Snippet from Sunday - December 9 - Roadblocks to Peace

Every year I look forward to unwrapping the simple wooden characters from their newspaper and reenacting the Christmas story with them. The angel will stand over an empty manger near the tree. Mary, Joseph, and a donkey will begin their long journey toward Bethlehem, probably on a bookshelf across the room. The shepherds will be watching their sheep on a windowsill, and the wise men will be off in another room, looking for their star. Step by step, all will make their way across the room toward the manger scene where the Christ Child will be born.

One figure whom I never find in nativity scenes is John the Baptist. True enough, John didn’t gather with Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds in that Bethlehem stable. But neither did the three kings, and still they always manage to make an appearance in our miniature re-creations.

Without fail, however, John shows up in our Scripture readings for Advent. All four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--begin the story of Jesus’ life and ministry by telling us about this baptizing prophet who was sent to prepare the way for Jesus. Luke, who is our guide for this year’s Advent season, doubles the emphasis on John’s importance by telling John’s birth story alongside that of Jesus. We hear almost as much about Elizabeth, Zechariah, and their miracle baby John as we do about Mary, Joseph, and the truly miraculous birth of Jesus. We can’t read and hear all these stories without getting the feeling that there must be something important about John’s ministry of preparation for those of us who follow Jesus.

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

Entering Lent

This Wednesday we entered Lent. Lent is a season of listening for Jesus calling us to follow him, to deny ourselves and take up our crosses. A the bottom, Lent only makes sense as a time to get ready for the celebration of the Resurrection at Easter. But in between us and Jesus' victory over death is the road to Jerusalem, to rejection, at the end of which stands a lonely cross. That is the cross we need to take up.

The Five O'Clock Community is going to spend some time in the coming six weeks asking how Jesus is asking us to go with him to the cross. How can we become more faithful disciples? Lent began as a time to get ready for baptism. In the earliest days, the church made its practice to baptize people on Easter, highlighting the fact that by going down into the water we are dying with Jesus and that when we are raised out of the water we are raised into his resurrection life. Being raised into Jesus' life means a lot more than just a hope for a happy place to go when we die. Living in Jesus' life means living in the way Jesus lived, carrying out our lives as his disciples.

The church has often taken Lent as a time for fasting and repentance. This originated in the forty day period before baptism when people would consider the new way they were committing to live and the old way of living they were leaving behind. We take this period of fasting and repentance as a time to speak honestly to God about the ways in which we have failed in the last year to follow Jesus, to go where he goes. And in the leanness of soul, the singleness of purpose that the season brings with it, we pray again for God to enable to follow  his Son.

Below are some helpful resources for Lent. I will post more as I find more.

The first is Christine Sine's Lenten study A Journey Into Wholeness.  The study is available for download, but there is a suggested donation of $5. You can find it and other resources on her blog godspace.wordpress.com. Check out some of her other posts for some other great resources for Lent.

The second is "Fasting with Jesus, Struggling with the Devil", an article by Mark Van Steenwyk posted on Jesus Manifesto that explores what our repentance during Lent is all about. Again, there's a lot more good resources on the site (like Mark's update about his "Facebook Fast" and articles by Jacque Elull).

Nov 30, 2008 - We Are Here to Repent

Nov 30, 2008
First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Is 64.1-9 & Mk 13.24-37

Proposition: When we see the brokenness of our world, our hearts yearn for God’s kingdom to arrive; yet we must realize how we take part in the sin that is destroying our world and repent for it.

We are here tonight to repent. We have seen God come to save us, we have been saved by God, but we have not lived our lives as those who have been saved, as those who have seen God. We are here to repent.

This is what Isaiah has to say to us tonight. Tonight we are at the beginning of Advent. We lit a candle at the beginning of this service, the first candle in the Advent Wreath. Tradition associates the first candle with hope--the hope of Messiah, exiled Israel’s hope of return to the Promised Land, our hope of Jesus’ return to save us. Hope is powerful stuff--we’ve seen that recently in political campaigns; maybe we even feel that now as we look ahead to Christmas, to reunions with family, with old friends, to a break from the regular droning on of our day-to-day lives. I strongly believe that it is our hope that sets us apart as Christians.

The passage tonight tells us a lot about hope. This is a prophetic song. The song is longer than just the text we read tonight. It starts early in the previous chapter and stretches to the close of chapter 64. The prophet wrote this song in hope.