You are the God who makes all things new

A Prayer of Adoration based on Mark 1: 21 -28 (Epiphany 4) 

You are the God who makes all things new.
You open new possibilities where we see no way forward.
You bring new life where we have run out of power and strength.
For those times when we have experienced your creativity in our lives, we give you joyful praise.

There are times, though, when your silence
and your hiddenness
make it hard to praise,
to trust,
to keep on in faith.

Sometimes, all we can do is to 
bring those times with us into worship.
So here we are.

We wait
We listen
We yearn to hear your promise renewed. 

At the heart of our faith
is the mystery that you are a God 
who comes to us in weakness:
you enter the deepest wounds
with healing mercy and grace;
your suffering brings our salvation.

So, we dare to bring you
the weakness that overtakes our best intentions,
the wounds that will not heal,
the suffering that cries to you for help.

Speak your Word again, we pray,
so that our lives may give witness
to your life-giving purpose for all creation.

Holy God, we have signed on to follow your Son,
as he feeds the hungry,
and defends the most vulnerable among us,
speaks for those who have been silenced.

Where we have grown weary,|
where we have grown afraid of the risks
that such following entails,
renew us,
give us fresh courage,
give us your life and energy and strength.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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“The God of New Beginnings”

A sermon based on Mark 1: 21 -28

The God we worship is a God of new beginnings. Over and over and over again, God enters into a situation where it looks like people have come to a dead end, where everything seems to be locked down. God enters into those situations and gets creative. God brings something new and good to life.

Think through the Bible stories you have heard. Where have you seen that happening?

There’s Genesis 1: “In the beginning, there is nothingness, a soupy mess, a formless void. The Spirit of God hovers over the waters, God speaks and a new creation springs forth.

There’s Genesis 11: Communities of people were stuck living in ways that did not yield life or goodness. Through Noah, God makes a new beginning.

There’s the story of the Hebrew slaves, newly escaped from slavery in Egypt, running from the Egyptian army and facing an insurmountable barrier — the Red Sea. Through Moses, God creates a way where there was not way. 

There’s the story of the people of Israel, stuck in Babylon, wondering how they will be God’s people in such a foreign land. God tells them to settle in and seek the welfare of the place where they are. In Israel, they had worship centred in the Temple in Jerusalem. In Babylon, when they could no longer worship in the Temple, they found a new way to gather to worship —  synagogue. And many of the rich prayers of the Psalms come out of this time when their usual way of doing things was disrupted. 

Whenever you are reading the gospels, pay attention when you read the words “on the first day of the week”. What happens on the first day of the week? God takes a dead-end situation and makes a new creation. God bring life where we expect no life and no future.

Mark begins his gospel with the words, “The beginning of the good news. . .” He puts us on notice: we are in Genesis time. A new creation is on the horizon.

Here’s what God’s new creation looks like: Jesus shows up and gets baptized. He gets tempted by Satan in the wilderness. He proclaims: The time is fulfilled. The Reign of God is at hand”.  He gathers a community together.

Jesus starts God’s new beginning, God’s new creation, and the first place he goes is to worship in Capernaum. Does that not seem strange to you? Where is Capernaum? 

Capernaum was a fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1500 people. Jesus begins his ministry by bringing God’s new creation to an obscure fishing village on the edge of the Roman Empire. He begins by showing up at a regular weekly worship service. What do you make of that?

If you were going to start something new, make a new start, make a new community that would change the world, would a small church’s weekly worship service be the place you would go first? God decides to get creative and he shows up at worship! Does that surprise you?

Tom Long tells the story of being a young pastor in his first church. He was talking with three young girls in a class on the basics of Christian faith. He asked the children if they knew what Pentecost was all about. The children looked at him in silence. So, Dr. Long told them the story of a worship service where God’s people were gathered together and there was a great rush of wind. Flames of fire came down from heaven and rested on the people. The people were from different countries. They spoke many different languages. Nevertheless, when the flames rested on them, they all started speaking and each person could hear and understand what was being said. Then the people left the worship service and they went into their communities. They had the power of God’s Holy Spirit with them. They began healing the sick and sharing their possessions with other people who were in need. They began doing the kinds of things Jesus did. They started changing their world. 

The children’s eyes were wide with amazement. Finally, one young girl spoke up. “Excuse me, Rev. Long,” she said, “but when did this happen? I think my family and I must have been away that Sunday.”  ( https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2003134/view )

When Dr. Long reflected on that story years later, he realized that the really beautiful thing about it is that the young girl believed that such a thing could happen at her church — that her church really could be a place where the Holy Spirit showed up and brought new life to all the people there.

I have a book on my shelves with the title The Dangerous Act of Worship. Do you think of worship as being dangerous? Do you think of worship as being risky? Do you come to worship on Sundays and wonder if Jesus is going to show up and astound us with an announcement that God is on the move? 

Mark says that, when Jesus showed up in Capernaum one sleepy morning and began teaching those people who had gathered for worship, he was interrupted by a man who was deeply disturbed. The man started yelling, “What business do you have here with us, Jesus? I know what you are up to! You’re the Holy One of God and you’ve come to destroy us!”

I don’t really know what to make of that. Many of the translations of this passage say that the man was possessed of an ‘unclean spirit’ but I could not find a very satisfying explanation of what exactly that might mean. Somewhere I read that the notion of ‘clean/unclean’ was a liturgical category — “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” (Psalm 24: 3,4). Perhaps the man with the ‘unclean spirit’ was a liar, someone who didn’t speak the truth, someone who lived by deceit. Whatever the unclean spirit was, it was afraid of Jesus, of what Jesus might be doing.

I do not really know what do make of this part of the story but I do know that being afraid is a normal response to the disruption and unsettledness of these days. I do know that it is easy to get caught up in being angry at whatever we think might be causing the disruption. So much of what we have counted on to order our lives is being dismantled, destroyed, put in jeopardy. These are hard days. Hope and creativity and a sense of well-being are hard to come by.

When we show up for worship, we set ourselves under the stories and teachings of Jesus. We tell the truth about our lives as best we can. We direct our attention towards God, listening, leaning in, yearning for a life-giving Word that will give us the courage and strength we need to keep on keeping on.

In all of that, God is at work forming us into God’s new creation. It is slow work. It is often painful as God exposes the fantasies and illusions by which we have shaped our lives. God’s work is often hidden and can only be seen in hindsight, as we look back and see where we have been in light of where we are now. 

Nevertheless, we keep opening ourselves to God’s Spirit and something happens: what is being lost gradually becomes less compelling than what God is bringing to birth within us and among us and around us. Our eyes and our minds and our hearts gradually wake up to the Holy Spirit blowing the fear away, breathing wonder into the anxious places in our souls instead. Our spirits fill with wonder that God is showing up again — in our lives, in the places where we work and play, in our world.

God’s new creation is a place where the most vulnerable are honoured and cared for, where the stranger finds a welcome, where those who suffer find healing and hope.

God is showing up again, doing what God does:

• brooding over the unsettledness of our days
• stirring up our lives and speaking the Word that gives us a new world
• making a way where there is no way
• bringing new life 
• setting captives free
• creating, saving redeeming
• and, through it all, leading us deeper and deeper into God’s good and holy love.

“What’s going on here?”, we ask with the people in Jesus’ first congregation. What’s going on is God’s creative, transforming, world-changing, life-giving work. God beginning agin. With us. Here. Now. Thanks be to God.

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The Prayer of Confession

A sermon based on John 20: 19-23

The very first worship service of the Christian Church took place in the evening of the first Easter Sunday. The gospel of John says that the disciples were gathered “in the house”. All the earliest churches were house churches. The followers of Jesus would gather in someone’s home. They would tell the stories of Jesus; they would share the meal as Jesus had given it to them; they would pray together. That was the shape of their worship.

As John tells it, the first worship service wasn’t much of a service at all. There were no announcements about upcoming fundraisers and programmes. Even though it was Easter, there were no special anthems sung by the choir. The worship leader didn’t say, “Christ is risen!” and the people didn’t respond, “He is risen indeed!” There were no joyful shouts of “Alleluia!” In fact, the congregation seemed to be having trouble getting past the Prayer of Confession.

That morning, some of the women had brought news of having found the tomb empty. They told of messengers telling them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Mary said that she had actually seen Jesus and that he had talked with her. He had told her he was “ascending to the Father”, whatever that might mean. However, when the disciples gathered that evening, they locked the doors behind them.

They were afraid of the Judeans, the religious authorities. They were troubled. They were troubled not just by events in the world around them; they were troubled in their own hearts and minds. You can imagine that they were still reeling from the loss and the grief of Jesus’ death just a few days previous to this. They were confused about the reports from the women at Jesus’ tomb. I may be reading too much into it, but they were probably enveloped with a sense of failure and guilt and shame for having deserted Jesus. William Willimon called this, “the church of the sweaty palms and shaky knees and firmly bolted door. . .  All who were there had gotten an “F” in following Jesus. (“You Call This A Church?”)

The worship service seemed to have stalled there. They couldn’t get past the Prayer of Confession.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, Jesus shows up. He pronounces the “Assurance of Pardon”, the “Assurance of Grace”. He says, “Peace be with you.”  He could have said, “You guys really messed up.” He could have said, “Shame on you. I thought we were friends. Where were you when I needed you?” He didn’t. He said, “Peace be with you.”

He showed them the wounds in his side and hands. Then, he said it again, “Peace be with you.” The disciples were experiencing everything except peace and Jesus offers them this great gift of God’s mercy and grace.

He offers it not just in the first church service on the first Easter. He offers it to us every Sunday. We gather together and we bring with us the trouble that we have been carrying all week long. Most of the time we keep the trouble locked behind the closed doors of our hearts. We keep it hidden, but it is still there.

There’s trouble in the world — in the streets of London, England; in the refugee camps in the Sudan; in the sea between North Korea and Japan; in the Arctic where the ice cap is melting at accelerated rates.

There’s trouble in this neighbourhood where people are grieving the death of someone they love and parents are worried about the drug addictions of their children; and young people search for a reason to live.

There’s trouble in our own hearts and minds: the fears and worries; the regrets and sense of failure; the guilt and shame that haunt our souls.

We bring all that with us into worship. In the Prayer of Confession, we tell the truth about it to God.

Some churches no longer have a prayer of confession in their worship services. “That’s too negative,” they say. “We don’t want to make people feel bad. People come to church to feel good.”

The point of the Prayer of Confession is not to make people feel bad. The point of the Prayer of Confession is to make a space where we can tell the truth about the troubles that makes us afraid. It gives you a place where you can tell the truth about the things that you have done that cannot be made right. It gives you a place to speak the guilt and shame that is crippling your soul.

Together, we tell the truth and we offer all of it to our crucified and risen Lord. Then, we listen. We listen for his offer of forgiveness, he release from the burden, his “Peace be with you.”

The Prayer of Confession proclaims: You don’t have to keep carrying your guilt. You don’t have to keep letting fear drive your life. You don’t have to let shame hold you in its grip. Failure doesn’t need to turn to into a victim. Jesus went to hell and back to free you from all that. With grace more powerful than death, God takes you old life and gives you a new one. You can begin again, in a different place. You can move down a different path. You are no longer a victim. You are no longer “guilty”. You are forgiven and graced and redeemed and made new and set free.

I read once about a prison chaplain who had on his desk a framed photograph of a Christmas pageant. There were angels in white robes, holding candles and bringing “good news of great joy”. There were the shepherds kneeling and looking like they were frightened. Except, the characters in the photograph were not children as we are used to seeing in Christmas pageants. The shepherds and angels in this photo were rough looking men. They were convicts — convicted of murder and violent crimes; criminals serving time in jail. Yet, there they were, men who had been transformed by Christ, acting out the story of the birth of Jesus. When the chaplain was asked why he kept the photograph on his desk, he said, “It reminds me of the awesome power of God to change us, to set us free, to give us new life.” (William Willimon, People Don’t Change — Do They?”)

We proclaim that truth every Sunday. Sometimes you will believe it. Sometimes, you will be glad and you will worship Jesus and you will find your way into the new life he offers. Sometimes, you will hear the gospel and you will doubt it. You will say with Thomas, “Unless I can touch Jesus’ wounds, I won’t believe that a new beginning is possible.”

What do you do when you are in that space? You keep showing up, Sunday by Sunday. You “practice resurrection”. You practice resurrection until you experience resurrection in your life. You do the slow work of making a space where God can work: you tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” as best you can. You confess the trouble, the mess, the fears and the doubts. Then, you wait for the risen Christ to show up and say, “Peace be with you.”

That’s why we share the peace of Christ every week. We practise with our voices and with our bodies the peace that Christ gives. We practise living into what Jesus says is God’s own truth about our lives. We practise trusting that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is at work in our lives too, forgiving sin, making all things new. We practise until, one day, Jesus enters the locked doors of our spirits. Then, we know we are forgiven. We know we have received the underserved mercy and grace of God. You know God’s peace is setting is setting you free and you can begin again. Thanks be to God.

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God of the new creation in Christ

God of the new creation in Christ,
God of new beginnings,
we come to you this day
in daring hope
That you can begin again in us.

Redeem us from our slavery to fear and anxiety;
rescue us from pride and jealousy;
restore us to the healing mission of your Holy Spirit;
renew in a a passion for your work.

We set our lives within your renewing grace.
By your Holy Spirit,
forgive us,
revive us
reshape us
in the image of your Son Jesus,
for we would serve him
to whom we owe our life
our salvation
our hope.

 

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“Take us with you as you pray”

God of mercy,
Saviour of the world,
Healer of our souls,
you come to us in our brokenness and sin.
You invite us to follow you into your realm of
love and reconciliation.

We open our lives to you
so that your Holy Spirit may do for us
what we cannot do for ourselves.

There are days,
weeks,
sometimes months,
when the sin and violence of this world overwhelm us;
when the hurt and anger silence our songs of praise to you.

On those days, Lord Jesus,
take us with you as you pray.
Show us your glory that even death cannot defeat.
Write deep into our lives your truth and love:
the truth,
the love,
that will one day
rule the world
and is
even now
making all things new.
So may we receive your grace and your courage
to keep us on this journey in faith.

As in our baptism you cleansed us and made us new,
so, today, we ask you to cleanse us again:
heal our lack of trust in your grace;
help us to start again where we have stumbled and fallen down;
restore in us the joy you have prepared for all your children.

Your claim upon us summons us into your promised newness.
Now we live in the wide open spaces of God’s steadfast love and mercy.
Thanks be to God!

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The Voice That Gives Life

A prayer based on Mark 1: 21-28

You are the God who makes us.
By your powerful, creative Word
you made the heavens and the earth
and all living things.

By your powerful, creative Word
you are still making new beginnings
where we can only see dead ends;
new life springing forth
from the chaos of our world.

We come to this time of worship
having listened to other voices —
voices that lead us to fear and anxiety,
to despair and resentment,
to cynicism and weariness.
There is no life in them
but they are strong and persistent
and we are easily held in their grip.

We come here wanting to hear your voice
override our fears and our weariness.
We come here waiting to hear your voice
speak a life-giving word —
a word with the authority and power
to create new hope and purpose within us,
among us.

Speak, Lord, for your children wait.

Then, grant us courage to trust your Son
as we walk down the road together,
the road that leads toward life and joy.  Amen.

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It sounds like good news

A prayer based on Isaiah 65 and Luke 21

Source of Life,
Source of our lives:
You are the one who makes new futures where none seem possible;
You open a path forward when all we can see are blocked roads.
Your prophets speak hope into our imaginations —
hope for a time of peace;
hope for a time of justice;
hope for joy and delight in the streets of the city.

It sounds like such good news
but you know the ways that we resist
the changes that you bring.

We are afraid of your new futures
that are not in our control.
We find it hard to let go
of the familiar and the comfortable,
the places of privilege we have carved out for ourselves.

Your newness is different than what we had planned.
Yet, we yearn for the life that your presence brings.
Our spirits wither without your breath.

So, speak your world-transforming words
into our hearts and imaginations again.
And send Your Holy Spirit to breathe into us
so that we see You at work.
And seeing You,
we are ready to let go and to take up
and to be your people
even in this newness.

We pray in the name of Jesus
who promised us both trouble
and words and wisdom sufficient for the time.
Amen.

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What happens in worship?

I’m attending the annual meeting of the Association for Reformed and Liturgical Worship, a group of congregations, individuals and congregations focused on promoting, supporting the practice of worship in the reformed tradition.
Last evening, John Witvliet, quoted Howard Hageman: “We have convinced our people that nothing happens in church”. Is that true in your experience? Is that why young people stay away in droves? Why people would rather be golfing or playing soccer on a Sunday morning? Are they convinced that nothing significant is happening when we worship?
I wonder how congregational ministers perceive the place of worship in the health of the congregation?
I served one congregation where worship was seen either as a convenient vehicle for recruiting people for social justice issues (everyone was gathered all in one place at the same time, so the people were a ‘captive audience’), or as something that had to be done because this was a church, but worship wasn’t really important the way social justice was important.
In what ways would our worship be different if the people of the congregation were convinced that worship is the most important thing the church does? Worship is certainly a counter-cultural act — focusing on somebody besides ourselves and on something besides our own needs for a sustained period of time; engaging in non-productive activity as a way of reminding ourselves that we are not in control of the world (God is and can keep the world going even when we ease up for a short period of time); learning to live in community with people who are not part of our own ‘affinity group’; singing songs that won’t make the top 100; listening to stories of a peculiar God actively at work in the world; giving money to people who won’t ever repay us.
Perhaps our most counter-cultural claim about worship is that God is at work in it, speaking to us, feeding us, forming us. Worship isn’t just about us getting our spiritual needs met. It’s about submitting our lives to God to let God work in them. It’s about letting God transform us. It’s about entering into something that is beautiful and good and creative. We get to participate something deeper and bigger than our own little lives — something worth giving our lives to; something that gives our lives hope.
That ‘something’ is the resurrection that God is making out of our dead ends. It is the new beginning that God is making out of the chaos and disorder of our world. It is the new possibility that God is opening up before us when we thought all options had been exhausted.
There is a lot going on in worship that is significant — that is changing the world and changing our lives. What would it take for us to become more aware of that and, so, not want to miss out?
Just wondering.

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God’s Unsettling Work in our Churches

A prayer based on Psalm 77

“I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord”
Exodus
making a way through the sea
water above
water below
chaos
the world falling apart
BECAUSE
Yahweh has shown up.

It was You, making the deep trembling!
It was You, causing the disturbance!
unsettling
noise crashing
lights flashing

We wanted less disturbance,
a safe shelter in the storm.
We blame those who upset
the settled peace we have made
with decline
with death
with despair.

Hidden beneath our distress
You are at work
churning the waters
so there’s space for new creation.
“Your way, O God, is holy”
and we miss it
when we resist your unsettling mighty deeds.

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A God who makes all things new

A prayer upon reading Revelation 21

Living God,
Maker of heaven and earth,
we come into your presence
and we know ourselves to be recipients of
great and wonderful gifts —
the earth, the sky, the waters —
given to us here in such abundance and beauty.
We lead enormously privileged lives.
Don’t let our comfort blind us to the newness
you are making in our midst —
a newness that is taking us in directions
we would not choose on our own;
a newness that moves our safe horizons
out beyond what we can control.
This much does not change:
You are our God; we are your people,
bound to you by the love of Jesus Christ
and by the call of your Holy Spirit.
Faithful God, hold us deep in that truth
even as you move us into your new creation.
Creating and re-creating God,
take us in our uncertainties
and make us new.
We pray in the name of your Son,
who has gone ahead of us into your new future
and who beckons us follow. Amen.

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