Many thanks to all of our youth who helped lead worship on Youth Sunday! We are grateful for all who participated in planning, organizing, and leading such an inspiring service of worship. In particular, we thank Brianna Burris, Chris Underdal, and Abby Johnson for preparing excellent sermons on “Faith and Perseverance.” Thank you!
Matthew 21:1-11
There is a familiar passage in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that goes like this:
This above all: to thine own Self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Jesus of Nazareth was the Servant of all, but he was true to himself. Nowhere is this better seen than in the story of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a colt, the foal of an ass.
As the typical traveler approached Jerusalem, he would dismount, and lead his beast into the city, so that not one of the people of Jerusalem would suppose that he was bold enough or foolish enough to enter Jerusalem in the manner that Zechariah prophesied for the coming of the Great King.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass. Zechariah 9:9
H=Jesus did just the opposite. He sent his disciples to find an animal (Matthew says it was two animals, but I believe the text is a result of copyists error) just like the one described by Zechariah. And, then, placing himself upon it, he entered the city in the manner that Zechariah had prophesied. In this simple act Jesus proclaimed to the city, and to the world, that he was God’s Messiah, Christ, King.
And the city responded. The disciples went before him, strewing his path with their garments and with branches they cut from the trees, and they cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
In this act Jesus was absolutely true to himself, and to his mission. Jesus had come to Jerusalem for two reasons: 1. He had come to Jerusalem to announce his identity, and 2. He had come to Jerusalem to force the hand of the authorities. In doing the former, he accomplished the latter. After his triumphal entry there was no way that the authorities, Jewish or Roman, could ignore Jesus. There was a new King in town, and King Jesus would not bow to the High Priest, and King Jesus would not bow to Herod, and King Jesus would not bow to Caesar.
Hear again those words of the Bard of Avon:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Think how often that the spirit of these words has guided the truly great of this world.
Think of Galileo, watching a lamp swinging in a lazy circle in the cathedral at Pisa, when he ought to have been listening to a sermon by his bishop. It was as he watched that swinging lamp that Galileo reached a conclusion..the Earth orbits the sun, not the sun the Earth. The church of his day which still read the Bible as a scientific text book, and believed in a flat earth cried, “Heresy.” They delivered Galileo to the inquisitors. They threatened him with torture, and with excommunication. Officially, Galileo recanted. But after he recanted, he rose to his feet and muttered, "But it does move." He was true to himself, and others who followed confirmed his theories, and a modern world is in his debt.
Think of Winston Churchill, the great Prime Minister of England. As a member of the House of Commons, Churchill warned against the dangers of Hitler. He said that Der Fuer had one goal---to subjugate all of Europe. He urged Britain to build up her army and her Air Force. He was a laughing stock. Then, all his predictions proved true. He was elected to the office of Prime Minister, and no one has ever done better by that office. When Great Britain was forced to stand for a time alone, against the wrath of Germany, Churchill shook his fist in the face of Hitler saying, "We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst---and we will do our best!" Winston Churchill was true to himself, and true to his convictions, and the modern world has been forever grateful.
Or think of Rosa Parks, who was so tired that she refused to go to the back of a Birmingham Bus. A tiny little woman engaged in one small act of civil disobedience, and she shook this nation to its core. And a modern world has been forever grateful.
If Jesus Christ had not set himself upon that colt, the foal of an ass, he might have avoided the cross; but if Jesus Christ had avoided the cross, he would not have been true to himself, and true to his mission.
If Jesus had avoided the cross we might never have seen the first light of God’s Eternal Day break forth from this Garden Tomb. And if Jesus had avoided the cross we might not pray to him, as we have during Lent, to “welcome us into his open arms stretched out upon the cross. “
Now it is all well and good to talk about Jesus Christ being true to himself, but can we lay the same exhortation upon ourselves. Can we speak of being true to ourselves in a world that we share with 7 billion 226 million other people.
I think we must. According to Jesus, the first and greatest commandment is to love God. The second, which he likens to it, is to “Love our neighbor even as we love our selves.” Love is not just affection; love is also respect. Jesus knew that if we did not have both affection and respect for ourselves, we could not possibly love and respect others.
Of course, many of us will have a hard time loving and respecting ourselves. We think of ourselves as damaged goods. We are disappointed that we have expected little of ourselves, and achieved it. We know that we have willfully broken and transgressed God’s Law. We know to do good, but we have not done it.
How can we love and respect ourselves.
That is a good question. I will never forget when I found my answer. A young man barely out of his teens put that question to me as he was in hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown. His breakdown was precipitated by his total lack of respect for himself, which grew out of his great moral failures.
He asked, “How can I ever overcome my past?”
I had a pack of note cards with me. I used to carry them in the days before smart phones. I took one out and I wrote, “When we belong to Jesus Christ, we can remember our past, but we must remember it like it happened to somebody else, because Jesus Christ has claimed it for his own.”
The next year he rode a bus to Winston-Salem to play his horn in our Easter Band. When I met him that morning, he handed me a badly worn note card. It read, “When we belong to Jesus Christ, we remember our past, but we remember it like it happened to somebody else.”
The self is not all bad, but we need to draw a line between the Ego and the Self.
The Ego is the Old Self. It is self-aware, it thinks, it imagines. This is good, but it does more. The Ego seeks to put itself forward. It seeks to win the game of life. It climbs the corporate ladder. It fights jealously for all the rights and privileges it considers to be its due.
When Jesus said, “If anyone would follow me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me," he was talking about the Old Self, the Ego. But the Self is something more than mere Ego. According to the great Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung, the Self is the most primitive of the archetypes of our collective unconscious. It is the thing in each of us that strives for health and wholeness. It lifts up strong hands in the quest for perfection.
Jung says that all the archetypes express themselves within, in the mind, but also without, in society. Though Jung was hardly an orthodox Christian, he said that in the outer world, Jesus Christ represents Self that all of our inner selves want to emulate.
St. Paul would have agreed completely. St. Paul says that the man Adam was the archetype of our old sinful selves. He called Adam, the man of dust, and said that he led the world into sin. St. Paul says that Jesus Christ is the last Adam, the archetype of our new humanity. He says that as we have borne the image of the man of Dust, the first Adam, so in Christ, we all bear the image of the man from Heaven, the Last Adam, Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, without even realizing it, each of us, deep down, in our one true Self wants to be like the magnificent Self who rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass, because he had to be true to himself, and true to his mission, and true to his God, and Father. How do we become our true Self.
First, it means we must look not for the worst in us, but for the best in us.
Let me ask you a question, “Who are you?” Are you the person you are when you are at your worst, or the person you are when you are at your best?
The scripture consistently teaches that we are the person we are when we are at our best, not the person we are when we are at our worst. We remember that Thomas doubted, but he was also the first to confess Christ as his Lord and his God. Tradition says that Thomas planted the Church in India. And we remember that Peter denied, but we also remember that when Peter turned again, he strengthened his brothers and sisters, and became a pillar of the church in Jerusalem. Tradition says that he was crucified upside down, because he refused to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord. Mary Magdalene was a woman of uncertain past. Some argue that she may have been a prostitute. Yet both John and Matthew tell us that Mary was the Apostle to the Apostle, the first to see the risen Christ, and to embrace his feet in faith. I could go on and on.
Second, being true to ourselves means that we must believe that our gifts are given to us by God.
This was surely the case with Jesus. The day would come that even the members of his own family accused him of being "beside himself." But he remembered that day in the rivers of Jordan after John had baptized him that the heavens open, and the Spirit descended, and the voice came to him, declaring, "Thou art my beloved Son, and with thee, I am well pleased!"
I grew-up believing that in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ you had to find the hair shirt that God made just for you, and put it on, and be miserable.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not even know who we are until we discover who we are in Jesus Christ. God does not give out hair shirts. God gives out robes of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. We make our hair shirts, and put them on out of guilt that God wants to take from us.
Third, if we are to be true to ourselves,we must never give up, or be discouraged.
When Jesus rode through the gates of the city, he heard the Hosannas. Yet he knew he was taking a short ride that would lead to longest, darkness night of his soul. But he did not dwell on the darkness of that night. He looked forward to the Joy that he knew would come in the morning, on the third day. The author of Hebrews writes, “For the joy that was set before, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right had of the throne of God.
I once had some good advice from a dying man, so I will pass it along: Never give up! Never give up! Never give up! It is only in the darkest night that the stars can truly shine. When we have reached the end of our resources, we have hardly tapped the beginning of God’s resources, and he can do in us, and through us, and for us, far more than we can ask, think, or imagine.
Jesus rode the colt, the foal of an ass into the city of Jerusalem, and God made him the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Finis
New Philadelphia Sermons
Dr. Worth Green
On May 3, 2014 we will be cooking whole pork shoulder butts on the famous “BIG BOY SMOKER”! The proceeds from this fundraiser will go to help offset part of the cost of this summers’ Senior High mission trip to Jamaica and the Middle High trip to Rural North Carolina. Cost is only $30.00 for a 7.5 to 8.5 (raw weight) pound shoulder butt and a pint of sauce.
If you wish to place an order please complete the form below and place it in the offering plate this Sunday, drop it by the church office or send your information to us at NCTOALASKA@HOTMAIL.COM.
We will contact you with a pick-up time after we receive your order.
Click the link below to print your order form.
The pastor’s old email address has ceased to function due to being swamped with junk mail. The new address is worth@newphilly.org. This has been encoded so that email siphon’s cannot pick it up. Please enter it in your address book. The pastor apologizes for any emails missed in the last several days.
After a very wet trial, we have determined a new snow/ice policy for New Philadelphia. If we have bad weather, except in the most extreme situations, we will always endeavor to have at least one worship service. Going forward that worship will always be held at 11:10 a.m., the time of our later Sunday service.
If we have only one service, we will cancel Sunday School, because we have no way to insure that all Sunday School teachers can be present.
When we make a change of any sort, we will publicize that change in several differentt places:
Please check one or more of these for news of closings, or a change of service time.
The Pastor
Moravians since Luke of Prague have always said that the one thing essential to personal salvation is “a heart relationship with the Triune God that issues in faith, love and hope.” (Note 1:) Luke of Prague died in 1528, but his statement about the one essential is still to be found in “The Unity Book of Order.”
Three weeks ago we spoke about the first part of that statement. We talked about what it means to have “a heart relationship with the Triune God,” who reveals God’s Self on the plane of human history with three persona or faces, the face of the Father, the face of the Son, and the face of the Holy Spirit. The first part of the One Essential is thoroughly rooted in the New Testament. In Romans, for instance, Paul refers to the three faces of the One Triune God, and in Romans 10:9 he mentions the heart:
“If you confess with your lips, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This morning I want to talk about the second part of that one essential. I want to talk about how a heart-relationship with the Triune God issue in faith, love and hope. The second part of this statement is also thoroughly rooted in the New Testament and draws its energy from several texts.
And in Romans 5:1-5 Paul writes:
Rom. 5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
Moravians are not alone in holding a high view of faith, hope, and love. St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.), who was arguably the most influential figure in the development of Western Christianity—figuring as he did in the Catholic faith, and through Calvin in the Reformation, wrote that if we know the gospel story, and if we have faith, hope, and love, even if we are deprived of the Scripture, we can still live the kind of life that God wants his Children to live, the kind of life that will bring us safely into his Eternal Presence. (Note 1) Augustine was bold to say this because he believed faith, hope, and love to be living and active instruments or powers, that God uses in us to accomplish God’s purposes for us.
Let us take up each of these powers in turn.
1. The first is faith. In Romans 5, St. Paul says, “We are justified by faith.” It is the language of the courtroom. God declares sinners innocent in Christ. In the New Testament faith is always faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ who created us and redeemed us; and faith in the God the Son, who loved us and gave himself for us, and then rose again to give us a future and a hope; and faith in the promised Holy Spirit who proceeds from the father, whom the Son sent to be with us, to empower us for living as God would have us to live, so that we might master through life while others merely muddle through.
Now faith has always come in for a lot of criticism. In the 19th Century, writing in “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Ambrose Bierce said that that “…faith is believing what everybody else already knows isn’t true.” In the 21st Century, Richard Dawkins, the militant atheist, says that primary advantage of faith is that people who posses it have an imaginary friend to help us through the difficulties of life.
The author of Hebrews would beg to differ. He wrote that “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The apostle means that, faith is solid and true, and assures those who possess it. In speaking of this text from Hebrews, Dr. Francis Schaffer wrote that it is impossible to tell a man walking on a road in the dark that the road does not exist, because he can feel the road under his feet. We know when we are on it, and we know when we get off it.
If we step out in faith, God meets us along the road. In Romans 8, St. Paul wrote about his meeting saying, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Jesus Christ.” And in 1st John 5:0 we read, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has born witness to his son.”
Ultimately Christians remain Christians not because we are logically convinced beyond all doubt, but because we somehow sense the testimony of God that is at work in our lives. In the same way, if you don’t have faith, and want it, then it would behoove you to live as if you have faith until you have it, then you will certainly live as if you have faith. In Hebrews 11:6 we read, “For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
2. The second power that is at work in us is hope. In Romans 5, St. Paul says that “we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God; more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings—-because they ultimately produce hope.” Christians have a hope for life beyond death. But we also have a hope for life in this world. We experience God’s faithfulness in one situation and that leads us to expect God’s faithfulness in others as they arise. In 2nd Corinthians 1:8-10 St. Paul writes:
2Cor. 1:8 For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. 9 Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; 10 he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
I once sat next to a woman on an airplane who had survived the holocaust. He father, mother, and sisters had all died. I was deeply saddened by her story, and I asked her what she had hoped for as she labored day by day in the camps. She said, “I hoped to be alive at the end of the war.” She went on to tell me that she believed that, “… this life was all there is, there isn’t anything else.” More than anything I wanted to share with her the hope that rightly belongs to us all because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we read in 1st Peter 1:3-5:
Pet. 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
This is good news! Yet, like faith, hope has come in for a lot of criticism. It was Alexander Pope who wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast, man never is, but always is to be blessed.” It was Karl Marx who said that the religion is an opiate for the masses. And countless individuals have criticized Christians and other religious people for holding on to the idea of “…pie, in the sky, bye, and bye.” Others have pointed out that lots of people have a hope, and not everyone can be right. Perhaps you have heard the story of the Cardinal who rushed into see the Pope saying, “I have some good news, and some bad news.” And the Pope said, “What is the good news?” And the Cardinal responded, “The Lord is back!” And the Pope said, “Well, what is the bad news?” And the Cardinal said, “He is in Salt Lake City.”
Of course, we do not believe that our hope is so compartmentalized. In Matt. 24:27 Jesus said, “For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man.”
Moravians have never made a big deal about the details surrounding the 2nd Advent of Jesus Christ. We don’t hold conferences on prophecy. We don’t have any charts pointing to all those things that must happen before the End of the Age. Jesus said, “Of that day and hour no man knows, not the angels in heaven, nor the son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:36) We teach that Christ coming back for his church, and our being called home to Him in death, are just two sides of the same coin. That said, we continue to insist that if God be God, and Christ be the Savior of the World, then the same Christ who appeared for the first time on the plane of human history in humility and hiddenness, his true identity known to only a select few witnesses, and to faith, must of necessity, appear a 2nd time, in power and in glory, his true identity known to faith and unbelief alike. Someday Ambrose Bierce, and Richard Dawkins, and Karl Marks will join with people of faith as we kneel before Him. That is what St. Paul is getting at In Philippians 2:10-11:
10 God has given him a name which is above every name, that, at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
3. That brings us to the third power that is at work in us: Love. In Romans 5, St. Paul writes, “…hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
It is hard to criticize love. Tom Jones sang, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love, it is the only thing, that there is just too little love.” Tom Jones usually sang about romantic love or even erotic love, but in this instance he was singing about real love, the love that reaches out to support and help another.
Atheists have at least two things in common with Christians and other believers. The best of them recognize the powerful and destructive nature of sin. Sam Harris has even begun to teach that we can be good without God. I think he is overly optimist about that, but at least he is preaching morality as he sees it. Likewise, many atheists have started to recognize the powerful and constructive nature of love—not lust but love.
Some of you saw the recent debate on Creationism vs. Evolution. I did not watch it. I confess that I don’t know enough science to tell you in any detail how God created the world; but I know enough Bible to tell you that having the right opinion about it is necessary for salvation. It is my personal conviction that God never intended the Bible to be a scientific textbook. Real science that sits humbly at the feet of the facts, and real faith, which sits humbly at the feet of the Savior, can co-exist. So, I did not see the debate. However, I did read a brief account of it on the web, and I was really impressed by the sheer number of responses that people posted on Twitter and various web sites. There were tens of thousands of responses. Indeed, NPR.Org reported that the most popular response received more than 2,000 favorable comments. A Christian posted it. He wrote:
As a Christian I will say this about the debate: My faith does not require me to believe in the age of the earth as outlined in the Bible. (That is debatable anyway. WNG) Christ commanded me to love and that is where all Christians need to focus. Discussing how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin is a distraction.”
And one atheist who goes by the name of Rabid Chipmunk responded to that post saying:
“And this Atheist respects you for that.”
Now someone may be pleased that I noted the wisdom of the Christian, and, at the same time, a little surprised that I think it is worth noting that an Atheist respects a Christian because that Christian has decided to major in love. I respect him because he is one of those for whom Christ died. And I am delighted that he respects a Christian for his emphasis on love, and, speaking as not judgmentally as I can, I hope he is one step nearer the kingdom because of it.
There is a powerful lesson here. Dr. Robert Coleman, at one time professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary once wrote that it is possible for a Christian witness to win every debate and loose the person with whom we debate.
In the gospels, Jesus was known as a hard to best in debate. Yet, at the most critical point of his ministry, he did not rely on words. In Isaiah 53, and again in the book of Acts, we read about how Christ endured his suffering.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.
Jesus ultimately won the world not with his words but with his actions. He loved us and gave himself for us. So, too, Jesus told his disciples to love one another, even as he had loved them, that is, with a sacrificial love, and this love is often best conveyed in actions. St. Paul so loved the Jewish people, his kinsmen, his race, that he wrote that he was willing to be cut off from Christ and accursed, if only they would embrace Jesus the Messiah. Likewise, St. Peter said it was possible for a believing wife to win her unbelieving husband “without a word,” through her “reverent and chase behavior.” Bishop Herbert Spaugh said it was the task of the Moravian church to love the sinner out of his sins. I think this church embodies some of that reality. We have one woman who often travels a great distance to be with us. She is a friend. She tells me that she is an agnostic, but she loves this church. Likewise, when I came to this church one of our members approached me and said, “Worth, I want you to know I don’t have a very conventional faith.” I said, “Really, how so?” He said, “Well, I don’t believe in God.” I said, “But you are here whenever we open the doors?” He said, “Yes, I don’t have faith, but I love to be around people who do, and I love this church.”
George Hunter, a distinguished professor of Evangelism has written that one of the best ways to engage non-believers is to invite them to join with us in our service to people in need, a service that many of them are eager to render. He says that if they walk with us in this way of service, it may be that they will discover that they wish to walk with us on The Way, too.
Notes
Note 1:
Augustine spoke of faith, hope, and love, probably because he wanted to make the point St. Paul Makes in 1st Corinthians 13:13 when he writes, “So faith, hope, love, abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Love is the greatest because it endures. Faith and hope will pass into reality and sight, but love will endure to all eternity. Luke of Prague reversed the order of Augustine and spoke of faith, love and hope. He did so to emphasize that the love that endures for Eternity is the primary thing we need right now. Our faith and hope do not disappoint us, and they will not fail us, because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Note 2: “Thus a man who is resting upon Faith, Hope and Love, and who keeps a firm hold upon these, does not need the scripture except for the purpose of instructing others. Accordingly, many live without the copies of the scriptures even in solitude, on the strength of these three graces…Yet by means of these instruments (as they may be called) so great an edifice of Faith and Hope and Love has been built in them that, holding to what is perfect, they do not seek for what is only in part perfect—I mean so far as is possible in this life; for in comparison with the future life, the life of no just and holy man is perfect here. De Doc. Christ. I, 39,43.
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