When Faith Makes a Difference

You know the story well. You don’t have to be a regular church attender to have heard it used as the central theme for many a sermon. It is the story of The Good Samaritan. The story is told as an illustration for a theological discussion.

An expert in the Jewish law wanted to test Jesus, the great teacher of the multitudes, so he asked Jesus a simple question, “What do I have to do to guarantee eternal life?’

Jesus responds with a question, “You’re the expert. How do you read it?”

“Put God first,” was the lawyer’s reply. “Love him with every fiber of your being. Take care of your neighbor as you would your own family. Love your neighbor as you love your own life.”

“Well said,” Jesus shot back. “I think you’ve answered your own question.”

The lawyer, now feeling a little foolish, wishing to regain some sense of honor and authority asked, “Well, just who is my neighbor?”

Thus begins one of  Jesus’ greatest parables, a story of two people who should hate one another, but instead offer and receive help when others refuse to get involved.

Our society is being divided up. We are faced with an “Us vs. Them” mentality. We are more concerned with being right than being righteous, with being "correct" than being faithful, We have groups within our own country who are more divided, more hateful, more antagonistic of one another than the Jews and the Samaritans ever were. Jesus speaks to the very heart of this division.

“What is saving faith?” we ask. “How much faith is enough faith?” we want to know. Sometimes we become “experts” in the word. We go to meetings, attend worship services, gather for prayer and study with like-minded Christians.

Jesus calls us to the road. He invites us on a journey. We’ve experienced love and grace. The question is whether or not we are ready to extend that love and grace to the rest of the world.

“When is faith enough?” When it will not be content with living life in a way that allows us to watch most of the world lying half-dead in a ditch and walk on by.

Pastor Craig

Pushing Back the Darkness

The opening words of Psalm 27 are “The Lord is my light.” When I first read those words I thought of a light in the darkness, something that helps us to see our way.

Over the years I have been involved in 11 family retreats, directed 5 summer youth camps, taken a group of 21 on a two week hike along the Appalachian Trail, and directed some 10 youth retreats. Almost all of these events took place at a remote camp or conference site, a place where, when everything was over, you had to walk back to your cabin or room in the dark. For some reason I cannot explain, the one item I forgot almost every time, except for the two weeks on the Appalachian Trail, has been a flash light. I have stumbled over more roots than I can count, have missed several trailheads, and walked straight past a dark cabin multiple times. I seem to have a mental block about flashlights when it comes to my checklist before I leave.

The flashlight image is how most of us think of the light of our Heavenly Father, something to help us find our way. It is a candle to reveal for us the roots, turns in the trail, and our destination as we walk along the paths of life. Certainly, this idea of light goes with the next words in that verse. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Our relationship to our Heavenly Father brings us out of the dark and shows us that straight and narrow path that leads to eternal life.

However, there is another aspect of light that we tend to forget. I think we often choose to forget it because it is less pleasant than the warm and inviting light that helps locate home and hearth. This aspect of light is not the flashlight; it is the searchlight. The searchlight reveals. It highlights that which often wishes to remain hidden. The floodlights you may have around your home help you find your way in the night if you are walking around the yard, but you probably had them installed first as a security feature, to highlight the people who would use the cover of darkness to find an entry point into your home.

When God’s light shines on us it reveals us as we really are. Our many faults and failings, the things we would so much like to keep hidden are brought out into the bright light of God’s holiness. This too is salvation, for it is only when we recognize our need for salvation that we fall at the feet of Jesus Christ and ask him to grant us that which he has already prepared for us.

The light of Christ shining out from us, helps us and others find our way in this world. The light of Christ shining on us, reminds us that we never grow out of our need for the forgiveness that comes through Christ. Both of these lights show us the path of salvation. 

Pastor Craig

Hope Before Dawn

About 35 years ago I was walking on the beach. I actually started walking around midnight. I walked a long ways north, and then turned around and headed south, and then back north. Eventually, the stars you only see when the night is black began to fade as black turned to gray.

Occasionally, I could see images moving along the beach, but I couldn’t be quite sure what they were. Once I thought there was a deer out on the sand, but it wasn’t light enough to tell if it was a buck or a doe, or if it was not even really a deer at all. In the beginning of something you don’t always have the details in clear view. You may even find that some you thought were so firm and solid in fact is neither.

That is why hope begins in the dark. It is a clinging to that which we are certain of and yet do not know for certain. As Christians, our faith is boldness in the night. We don’t creep across the room as when we get up in the night to go get a drink or try to find the way to the bathroom in the dark without stepping on the dogs. We stride forward, stubbornly claiming that the dawn will come and we will realize that for which now we hope.

Faith is not simply believing that Christ can transform our society, changing all its prejudices and wiping away all its hatred; It is proclaiming in the street what Jesus said in the synagogue, proclaiming its truth directly in the face of all that would try to contradict it or cause it to fail.

"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed;  To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD." Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

John 4:18-21

Our message is the same today. God’s favor is not in the distant future. It is for us and it is for now. We bring liberty. We bring peace. The poor have hope and the hungry have food because we, through the Spirit of Christ bring it to them today, not just offer it to them with the changing of the guard.

Pastor Craig

Who Will Feed This Child?

Pledge

Why?

Recently, I was asked the “Why” question. I was about to do something and a friend told me, “Before you do this you have to answer the “Why” question. Why are you doing this?

In the process of making some of the most important decisions of our lives, we seldom answer that question. We may on some shallow level, but that isn’t enough. Our “Why” answer should be an emotional response. It should be the answer to the question that keeps us up at night from time to time. It may make us cry. For some of us, answering that question is like turning on a light in a dark room. Things begin to come together into a clearer picture. We recognize true purpose and meaning. 

This brings us to the question itself, Why are you a Christian? 

Some of us will speak of finding purpose and meaning in the world. While that could be a good answer, there are many people who seek and, seemingly find, purpose through other things and religions. Others will speak in terms of escaping the wrath of God and the coming judgment. That too would be a sufficient answer, but it is an answer that, ultimately, lies in the future and does little to address the here and now of a person’s faith and actions. Some of us would mention that it arises from the way we were raised. Our parents brought or sent us to church and it has become a part of our ritual. It is something we do out of habit, similar to taking the shoe and sock completely off of one foot before we move on to the other, or taking both shoes off before we take both socks off. Why are we a Christian? Why do we go to church? 

Ultimately, the answer lies totally outside of our own person. We are a Christian because God loved us and called us to be his disciples. Yes, that is my Calvinism sneaking in here. When God summons us to be his disciples, that call is irresistible. The Holy Spirit quickens us. In other words, the Spirit of Christ raises us from spiritual death and decay, allowing us to respond to the call of God upon our lives. That means we do nothing! We have no power. We are a child of the King rather than an orphan on the street. The King chooses the children he will adopt into his house. They don’t choose him.

I know, you may be asking where the emotional response comes from. The Good News is that God has indeed chosen us. He has raised us up from the depths of misery and lostness to participate at his heavenly banquet. We fail to recognize how blessed we are until the moment when we recognize our original state of separateness. 

Why are we a Christian? Because God loved us first in order that we might love Him. 

Pastor Craig

We Hope

The First Sunday of Advent is traditionally called the Sunday of Hope. We light the Hope candle on our Advent Wreath and we hope for the return of Christ to reign in His world.


This hope is more than a wish. This hope is as needed as life and breath at this time. Hebrews says that “faith is the evidence of the unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). I think we could say the same for hope.


This year has brought us the loss of loved ones. Some who are near and dear to us will not be at our Christmas table this year. We miss them. There is a hole in our lives and we HOPE in the resurrection, that time when we hope for our own resurrection and rely on the promises of Christ Jesus that all those who belong to him will see his faith and gather around his throne to rejoice in his goodness.


This year has brought us increased racial tensions. An event happens between people of different races and others immediately proclaim that the event is the product of one race hating the other, or, maybe, both races hating the other. The consequences ripple throughout society and the world and other lives and families suffer as well. Riots, lootings, and arson destroy neighborhoods that were already on the brink of poverty and collapse. Opportunists use the tension to cause chaos and sow discord. They attempt to destroy our hope that love and peace can reign between races, cultures, political and socio-economic differences.


We need the Prince of Peace who brings Hope in our lives now more than ever. Today we light the Candle of Hope, not just because it is the First Sunday of Advent, but because we need our own act of defiance. We light a candle in the blackness of human sin and suffering and we proclaim the coming of the one who brought salvation to humankind and who will bring the fruits of the Spirit in our midst and gather us around his throne, regardless of color or any other divider we experience in this world.


We Hope.

Pastor Craig

Glorious Journey

What makes us the way we are? When we see bruised and broken adults, are they the product of their own poor choices? Or are they the victims of the poor choices that surrounded them in their youth? We say that there is a time when we must stand accountable for our own actions. Our society holds this to be true. When a thirty year old commits a crime, no one arrests the parents.

What about when a young person turns out to be an outstanding adult? Much of the time we give credit to the parents, telling them what a good job they did raising this particular child. But what about that young person who becomes caring, compassionate, trustworthy, loyal, reliable, wise, thrifty, gentle, loving, and joyful almost in spite of the influences that surrounded them rather than because of them.

I must say, I simply don’t know. I do know that when God puts his hand on a young man or woman they will indeed do something grand. That is the power of the hand of God.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Co 5:17

I have heard it put best this way. When Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, he didn’t use new and fresh water. The water pots placed there by the door were pots for purification. In other words, the water may very well have been some of the same water the celebrants at the wedding had used to wash their feet as they came in off the dirty roads. Jesus’ command to fill the pots does not indicate the pots were empty. They only needed to be “topped off.”

When Jesus told the servants to take this water and serve it to the guests, you can guess the hesitancy of the servants might have had.

You want us to take dirty foot-washing water and serve it to the wedding party!

The amazing thing is that Jesus didn’t simply turn water into wine. No, he took dirty, polluted water, water unfit to drink, made it clean, and then turned it into wine. That is the miracle of God’s work in you. Jesus Christ takes you as you are, with all your sins, mistakes, flaws, and faults, and cleanses you in a manner worthy to be presented to the Master of the Feast. It doesn’t matter whose choices led you down that awful path you have travelled.

Next He turns you over to the Holy Spirit who takes you and forms you into something that brings joy to that same Master who proclaims you the very best that could be!

Don’t dwell on the place from which you came, rather, glory in the journey you have begun!

Pastor Craig