not know what we are capable of from birth. Everything we are good at is a combination of God’s gifts, hard work, training, & practice, a focus upon becoming good, and God’s blessings. So often, we don’t do something because of our pride – since we can’t put twenty pieces of gold proudly into the treasury, we are afraid to put our two pieces of copper into the treasury. We let our pride get in the way. We believe that because we can’t sing as good as Frank Sinatra or Michael Buble or Amy Grant, we shouldn’t sing. We believe that because we can’t act like Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts, we shouldn’t act. We believe that because we can’t preach like Billy Graham, Charles Stanley, or Beth Moore, we can’t preach. We let our pride get in the way of following what God wants us to do.

Last year, in this state, about 30 Methodist preachers retired. Only about a dozen new preachers started out. Churches were closed because of this.

This June, about 50 Methodist preachers are expected to retire in this state. Only about a dozen or so new preachers are expected to start out. More churches will close because of this.

If you have ever thought about preaching, let me give you the facts about the job.

You will not be paid well – but you will receive a home, with all utilities paid.

Some people will leave your churches the day you arrive – But others will come to your churches over the next few years.

You will upset and offend some people – but you will also have people tell you that you have become their dearest and closest friend.

You will never be able to count on staying in the same home from one year to the next – yet you will always know that God is with you, for God walks into homes, hospitals, nursing homes and funerals with you.

You will often wonder if you are doing God’s will – and you will often see that God was working no matter what you did.

There will be days when you feel like you are working just for bread – but you will learn that the flour and the oil will always be there, alongside the living water that flows from the Words you read through the sermons you preach every week.

There will be days when you will not feel like you have made any difference in the world – and then, the next day, as you put your two cents into God’s treasury, you will know the Father’s blessing.

There are several of you who have been toying with the idea of leading a church for a while now. You have daydreamed about what you would do, what you would say, how you would do things differently. I’m here today to tell you that God has been sending you those daydreams through the Holy Spirit.

Most pastors that you will talk to will tell you the same story. They heard the call one day and then made excuses why they couldn’t or shouldn’t answer the call. They were too young or they were too old. They had too many children or not enough education. They needed money or they were scared of speaking in front of people or they were scared of speaking to people in their homes or hospital rooms. They felt they couldn’t put twenty gold pieces of difference into the world and so they held back their two cents worth. They delayed and they delayed and then finally, they took a step forward and found they had made a mistake. The mistake, they’ll all tell you, was in not stepping forward sooner.

If you are interested in considering the ministry, the path is simple. Talk to me. There are many starter churches available, part-time churches with 15 to 20 people – about the size of a solid Sunday School class. Mary Ellen Finegan, our District Superintendent, and our Bishop have both put out a call to find new pastors.

It’s time to put aside your pride, your fear of failure, your fear that you don’t have twenty gold coins to put in the treasury – and put in your two little copper coins. For you may not become the next Billy Graham, leading four million people to the altar – but you may lead one person, a person who will not spend eternity in hellfire because of you.

Just like everything else, becoming a pastor is a matter of God’s gifts, hard work, training, & practice, a focus upon becoming good, and God’s blessings. God took me, a man with experience in automating factories and developing an Internet business and made me a pastor. God took Saundra, a woman whose first job was sewing gloves for a living, who had jobs selling everything from insurance to electronics to secretaries to inkjet ink and made her a pastor. God took our son Andy, who had a year and a half of college and had only worked at the Boy Scout camp and made him a pastor. God took our friend, who did prison time for beating up a guy he was selling drugs to, and made him a pastor. God took our other friend, a union carpenter, and made him a pastor.

And God may want to make you a pastor.

Will you give Him permission? Will you put away your pride and put in your two cents?