Rural Rev » Sermons

Christmas Pickles

pastoralex4 — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 20:35:54 +0000

My congregation and I continued our Advent preparation today with a message drawn from Matthew 3:1-12. Because we celebrated the baptism of one of our youth in worship today, the text couldn’t have been more fitting. It allowed us to focus on the way that the message of John “The Baptizer” calls all of us to repentance and baptism–not just as a one-time event–but as on ongoing reality in our lives.

The image of ‘soaking’ in the baptismal waters led me to the image from which the sermon title was drawn: Christmas Pickles. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this tradition, but at least some sources attribute it to a German custom. Supposedly, after the children had gone to bed on Christmas Eve a pickle was hidden among the boughs of the Christmas tree. Then on Christmas morning, the first child to find the pickle received an extra gift.

As I explained to my church, therefore, the title “Christmas Pickles” reminds us A) that God wants to give us a gift at Christmas: the gift of a new life; and B) that we must decide (and keep deciding): Will we be baptized cucumbers (who get dunked and that’s the end of it)…or will we be “Christmas Pickles” (who continue to immerse our lives in the living waters of Christ?

Christmas Pickles

Christmas Questions

pastoralex4 — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:10:25 +0000

Advent is a season intended to help all of us prepare our hearts so that we can experience anew the wonderful gift that comes to us in the Child of Bethlehem. But as I told my congregation this past Sunday, it seems that more and more these days the things I do to get ready for Christmas actually make it harder for me to BE ready for Christmas. But the epistle lesson for this first Sunday in Advent (Romans 13:11-14) offers us three “Christmas Questions,” which–if allowed to penetrate our lives–can aid us in our preparation. Here’s wishing all my friends the grace-gift of being ready for Christmas.

Christmas Questions

And Then Add…Brotherly Kindness and Love

pastoralex4 — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:28:38 +0000

Today marked the conclusion of my Fall message series: And Then Add…Recipe for a Godly Life. In order to be ready for Advent next Sunday, we had to squeeze two of the virtues mentioned in 2 Peter 1:3-8 into this Sunday: brotherly kindness and love. Compared to some earlier sermons in this series, it was a lot of ground to cover. But I hope that I managed to communicate the main contours of both philadelphia (brotherly kindness) and agape’ (love)…and to drive home the point that we need both if we are to reproduce the character of Christ within us.

Of course, the greatest value of the series to me has been the reminder–that no matter how we struggle to allow Christ-like virtues to flourish within us–God’s “divine power has already given us everything we need for a godly life” (2 Peter 1:3). Ultimately, if we will entrust our lives to our Heavenly Father, He will be faithful to complete the good work He has begun within us.

So here’s to “adding to your faith”! May your growth in virtue keep you from being “ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:8)

And Then Add…Brotherly Kindness and Love

And Then Add…Godliness

pastoralex4 — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:05:23 +0000

Today, my congregation and I drew near to the end of our Fall message series rooted in 2 Peter 1:3-8–And Then Add…Recipe for a Godly Life. For me, at least, this study of key virtues that keep us from being “ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus” has been thought-provoking and energizing. But today–sandwiched between perseverance (last week’s virtue) and love (next week’s virtue)–we arrived at godliness…and I find myself wondering if we couldn’t use several more weeks just to pause and dig more deeply in this one spot.

I attempted to ‘unpack’ godliness using 1 Peter 3:13-17, a passage that allowed us to talk about godliness in terms of the way we revere Christ as Lord…the hope that people should notice in our lives…the way we should be prepared to ‘give an answer’ for that hope…and the fact that we should give that answer with gentleness and respect. But it seems there’s so much left to say:

I’d love to reflect on the ‘lack of attention’ and/or ‘bum rap’ that godliness gets these days. I don’t know many people who have a clearly expressed desire to become more godly. Maybe that’s just not a term we use anymore…or maybe godliness isn’t something we want.
I’d like to talk about our misperceptions about godliness. Godliness is not pious, holier-than-thou legalism. Jesus was the most godly person who ever lived (from my perspective, anyway), and yet society’s outcasts (the lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and other ‘sinners’) were happy and eager to spend time around him.
And then, I’d love to tell and hear stories about our godliness is (or isn’t) working itself out in our lives. What are our key struggles? What helps? What gets in the way?

Maybe I’ll have to come back to the topic in a future series. For now, I can only offer this: And Then Add…Godliness

And Then Add…Perseverance

pastoralex4 — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:49:36 +0000

Today’s message marked the mid-way point in the 7 virtues that my congregation and I are examining as part of our Fall message series. Appropriately, our virtue du jour was “perseverance”–just the virtue one needs when you’re halfway home but still have a long way to go. As I’m sure is true of most churches, my congregation is full of people who currently faced with the challenge of enduring through difficult times. I hope that this sermon gave us all some good reasons to persevere.

And Then Add…Perseverance

And Then Add…Self-Control

pastoralex4 — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:03:27 +0000

Since this Sunday happened to fall on Halloween, it seemed more than just a little providential that our Fall message series (“And Then Add – Recipe for a Godly Life’) brought us today to the virtue of self-control. In my experience, at least, Halloween is not a holiday associated with exercising restraint. Instead, the whole observance tends to revel in excess. But I hope that our investigation of 1 Thessalonians 5:4-11 allowed members of my congregation to consider the nature of self-control and some of the ‘key spiritual realities’ that make it so important.

And Then Add…Self-Control

And Then Add…Knowledge

pastoralex4 — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:10:23 +0000

Today’s sermon on “Knowledge” represented Step 3 in our Fall message series: And Then Add…Recipe for a Godly Life. For most of my adult life, I’ve been an ‘acedemically-oriented’ person (I believe that “study geek” is the alternate term), so this message had a real ‘hook’ for me. I care a lot (sometimes too much?) about what I know…and I care about what the people I’m supposed to be equipping know. But as I suggest in my sermon, when it comes to the mysteries of faith, the knowledge that we need to ‘add’ isn’t ultimately ‘knowledge about.’ It’s ‘knowledge of.’ It’s not what we know, but Who we know. Of course, it’s probably difficult (if not impossible) to know God unless we also know something about God. So this message–drawing on 2 Peter 1:3-8 and Colossians 1:9-14–seeks to unpack those dynamics.

And Then Add…Knowledge

And Then Add…Goodness

pastoralex4 — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 18:02:03 +0000

Our fall message series on 2 Peter 1:3-8 continued today with a focus on “goodness.” As I indicated in my sermon, goodness is something of a ‘weak word’ in our culture these days. We want to look good and feel good. On occasion, we may even make the choice to do some good. But God wants to make us BE good…which is something different altogether. So how do we ‘become’ good? Well, in the end goodness is only a gift that we can receive through God’s grace. But there are some things we can do to open our lives so that we’re ready to receive that grace. And what are those things? Read on in…

And Then Add…Goodness

And Then Add…

pastoralex4 — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:37:17 +0000

After taking a Sunday off for a little vacation (it’s amazing how exciting AND how exhausting moving into a new church facility can be), I was back in the pulpit this week with the first installment in a new message series: And Then Add: Recipe for Godly Living. Taking its cue from 2 Peter 1:3-8, the series will focus on the key virtues that we need to add to our faith so that we won’t be “ineffective and unproductive” in our knowledge of Christ. For today, however, we emphasized the fact that God has already given us everything we need for a godly life.

What do you think we’ve already received that makes a godly life possible? I chose to emphasize three things: God’s Word, God’s People, and God’s Presence.

And Then Add…

Made for Something More

pastoralex4 — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:54:54 +0000

About a month ago, my congregation started the process of moving into a new church home. Although there are still things that remain to be moved, adjusted and figured out; I feel like we can say that this transition is now complete. We’ve had three Sundays in our new building, and–while not everything has been perfect–it has been a great beginning to the adventure that lies ahead.

In various ways, I’ve tried to let my sermons this month help us think biblically about this transition and about our new facility. Today, using a passage from Revelation, I wanted us to remember that having a new church building is not our ultimate goal. We were “made for something more”: a transformed life that we will one day share with our Father in heaven…but a transformed life that begins now as we allow Christ and the Holy Spirit to do their work within us.

Please continue to pray that God will allow us to experience that ‘something more’…as we worship, grow and serve together.

Made for Something More