From Sampler to Sower

Teaching Series: Look Up

Message Title: Elijah Was a Man Just Like Us

Sermon in a Sentence: “Elijah was a a man, just like us. He prayed earnestly (James 5:17a).”

Text(s): Psalm 121:1-2, 1 Kings 16-18, James 5:17

Message Summary:

We started a new series at Water’s Edge this week called Look Up. The theme verse from the series is Psalm 121:1-2:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth (NIV).

The Psalmist asks where he can turn for help, and he knows the answer.  “My help comes from the Lord.”  When we need help, we don’t look to other things or other people.  We’re called to lift up our eyes and turn to God.  In this series we’ll be learning what it means to live a life a prayer — a life that looks up.

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We’re starting a new series at our midweek youth service, Water’s Edge, tonight.  The goal is to help our students learn to pray.  (Watch later in the week for a full summary of our service.)

We realize that it’s one thing to talk about prayer.  But learning to pray is like learning how to talk.  You don’t learn to talk by listening to lessons about talking.  You learn to talk by doing it.

So to help our students not just learn about prayer, but actually learn to pray, we’re preparing daily prayer cards.  They include a simple prayer prompt from one of the four types of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. It’s a way to give students something to talk to God about, and then turn them loose to do it.

Here are the first two weeks cards, along with a weekly Bible verse card for memorization.  They are in no particular order, in fact we plan to shuffle them up before we give them to students so no one has the cards in the same order.

Update: Here is the second, two-week set.

I’ve had a flood of messages coming in from people wanting to know my 2011 bracket picks so they can ride my prescience to victory in their bracket contests…

Actually, no one has asked, and that’s probably a demonstration of wisdom on their part.  However, in the interest of accountability, here’s my picks.

Of course, I should probably warn you, I have a tendency to pick who I want to win, rather than who I think will win.  I’m not willing to root against my favorite teams just for the sake of preserving my bracket.

And in case you were wondering, here’s what I was wearing while I made my picks…

It was early Sunday morning, March 13, 2011, the Sunday that churches in the Orthodox tradition would be celebrating the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the Seventh Ecumenical Council that formally addressed the iconoclast controversy in the Church and officially affirmed the use of icons in worship.  (For more about the history and theology involved in Triumph of Orthodoxy, see my post from yesterday.)

Of course, in our Nazarene congregation (Protestant, Wesleyan, Holiness) I may have been the only one who noticed. In many ways it was stretching our liturgical muscles just to recognize it as the first Sunday of Lent. It wasn’t the first time our congregation had observed the Lenten season, but for many of our people Lent is something relatively new rather than an old and welcome friend.  (Imagine that, Lent is new!)

I was in our video booth, working on preparing the visuals for use in our worship that morning. I’ve been re-reading Leonid Ouspensky’s Theology of the Icon and I found myself thinking through our use of imagery in worship. I was struck by how far from our Protestant iconoclastic roots many of our churches have come.  There was a day when using pictures along with our worship would have scandalized our theological forebears.  Now I rarely visit a church that doesn’t have some way of projecting words, pictures and videos onto a wall or screen for congregants to see.

Somehow I doubt St John of Damascus had any idea how thoroughly Orthodoxy would one day triumph.

Or has it?

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No one could describe the Word of the Father;
But when He took flesh from you, O Theotokos,
He consented to be described,
And restored the fallen image to its former state by uniting it to divine beauty.
We confess and proclaim our salvation in word and images.
(Kontakion on the Triumph of Orthodoxy)

Chances are you probably didn’t sing that hymn in worship yesterday. Let’s face it, chances are, you didn’t even know that yesterday was the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Yet Christians around the world who worship in congregations that are part of the Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrated what is, in their estimation at least, one of the most significant events of Church history: the Seventh Ecumenical Council, also known as Nicea II.

Let me save you a trip to your church history books. The seven truly Ecumenical Councils were synods held by the Church to which bishops from the whole of Christendom were called to wrestle with heresies confronting Christianity and to define the boundaries of orthodoxy.  (The Roman Catholic church considers 21 councils to be ecumenical; the Eastern Orthodox church only acknowledges seven.  It seems hard for me to consider any council not affirmed by both East and West to be truly ecumenical.  Either way, however, both main streams of Christianity consider Nicea II to be an Ecumenical Council.)

This council predated not only the Protestant reformation, it predated the Great Schism itself. It is a truly Ecumenical council, an event that all Christianity shares. In other words, this isn’t just their history. It is our history. And the truth it defended has profound implications for our theology and liturgical practice. Here’s why:

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Lent is a season of reflection and repentance, a time to do a hard reset on our priorities and fix our minds on things above, not on earthly things. But we’re youth workers, right? Of what do we have to repent?

(OK, at least some of us are youth workers. I realize I have plenty of readers who aren’t actively involved in youth ministry. If that’s you, you’re more than welcome here too.)

In light of that question, I’d like to take a closer look at how we do ministry, as well as how we live our daily lives, to see if there isn’t still room for repentance this Lenten season. To that end, I’m starting a new series on some of the attitudes and actions that threaten the effectiveness and Christlikeness of our ministry. I’ll be addressing them under the rubric of the seven deadly sins, starting with the sin of gluttony.  But first a word about the sins in general.

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“Brethren, while fasting bodily, let us also fast spiritually. Let us loosen every bond of injustice. Let us destroy the strong fetters of violence. Let us tear up every unjust writing. Let us give bread to the hungry and let us welcome the homeless poor into our houses, that from Christ our God we may receive the great mercy.” (Stichira, Wednesday of the First Week)

As I was reading Alexander Schmeman’s phamphet Great Lent: A School of Repentance yesterday, I came across this sticheron, written to be used as part of Orthodox worship on Clean Wednesday, the first Wednesday in the Great Lent.

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Looking at my analytics, several visitors to the site have come here over the last few days searching for examples of an Ash Wednesday order of service, or guidance as to what to say during the imposition of ashes.  I realize this post is probably too late for most planning 2011 services, for future reference, here is our Ash Wednesday service for 2011.

Prelude

Reflection

We will sing “There is None Like You”.  In between verses, the following Scriptures will be read:

• Deuteronomy 32:3-4
• 1 Chronicles 29:10-11
• Isaiah 40:25-26, 28-29

Then we will sing “I Love You, Lord”

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The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say

‘That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming, said Pippin. ‘Or is it one of your imitations? It does not sound altogether encouraging.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Frodo. ‘It came to me then, as if I was making it up, but I may have heard it long ago.  Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years before he went away.  He often used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is know knowing where you might be swept off to.”‘ (From J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Book One, Chapter 3)

Perhaps my favorite quote of my favorite book of all time (as long as like Tolkien, you view the Lord of the Rings as a single book).  This quote unlike any other captures the mystery of adventure and the thrill of travel.

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It started with a simple question from my brother-in-law.

“What do you think about the sex demonstration at Northwestern.”

At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about.  The story of the controversial after-class demonstration from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL had been big news in northern Illinois where Mark lives.  It hadn’t yet garnered any attention here in rural Indiana. I had to look it up to find out more.

So in case you’re anything like me, here’s the gist of the story.  Dr. J. Michael Bailey teaches a course in human sexuality at Northwestern University.  As part of the class, he routinely schedules optional, after-class panel discussions to address issues raised in class from various perspectives.

On February 21 the class concluded with information about just one such discussion.  Students were warned that panel discussion on “Networking for Kinky People” would contain graphic information of an obviously sexual nature.  The only problem, Dr. Bailey himself at the time had no concept of just how graphic the demonstration would prove.

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