A Time for Green Chapel ’08…

The writer of Ecclesiastes shares wisdom about the reality of seasons. We hear, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” At times these words may be challenging to hear, but they are true. On October 5 we celebrated with thanksgiving the culmination of Green Chapel ’08. Our season of outdoor worship on the Southern Village Green has come to an end and we rejoice in the blessing it has been for many people. God faithfully provided our community with the opportunity to meet in a unique space for worship. Our minds are filled with sweet memories of the beauty of church under the Carolina blue sky. Thank you to everyone who made this season of life possible.

Hope for All People

HOPE FOR ALL PEOPLE
Luke 10:1-16
Psalm 138
Preached by Maggie Mraz, Intern Pastor
October 5, 2008

Before Paul and I had kids I was a special education teacher. The kids I taught were labeled “emotionally disturbed”. Each of them had been abused in some way by someone who was supposed to love them. They were all unique and they were all very needy. One girl, Alisha, tugged on my heart more than the others. She seemed to live on a roller coaster; the kind of person who wore her pain loudly and visibly. We often knew what kind of day it would be by the condition of Alisha’s hair. On the days she entered the classroom and her hair was brushed and held in place with a barrette or a headband there was a chance we may have some peace, but when Alisha’s hair was wild you could almost bet that we were in for a long, challenging day.

To me Alisha was like a stray cat and I really wanted to make things better for her. I puzzled over how her life could ever get better. I lost sleep at night wondering how to impact a situation that seemed desperate, chaotic and unpredictable. Sometimes I took the risk of taking Alisha home with me. I can vividly remember the simple joy that came from having her in our house. She was mostly a mess, but those hours together were filled with hope.

I was able to give her my undivided attention. We walked into town and sat together at restaurants. We listened to music and read books. We watched movies and talked in the front yard under the maple tree. She liked to run up and down the stairs of our house; a thrill for a child who lived in a double wide. Alisha laughed and rocked wildly on our rocking chair. It was a joy to be with her on those days. They were peaceful hours that gave us a hopeful glimpse of Alisha at her best. Such a memory reminds me that there is hope for all people. Hope for peace.

We all hope for peace, don’t we? Each day the newspapers that find their way into our homes are filled with news that reminds us of our need. A quick scan of the Triangle section of the N&O shows us that we need peace. Lots of bad news and many of us begin each day soaking it in over coffee. But, hey, there is hope and there is good news!

Luke’s version of the good news proclaims hope for all people. Did you hear Lizzy this morning? The kingdom of God has come near to you! It’s true. Jesus sent out 70 disciples ahead of him with specific instructions about proclaiming the kingdom of God for others.

Listen again. Read 10:8-11

This passage echoes one found in Chapter 9 where Jesus sent out the twelve disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God for others.

Listen. Read 9:1-2

This passage echoes one found in Chapter 4 where we hear Jesus at the beginning of his ministry speaking to a crowd after healing many people. They wanted him to stay with them, but he was intent on his mission of sharing the kingdom of God with others.

Listen. Read 4:43-44

The movement of the sharing of the kingdom of God began with the birth of a baby named Jesus who grew up to be a teacher and a healer who invited others to come along, to follow and to live like Him. The movement continues through the lives of his disciples with the hope that the kingdom of God will spread all over the world.

It all began with Jesus and moved out with the twelve and then moved out with the 70 and so on and so on and so on. Sounds like that old shampoo commercial, “And they told two friends, and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on.”

It is important to note that the appointing of 70 is understood to be a symbol representing all the people of the world AND that the sending of the 70 points to the mission of the church. Luke also wrote the book of Acts. He tells us in Acts that just before his ascension into heaven the resurrected Jesus told his disciples that they would be empowered by the Holy Spirit to spread the kingdom of God in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The hopeful movement of the kingdom is not limited to some, but is to be shared with all people. The kingdom of God is for everyone! It’s for me and for you and for messy people like Alisha.

Jesus is clear that whether people receive or reject the kingdom doesn’t change the truth that the kingdom of God has come near. So what does that mean for your life? What does that mean for the person sitting next to you or for your neighbor or for the people you work with or your family or for the stranger on the street?

Well, it seems that it is all wrapped up what we choose to do. Do we accept that God is in charge rather than us? God desires us all to live at peace with Him and with others. Even when the world wants to place labels on us or when we are tempted to put labels on others we can choose to live in a different way; in the ways of Jesus; in the kingdom of God.

What does living in the kingdom of God look like? Well, consider this: Who needs your undivided attention? Who would love to walk and talk with you? Who needs to sit with you at a restaurant? Who needs to listen to music with you? Who needs to read a book with you? Who needs to watch a movie with you? Who needs to sit in the front yard or under the maple tree with you? Who needs to run up and down the stairs of your house? Who needs to laugh with you? Who needs to rock wildly in your rocking chair? Think about it.

I traveled to Israel a while ago with Asbury Seminary. For 3 weeks we lived just outside the gates of the old city of Jerusalem. One of the many wonderful memories I have of that time is hearing the exchange of peace over and over again. As you entered or exited a place or walked by someone there was the possibility for the exchange of, “Shalom”. Peace. It’s a way of expressing of desire for fullness of life for another. It is like, “I hope you lack nothing you need. I hope are blessed with wellness, wholeness, and abundance in your life even though there is tension and struggle all around.” Shalom. Peace.

The kingdom of God has come near to you. It began to break into the world with Jesus and promises the hope for all people to be at peace with God and with others.

Each week we end Green Chapel by taking part in the ancient tradition of sharing the peace of Christ with one another. It is more than an expression of friendship or welcome, but sharing of the peace Jesus offers all people. Today when we exchange handshakes or hugs or kisses I encourage you to think about this action as a means of reminding one another that the kingdom of God is near and we are invited to live within it and to share it with other people. Maybe then we can better remember with our daily thoughts, words and actions that we are forgiven so we may be forgiving. We are reconciled so we may be people of reconciliation. We are loved so may love. We are blessed so we may be a blessing. We are healed and may be healing toward others.

I leave you with a very contemporary version of Jesus’ instructions for his disciples,

“On your way! But be careful…this is hazardous work. You’re like lambs in a wolf pack. Travel light. Comb and toothbrush and no extra luggage. Don’t loiter and make small talk with everyone you meet on the way. When you enter a home, greet the family, ‘Peace.’ If your greeting is received, then it’s a good place to stay. But if it’s not received, take it back and get out. Don’t impose yourself. Stay at one home, taking your meals there, for a worker deserves three square meals. Don’t move from house to house, looking for the best cook in town. When you enter a town and are received, eat what they set before you, heal anyone who is sick, and tell them, God’s kingdom is right on your doorstep! When you enter a town and are not received, go out into the street and say, “The only thing we got from you is the dirt on our feet and we’re giving it back to you. Did you have any idea that God’s kingdom was right on your doorstep?” (The Message Luke 10)

I’ve heard people say, “Sometimes it would be nice if we could just throw people into the kingdom of God.” We can’t. All we can do is continue to seek to live in the ways of the kingdom and remember that God is in charge. Some will accept the message and others will not. We may seek to live like Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and sincerely connect and re-connect with people in ways that hopefully extend the peace of the kingdom of God to all people. Either way people respond the message is still the same. The kingdom of God is near. Amen.

One

Our final Green Chapel for 2008 will gather for worship on the Southern Village Green on October 5th at 10:00 a.m. We will we celebrate Holy Communion and expect great sharing of powdered donuts and apple cider to follow the service. Come, join us! Everyone is welcome.

Future Hope

Preached 9/278/08 by Shay Hall, youth pastor
“Future Hope”
Romans 8:18-27

One of the biggest questions people have when it comes to believing in God is the question of suffering and pain. The argument goes, “If God is all good and all powerful and all knowing, why is there so much suffering and pain in the world?” It is hard to have hope when you look around and see so much pain and suffering and hatred. It is hard to have hope when systems are so broken and so corrupt. It is hard to have hope when nature itself turns on humanity in destructive and catastrophic ways. It is hard to have hope in and for the world we live in today and that all makes it hard to have hope for the future.

As we look today at what Future Hope is for us as Christians, let us start by looking, not to the future, but to the past, to the way past, to the beginning. Genesis 3 tells the story of humanity’s first encounter with sin and the consequences of that sin. In the account we learn that because of human disobedience to God there is strife between the serpent and humans, there will be great pain in childbirth, the ground will no longer produce abundantly without hard work and will instead produce thorns and thistles, and ultimately humans will no longer live forever.

We turn here first, not because it gives us hope for the future. Rather we look to the past to understand our present situation. Paul tells us, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it…We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” This groaning, this frustration, this pain is the result of human sin. We see it all around us. Hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, cancer, famine, economic turmoil, even war. The earth is groaning for liberation.

I want to be clear though. The suffering of the earth as a result of human sin is not an individualized reality. The gulf coast does not suffer hurricanes because the people living there are more sinful that those in the other areas of the nation, nor is Africa plagued by AIDS because it is a godless continent, as some have proposed. No, humanity as a whole is riddled with the condition of sin that no one is free from on their own and thus, all of creation suffers because of our collective sin.

So we find ourselves in a world that appears to be in rapid decay and self-destruction and while humanity is to blame for it all, there is nothing that we can do to remedy the situation. It would be easy to look around at the world and see very little to be hopefully about, but isn’t the phrase “Future Hope” kind of redundant. Isn’t hope something that is not yet here? Paul writes, “Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

“But wait,” you say to yourself, “How can I and why should I wait patiently for some distant hope when my life and the world around me are filled with obvious pain and suffering?” Let me assure you I am right there with you today. My father-in-law went into the hospital last week as his cancer became more aggressive and the effects on his body and mind grew worse. He barely remembers his own daughter and has no idea where he is, he cannot stand on his own, and his wife is wrought with sorrow at the prospect of losing her husband. I understand how someone can see the world in negative ways and the temptation to lose hope. Each one of you here most likely doesn’t have look too far to see immense suffering and pain.

And so we join all of creation as we cry out with groans. But these are not necessarily the groans of death and despair. Instead, Paul tells us that these are the groans of anxious, expectant, excited waiting for the coming of something new, and not just something new, but everything new. These are the groans of labor as creation itself is being birthed anew. The cause of our groaning is shaped by our perspective.

The pain and heartache caused by my father-in-law’s cancer is bad, but there’s good news in the midst of his suffering. Before he was diagnosed with cancer, he hated God. He wanted nothing to do with God because he had seen firsthand much of the suffering of this world. He didn’t want anything to do with a god who would allow for that kind of misery to run rampant in the world. Yet, when he began to experience the pain that he saw all around, instead of hating God all the more, he came to find God and rely on God for the first time in his life. Now, he longs for life. He wants to live and yet he is at peace with the prospect of death. Through his suffering he has found Christ the Lord.

And so, our current condition is one that has been misdiagnosed by many. We are not in pain because we are at the end of life. The world is not suffering because the end is near. Rather, we are waiting eagerly for something new to arrive. The ache is like the burn of new muscles growing when you work out. The sting is like that of hydrogen peroxide on a wound. The pain is that of childbirth. Paul is not the first to use the imagery of childbirth when speaking of the age to come. Jesus also spoke in these terms when he says, “You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy (John 16:20-21).” The hope we have is in this something new that will come to the earth someday. The old age is passing away and the new age is coming fast and when it arrives the joy we have will blot out the pain we are experiencing now.

However, there is not a clean divide between the old age that is passing away and the new age that is to come. God interrupting our current situation is not a one time event that will drastically flip everything upside down once and for all. Rather, God is working in and through Christ’s coming to earth and Christ’s second coming. The new age is here and yet the new age is still to come. When Christ came to earth, called disciples, suffered, died and rose from the dead the new age began. Christ left the disciples with this new age a work in progress. He left them with a command to take care of the creation and those who dwell in it. But he did not leave them alone. He sent the Holy Spirit to be with them, to comfort them, to guide them, to empower them to continue the work of God in this world until Christ comes in final victory.

My wife just gave birth a month ago and so the imagery of labor pains in this passage is alive in my mind, but this metaphor can be extended even further. For many women, the experience of being pregnant brings out many urges that may not have been a part of who she was before. I’m sure you can all think of some bizarre combination of foods you have hear some expectant mother have craved. My wife didn’t desire strange foods, but strongly desired certain foods at different stages of her pregnancy. She craved scrambled eggs, then cinnamon rolls, and Burger King Whoppers. For many women pickles and ice cream seems to be the classic pairing for pregnancy.

Many women also experience what is called nesting. This is where a woman who is close to giving birth begins to prepare a nest for her new child. She puts every last detail on the nursery. She cleans every corner of the house. She has her husband re-clean every corner of the house. She sorts and rearranges everything so that the house will be perfect for the new arrival.

If we believe the world is groaning not with the pains of death, but with the pains of new life, we should have a similar instinct to prepare for that new life. This is what the work of the Spirit does in us who are called by God to live in to this new life now. Yes, this world is suffering and seems to be passing away, but we have been entrusted to care for this created world and to prepare it for Christ’s glorious return.

The phrase “waiting eagerly” is used three times in this passage. This phrase is not simply a patient endurance. It is not passively biding our time. It is the expectant eagerness of a child on Christmas Eve whose anxious energy turns to baking cookies for Santa or running through the wish list one last time. This eager waiting is an energized force that comes from a hope of that which is to come. It wells up from the inside and causes you to spring into action. Like a woman preparing for her coming child, some force within points us to that future hope and when that force, that Holy Spirit is recognized and let loose, the preparations can begin. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”

You are the children of God if you have this hope for the future. You will be revealed when you allow that hope of Christ to come alive in you through the Holy Spirit. And creation will rejoice in your hope because in Christ and through Christ we can proclaim that something new is on the horizon, something new is here and that creation will be completely new and it will be complete.

Hope for the Holy Spirit

Preached by Maggie Mraz, Intern Pastor

A group of us from Christ church traveled to Israel during the winter of ’06. We went as pilgrims seeking to experience God in the land where our faith was born. Now, I know myself. One thing I knew was necessary for me to do on this trip was to commit to NO shopping. I was not travelling all the way over there to shop and I knew that shopping could get in the way of my ability to seek God. I did pretty well until we got to the airport to go home and we had several hours to kill before our flight took off. How convenient or tempting that the airport was also a SHOPPING MALL.

When you go to Israel you constantly see lotions and scrubs made with minerals from the Dead Sea. This stuff is promoted like a miracle elixir that will rejuvenate just about anything. I think they had given me hope that I could look 20 years old again. Oh, and there is an added twist because all the products are packaged in a way that you think you are getting a deal; buy two get one free.
I didn’t fall into the trap for 10 days and then I found myself in the duty free shop at the airport and that stuff is all over the place. At that point in my life I was 39 years old and on the brink of turning 40. I had put up a good fight all week, but proved to be easy prey as I was captured by jars of eye cream. It seems that I could not resist. Oh, and the prices were in shekels and since I am not a math wizard I was slow at calculating the exchange rate. I spent like eighty six dollars on lotion during the final hours of a trip to the Holy Land after being faithful to my commitment to resist shopping during the entire trip.

I am weak!
But I hear that there is hope.

There is a product currently being advertised in high end mail order catalogs that caught my attention. A glossy photo for something called, “hope in a jar” is offered. Its trademark is registered. It’s got spf 20. Two ounces may be purchased for $45. It is identified as a daily high performance moisturizer with broad spectrum sun protection. It contains antioxidants to enhance skin immunology and lactic acid to gently exfoliate your face. Hope in a jar; a marketing genius. We fall for this, don’t we? It gets our attention and we buy into it.

We are weak! And they know it!!
But we hear that there is hope.
YES, we are weak and YES. there is hope. We believe in God of the weak. God chooses to work through the weak in ways that bring glory to God.

Maisie read for us this morning from 2nd Corinthians where we hear Paul writing to an ancient church community. His words travel through the ages and speak to us today. Paul reminds us that God works even through our weakness. He tells how all he has accomplished in ministry has been led by Christ. He has not been successful because of Paul, but because of God. He doesn’t claim credit but knows that Christ works through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

Verse 5-7: For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

It is a wonder how God works in us and through us. Paul likens us to common, earthenware vessels; clay pots and shares the amazing work of God through these ordinary vessels as we are given the treasure of the gospel; the indwelling presence of Christ empowers us to live for others in ways that give glory to God. (Hold up a terracotta pot) Through the Holy Spirit God gives life to those who believe in Jesus so we may reflect His image in the world for others. The Spirit works in and through us with the hope of life being shared with more and more people.

Paul describes the ministry of the Holy Spirit through us as a treasure; life giving and the representing the glory of God. This treasure is held in frail containers. (DROP THE POT)

It is amazing how God works. Where would we keep treasure or valuables? We would keep them in a safe; locked in a secure place rather than a disposable container. A jar of clay…it’s like a cardboard box. God puts treasure in breakable, cheap common containers. Why? So we may point to the greatness of God rather than to focusing attention on the container.

As I spent time with this passage I couldn’t help but make a connection with Daffy Duck. We watched too much TV as a kid. I’ve had a cartoon from my childhood rerunning in my mind. You might remember this one. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are tunneling their way to Pismo Beach. They make a wrong turn (at Albuquerque) and end up in a cave. Much to their surprise the cave is full of treasure; lots of treasure. There are mounds of gold coins, gems, and jewelry. Daffy becomes mesmerized at the sight of all the loot and immediately stomps Bugs back into his rabbit hole shouting, “Mine, mine, mine, it’s all mine”! His eyes are swirling in a daze as he transforms into a greedy miser. It’s a ridiculous scene and classic Daffy. Daffy is weak. He wanted to keep all the treasure for himself. We can relate. Each of us has some of this duck within us, but God works by the Holy Spirit in our weakness and brings glory to God.

Paul shares amazing news that God is at work spreading the gift of life to more and more people through people by the extraordinary power of God. God works through us. God uses us to spread the hope of life. In our weakness God uses us to bring life through the Holy Spirit. Within us God is at work to bring life. Our reading today gives us REAL hope that is unseen but powerfully at work within the people of the church. We are reminded of life that comes from God through the Holy Spirit. This same Spirit that brought Jesus back to life is the same Spirit at work within the community of faith in Corinth long, long ago and the community of Chapel Hill today. It is the same Spirit at work in you and me today.

Paul reminds the church that the ministry do is through God. It is God’s doing and not our own. We are ministers of the new covenant in Jesus Christ through the Spirit of God. The church has been given the means to live a powerful life through God. Paul tells of the work of God through the Holy Spirit in the lives of people who believe in Jesus. He proclaims the gospel. God has made a way for people to know God. Through Jesus the glory of God is made known. God has been given a face so that people may recognize God. The gospel in few words…Because of Jesus we are forgiven and reconciled by God. How may we respond to this gift from God? We may respond through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Paul doesn’t hide the truth that this life will include suffering, but shares that we are empowered by God to endure suffering. Through suffering God’s divine power is revealed. It’s the reality of the cross and the resurrection in and through Paul’s life and in and through our lives. Jesus suffered but was enabled to endure through God’s power. He was delivered from suffering through God’s power. We may expect the same. We believe in God who brings life from death through the Spirit. We believe the Cross leads to resurrection.

V 4:16-18

Some men met for lunch one day at a local fast food restaurant. As they were entering the place another man sitting outside mumbled as they passed by, “How about buying me some lunch?” It would have been really easy to keep walking. The trouble is these men have been learning together about Jesus. For the last few years they have been meeting each other weekly with the hope of growing. God is doing something in their midst. So, they couldn’t walk on by but instead they invited the man to join them for lunch. They sat together. They talked. They listened to each other. At the end of the lunch hour the strange man thanked them all for buying him lunch. One of the men responded honestly, “Thank Jesus because if it wasn’t for him I would have told you to get a job instead of offering to buy you lunch and instead of sitting and eating with you.”

We are a bunch of clay pots.
We are weak!
But there is hope.
Each one of us is offered life because of Jesus with the hope that we too will join in the stories that bring glory to God. Amen.

Jesus, our Hope

Shay Hall and Kaytee Flowers
Green Chapel: Hope
Jesus, Our Hope
Luke 14:25-33

This morning, I have the privilege of co-preaching with Kaytee Flowers as we continue this series on hope. As Kaytee and I began to reflect on Jesus as our hope, an idea that seems central to our faith and basic to our theology and understanding of what it means to be the Church, we began to ask a lot of questions: What is the difference between faith and hope? How do we respond to a hope found in Christ? What is it that we are ultimately hoping for? Do we have hope in Christ for the afterlife alone, or does Jesus offer us hope in this life, as well? If so, what is the nature of that hope?

As we pondered these questions, I began to realize something fundamental about the assumptions our immediate culture and context teach us to make about the need for hope. Sure, we can believe that we need Christ for our ticket to heaven and put our hope in that distant cosmic voyage, but for most of us, we have more than what we need for survival in this life for a reasonable number of years. We have homes, incomes, insurance, access to the best medical facilities in the world, communities where we find meaningful social interaction, and almost anything else we can think of to provide security, happiness, and “the good life.”

Since we think we already have what we need, what is it that we would hope for? With a belief that we have secured all our needs, our hope turns to what we want and is transformed into greed. We begin to “hope” for comforts and luxuries rather than the basic essential desires and needs of our souls. Eventually, we begin to let go of these essential needs in exchange for the empty desires of our lustful nature. And so we move so far from hope in the things of God that we have trouble even defining what it is that Christ offers us hope for.

The passage from Luke is a hard message to hear and even harder to understand. Jesus tells his followers that they must hate. They must hate their fathers and mothers, their wives and children, their brothers and sisters, and their very own lives. At first this sounds so very opposite from what Jesus teaches. When we think about Jesus and his message, it is typically one of love. So what does Jesus mean when he says to hate our families and our lives?

In Luke’s time, as always, family was a central part of life; it was part of your identity, what made you who you were. In our culture we have many counterparts to this such as careers, social status, and friends. Although family lineage is not nearly as important, for many of us our immediate family is held very dear and we draw life from them. We put our hope in them.

Earlier in Luke 14, Jesus tells a parable of a banquet. In the parable, the master of a house sends out invitations to the banquet, but those who are invited are “too busy” to attend. Two have just purchased something (one a field, one five yoke of oxen) and they must tend to their newly acquired possessions. Another just got married, and so cannot attend.

This parable is almost a satire of how people respond to the invitation by God to his Kingdom. They get all excited about Jesus–when the time is convenient for them. They say they are looking forward to feasting in the Kingdom of God but when the invitations go out they are too busy with things they see as more important.

This is what Jesus warns us about when he says that we must hate our own families and our own lives. If our family ties, our friendships, our careers or our property are more important to us than God’s Kingdom, we will miss the feast. The feast will not wait until it is convenient for you, because it will never be convenient for you. So make sure you are ready to drop everything when the invitations go out, and be ready for some inconvenience, some sacrifice, and even some suffering. What Jesus is asking is not that we show hate towards our loved ones, and not that we abandon our families, but rather that we prioritize. He asks us not to build our identity on our personal relationships with others or our own abilities and accomplishments, but to put our relationship with Him first, and to build our identities in Christ.

One of the greatest stories from the Old Testament is that of Abraham. God called Abraham to be a great nation and at first Abraham responded faithfully, but rather than maintaining hope in God along, Abraham built his identity on producing a great nation through hope in an offspring. God calls Abraham to faithfulness once again as he tells him to take his son, his only son, whom he loved and go to the region of Moriah to sacrifice him there as a burnt offering. God calls Abraham to give up the one hope he has in becoming a great nation, his son Isaac. For Abraham, faithfulness will be inconvenient. It will require literal sacrifice and heart wrenching suffering. Yet Abraham takes his son and heads for the mountain. He does this because he has faith in God. He has faith so he can raise a knife to that in which he formerly put his hope.

God is calling us to have the same kind of faith, to be willing to give up the one thing that we most put our hope. The hard questions is: Are you willing to give it up?

In the passage from Luke for today, verses 28-32 have never made much sense to me, especially when taken in the context of hope. It sounds like Jesus is preaching against faith. He says to sit down and measure the cost of building before stepping into it. He says to weigh the cost of war before charging in. Where’s the leap of faith I’ve always heard about? Where’s the blind trust in God?

But once Kaytee and I began to pour over this passage I began to see these comparisons more clearly. Christ is not saying we should be sure we have all the supplies we need before starting just in case we don’t have enough to complete it. Instead he is saying that the house will be complete, but are you willing to pay the price for the supplies. The war metaphor drives more at the severity of what Jesus is saying. If there is a battle that needs to be won, how many troops are you willing to give to the cause? Jesus is saying that life itself is at stake. Christ is offering a chance to be his disciples, to dwell with him in the house of the Lord forever, to feast at His great banquet, and all we have to do is give up all that we have.

I have taught on this passage many times before and I have always boldly proclaimed a need for the kind of faith that takes precedent over parents and children, but now I enter into this text with a bit more caution because I now have two beautiful 1 month old babies. So now I must ask myself if I am willing to give up my children for Christ if God asks me to. I can’t possibly imagine why God would ask me to, but I need to be willing to do that should God ask it of me. I have to tell you, it’s hard.
The problem though comes right back to the beginning. Do we have enough hope in the results that Jesus promises for us to let go of the things that distract us from true hope? Most likely the answer will be a quick “no” at first. Give up my family? Give up my job? Give up my life? It’s a hard request. It’s almost cruel how difficult a request Christ is making, but somehow the answer must become a “YES!” Somehow we must turn away from hoping in the things we can provide for ourselves and turn to the one who provides all good things abundantly. This is our part in fulfilling the hope Christ provides.

When we try to live with hope in this world and in ourselves, we are like a man who falls from a building and the whole time he is falling he keeps telling himself, “I’m ok so far. I’m ok so far.” How many people can actually say that their lives have so far gone according to plan? So we can no longer put our hope in our own plans. As we seek to build lives for ourselves our own supplies will always be inadequate. We cannot place our hope in our abilities, families, possessions claiming that we are “ok so far.” But we don’t hate them, rather we reject their inadequacies to give life and we seek instead the fulfilling love and perfection of Christ.

Apart from God we can do nothing, but in Christ we can do all things. And we can really only accomplish what Gods wants us to accomplish, that which is in his plan, because the materials he’s given us are designed just for that purpose. But when it may seem that nothing is going right at all, the Lord is still there, and He knows what He is doing. And looking back on those moments now, we can see how they were for the better, and we can see how they made us who we are today, and we can be thankful. And even now, or in the future, when it seems like nothing will ever be right again, there is a reason for what is going on and everything will work out for the better. And there we will find hope in Christ for today and for tomorrow.

The beauty of putting our hope in Christ is that this hope does not disappoint because God has poured out his love into our hearts. The beauty is that this hope produces faith because faith is being sure of what we hope for.

So what is the hope we have in Christ? We can look back to that story of Abraham and Isaac. Once Abraham raises his knife and is willing to sacrifice his son, his hope is no longer in his son but in God once again. In placing his hope back in its proper place, he is able to look up from his son and see what God is providing for him, a ram suitable for offering to God.

The good news is that when we willingly give up the things of this world in which we put our hope, we will then be able to look up and see the true offering that God is providing in Jesus. For God did not require Abraham to kill his son but provided a sacrifice for him and so God provides hope for us in his own son, the Lamb of God, who God did sacrifice for our sake and who rose from the dead so that we could have assurance that Christ, our hope, will be with us now and forever. Amen.

Three

Join us at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning at the Southern Village Green. Come hear “Aspects of Hope”.

• September 21 – Hope for the Holy Spirit (Maggie Mraz, intern pastor)
• September 28 – Future Hope (Shay Hall, youth pastor)
• October 5 – Hope for all People (Maggie Mraz, intern pastor)

Bring some powdered donuts and apple cider to share along with your blanket and/or lawn chair. See you on the Green!!

Four More…Weeks

Come join us at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning at the Southern Village Green to hear “Aspects of Hope”:

• September 14 –Jesus, our Hope (Shay Hall, youth pastor & Kaytee Flowers, youth)
• September 21 – Hope for the Holy Spirit (Maggie Mraz, intern pastor)
• September 28 – Future Hope (Shay Hall, youth pastor)
• October 5 – Hope for all People (Maggie Mraz, intern pastor)

Hope for Today

Come on out to the SV Green on Sunday, September 7 to see the beauty of God’s church in the open air. Green Chapel gathers at 10:00 a.m. on Market Street Green in Southern Village. Come as you are, but don’t forget your lawn chair. This week we will hear words of hope from guest preacher, Matt LeRoy, a recent graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary who has a heart for loving Chapel Hill. Join us!

Hope for the Hopeless

Preached on Sunday, August 31 by Greg Arthur, Associate Pastor
Luke 12:22-34

Introduction: What does it take to make someone hopeless?

As we focus on hope for the next several weeks it is important to consider what are the enemies of hope? What keeps us from being a hopeful people? Lately there seems to me to be more pessimism than hope with people. Why is that?

Here are some things that will make people pessimistic. A war without a clear goal or end in site, an economic slump that affects housing values which are usually the biggest investment people make, less jobs, and famine and hunger (these may not be an issue here but read about the rest of the world there are huge famines taking place) all of these issues are making us pessimistic and hurting our ability to hope? Why? We struggle to hope when we are worried. It is just part of human nature to struggle with being hopeful when we are worried. The more worried or threatened we feel the less hopeful we often are. That is a huge problem for us, because hope plays such a vital role in our lives.

Illustration: What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.
—Emil Brunner, Swiss theologian (1889–1966)

So if we are to people of hope, if we are to overcome the hopelessness that limits us and affects our lives, especially now in such troubled times, we must learn to deal with our worry. Thankfully and hopefully that is something that we can do.

In Matthew 12 Jesus tells us, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body what you will wear.” That sounds like such an empty statement doesn’t it? It sounds like some little nice thought you would find painted on a shell at a Hallmark store. I mean it was a catchy yet artificially sweet Bobby McFarren song in the 80’s. Don’t worry be happy was the message pop culture gave us. And it is a nice idea that lasts about as long as the 3 minutes of that song.

Why in the world would we believe or respond to a call not to worry. Doesn’t Jesus get it? Doesn’t Jesus get that our lives are in turmoil, we are stressed, the future is uncertain, and hope is hard to come by these days? Yes, Jesus certainly does understand all of these things about our lives, but he also understands some things that we do not.

Jesus reminds us about the provision of God. It is not as if God hasn’t worked, from the very act of creation on through every day of existence, to provide what we need to live. God provides for our physical needs, just as he does with the flowers of field and the birds of the air. But hope goes beyond that. We are called to live our lives with a focus not on the things of this world, but on the Kingdom of God, the fullness of possibilities that exist in this world because of God’s redemptive work through and around us.

We can be freed from worry because what we see and what we are capable of is not all that there is. God is at work all around us and he is working to redeem all of creation, to fix the brokenness of this world, to bring about peace and to fill this world with his unconditional and transforming love. So we don’t have to worry about eating and work and housing because God has far bigger things to occupy our minds. Part of God’s work to redeem this world is to reshape our minds so that hope replaces worry because in a world where the people of God spend their time hoping instead of worrying, when those who are hopeless find hope, anything is possible.

Jesus is trying to point us to the infinite possibilities of God that should dominate and define our lives instead of the pessimistic and limited realities that we try to convince ourselves are the full view of this world. That is all and good, but why should we believe a word this Jesus says? Why would he telling us to be not worry mean anything more to us than a silly 80’s song? Very simple answer to that one: the resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus did many things for us. But, as all four gospels make very clear, the resurrection first and foremost served to vindicate Jesus and his teachings about the coming of the kingdom of God and inaugurate its entrance into the world. The resurrection of Jesus allows us and commands us to be hopeful. We can read everything Jesus said differently because of the resurrection. Everything he taught is made relevant and valuable and powerful by his resurrection. It gives us the power to hope. And if we can believe in the resurrection of Christ and accept his message of hope, than we can truly begin to change the way our minds work and we can exchange the worries of this world and their accompanying hopelessness for the hope of those who are discovering the kingdom of God at work all around them.

Illustration: Yellow is not my favorite color. But now that I know the story of Vincent van Gogh, I have come to value yellow differently. This famous Dutch painter, sadly, tossed away the truth imparted him in his Christian home and sank into depression and destruction. By the grace of God, as he later began to embrace the truth again, his life took on hope, and he gave that hope color.
The best-kept secret of van Gogh’s life is that the truth he was discovering is seen in the gradual increase of the presence of the color yellow in his paintings. Yellow evoked (for him) the hope and warmth of the truth of God’s love. In one of his depressive periods, seen in his famous The Starry Night, one finds a yellow sun and yellow swirling stars, because van Gogh thought truth was present only in nature. Tragically, the church, which stands tall in this painting and should be the house of truth, is about the only item in the painting showing no traces of yellow. But by the time he painted The Raising of Lazarus, his life was on the mend as he began to face the truth about himself. The entire picture is (blindingly) bathed in yellow. In fact, van Gogh put his own face on Lazarus to express his own hope in the Resurrection.
Yellow tells the whole story: life can begin all over again because of the truth of God’s love. Each of us, whether with actual yellows or metaphorical yellows, can begin to paint our lives with the fresh hope of a new beginning.