Rev. Dr. William F. (Chip) Summers              Pastor

Worship Service August 25, 2019

Sermon:  "The Gospel According to Zacchaeus"

Scripture: Luke 19:1-10

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Dr.Chip's August 4, 2019 Sermon

"CALLOUSED CHRISTIANITY"

           " Sometimes Jesus’ parables don’t leave much doubt as to their meaning. A preacher must scratch around to find something to add to what Jesus has already made abundantly clear.

           The first brother, the Yes Man, is offering political rhetoric, saying what he knows the father wants to hear. We constantly get that not only from the politicians but from people trying to sell us things. They tell us what we want to hear. “This skin cream will make you look ten years younger. Our goo will grow hair. (It won’t) Our car will make you feel good about yourself.” In the religious realm, this language says all the right things about grace, love, and forgiveness, but in its actions, it demonstrates pride, disdain, and retribution.

           The second son demonstrates what is important to him by his labor. I don’t know why he refuses to answer positively, except that he has heard his brother’s words, knows they are a lie, and doesn’t want to be part of that kind of language. He chooses to commit himself with his labor. We work for those we love and for the things that are important to us. Every day, we tell the world who we are by the way we use our time, energy, and money.  The tasks we accept aren’t always easy or pleasant, but out of love for someone, we focus on their needs and we work. I think this is why spouses and children are so precious to us. We have so much invested in them.

             I have a vision of the end of the day. The two sons are at the table waiting on the father. He comes in, says the blessing, and the meal begins. He looks at the first son and says, “So, what did you do today.” The young man replies, “I just don’t know where the time went. After morning prayers at the synagogue there was a committee meeting about new candle sticks for the alter, and then I had a Bible study with the rabbi. After lunch I went to the baths and preformed the ritual cleansing so of course I couldn’t get dirty after that, so I came home and took a nap.

            The father then looks at the other son and raises a questioning eyebrow.

The boy doesn’t say anything but shows his father his hands, calloused and thick skinned, hands made strong by heavy labor. And the father smiles and nods.

Sometimes language isn’t necessary.

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light, 

And showed the names whom love of God had blest, 

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest."

Dr Chip's Sermon July 28, 2019

RESURRECTION       

The doctrine of the resurrection became even more important to me on July 15TH when my father became a member of the Church Triumphant. He left instructions that his memorial service should not direct our attention to the details of a life now ended but should draw us towards the life to come. And so, with hymns, prayers, and scripture we, offered glory to God and celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I’ve spent the last week reviewing what scripture says about the resurrection and what I believe about resurrection. I want to review quickly what we know and don’t know about the life to come. The great Scotts preacher, James Stewart, summed it up best when he said, “Who says Christianity says resurrection.” It is this belief, beyond all others, that has propelled Christianity into a world changing presence. What then does scripture say?

John 14:2 “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Death comes to us as an over-whelming force against which we are helpless. We are never fully prepared for it, can’t mitigate it, and can’t avoid it. Jesus reminds us that God is not caught off guard but has anticipated our death and made preparations for it. Just as he has dealt with us personally in this life, so he will greet us individually in the life to come. Resurrection means already there is a spiritual room with our name on the door.

I Cor. 13-12 Paul tells us, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Simply put, heaven is the place of reunion. Our individuality is kept and completed so that we know each other, and our relationships continue. We will know and be known. We will become part of the great cloud of witnesses.

I Cor. 15:43 Paul explains what the resurrection of the body means. “Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. 44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.”

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a stumbling block for many. They think of it as some kind of resuscitation of this body. When Paul says we are raised with a spiritual body, he has several things in mind. First, in this life, body and spirit are one, therefore the life to come will include both. Second it is another way of saying we retain our individuality, that we will know and be known. And third, the spiritual body leaves behind all the aches, pains, and infirmities we have known in this life. “There is no arthritis in heaven.”

Romans 8:38 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” By the gracious decree of the creator God, the resurrection is absolutely guaranteed. There is nothing in this world or the next that can dissuade God from his announced intention.

Why do I believe in the resurrection? Because without it, life makes no sense. There is so much brokenness in ourselves and in the world around us, so much pain and suffering and fear, so many who are blighted by circumstances into which they are born, there must be a resurrection to balance the books. The resurrection is the resolution of all the unfinished business of life. It is the dissolution of anger, pain, frustration, and fear. It is the antidote for all the unanswered questions, the unmerited suffering, the ambiguity of good mixed with evil and evil mixed with good. It is the sorting, completing, and satisfaction of all the inequities of this world into the perfect peace of the world to come.   

Dr Chip's Sermon July 14, 2019

“The Spiritual Journey”

Luke 4:1-13

            "I continue to think about what we are doing when we come here week after week. Our worship is ritualized, that is we do the same things over and over. What is the point? What is happening? Why do we do these things?

            At the most basic level, we come here to give and to get. We come to give praise and honor to God for sustaining our life, for meeting our needs, and for giving us hope in the future. We sing a hymn for the forgiveness of sins and the offering is brought forward to the Doxology, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” But even as we give praise and honor, we hope to get something. We come hoping to claim some sense of who God is and what we can expect from him and most importantly, what he expects from us. And so we read scripture for some clue as to what our life should be like. Whenever we read and hear the text, there is the implicit question, "What does this have to do with me?"

          A story like the temptation of Jesus seems remote from our life and our needs, but I want to suggest that it is nothing less than the model of the Christian life. The text says he is led out by the Spirit, that is by the presence of God. These are the temptations of one who is filled with the presence of God. Notice also that there is only one way this story could have gotten in the gospel. Jesus had to tell it to his friends. No one else was a witness to the events. He gives it to us as a model of what we can expect as we make our spiritual journey.

          If we look at the three temptations and ask if they are similar in any way, we find there is a common theme. They are all attempts to use God for selfish ends.

·       Tum these stones into bread – It is the temptation to use God for economic advantage. The besetting sin of Israel was that she believed worshiping God would bring her prosperity. When we sing, “God bless America,” we must be careful to remember we are asking for his presence in our midst. We are not praying for material abundance.

·       Accept political power – The temptation is to identify God with a particular nation or cause or political party. Such judgments are always infected with self-interest. The will of God cannot be reduced to specific historical causes. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” he means it. When political leaders try to use God to bolster their own agenda, they are guilty of the second temptation. 

·       Jump off the temple – This is the attempt to use God for personal safety. Protect us from cancer and car wrecks and coronaries. I will worship you if you will keep me safe and my loved ones also.

        Jesus is already filled with the Holy Spirit and yet these temptations are present. How much more likely are they to be present with in us.

        If the temptations have a common thread, do the replies also have a common element. Yes. Obedience, not privilege

·            We do not live by physical abundance, but by the presence of God. Life, as it was meant to be lived,     True worship depends on God, not the things of this world.

·           Worship belongs to God, not the political system. Our first loyalty is to the God who judges the nations, who presides over the rise and fall of empires. The transcendent will of the living God cannot be reduced to historical causes and so we judge the agendas of politicians and governments in terms of God’s demand for ethical behavior. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” So writes the prophet Amos.

·          Do not equate the love of God with personal protection. Obedience means practicing humility before the purposes of God. The question is not, “What do we want from God?” The question is, “What does God want from us?” Are we living out his will for our lives? “My job is to do the will of God. God’s job is to take care of me. He won’t do my job for me, and I can’t do his job for him.”

        These are the temptations that beset us. This is where we live. The spiritual life is to keep in check the self-centeredness that is our creaturely nature.

     The passage ends, "The devil withdrew until an opportune time." There is one more event that Jesus must have given his disciples. Alone in the garden of Gethsemane, he prays, "let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done".

                                                                           

Dr. Chip’s Sermon, July 7,2019

"A COMMUNITY OF HEALING"

Luke 5:17-26

     This is one of my favorite Jesus stories because of the unexpectedness of it. I have this image of Jesus sitting in the house, focused on his teaching, surrounded by rapt listeners, when bits of tile and dust begin to fall on him. He stands aside and looks up wondering what in the world this is about. Jesus is often interrupted when he is teaching but never more strangely than here.

Jesus turns the interruption into a teaching moment when the Pharisees are offended by his words. “Which is easier,” Jesus said, “To say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up and walk?” The point is that spiritual wholeness is just as important as physical wholeness and just as difficult to accomplish. The two must go together. Spirit and body form a unity that cannot be divided.

In western history, the ideas of mind and body got separated. They were treated as unrelated to each other. Beginning with the Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, life was divided into “nous” or soul, and “sarx” or flesh. This is important because the Hebrew tradition understood life to be a unity. The word “Nephesh” in the Old Testament referred to both body and soul, or spirit. The spiritual and physical are so intertwined that they cannot be pulled apart. The two are created as one by God.

The rise of science in the last two centuries further divided the soul from body. In the 1860’s it was discovered that strict hand-washing in hospitals reduced infections by 90% pointing to a physical basis for disease. The development of microscopes allowed Louis Pasteur to see the cause of smallpox and the germ theory of disease took hold. Illness wasn’t caused by vapors in the air as they though or by the punishment of God as others believed, but by microscopic creatures invading the body. Today, the range of medical knowledge and techniques is mind boggling. From x-rays and CAT scans and MRI’s, to radiation and chemo therapies, to artificial joints and transplants, and on and on and on.

Which is easier,” Jesus says, “to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up and walk?” The two are one because each depends on the other.

All of this began to change in the last half of the twentieth century. In the 1950’s a Hungarian doctor named Hans Selye began to notice that all of his hospital patients exhibited similar characteristics. Regardless of their disease, they reacted to the worry and anxiety of illness with the same bodily responses. (For those of you taking notes, he discovered the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.) He coined a new word to describe the effects of the response. He called it “stress.” That’s right, stress didn’t exist before the 1950’s. His book, “The Stress of Life,” laid the foundation for our modern understanding of life as spiritual physical interaction.

Jesus and the Hebrews were right. Life is a unity. Spirit influences body and body shapes the spirit. Spiritual healing is found in the words, “Your sins are forgiven.” Sin is the source of spiritual stress. It is the cause of anxiety, guilt, shame, defensiveness, and denial. Remove the source, and you remove the spiritual consequences. “For freedom Christ has set you free,” Paul shouts, free from the spiritual consequences of sin.

“Which is easier,” Jesus says, “to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up and walk?”

When I began in the ministry, pastors were not welcome in the hospitals. We were considered intruders who interrupted the important work of healing. We had nothing to contribute. Beginning about twenty years ago, several studies were done on the difference between patients who had faith that God was with them and those who didn’t. One study found that patients who had prayer before surgery needed to stay in the hospital two days less than those who didn’t. Today, when pastors go to the hospital to visit, they are considered part of the healing team. In years past, I wasn’t allowed in the pre-op areas. Today, I am not only ushered into pre-op, but the medical people pause respectfully when I pray.


The bits of plaster and tile begin to fall on Jesus. He stands aside to see what is happening. It’s a strange sight as the roof disappears and a man is lowered on a stretcher. When he sees what is happening, the faith of this man and his friends, I think with some wonderment, Jesus offers spiritual healing. But the man would never have gotten there without the faith and commitment of his friends. It was his community of faith that brought him into Jesus’ presence. His community of faith became his community of healing. Whenever we reach out to another with words of faith that remind them of the presence of Jesus, we are part of a community of healing. We are given to each other to be the presence of Christ. A card of comfort, a phone call of caring, a visit and prayer for God’s presence, these are the actions of a community of healing.

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Easter

                                             

Pentecost at YPPC