Now that we have a sense of the scope of our challenges in terms of growth and finances, we can have a context to put these next few weeks’ sermon in. We need to acknowledge the perceived risks that are associated with being financially committed to the Lord. We need to understand that there are definite results that come when we’re faithful to God’s promises.

I’m encouraging you to be there every week this month so you can get the full sense of the lessons on stewardship. Be sure also that you set your clocks forward on Saturday!

Blessings,

LJ

Please click on over and check it out. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Luke 9:23-25 Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?

Luke 12:15 Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”

It’s pretty cool to see a living example of these principles.

Read the article here.

Readings

• Monday, Feb. 8, My Sheep Hear My Voice (John 10:22-30)
• Tuesday, Feb. 9, Believe in the Good News (Mark 1:9-15)
• Wednesday, Feb. 10, Only Believe (Mark 6:34-44)
• Thursday, Feb. 11, Help My Unbelief (Mark 9:14-27)
• Friday, Feb. 12, Ask and Believe (Mark 11:20-25)
• Saturday, Feb. 13, Both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:29-36)
• Sunday, Feb. 14, You are the Messiah (Matthew 16:13-27)

What It Takes to Know a Person

What does it take to know another person truly? We may be introduced to someone and right away learn something about that person’s work, home, or family.  We might then draw conclusions about that person’s character, based on what we associate with a particular profession, place, or family situation.  But with time, we learn more about that person and are driven to other conclusions.  People can defy our “first impression” expectations.

Today’s lesson concerns what Peter knew about Jesus.  Be declaring Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Peter declared what Christians ever since have affirmed as the central tenet of their faith.  But by itself, Peter’s confession is not sufficient to tell us who Jesus is.  He is indeed the Christ, but we also must know the kind of Christ he is.  We need to know that he willingly went to the cross for the sake of sinners.  Jesus defied Peter’s expectations.  Perhaps we will need to revise our expectations of Jesus too.

Lesson Background

Today’s story is at the center of the plot of Matthew’s Gospel.  Prior to this story, Matthew presents Jesus performing miracles, teaching, meeting the challenges of his opponents, and issuing calls to repent of sins and follow him.  Notably Jesus has spoken and acted with authority that some recognize can belong only to God.  Yet to this point in time, Jesus has not spoken clearly and directly about his identity.  He has left provocative hints but has made no explicit statements.  Most prominent among those who follow Jesus is Simon, also called Peter.  He is the first Jesus’s followers to be named in Matthew’s Gospel (4:18) and the one most often named thereafter (8:14, 10:2, 14:28, 29; 15:15).  He is usually bold, sometimes in a foolhardy way.

Today’s story is set in Caesarea Philippi, a town on the northern edge of Israel’s territory in Galilee.  The town was famous in Jesus’ time for a shrine to the Greek god Pan.  It was as pagan a place as one could find within Israel’s borders, a symbol of the conflict between the God of Israel and a hostile, sinful world.  Our text divides naturally into two parts.  The first is focused on Peter’s statement about Jesus and Jesus’ response to it.  The second centers around Jesus’ statement about his future, Peter’s response to it, and Jesus’ rejoinder.  We must couple the two parts together to grasp who Jesus really is.

With the sermon recordings staying up to date more so now of days, we now can offer to you the ability to either listen to the sermon again or hear it for the first time.  And the easiest way to do that is to subscribe to the sermon podcast.  I also added a “Contact Us” page that will allow anyone to contact the church through email.  Lanny and I will be the ones receiving any messages sent through the website.

Among other real techie fixes that no one wants to hear about are as follows:

• Added Google’s Custom Site Search to the search, so now you can search anything about the site, whether it be about a sermon or a post.
• Added the ability to see recent sermons right on the homepage.
• Added the church’s address to the side bar under “Location”
• Many other very small design fixes.

Thanks for your patience!
Julian Lannigan

In the News

At 23, and ranked by Baseball America as the eighth-best prospect on the Oakland A’s farm team, Grant Desme was likely on a fast track to the major leagues. But last month, he informed the A’s management of his intention to retire from the game and enter a Catholic seminary this August.  

Desme said he has been feeling the call to the priesthood for the past year and a half but decided to play the last season as a way of testing the call. Ironically, his success on the ball field during that season convinced him that the call he needed to answer wasn’t the one to the majors but the one to the church. 

"I’m doing well in baseball," Desme said. "But I had to get down to the bottom of things, to what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life. Baseball is a good thing, but that felt selfish of me when I felt that God was calling me more. It took awhile to trust that and open up to it and aim full steam toward him. … I love the game, but I’m going to aspire to higher things."

Of Desme’s decision, Rob Fai, assistant general manager of the Oakland affiliate in Vancouver, B.C., said, "All I hope is that, at the end of the day, he never regrets [making the decision now]. So few players get to the point where he’s at. In my perspective, the guy could be a priest when he’s 35 or 60. … Here’s a guy who’s so unbelievably close to making it. The timing is the one factor I can’t figure out." Fai wondered aloud if current events, such as the earthquake in Haiti, had nudged Desme to make the move to the priesthood now.   

After informing the ballclub of his decision in late January, Desme said he felt at peace.

The process of becoming a priest takes about 10 years. "It’s like re-entering the minor leagues" Desme said.

"I desire and hope to become a priest," he added. "But it’s all up to God."

More on this story can be found at these links:

A’s prospect leaving baseball for priesthood. Fox Sports

Grant Desme discusses decision to become priest. San Francisco Chronicle

A’s prospect leaving baseball for call of the priesthood. Yahoo! Sports

The Big Questions

1. How can we tell the difference between a call from God and a "career opportunity"? Can they ever be one and the same? How do we know?
2. How do we distinguish between a call from God and a prompting of our own for change?
3. Many of the things God calls us to do involve sacrifice on our part. Does every call from God require sacrifice from us? Why or why not?
4. Does God have a call for every Christian? Is ministry the only calling, or are some of us called to other kinds of service, including things such as folding worship bulletins and shoveling snow off the church sidewalks? Are all callings equal, or are some "higher" than others? Explain your answers.
5. What helps you discover God’s will for you?

Confronting the News with Scripture

Consider the following scriptures as you ponder God’s call on your life:

• Amos 7:10-17 ¹⁰ Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent a message to Jeroboam, king of Israel: “Amos is hatching a plot against you right here on your very doorstep! What he is saying is intolerable. ¹¹ He is saying, ‘Jeroboam will soon be killed, and the people of Israel will be sent away into exile.’” ¹² Then Amaziah sent orders to Amos: “Get out of here, you prophet! Go on back to the land of Judah, and earn your living by prophesying there! ¹³ Don’t bother us with your prophecies here in Bethel. This is the king’s sanctuary and the national place of worship!” ¹⁴ But Amos replied, “I’m not a professional prophet, and I was never trained to be one. I’m just a shepherd, and I take care of sycamore-fig trees. ¹⁵ But the Lord called me away from my flock and told me, ‘Go and prophesy to my people in Israel.’ ¹⁶ Now then, listen to this message from the Lord: “You say, ‘Don’t prophesy against Israel. Stop preaching against my people.’ ¹⁷ But this is what the Lord says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in this city, and your sons and daughters will be killed. Your land will be divided up, and you yourself will die in a foreign land. And the people of Israel will certainly become captives in exile, far from their homeland.’”
• Judges 6:11-24 ¹¹ Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. ¹² The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!” ¹³ “Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.” ¹⁴ Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!” ¹⁵ “But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!” ¹⁶ The Lord said to him, “I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.” ¹⁷ Gideon replied, “If you are truly going to help me, show me a sign to prove that it is really the Lord speaking to me. ¹⁸ Don’t go away until I come back and bring my offering to you.” He answered, “I will stay here until you return.” ¹⁹ Gideon hurried home. He cooked a young goat, and with a basket of flour he baked some bread without yeast. Then, carrying the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, he brought them out and presented them to the angel, who was under the great tree. ²⁰ The angel of God said to him, “Place the meat and the unleavened bread on this rock, and pour the broth over it.” And Gideon did as he was told. ²¹ Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and bread with the tip of the staff in his hand, and fire flamed up from the rock and consumed all he had brought. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. ²² When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he cried out, “Oh, Sovereign Lord, I’m doomed! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” ²³ “It is all right,” the Lord replied. “Do not be afraid. You will not die.” ²⁴ And Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and named it Yahweh-Shalom (which means “the Lord is peace”). The altar remains in Ophrah in the land of the clan of Abiezer to this day.
• Luke 5:1-11 ¹ One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. ² He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. ³ Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. ⁴ When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.” ⁵ “Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.” ⁶ And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear! ⁷ A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking. ⁸ When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around you.” ⁹ For he was awestruck by the number of fish they had caught, as were the others with him. ¹⁰ His partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were also amazed. Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you’ll be fishing for people!” ¹¹ And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.
• Acts 16:6-10 ⁶ Next Paul and Silas traveled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia, because the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time. ⁷ Then coming to the borders of Mysia, they headed north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there. ⁸ So instead, they went on through Mysia to the seaport of Troas. ⁹ That night Paul had a vision: A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was standing there, pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” ¹⁰ So we decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us to preach the Good News there.

(From the Wired Word – 2/7/10)

It’s time to get serious about stewardship. It’s a topic we’ve managed to avoid for a while now and I carry some of the burden of responsibility for the lack of direction.

Please take some time to read this article and think through the thought questions that follow. I’m convinced we need to hear this.

Family Downsizes Home, Gives $800,000 to Charity

In the News

One day in 2006, Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, and his wife, Joan, were driving their 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, home from a sleepover. Stopping for a red light, Hannah noticed a Mercedes coupe on one side of the street and a homeless man begging for food on the other side. A thought suddenly struck her, and she said, "If that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal."

After the light changed, Hannah pursued the topic, pushing her parents about inequity and insisting that she wanted to do something personally. Finally, her mother, thinking to bring Hannah back to reality, asked, "What do you want to do? Sell our house?"

Wrong question for an idealistic teen.

Hannah leaped on that idea, urging her parents to sell their luxurious home and give half the proceeds to charity. They could buy a more modest home with the other half, she said.

Kevin acknowledges that they were fairly well off, "a result of hard work, good education and career luck," he says. And at the time, the family of four, including Hannah’s younger brother, Joseph, were living in an attractive, spacious, three-story home.

Hannah wasn’t deterred, and in the days ahead, she continued to promote the idea and finally got the rest of her family on board. The Salwens sold their home and moved into one that was half the size and, significantly, half the price of the one they sold. They ended up giving $800,000 to the Hunger Project, a New York City-based international development organization, where it’s being used to sponsor health, microfinancing, food and other programs for some 40 villages in Ghana.

The whole process brought the family closer together. They researched charities to find the right one to receive their gift. Along the way, they participated in World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine to learn what it was like to be hungry. They worked together at a local food bank and soup kitchen, and they labored on a team helping Habitat for Humanity build homes. They even traveled to Ghana with Hunger Project executive John Coonrod. The Salwens discovered that Coonrod and his wife donate so much back to the project from their modest aid-worker salaries that they’re among the top Hunger Project givers from New York.

But the family came together in another way as well. Kevin says that in the larger house, the family scattered in different directions, but after the downsizing, with less space to scatter to, the family members spend more time in proximity to one another. Unexpectedly, the smaller house turned out to be more family-friendly. "We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness," Kevin says.

The family who purchased the home the Salwens sold were so impressed with what the family was doing that they gave $100,000 to the same project.

The Salwens haven’t been without critics. Some have called them sanctimonious showoffs, and others have said they should be helping Americans instead of people in Ghana.

Kevin and Hannah have written a book about the whole experience. Titled The Power of Half, it’s due to be released in February. Their aim, the father and daughter say, isn’t to encourage others to sell their homes but rather to urge them to step off the treadmill of accumulation and define themselves more by what they give than by what they possess.

Hannah, now 17 and planning to become a nurse, says,

"Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half; you just have to find it."

More on this story can be found at these links:

What could you live without? New York Times

Why we gave away our home. Parade

The Power of Half. Salwen Family Blog

The Big Questions

1. How much of what you possess could you give away without harming your well-being?
2. What possessions or commodities do you have in quantities that are more than you need to be comfortable?
3. Under what circumstances might giving away most of your possessions to help others be the right thing to do?
4. What is the main biblical view of possessions?
5. To what degree and with whom does motive count when we do acts of charity?

Confronting the News with Scripture

• Genesis 13:2-12
• Luke 14:25-33
• Luke 19:1-9
• Acts 10:1-8
• 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

In the News

When the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, among the thousands of people caught inside collapsed buildings were three officers from the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) and three representatives from Interchurch Medical Assistance (IMA) World Health, a nonprofit that works in the developing world to provide free health-care services. All six were trapped inside the lobby of Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Montana when the four stories of that structure suddenly crumpled down on top of them.

The trio from UMCOR — Rev. James Gulley, Rev. Sam Dixon and Rev. Clint Rabb — were in Haiti to improve medical services and agricultural practices in that nation. Gulley, formerly a missionary to Nigeria and Cambodia, was a specialist in sustainable agriculture. Dixon was the head of UMCOR, and Rabb was the leader of its office of voluntary mission service.

They had come to the hotel to meet with the team from IMA World Health, which included Sarla Chand, an IMA officer; Rick Santos, chief executive of IMA; and Ann Varghese, a representative from Haiti.

After meeting in the lobby, the six started toward the restaurant but never got there. Because she had stopped to send an e-mail message from her laptop, Chand was a few steps behind the other five when she heard a noise followed by a blow to her head. "My laptop bag flew off in one direction, my (hand) bag flew off," Chand said. "I’m just being propelled forward. I don’t even have time to think of the wordearthquake."

That was followed by darkness and a moment of dead silence.

Eventually, each of the six spoke out in the darkness. Chand, Gulley, Santos and Varghese were okay, but Dixon and Rabb, who were pinned side by side under a large slab of concrete, both indicated that their legs were broken. But even those who were relatively unhurt could find no way out of the rubble, not even by using the light from their cell phones.

The six remained in that state of dark entrapment for the next 55 hours, until a French search-and-rescue team finally pulled them from the pancaked building. As it turned out, Dixon died shortly before he could be extracted, and Rabb died later in a Florida hospital to which he had been transported.

Both men, however, were conscious through the long, dark hours before the rescuers arrived. Gulley said that as the time passed, "We talked about faith, prayed together and sang. We sang ‘Peace Like a River’ several times."

Gulley said Dixon and Rabb were in great pain, and the rest tried to help as much as possible. Santos had some Aleve with him, which he gave them. "Sam was at an angle that put strong pressure on his legs," Gulley said of Dixon, "so we used laptop computers to brace his back. It would help for a time, and then we would have to rearrange it."

Santos also passed around a lollipop he had with him.

Gulley credits Chand, who was the nearest to the outside, with getting the attention of rescuers. Once she was pulled out, she insisted the rescuers keep digging for her colleagues. She also told them about two other people she knew were trapped in a nearby elevator.

When help finally came, Gulley and the others started singing the doxology, "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow."

Only hours after the rescue did Chand learn that two of those whose voices had comforted and guided her with words of faith during the ordeal had succumbed to their injuries.

"I have no answer about why I was given the gift of life and Sam and Clint were not," Gulley said in an interview with United Methodist News Service. "I can’t answer that any better than Job could answer why some people suffer more than others. All I can do is continue to try to use that gift in God’s service in whatever way it is intended. I’m grateful to be alive, and I accept that gift."

On Tuesday, a week after the earthquake, Joe Knerr, leader of the Fairfax County, Virginia, urban search-and-rescue team, said workers were still searching the Hotel Montana for survivors. But, he added, "Hotel Montana will have a large number of fatalities."

As of that day, 22 people had been pulled alive from the destroyed hotel, and 10 bodies had been recovered. But more people were known to have been inside. "We’ve searched with dogs and listened if there were voices," one rescue worker said. "No positive results."

More on this story may be found at these links:

Survivor: UMCOR trio kept faith in Haiti ruins. UMC.org

Haiti survivor Chand recalls hotel rescue. UMC.org

Quake victim recounts time buried alive, rescue. NPR

James Gulley recalls 55 hours in earthquake ruins. Global Ministries

Little hope left for Canadians trapped under Haiti’s Montana Hotel. The Province

The Big Questions

1. The Christian faith tells us we are in the hands of God. What does it mean for faithful people to be in the hands of God when in life-threatening situations from which some faithful people do not survive?

2. How is it possible to have "peace like a river" when one is drowning in the flow of circumstances?

3. If serious illness, deep troubles, life-threatening circumstances or something similar cause someone to cease to trust God, does that mean that person’s faith wasn’t real to begin with? Why or why not?

4. How might times of trouble actually restore or strengthen someone’s faltering faith?

5. If your life had been spared during a tragedy when others next to you died, how might that affect your relationship with God? How might it affect how you live the rest of your life?

Confronting the News with Scripture

Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

Acts 16:24-25

" … he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them." (For context, read 16:16-34.)

The situation of Paul and Silas, in prison at Philippi, was not unlike that of the Christians in the collapsed hotel in Haiti. They were in dire circumstances where they had absolutely no control over what would happen to them, and there was a good chance they would not even survive. Yet Paul and Silas, like the Christians in the hotel rubble, prayed and sang hymns to God.

This same phenomenon has been seen in the streets of Haiti, too, where some people who have lost everything are singing praises to God.

Question: What is it about terrible circumstances that sometimes causes people to sing to God? It that something like "whistling past a graveyard," or is there more to it?

Psalm 116:10

"I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted … ‘" (For context, read 116:1-19.)

Psalm 116 is a song of thanksgiving for recovery from an illness, and it must have been a life-threatening one, because the psalmist described it by saying in verse 3, "The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me." (Sheol was the abode of the dead, so "the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me" was like saying, "I had one foot in the grave.") But in the verse above, the psalmist declares that even in the depths of illness, he or she "kept my faith."

Questions: Was the psalmist’s ability to keep the faith through a trying time the result of his or her own fortitude, or was it because God made that possible? In other words, is courageous faith something we dredge up from within our own being or is it a gift of God?

Luke 1:38
"Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’" (For context, read 1:26-38.)

This is Mary’s response to the angel who informed her that she was to give birth to God’s Son. Given that she was unmarried, this unexpected pregnancy would make Mary the object of gossip and scorn, and almost make her husband-to-be turn away from her (see Matthew 1:19). Yet her response is one of deep trust. She speaks the words above as a "servant of the Lord" and indicates she will cooperate with whatever God wants for her, even if it will be difficult to go through.

Questions: In what ways can Mary’s response be a model for all people when they decide to follow Jesus?

2 Corinthians 1:9

"Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." (For context, read 1:8-11.)

Without naming the specific trouble, Paul here refers to an affliction he and a least one coworker "experienced in Asia" (v. 8), which may have been an imprisonment in Ephesus, the principal city of Asia. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that it seemed at the time like a death sentence. But in that trouble, Paul and his companion relied not on themselves but "on God who raises the dead." In other words, he counted on God for deliverance — if not in this life, then in the next.

Question: To what degree does the promise of eternal life help you face the unexpected dangers and trials of this life?

1 Peter 1:6-7

"In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith — being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." (For context, read 1:3-9.)

When Peter refers to suffering "various trials" and being "tested by fire," he is probably alluding to, among other things, persecution that some Christians were experiencing. But rather than advising fearfulness, he speaks of rejoicing in the troubles because they reveal the genuineness of one’s faith. Peter understands that by accepting Christ, Christians are secure in their salvation for the future; therefore, the present sufferings can be endured with hope, and those suffering can show how brightly faith shines.

Peter is not saying that God sends troubles to test Christians but that faith shows how real it is when trials nonetheless come.

Questions: Think of a time your faith has been tested by trial. What did you learn?

Questions for Further Discussion

1. What is your reaction to Rev. Gulley’s statement that "I have no answer about why I was given the gift of life and Sam and Clint were not"? What is your reaction to his conclusion: "All I can do is continue to try to use that gift in God’s service in whatever way it is intended. I’m grateful to be alive, and I accept that gift"?

2. Rev. Gulley and his companions were trapped by an earthquake and freed by humans. Paul and Silas were trapped humans and freed by an earthquake (Acts 16:26). What does this suggest about the ways of God?

3. What do you think should be the tone of the funerals for Revs. Dixon and Rabb? Why?

4. In what ways do you believe that our prayers here in America for the victims of the Haiti earthquake contribute to the faith, patience and hope that we see in the persons described in these reports?

5. What does the phrase "the fellowship of shared suffering" mean? Why might you describe it as a holy thing?

Responding to the News

The challenge here is to work at the spiritual disciplines — prayer, Bible reading, meditation, good deeds, etc. — to keep growing in faith. Right now, the discipline of giving is an important one, especially with so much human need in Haiti. 

Closing Prayer

O God, thank you for the gift of faith. Let it grow in us. Please strengthen and help all those who are working right now to save lives and tend to the needs of those who are suffering in Haiti. Enable those overseeing the work to quickly find ways to get the aid where it is needed. In the name of the compassionate Christ. Amen.

Blessings,

LJ