WARNING PREACHY - 12/25/2015 (ADVENT 5)

 A Christmas Day Memory – 2015

I remember my first Christmas as a Christian.  I was living in New Jersey and my housemates were all gone to their family’s homes.  I wasn’t sad to be away from home, more bored really.

Across the road from my house lived a woman my age with a son who was just over 12-months old.  They too were alone for Christmas and we met for an awkward Christmas lunch.  We didn’t really know each other but we were neighborly enough to share a meal together. 

I pieced together her situation.  She was a young woman with a baby whose father was out of the picture.  She worked at a gentleman’s club in Newark and if she had family she never mentioned them.  We talked politely over lunch, we agreed to do a movie or something in the future and I left.  That afternoon I literally wept for her and her son.  Being with her had reminded me of how destitute the human situation could be and realized the spiritual shockwave of Emmanuel (God with us) on that first Christmas morning.

While I wept and prayed for the woman and her son I recognized the very real hope of the spiritual in our physical world.  For in the babe in the manger life had been breathed anew in the sons of Adam.

21Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:21-22)

Over the next few months we went to see a movie or two and she came to church with me but then she moved on.  She went to another state and I never heard from her again.  My prayer this morning is that she knows the reality of Christ in her physical life and the Spirit in her soul.

WARNING: PREACHY - 12/13/2015 (ADVENT 3)

Why do Christians anticipate the celebration of Christmas, the birth of Jesus, during Advent?  Because in Jesus is the culmination of both man and God; both flesh and spirit.  Jesus is the salvation of our souls.  And while the Advent season is focused on Jesus as the babe in the manger the real thrust of his being is culminated on the Cross of his suffering.

In First Peter 3:18 Peter writes in just one verse a real mouthful.

¹⁸ For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. (1 Peter 3:18)

1.      Jesus suffered once for sins

2.      Jesus was the righteous for the unrighteous

3.      Jesus did this to bring us to God

4.      Jesus was killed physically and was made alive spiritually

Don’t miss the fact that Jesus suffered ONCE.  Too often we people act like Jesus is to die again and again, over and over, (as Cyndi Lauper sang) “Time After Time” as though with every new sin in our lives Jesus must hang on the cross to suffer again.  While this sort of preaching might guilt some people into behaving properly on a regular basis, it defies the concept of suffering once.  Rather, the blood of Jesus is sufficient to cover our sins (past, present, and future) despite every attempt of guilt. (See Romans 5:15 – 6:22)

Peter states that Jesus was righteous and he suffered for those of us who are not righteous.  In other words, Jesus died for us sinners.  Too often we don’t like to admit that we are sinners.  We tend to think that we are "a good person".  The most common response that I get when talking to people is “I’m a pretty good person; it’s not as if I have ever killed anyone.”  The problem with this sort of reasoning is that the person making this statement is comparing him/herself to another human when the true comparison is between the person and Jesus Christ.  When Jesus is the object of comparison it is easy to see that we fail in that comparison.

Jesus suffered and died to restore relationship between God and sinners.  This relationship is not religious in nature.  This is why just showing up to church each week, getting dunked or sprinkled, and consuming the wafer, bread, and Juice really does nothing.  Church attendance, baptism, communion, and Eucharist only have value inside of a real day-to-day relationship with the living Jesus.

I have been pointing out the nature of the flesh and the spirit in the birth of the child Jesus this Advent season, Peter points out the reality of flesh and spirit of Jesus even after his physical death on the Cross.  Even though his flesh was crucified and killed dead, the Holy Spirit raised him back to life again.  He was resurrected from the grave which is the reason for our faith. (See 1 Corinthians 15:12-22)

This Advent season we anticipate the birth of the baby Jesus, not because he was miraculously brought about (which he indeed was) but because he is the culmination of both the flesh of Adam and the Holy Spirit of God.

WARNING: PREACHY - 12/6/2015 (ADVENT 2)

  

⁷ Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  (Genesis 2:7)

They say that Adam didn’t have a belly button.  That he was created as the perfect human without human intervention.  God formed him from the dust of the earth and breathed life into him and he became a living soul.  He was perfect, without sin, living in union with God.  But perfect as he was he was not God.

In Luke 1 the Holy Spirit came upon the virgin in power and formed in her a new life.  He was to be called Jesus and, as Matthew states, Immanuel (which means God with us).  He was perfectly man and he was perfectly God; the New Man.

⁴⁵So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. ⁴⁸As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (1 Corinthians 15:25-49)

There is that famous picture of Michelangelo’s where the finger of God comes out of heaven and touches the finger of man.  It is at the point that God literally touches man that we recognize the reality of God in our world, that moment when we recognize the babe in the manger as the fingers of God and man touching, and when by faith we received the Spirit of the Almighty into our own souls and it shocks us like a spiritual sonic boom in our souls.

You do understand that I am not really talking about Adam and Mary right?  For you and I are the focus of Christmas here and now.  Jesus died for sin some 2000 years ago creating the assembly of believers (the church).  Today, his death still holds and he is still forming his church (the assembly of believers) among men.  Today is the day for you and I to recognize God on earth through the baby Jesus in the manger.  For faith in Jesus is retroactive.

¹⁶So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians5:16-18)

WARNING: PREACHY 11/28/2015 (ADVENT 1)

I’m taking a break from the book of Colossians to focus on the season of Advent.  Advent is the five weeks leading Christians to the celebration of the birth of Christ which is really why Christmas is celebrated.  I pray you find it beneficial…

In John 3 a Pharisee named Nicodemus starts talking to Jesus and Jesus tells him straight out that he needs to be “Born Again”.

John 3:5-8
³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
⁴ “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Despite popular thought, this passage is about flesh and spirit.  Many believe that this ‘born of water’ in verse 5 refers to the waters of baptism.  It does not.  Verse 6 states clearly that “Flesh gives birth to flesh” contextually keeping with how the water in verse 5 is to be understood.  Jesus’ words here are a quoting a concept from Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 11:5

As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

And so too Christmas is about flesh and spirit because Jesus is both Man (flesh) and God (spirit).

Luke 1:26-35

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."
 
When Mary was informed by the angel that she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, we see the miracle of God co-mingling with and literally becoming the flesh of man.  Yes, the very concept should leave us scratching our heads at the thought of God, the "Maker of all things” becoming part of that which was made.  It is certainly a miracle that the Virgin became pregnant but I think it may be more miraculous that God (spirit) became Man (flesh).

Nicodemus, do you remember him from John 3?  He and his ilk did not quite get the concept of being “born again” (John 3:7).  Seriously, the very concept should leave us all scratching our heads.  None-the-less, Jesus said it and we need to pay heed to his words.  His words are not of no-consequence, they are the words of eternal-life.   And they begin for us on the day the child Jesus was born on Christmas Day.