Exalting Jesus and equipping and empowering us!

     If ever there was a remnant of God’s faithful people, I’m guessing this is it.  It is terrible unfortunate and a sign of the poor catechesis in the Church that Ascension Day is so ignored today.  To continue a discussion we had last Thursday at Wrestling with Faith, the Ascension is of such importance that its acceptance is one of those beliefs which defines us as Christians.  Every time we gather for the Eucharist, we remind ourselves that He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  From there He will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Rejecting the Ascension in the early Church made one an anathema, outside, the Church.  Luke reports that the early disciples saw with their own eyes this event take place.  It has tremendous theological and pastoral meaning to us, yet few liturgical folks bother to attend the service that commemorates the event, to say nothing of those churches where the Ascension gets nary a mention.  So, why are we commemorating it and what is its significance to us in modern Nashville?

     The need for the service arose out of a couple sermons several months ago.  Truthfully, I was not focused on adding another service to our calendar, but some lines I had stated caused some interesting pastoral conversations.  One week I mentioned the comfort we should have knowing that our Lord Christ makes constant intercession for us, and some Adventers got to arguing with me about whether He does, in fact, do that.  Another week, maybe Trinity Sunday last year, I spoke briefly about the Holy Spirit incorporating us into that intimate relationship we call the Trinity through the work and person of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Father.  At the time, neither were my focus, but both flow as a result of our understanding about Christ’s Ascension.  Since the Ascension is an essential of the faith, we should be more familiar with it and some of the consequences of those essentials.  Add the overall struggle in some quarters of this parish with the creeds, and it simply makes sense that we need to focus a bit on the essentials more at Advent.  How better to do that than through worship?

     First, as a couple commentators and colleagues pointed out over the last week or so, we are wrong to understand Ascending in a rising above sense.  You and I live in a culture that has gone to the moon, sent probes out of our solar system, and has a couple television channels devoted exclusively to meteorological events.  When we think of Ascension, we probably think of Jesus rising and fading from view.  I see the nods.  That is not necessarily what the Apostles and disciples who witnessed the event described.

     Part of our problem is that we know clouds are up there, right?  Some of us who watch too much of the Weather Channel can probably name all the different clouds in the sky.  What the Apostles were describing, though, was less a meteorological event and more a theological event.  The cloud that conceals Jesus from their site is our clue.

     When Israel is led from Egypt in the Exodus, what shields them by day and illumines their path by night?  That’s right!  A cloud.  When Moses and the elders are gathered in the Tabernacle during the wandering in the wilderness, what signifies to the camp that God is speaking with Moses or the elders?  Too tricky?  That’s right!  A cloud.  Ok, here’s one for serious students of the Scriptures.  What does the Chronicler say happens in 2 Chronicles 5 at the dedication of the Temple, when the priests are trumpeting and the Levites are well dressed, and the people are thanking God?  The Temple is filled with a cloud.  In fact, the Chronicler records that the cloud was so thick that no one could minister to the Lord.  All right, let’s try one more easy one: what signifies to the prophet that God is going to allow His people to be defeated and carried into exile?  What leaves the Temple?  Did you know it or just guess?  That’s right, the cloud.

     When we read Luke’s description of what happened, it is the glory of God, the Hebrew word is shekinah, that we should be seeing in our minds.  Describing God is a challenge for mortals, right?  How does one describe the glory of God that is unfathomable and present and thick and all those other adjectives?  How do we describe something that is simply beyond our comprehension?  Earlier folks used the image of a cloud.  It makes sense.  It cannot be fully comprehended; part of it is never really seen.  What the Apostles saw with their own eyes was the Lord returning to the glory of God.  Was it a real lifting up in height?  Was it a dimensional gate?  Our language, were we to witness it, would struggle, too, to describe it.  But, we would all be trying to express that our Lord’s Incarnation and Resurrection has, for a time at least, ended; and that He has returned to the glory of the Father who sent Him.  So, instead of thinking of this as the day where Jesus rose up into the sky among the clouds, we should really understand that this is the day where our Lord was exalted and returned to the Father who sent Him, who loved Him before the foundation of the world.

     While we can wrestle with what our disciples saw and try and translate it into our own language that thinks it has an answer for everything, those wrestlings have nothing to do with the why.  Why is the exultation of Jesus important?  Why did our early forebears insist on this event being accepted by others who claimed to be Christian?  Why is it important for us to remember it today in 21^st century Nashville?  It seems to me there are at least three reasons why we remember this day, why it is important to those of us who claim to be followers of the Christ Jesus.

     First, it is the completion of the Incarnation and the beginning of the time after Pentecost.  Jesus Himself told the disciples that He must return to the Father and that if they loved Him they would rejoice at His returning, but that He would not leave them comfortless.  Jesus’ exaltation enables the coming of the Holy Spirit.  While on earth in fully human and fully divine form, all that we attribute to God was particularly focused on and around the presence of the Incarnation.  Now, Jesus’ exultation allows all of God’s power, redemptive grace, wisdom, and the like to be incarnated with a little ‘I” in the members of the Body of Christ.  You and I and every single person who really is Christian are promised empowerment to accomplish the things that God has given us to do.  We act in Nashville; others act elsewhere in this country; others act in every country around the world.  All of us are called to act, called to work, called to minister to others that God might be glorified in our lives so that others turn and are saved!

     Does that mean God was limited in human form?  Yes and no.  We call it a condescension because Jesus left the exaltation of the Father to descend to our existence, to suffer as we suffer, to redeem our sins and the sins of everyone who would claim Him Lord.  No doubt God’s grace was active and alive and vibrant in the world during Jesus’ earthly ministry, but God is still God.  God chose to limit Himself in human form and to exercise this earthly ministry, to become the Living Word, for the purpose of drawing the world to Himself.  And during that ministry, Jesus exercised amazing power, miraculous power, and we gather here tonight in fulfilment of His purposes.  Think on that.

      Now, though, we are His Body.  You and I would say we are mystically joined with Christ and He with us.  We exercise ministry in His name that He might be glorified.  And when we sin, we repent and try again.  When others sin against and repent, we forgive and let them try again.  I see faces looking a bit strange.  Y’all are wrestling with the liturgy, aren’t you?  We don’t think them empty words, exactly, but we do not spend nearly enough time contemplating what they say.  Yes, we are empowered by the holy Spirit to do that work God has given us to do.  Some of us get easy work, right?  Not really.  Even the easy work requires the presence of the Holy Spirit to get it right.  The problems of hunger or poverty or any social injustice are beyond our ability to solve.  No matter how many people we feed, how many impoverished we help, how many folks suffering from injustice we assist, there will always be more.  If we understood the scopes of the problems which He calls us to act against in His name, how many of us would ever take that first step?  But, Jesus is there, at the right hand of the Father, interceding with the Father to give us exactly what we need to glorify Him.

     This, naturally, leads to my second importance.  Now that Jesus has returned to the glory of God, now that He has been exalted, He is able to make intercessions on behalf of each one of us.  Better still, because He is God, He asks the Father to give us the things we best or most need.  What do I mean?  Look, I try to be a faithful shepherd and steward.  Few Adventers argue that with me, at least publicly.  God has entrusted me for a time to lead you to Him.  I do not serve here because it’s a cushy job; I do not serve here because I get some special feather in my crown in the next life that says He served Us at Advent; I do not get any special privileges that I have discovered because I serve here.  But God has entrusted me to do the best I can to point you, to lead you, to cajole you to Him.  That is my singular focus.

     But even though it is my focus, even though I think that is the attitude that God demands of those we ordain, I still make mistakes.  I still sin.  Sins are easier for us to understand and deal with.  I repent; the offended forgive.  But what of the mistakes?  I have prayed for miraculous healings for those suffering from cancer.  How many people have been cured of cancer?  Not nearly as many for whom I have prayed.  I have prayed for miraculous provision for folks among us suffering particular privation.  How many folks among us, myself included, have won the lottery?  Most frustrating has been my prayers over those dying.  I know God hates death.  I know He snorts at it in anger.  Yet, I have not had too many experiences where the dead or dying got up.

     Those failures on my parts become lessons for us all.  Those of you who have lived those experiences and those anointed prayers and still experienced healing can testify to the truth that I and you did not always pray for what you needed.  We may have wanted cancer to go away when what you really needed was the perseverance to bear that cross faithfully, that others might see your cross-bearing and turn to God.  You and I may have wanted God to give you or me that winning lottery ticket, but what you really needed for effective witness was the childlike trust that God would give you your daily bread.  That simple day-to-day, childlike trust was far more meaningful to those who watched you live than any single super-sized blessing.  And, unsurprisingly, how we deal with death is often the most effective witness we will ever give to others.  Maybe, instead of praying against it, we should be praying that we do not fail in our own Gethsemane moments?

     The third and last lesson about which I want to speak is our purposes for gathering as a community.  We call it worship.  We Episcopalians have a liturgical way of going about things.  We have certain prayers; we have a particular order; we have specific people who exercise particular gifts leading us in this event we call worship.  Other denominations have different ways of going about this event we call the worship of God.  Why do we do it?  Why do we put so much energy and effort and study and consideration into worship?  Is getting worship right our focus?  Perhaps.  Is it we are trying to capture the way the Apostles were taught by Jesus?  No doubt in some quarters.

     At its best, though, worship speaks to the exaltation of our Lord.  How so, you ask?  Earlier, when I was speaking of the cloud and the Jesus being taken back into it, I mentioned that we have different languages to be used in trying to describe the event that took place.  One of those metaphors I used was dimension.  You and I are able to perceive four dimensions in our lives (length, width, height, and time), but people far smarter than me claim to be able to prove the existence of other dimensions in various ways, but usually mathematically.  They are real, but we cannot perceive them.  In some ways, that is the ancient view of heaven.  I know many of us grew up thinking heaven was up there and hell was down there, with earth being somewhere in the middle of the two, right?  Many of us were taught that, when we die, we hope to go up there, get our wings and harps, and play wonderful music for all eternity?  Good, you all are laughing, but you have heard that idea expressed repeatedly.  Is that what Scripture teaches us? 

     The last couple weeks we have been reintroduced to Revelation?  What is being described there?  A new heaven and a new earth.  Jerusalem descending and God dwelling in this new creating among His people.  If we think of ascending as enfolding into God’s glory and descending as the unveiling of God’s glory, does it sound at all like we get wings and harps?  No, it seems to be something else.  Now, I don’t waste too much time on it because I know for a fact that God will make my idea seem silly.  The best that I can dream of simply pales in comparison to what God has planned for us.  So I will just wait to be surprised and awed and not overthink it or rehearse my harp music.  I will work my hardest to get as many people there as possible, but I am not going to stress for a second about the reality that biblical authors tried to convey with Wedding Feasts and Ascension and modern scientists and mathematicians convey with dimensional theories all those other images about which we read.  While the particulars are hard both to express and to fathom, Scripture is clear there is another reality that you and I sometimes can perceive.  Paul warns us about Spiritual warfare.  Jesus teaches us about Whom to fear and what should be important to us and that all this is seeming reality is, in truth, transient.  Even our liturgy during funerals reminds us that in death life is not ended but changed—that’s what gives ultimate rise to our alleluia’s at the grave, right?

     Given all that, what is one of the purposes of worship?  Yes, thanking God is always a great place to start, but let’s think sacramentally for a moment.  We are, after all, Episcopalians.  Why are the Sacraments important to us?  It really should not be that tough.  Y’all are here when most of our brothers and sisters are blowing this feast off.  Why?  I hope, and it is a hope right now, maybe not a reality, but I hope that one of the reasons why you are here to celebrate the Sacrament with me this evening is to be reminded that in the Sacraments of the Church, the boundary which separates this world from the real, heavenly world of God, is at its thinnest point.  I hope you come to worship at Advent expecting to meet Jesus here, to see God here, to feel God’s presence in your life here!

     We are good little Anglicans here, right?  We only accept two Sacraments.  Some of our Anglican forebears call them Dominical in deference to the fact that Jesus Himself commanded them.  We are to baptize in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and we are to celebrate the Eucharist.  What happens at those two events?  Members are confirmed in God’s kingdom or grace.  Right, baptism is a kind of initiation, and the Eucharist is a reminder of the transformation that began in baptism.  We make a promise to God in the former, and He, in turns, makes unbreakable promises to us, knowing we will break ours.  But even the condition for restoration after our broken promises to Him are spelled out in that Sacrament.  We repent when we sin, and we will continue in the Apostles’ teaching.  The Apostles’ teaching is, of course, our service.  We gather for hearing God’s Word.  We hope to get good and engaging teaching.  Even failing that, though, we know we will meet Jesus in the Sacrament.  The meal, that pledge to use the language of the early Church, reminds us that we are being nourished, being strengthened, being equipped to do the work He has given us to do.  Then what?  We leave.  We head out into our various mission fields fed, equipped, restored, reminded, and ready to do His work in our lives.

     Even in those other five Rites of the Church, to use Anglican understanding, or Sacraments, to use the language of our Roman and Orthodox brothers and sisters, are understood to remove that veil that hides the reality to which we are called.  Is death and not an ending but rather a change?  Does not marriage shadowily reflect the relationship we call the Trinity?  Does Reconciliation not remind us of the forgiving and redeeming grace of God?  And so on?  Why do you think we have fought so hard about their nature?  Why do you think we continue to fight about them?  Out sacraments, our worship of God, thins that veil or cloud or dimension or whatever we want to call it, and gives us an opportunity better to see, or to hear, or to understand Him working in our lives.  It why we attach the words mystically to such understandings.  It’s true.  It happens.  It’s repeatedly happens.  But it defies logic.  It defies what we call science.  It defies especially what we know of ourselves, that we are His unworthy servants.

     There are more implications regarding the importance of this feast we celebrate today.  I chose three that seemed to me to be what God wanted me to speak tonight.  I apologize for a lecture than a real sermon.  In some ways, I feel I have been engaging in more teaching than normal these last couple weeks.  Yet, if I did my job well this evening, if I did my job faithfully, I trust that we each were reminded of why we gather this day to celebrate this event that was so important to those early disciples and apostles.  More importantly, I trust that, in us considering just a few implications of this event, we have all learned why this event should be important to us today.  Yes, that God raised Jesus from the dead is an important declaration of His power to redeem us and others and even the world, but His exaltation makes it possible that you and I, miserable sinners that we are, can be equipped properly to accomplish His will in our lives!  And that, my brothers and sisters, is worth an evening’s and a morning’s and continual worship and Thanksgiving!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

What if we fought Him less and really, enthusiastically followed Him?

     Our reading from Acts today is certainly timely and apt.  Timely, as it reminds us that we need to answer God’s call on our own lives, just as did Paul and those with him in his journeys; apt, in that we have participated in another telling of that story in our midst.

     The story begins with a vision.  Paul sees a Macedonian asking for help in a dream.  He and those with him pray about it and become convinced that God is sending them to Macedonia.  Luke describes the difficulty of the journey in a few words.  This is not like you and me being asked to take a cruise ship to your favorite Caribbean island.  Remember, the ships were, for the most part, coastal huggers.  Ships were meant to stay in sight of land.  Some sailed through the night, but many dropped anchor during the darkness to make sure there were no reefs or rocks to hit.

     Anyway, they arrive at Philippi, one of the bigger cities at the time in Macedonia and, as Luke notes, a Roman colony.  That little note tells us a lot.  Philippi has patterned itself intentionally on Rome, so the city will run in accordance to Roman law.  It also makes Paul a bit of a celebrity.  Philippi probably did have a handful of citizens, but in a world with only 100,000 citizens or so throughout the empire, every citizen was a bit more important to the locals, the further one went out from the heart of Rome.  Out in the border lands, there was a worry about getting to close to barbarians or spending time among the conquered who might bear ill will, but this was a town that intentionally patterned itself after Rome.

     Luke says they remained in Philippi some days, but that on the Sabbath Day they went outside the gate by the river, presumable to a copse of trees or meadow or some other distinguishing feature, that served as a place of prayer.  We learn a couple important details in this brief description.  First, where do faithful Jews usually meet to worship God?  That’s right, the synagogue.  Next question: How many Jewish men did it take to found a synagogue?  Three?  Good guess.  Three is obviously important to God.  One?  Ah, we have someone focusing on God’s immanence this morning.  Good.  Any other guesses?  No?  Twelve?  It makes sense, right?  The twelve tribes and all that.  I see the nods.  For Philippi to have had a synagogue at this time, twelve Jewish men would have had to found it.  In our language, they would have planted the church and become the Bishop’s council in the new faith community.  That there is no synagogue in Philippi tells us that there are not enough Jewish men present in the city to plant a synagogue.  Even if there are more than a dozen Jewish males present, not enough are serious enough in their faith to start a new synagogue.

     Now, and I know this will shock those of us who buy into the stupid post-modern narrative that God hates women or the authors of the Scriptures hate women, but who are the faithful in this story?  That’s right!  The women.  The God-fearers or faithful Jewish women in this story are the women.  They gather at the place outside the river gate to pray to God.  And what does “misogynistic” Paul do when he learns about them?  I know, it’s shocking.  He goes out the gate to the appointed place to pray with them!

     I know I am preaching to the choir in this place—you are here worshipping God on a holiday weekend and attend a church with women in leadership—but do not forget these little stories when someone confronts you with the idea that God hates women or that Paul hates women or that the authors of Scripture hate women.  God made women in His image and has used women repeatedly to advance His purposes in the world!

     While praying and worshiping with the women, Paul shares the Gospel with them.  In response, a woman named Lydia, responds.  As an aside, I want you all to note that she is a woman of means.  She is the seller of purple cloth in Philippi.  All the aristocrats in the city will have to come to her for their purple.  Did I mention that the city patterned itself after Rome?  She has a nice monopoly, and she does not seem to need a man to take care of her at all.  In any event, echoing the story of Cornelius with Peter, Lydia and her household are baptized by Paul, and she provides Paul and his fellow travelers with hospitality during their stay in Philippi.

     A couple lessons should jump right out at us this morning.  First, aside from the reputation Paul has about hating women among post-modernist scholars, what prompts Paul to go to Philippi?  It was quite a journey, and it had no synagogue.  From a purely pragmatic perspective, Paul should have no reason to expect an audience hungry for the Gospel to be present in Philippi.  Why does he, then, go?  That’s right!  God.  God speaks to Paul in a dream and tells him to go there. Don’t forget, Paul wondered at that, right?  He discerns with those with him whether it was God or just a dream.  For reasons left unwritten by Luke, the group is convinced they should journey to Macedonia.  Second, who does the real evangelization in the story?  It’s not a trick question.  Who opens Lydia’s and the other hearts to the Gospel?  That’s right!  God.

     This story, just like Cornelius’, ought to remind us of the freedom and joy we should have and encourage us to live our faith as God calls each of us.  I spoke a couple weeks ago about the general who joked about the “yabuts.”  His audience wanted to believe, but each had an excuse or a qualifier.  Adventers are much the same.  How many of conversations center around the idea that you, in particular, are ill-suited to God’s particular call on your life?  How many?  If I preach that God is using you in your daily life and work, which we believe and pray every week from our beloved BCP, how many conversations do I sit through listening to someone explain why they are particularly not prepared for this calling or that calling?

     Some will protest to the point where they will say “It’s easy for you, Father.  You have been trained.”  And how many times do I respond with a word more closely aligned with skubala?  I was not trained for 90% of the stuff I share with y’all.  I’ll let you all in on a little secret since you dragged yourselves to church on a holiday weekend, most of the time I am winging it.  Don’t scoff.  Listen.  Do you think I intended to teach the Ten Words at the Y so well that those men would find their answers to the New Zealand tragedy in that teaching in my absence?  Of course not.  Ask any folks at my last parish about the fight against slavery.  Who forgot Communion?  Who forgot oil for healing?  The professional!

     The big difference between me and you is experience.  I have experienced God’s power and grace too many times in my life not to believe He will show up in ways I cannot ask or imagine.  Jim asked Thursday night who all had seen miracles.  I shared with Jim my most . . . significant, but I also shared with the group I see and hear of God at work all the time.  And that is part of the problem, right?  We do not do the things that God is calling us to do for fear of failure or distrust in ourselves, and so we never see God’s redeeming power at work in our lives.  We focus too much on what can go wrong rather than trusting God to redeem our mistakes and make them go incredibly well.  There’s a spiral, of sorts, at work in our lives.  The more obedient to God we are, the more He seems present and at work in our lives; the more we fight Him, the more distant He seems.  When I share these stories with you in Bible studies or sermons or individual conversations, I do because they are your stories, too!  My sermon illustration for today is a perfect example.

     Three years ago, a long-haired, flip flop wearing, tattooed guy came through the office door asking to speak with the pastor.  You all now know him as James Harvey, of the missionary Harvey family for which we have been praying for a couple years.  Some of you know more of the story thanks to Bible studies and other gatherings, but James felt the call of the Holy Spirit to stop in and greet the pastor.  James was not too thrilled with this prompting.  Everything he knew about Episcopalians taught him we were little different than Unitarians with Popish worship.  For a baptist’s minister’s kid, we were kind of the perfect storm or hot mess to be avoided.  Events at Advent at the time made him a welcome visitor, from my perspective.  I thought his reason for sharing was weird, but I’d had plenty of reason to trust God in the past.  So I did.  Thanks to James’ openness and obedience, I have had a lot of good Wednesday afternoons ever since that first visit.  His practice now, don’t forget he’s the son of a Baptist minister, is to join us for Wednesday worship as we remember the life and witness of a saint, and then he and I spend time sharing where we have seen God at work in the world around us and praying for one another and our families.

     The reason I bring that up is that, in part due to James’ efforts, you have a modern Lydia story to share.  If you will recall three years ago, I shared with you that James and his missionary team were headed to the Tonka valley in northern Siberia to try and convert Urdu folks to the Gospel.  Now, understand, I am using the best I can do in English.  This valley in northern Siberia of which we speak has both a proper Urdu and Russia name.  The Urdu people living there are one of those unreached people groups about which missionaries like to tell the Church.  It may seem weird to us that a people can be unreached in this day and age, but there are several out there.  This group lived in a valley which measures winter snowfall by the feet and makes the windchills of the northern plains seem rather balmy.

     I used some small amount of Discretionary funds to help offset James’ expenses—that is your part of the beginning of this story.  Some of the money Adventers gave me to use to serve others in God’s name went to his work.

     Upon their arrival, James and his team discovered a house church meeting in a mechanics bay in the valley.  They went from “how do we find converts and plant a church” to “how do we support what the Holy Spirit is already doing?”  They asked the pastor what he needed to better serve his people.  He asked for some training, some prayer, and some help digging a new bay.  So they helped train him, prayed for him, and dug him a new bay.

     Imagine their disappointment about a year or eighteen months ago when they discovered he had been called home.  He was having to go back to Turkey or Afghanistan or wherever his family lived because of the family’s need.  The missionaries were fearful the house church would fold.  It was losing its pastor, its meeting place, and most of its membership.

     A bit over a year ago, some members of the team returned.  Much to their surprise, they encountered a woman they had never met before.  She had taken over pastoring that church.  When they asked her what she needed, she told them everything.  She had kind of been forced to assume the leadership of that church in that remote region of Siberia.  She had no training.  Heck, she had no Bible in Urdu.  She had no idea what she should be doing or how she should be doing it.  A Lutheran pastor had agreed to help her when he came through town, but it was not nearly enough.  I should add, he’s had a health crisis and been unable to visit her for more than nine months now.

     Anyway, the team, and all of us who supported the team, prayed about how she could be helped.  Short of missionaries staying there or bringing her here, what could be done.  Somebody came up with the great idea of purchasing her an i-Phone and teaching her the stories in the Orality project in Urdu over the internet.  How many of us sort of buy into the idea that smartphones are tools of the devil?  I see a few hands.  Here was God giving folks an idea of how to use a smartphone to spread His Gospel.

     That Bible-picture-book that everyone here has seen, was intentionally done the way it was done.  It is not meant for the preacher/teacher to be an artist.  The art was designed so that little kids could draw it and remember the stories.  Many of these unreached people groups of which missionaries speak are oral cultures rather than written like us in the west.  The picture provokes the brain to recall the story.  If I did a simple drawing of an ark with sets of two animals on a rocky mountain with a rainbow over it and a dove with an olive branch in it, what story do you think you would remember?  What details would be provoked in your mind?  I see the lightbulbs going off.

     I know some of us dismiss James and his work because of his appearance, but his work is really Gospel.  It generally takes years to translate the Bible into new languages.  Some of those countries confiscate the Bibles when they are translated.  James has a simple looking picture book that no customs agent ever wants to peruse!  Better still, the stories are told from one person to another.  I see the nods, y’all get the idea.  In the case of this woman in the Tonka valley of northern Siberia, whom we call Lydia because her real name is too long, someone fluent in Urdu can tell her the story related to the picture that captures her interest.  She in turn can show the picture or draw it in the dirt for those to whom she is called to minister.  And so on.  The discretionary funds with which you have trusted me have helped that book get published and purchased for folks around the world, and we helped buy this Urdu woman we call Lydia an i-Phone for training.

     Before you came to church this morning, how many of you had any idea that you, you sitting in the middle of Brentwood or Nashville, TN, had supported a modern Lydia with your thank offerings and gifts?  How many of you realized that God was still going ahead of those missionaries whom He calls and doing what seems impossible by modern standards?  How many of you expected that your gifts and thank offerings would be used today to help an Urdu woman in a remote valley of Siberia lead caribou and reindeer herders into a deeper relationship, a deeper experience with God?  Yet that is all our story today!  All of us at Advent have had a hand in that work.  Some of us have contributed financially; others have contributed by means of prayer. 

     Sitting here today in the comforts of this place and this country, you may be tempted to downplay this story in your mind or corporate faith journey.  But ask yourself this important questions: What do I think those folks in the Tonka valley of norther Siberia think of the pittances with which we have supported them?  What do I think the missionaries think of the small funding and constant prayer with which we have supported them?  You do understand their thankfulness to God for your faithfulness, right?  You do understand that they perceive of you as saints—folks who are committed to building up the Body of Christ across the world!

     It’s a cool thought, is it not?  They are thankful for us.  They give thanks to God for us in languages we can neither speak nor read.  I know, if they only knew us!  But here’s the Gospel my brothers and sisters: God does know us!  He knows us intimately!  And though we may not yet describe ourselves as a spiritually mature community of followers of Jesus the Christ, He knows what we can be!  Now, here’s a question we should all ponder as we give thanks this weekend for those who made such gatherings possible with the ultimate sacrifice for us, imagine what God could do with us and for us if we only responded with excited and determined “yes, Lord’s.”  If God can reach the remote areas of the world with our half-hearted efforts or yabuts, imagine what God could do with enthusiastic “here I am Lord, send me’s.”  Even then, my brothers and sisters, He would accomplish more than we could ask or imagine.  What is it He is asking of you this day?  What dream has He placed in your heart this morning?  What story does He want the world to know about you and me and this place in His salvation history?

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†