Commissioning for the beginning of the New Church Year.

Commissioning for the beginning of the New Church Year.

What is a commissioning you might ask? When a brand new ship is set to sail, the ship builder celebrates the occasion with a commissioning service to proclaim that the ship is sea worthy and ready to set sail. It is a public declaration that the ship is ready for the voyage. It is the official launching into service of the ship.

That’s how it is with the church and the church year. This is the official launching of the church into another year of service and another year being sent out to sea to serve and be on a voyage.

We are all called to discipleship. We are called by God to be the church of Jesus Christ, a sign in the world today of what God intends for all humankind.

Do any of you know what the great ends of the church are? Well, I didn’t either until one day I read them, was taught them, and then appreciated them to the extent I wanted to learn them and live them.

The great ends of the church are

the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;

the shelter, nurture, and the spiritual fellowship of the children of God;

the maintenance of divine worship;

the preservation of the truth;

the promotion of social righteousness;

and the exhibition of the kingdom of Heaven to the world.

The Call of Christ is to willing service to God, to the church, and to the world.

So today we have all been called here by Christ to be fully present, ready for worship, ready to serve.

All those who teach, who learn, who sing, who pray, who lead, who work diligently with their hands, who write letters, who make phone calls, who volunteer inside and outside the church, who usher, who prepare meals, who hang banners and paraments, who was dishes, water plants, make tea, who come and sit beside another, please hold out your arms before you with palms up. 

God has called you! Please respond to the following questions with I will. 

Will you welcome another year of responsibility to the service God has called you?

Will you be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ obeying his Word and showing his love?

Will you support and encourage one another in the work of ministry?

Dear friends you are commissioned to the service of God in the beginning of a new year of the church, praise and thanks to God!!

Pray: WE thank and praise you oh God for these your people who you have called into a life of faith and a life of service. Establish them in your truth and guide them by your Holy Spirit, that in your service they may grow in faith, hope and love, and be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory now and forever. Amen. 

Followers of Jesus

Sermon Mark 8:31-38 September 13, 2015 Ordinary Time B Rally Day

Followers of Jesus

Tell me friends about the God you want. The God I want is a God who can take away pain and shame. The God I want is a God who can cure cancer and AIDs. The God I want is a God who can give people jobs and find them homes. The God I want is a God who can stop wars and can end family discord. I want a strong God, a God who will take charge and be in control of all the things that seem out of control. I want a God who will bring order to all the chaos in this life. I want a God that will answer my prayers and will protect my family. The God I want is a God who will help me feel wanted and loved and who will show me how to love others.

I don’t think wanting this kind of God is unreasonable. As a matter of fact, I think this is probably the same kind of God the disciples wanted. It is the God they believed was being revealed to them in Jesus as they followed him throughout Galilee.

Oswald Chambers says, ‘If a man or a woman is called of God, it does not matter how untoward circumstances are, every force that has been at work will tell of God’s purposes in the end. If you agree with Gods’ purpose God will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony.

Somehow along the way God is going to bring our identity with Jesus and our lifestyle with him into sync. Now I wish I could hit the sync button on my life to make it happen as easy as it does with the controls in my car and my phone and all those other nifty sync buttons out there where it happens in an instant. But God has a sense of humor and looks down at me as stamps the label, “work in progress” on me.

When I worked in the women’s jail, I used to hear from the girls as they talked about each other to me. They would be angry about the behavior of one of the girls after she had made a commitment to accept the love of Christ into her life. They would sometimes be so angry. “You think she’s a Christian?,” they would ask. And then they would yell about how she got angry and cursed and how she was selfish. Then we would talk about how long it takes a newborn to learn how to walk. Change rarely happens overnight. Being a follower of Jesus goes beyond our commitment to him. It is a determined decision that we will follow this Jesus into places we dared not go. It is a determined decision that this life we live is worth spending following this man who gave his life of love for us and no matter what we will choose to offer up ours to him. It is a decision that forever changes us and all of our life is surrounded by God’s embrace.

To be a Christian has been defined hundreds of time over the centuries. We have included in church doctrine expected behaviors and we have shunned, excommunicated and harmed those who have not fit into the context of the Christian definition. Benjamin Corey one of the authors on the Patheos blog. says that Christians today are ashamed of the title and have tried to come up with different titles to describe their relationship with Jesus. But, ultimately he says he realizes that his identity is not with what others look to as the Christian definition but his own understanding as a follower of Jesus.

He encourages these five ways of living as a follower of Jesus. He read the Scriptures and discovered these things about the followers of Jesus then. He suggests that we too can be followers in this way. Here are three of them and then I add two of my own

1.       Jesus followers liked to talk about him. They did it in a way that others were hungry to know more. Their talking about Jesus attracted people to the love of God, it didn’t scare them away.

2.      Jesus followers were full of compassion for outsiders and the weak, quick to show mercy and grace.

3.      Jesus followers wanted to share their stuff. They wanted others to join them and to experience life together as followers of Jesus. They were not afraid of newcomers and when they were God showed them a new way to learn to live together. They wanted to hang out together and enjoyed spending their time with each other.

4.       Jesus followers went into uncharted territory. Somehow they ventured into lands and places they would not have done, but their desire for others to know Jesus was greater than their fear.

5.      Jesus followers prayed a lot. They prayed by themselves, they prayed together, they prayed in public and in private. They prayed all the time.

Being a follower of Jesus is not an impossible task, but it is a decision to choose to carry the label of faith. It is a decision to choose to participate in the life of Jesus. It is a decision to accept that we belong to God, yes, and that we belong to Christ.

Years ago there was a poem that was written. I had one given to me on a card and a little cross to carry in my pocket. I carried it for a long time and even had several to share with others. It was a useful reminder for me of how I belonged to Christ.

And it goes like this: I carry a cross in my pocket
A simple reminder to me 
Of the fact that I’m a Christian 
No matter where I may be 
This little cross is not magic 
Nor is it a good luck charm 
It isn’t there to protect me 
From every physical harm 
It’s not for identification 
For all the world to see 
It’s simply an understanding 
Between my saviour and me 
When I put my hand in my pocket 
To get a coin or key 
His cross is there to remind me 
Of the price He paid or me
It reminds me too, to be grateful 
For blessings day by day 
And of the peace and comfort I share 
With all who know my Master 
Who give themselves to his care 
So I carry a cross in my pocket 
Reminding no one else but me 
That Jesus Christ is Lord of my life 
If only I let Him be.

But somewhere along the way as I journeyed with Christ I discovered that I needed a different understanding of what it meant for me to carry the cross of Christ. You see each of us has a call that Jesus places on us that is as unique as we are in God’s creation. And as we grow from our consciousness into our understanding of Christ in our life we move more and more from the God we want into the love of the Christ we need. As we grow we recognize the movement of grace in us-we realize how the work of God through Jesus is not a once and for all fix it, it is not ‘dunk and done’ relationship, it is a process-and processes take time-as a matter of fact they take a lifetime. A process cannot be a forced program. We ourselves cannot create process-no, that’s the work of God through Jesus in us. We, friends, have to prepare our hearts for process-we prepare our hearts and ourselves to be open to receive. Becoming a follower of Jesus, taking up our cross can be as difficult as allowing the process of God’s love to take over and allow ourselves to be willing to receive a love that will transform our lives in ways we have never imagined.

I share with you this poem I wrote years ago to help me on my journey of understanding the Jesus I need and the cross I carry.

The Cross in My Pocket

The cross in my pocket that

I must come to bear is a cross

That Christ has already carried there,

He calls on me and says, “My child,

Your cross is to look on me

And be healed,

No longer carry the pain,

No longer shed the tears,

Give me the anger,

Let me take the shame.

For you my child,

Your cross is to believe.

Your cross is to trust.

Your cross is to walk tall

And be complete in me.

Carry it tall

Lift it high for all to see.”

So the cross I carry in my pocket

Is not a burden you see,

The cross I carry is the

sign of Jesus completed in me.

Let us go forth and respond to the claim of Christ on our life and say to him, Here I am, Lord. Amen.

Stormy Weather

Sermon Acts 27:13-26 August 30, 2015 Ordinary Time

Stormy Weather

We arrive at this Scripture text in the middle of a sea story. It’s part two of Paul’s final journey to Rome. It’s the part where the travelers encounter stormy weather. We really had to go back to the beginning of the chapter to figure out what was going on in the first place.

I’ve put a map in your bulletin because the details of this story include telling geographic places in the manner of entries into a ships log. Because Luke offers these details we the readers of the 21^st century can imagine the transportation routes of these early centuries. Recognizing the distinctive features of this voyage provides the opportunity to understand the realistic drama facing the Paul and the travelers.

Paul is still a prisoner as he heads to Rome on this ship. He is determined to have his day in court before Caesar.

I must say this story has a great deal more meaning to me now that Mike and I have spent some time sailing in the same waters described here. A small detail shared in the beginning of the chapter shows how they got underway. The trade routes on the Mediterranean have been around for 6000 years of known history. By the time Paul was traveling there was a sophisticated system of sea travel. There were passenger ferry boats that transported people short distances and cargo ships for longer distances. As we read, they booked passage on a larger ship to get to Rome. The bigger the ship the faster the hull speed. Not much has changed on the Med since then. People and cargo are still traveling distances via ferry boats and cargo ships. The distance of Paul’s travels described in this section is not just a ride up the road but is about 900 nautical miles. There weren’t engines in the ships to facilitate travel nor were there thrusters to keep the ships on course. They were faced with severe head winds making travel difficult if not impossible to point in the direction of their destination which is why they were being pushed out away from the coastline and further out to sea. We have been told by seasoned sailors there that the winds begin to pick up in July and increase steadily over the following months so that by fall it is not advisable to travel. During Paul’s time shipping lanes to Rome were shut down in the winter.

Paul notes the weather and warns the sailors to stay put and plan to winter where they are. But they preferred to risk going ahead to a more suitable port to winter. And this is where our verses come in today.

Their plan was to sail a short distance to a more favorable place. These experienced sailors figured they could do it. If you look at the map, it doesn’t seem like a distance impossible to travel. As a matter of fact it seems quite probable in favorable conditions. These sailors didn’t like the port they were at and didn’t want to be stuck there for three months. Perhaps the restaurants there were crummy or the shopping and entertainment lousy. Whatever the reason, they wanted to get to Phoenix just a short sail away, you know maybe about a day’s sail, not too hard to do.

However, what happened with the storm and the weather was they were blown completely off course. The winds got hold of their boat-and because they were sailing against the prevailing winds, they couldn’t keep the bow into it and they lost complete control. If you look at the map again, they were afraid of the ship ending up on the coast of Africa. They did what they could to keep it headed in the direction they wanted to go. *Their miscalculation of the weather caused them to be caught out at sea for hundreds of miles and for weeks. You see where they ended up shipwrecked, yes, way over there on Malta, not just down the coast of Crete. There is an enormous statue of Paul on the shores of Malta marking the spot where they believe the ship ran aground.

SO, here these poor sailors are sapped of energy, of hope and of strength as they try to keep the ship afloat. They are hungry and truly suffering from the effects of the storm.

Paul shares his faith in the midst of this hopelessness. He trusts God as the one who saves and delivers in all circumstances. He trusts God that God’s plans will happen even when human and nature try to interfere. He shares his faith with a people who declare no faith. He encourages them with words of grace. He lets them know that the God of grace is the one who saves all people.

Sometimes a story is just a story. It is just a narrative account of the life and ministry of Paul. It is an insight into the practical ways of living in the first century. And I think it can help us a little in the practical everyday way we do things. Because, we can learn a little about knowing something of the essentials in the storm.

o   Check all your equipment before the storm

-if it works, then you know you are ready.

Mike and I have a checklist that we use before we ever set sail to make sure our boat is safe and in order before we do anything. I wonder if we could be that vigilant about how we live on shore, if that could make a difference.

o   Heed the weather forecast warnings!

-no cargo is worth losing

-some risks should not be taken

-sometimes delays are meant to be

(We are seamen understand what being in delivery mode can do to a sailor. We are so focused on getting there and making it on time that we lose all sense of judgment.) Therefore,

-Do not function in delivery mode because it will cloud your judgment.

o   Stay calm in the middle of the storm

-Stick with what you know-which means practice, practice, practice before you go. You can’t get up and reef the main in the middle of a storm if you haven’t done it several times in calm weather.

-Don’t panic…don’t let fear rule. When fear takes over there is no amount of skill that will save your vessel. Fear paralyzes and you can’t have that in a storm.

-pull together

-remember your goal

-have hope…take hope

In the stormy weather, even if it could have been avoided, Paul offers words of encouragement. 

And perhaps that’s what we all need every once in a while. 

• Perhaps we could use words of encouragement even during the times when we know or discover we’ve made the wrong choices. 
• Perhaps we need to be reminded that God still saves us and cares for us when we’ve put ourselves in the middle of troubling circumstances. 
• Perhaps we need to be brought alongside someone who has undeniable faith and strong positive words for us during the times when we are losing everything we own.
• Perhaps that’s what this story is about; the chance for us to see a person who is held captive by the world use his freedom in Christ to witness to the power of God to pull all things together for the sake of all people.

Keep up the courage, God’s promises are sure and true. Amen.

…

Water, Water, Everywhere.

Sermon Psalm 24:1&2; Psalm 65; John 7:37-39 August 29, 2015 Presbyterian Women Women Between the Waters Gathering

Water, Water, Everywhere.

When I moved here last year-yes I am a come here-I spent the first few months exploring the roads and ways around the area. Did you know it’s very hard to get lost on the Eastern Shore? As a matter of fact this is how I learned the truth of the meaning, “Water, water, everywhere”. Yes, no matter what road I went down or which curve I followed, I ended up facing the sea or the bay.

You know how it is on a peninsula that is about as wide as your pencil-surrounded by water on all sides.

Now this entrapment by the water for some is a dream come true.

Knowing that at each turn of the head the beauty of waves, ripples, tides and the flow of creeks are there and everywhere and they bring wonder and awe and a sense of completion.

 

Welcome Women Between the Waters painted by local artist Marshall Ryon

Yet, for some this embrace of creation is a reminder of isolation, loneliness, and the harshness of life.

The harshness is not just the fact that your best shopping deals happen at Family Dollar. Or that stores like Target, JC Penney, or PetsSmart, are 60 miles away. Or the fact that there are only 45,000 people who live here, or that jobs are few and hard to come by…

The realities sometimes buffet our existence the same as the winds and waves of the storms.

Yet, living with our lives surrounded by water draws us closer to God’s creation. Living surrounded by water reminds us of the essentials of life on the Shore.

We are reminded of the Word of God and how “The Spirit of moved over the face of the waters.”

The Spirit of God still moves over the waters, over, under, in, through, and as the Spirit moves all of creation comes alive.

Even in creation when God said, ‘let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures’…we are witnesses everyday to this creation story as we comb for seashells and find footprints in the sand.

We are also witnesses to the power of water and wind as we have braced for hurricanes, tornados, floods over the years. These storms we know well will always be a part of Shore life.

As women we are more than witnesses, we have more than stories to share.

Women of the Shore have courage and compassion to share.

They have connections and curiosity to offer.

Yes, women of the Shore need each other.

When the storms clouds come and the waves begin to crash in we need each other to turn to,

we are not a people in isolation,

but a people drawn together to lift up

and give aid where and when needed.

When I imagine women working together

through tough times

and I view

our marvelous peninsular,

I find myself,

embraced

and surrounded by the waters,

wrapped in a large prayer shawl,

as they sustain us and hold us all together.

We are women of faith!

The waters remind us over and over again of the source of life. And as Jesus stood at the festival and said ‘if anyone is thirsty let him come to me’ and let the one who believes in me drink. For out of the believers heart will flow rivers of living water.

We have the source of living water within us through Christ. And the water doesn’t just flow forth from us it gushes.

It cannot be contained

and it is filled with energy

and it touches everything

and everyone in its path.

Consider this gift we have of life poured upon by the Spirit and life flowing from us. May we receive and may we give.

Water, water everywhere, wonderful life, be embraced, be part of it, share it, live it and rejoice. Amen.