Wait

Sermon

Advent 1
Service of Nine Words,
Ocean Forest
Sunday November 27, 2011.

Wait

Isaiah 35:1-10

Friends, every year we run into this Advent theme of waiting and every year this grand vision of Isaiah appears on our horizon to reassure us that there is a grand plan in all of the goings on of our life and our church.

This picture of God’s enduring reality that is meant to carry us through whatever we are experiencing, particularly doubt, fear ad anxiety about our future is beautiful and needed.

I wonder whether this Advent of all of the last 8 here at Ocean Forest is the most full of  these  realities of fear, doubt and anxiety about waiting and pondering what is going to happen to us.

I feel this fear and uncertainty as I pull away from you and feel your sadness and anxiety. I sense that you sense that you are now going to be waiting in a way you have never waited before as a congregation of followers of Jesus.

When will we be able to organise ourselves to do what we need to do and call another pastor to come and lead us? When will another Pastor come and live with us and lead us? When will we feel like we are “normal” again as the new year begins and a pastor joins us and we pick up where we have left off before this strange time of loss and waiting came upon us?

All very expected questions and very human feelings attached to these questions about how things will be.

It always amazes me that these beautiful words of hope from Isaiah were spoken into a situation full of doubt and fear. These words of God were spoken into a situation of being totally cut off from what had been. These words were spoken to a community in forced exile from their home land. They had lost it all, not unlike those families who have lost it all in Margaret River.

These words speak into complete loss – Loss of home, income, status, identity and faith community. God’s people are in a hostile and foreign place that is eating away at their hope in a gracious and faithful God.

Where is the God of those great and mighty acts of salvation and love? Where is Moses? Where is the sea parting and the enemy dying? Where is hope and faith and future and peace and belonging and life as God promises?

These are the human questions we ask of each other, the church and the Lord and they are questions meant to be asked with a view to hearing a response.

For God’s people, there is questioning and there is listening. Sometime I wonder whether we do all the questioning but can’t seem to do the listening. The questioning of God’s presence and faithfulness gives us something to talk about. The listening takes our own words away and requires an open heart and a still mouth with big ears – and of course, PATIENCE.

Can we hear the still small voice of God now….

¹ The desert and the parched land you are pondering now will be glad;
the wilderness of no pastor, little music and sense of well-being will rejoice and blossom again.

These worrying days will burst into bloom at the right time; You will eventually shout for joy at hat God has done for you. You will see a glimpse of the glory of the LORD, the splendour of our God. To troubled people God then calls for a response in these Advent days of waiting:

³ Strengthen those feeble hands and steady those knees that give way; (not just your own)
⁴ say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear; your God will come and deliver.

Isaiah was sure against all insecurity. he was form against all wavering and doubting. So am I. The Lord will deliver and in the meantime, he will shape you individually and together in ways that have never happened for us here. We are in new ground again – but it is God’s ground.

I call you with Isaiah to be there for each other. Say things to each other. Say things that encourage and build up like never before and in new ways. God will be in your speaking and doing. This is his promise today.

Amazingly, through this trusting and encouraging and doing good things for each other, your eyes will be opened to new things. Your blindness to God’s presence in your life will be taken away and life will look different when the new road is in place ahead.

⁵ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

There is a new road ahead for this congregation in mission. There is no getting around it now. But again, it is God’s construction. It is a people road and we are all people under construction.

             ⁸ And a highway will be there;
          it will be called the Way of Holiness;
          it will be for those who walk on that Way.

But only the redeemed will walk there,
¹⁰ and those the LORD has rescued will return.

This road of the next months is ours and it is the Lord’s and it will be a means through which he affirms in you your "set apartness", your "specialness," as his uniquely gifted and faithful people in this place.

Even now we can at least imagine the end of this new road of faith in Jesus. Isaiah does. We can too… 

They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.  

 

Wait by questioning

Wait by listening

Wait by speaking encouraging words to each other.

Wait by practicing patience: the patience of faith; a trusting patience that the road is the Lord’s and he has placed you on it – you who are holy and blameless in his sight through your baptism and through the Living Word, Jesus Christ that you serve and love.

Strange Place

Strange being in this "in-between" place where we have made another big decision to change the course of our lives by taking a Call to another community 3000km's away from where we have been serving for 8 years.

This kind of decision is nothing new to us or many people from many different walks of life. Half the people I know have made these huge decisions - people like the many South Africans or Zimbabweans who have left their home country to make a new life in Australia; or the many teaching staff who have left their home to come and work in Dalyellup, or the many rural people who long ago, packed up the truck and drove the long Nullarbor road a generation ago to settle on virgin land in the WA wheat belt...... Sometimes life and living it with a responsiveness to people, church, country and God demands these big decisions that bring big change.

This is the second time that my wife and I have packed up our lives and moved away from our home country to South Australia. The first time was in 1989. Now 22 years later, we are doing the very same thing! Then we were a young married couple. I was ready for adventure and Leanne was rather more unconvinced about "adventure". But, she came and we went and the rest is history.

Now we leave with three of our four children in tow a little more money and better furniture and a joint will to live the next chapter of our lives.

Similar doubt about our ability to cope and do well appear. I left WA in 1989 to take up a youth worker job in a large inner city Lutheran Church (Bethlehem, Flinders Street, Adelaide CBD). I had little idea of what I was walking in to! Such a different church culture and experience. So large compared to the smallness of WA (church wise). So many more people, some supportive, some not. So many more opportunities for friendship, seeing new places, learning more about my profession (Youth Work)....

After 12 years in two places "out on the rim" of the LCA (Auckland and Bunbury), it feels a little similar to what it felt like back in 1989. So many opportunities for new relationships, new challenges in terms of my Calling, more possibilities for learning from mentors and strangers.....

This Calling is a senior pastor role and that is daunting. It is a new dynamic I will have to learn - not just diving in and leading by doing all the time, as one needs to do in a  smaller setting, but leading in a different way - present but not always immediately hands on; leading by gathering and inspiring (hopefully!) and working with others who lead...... It will be a steep learning curve to not go with the instincts learnt over the last 12 years in the ordained ministry.

But life is really one big steep learning curve isn't it? You actually learn the most about yourself, your close relationships, when you are under the pump the most. In the moment you don't even know what you are learning, but later it becomes apparent, if you take the needed time to reflect on what has happened, that is.

So, I find myself doing plenty of this reflecting time. It just seems the right thing to do.



Reason for Living

One of my favourite preachers at the moment is Tim Keller, who pastor's Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York.

I heard this podcast and thought it was the best explanation of the Christian Faith I have heard in ages. It is addressed to the average person who desperately wants complete freedom in life, but knows that with complete freedom to do whatever you want in life, comes the devestating reality  that this appraoch to life renders everything completely meaningless......

Have a listen if freedom is your desire, but emptiness follows it.....  Or if you have a lot of friends (as I do)who living in this same collision course with themselves..... it will take about 35mins of your time.

Just click on this link and press the go to box that comes up.....

http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sites/sermons2.redeemer.com/files/RSS_Feeds/Timothy_Keller_Podcasts.xml

Crossroads

Sermon

Pentecost 21A
Sunday November 6, 2011.

Ocean Forest

Crossroads

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

 

13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Friends, crossroads in life often create grief for us. When something highly valued is lost, a crossroad is created and we have to make choices about what was once a sure thing, because the straight road we were on has now become a fork in the road or a crossroad. We grieve what was and have to face a more uncertain future.This is what has happened to us now with me announcing that I will no longer be the pastor of this community. What was stable and trusted is now being removed and the future looks more like a crossroad than a straight road.




 I spoke to the secondary school Thursday about all of this and focussed on that thing that happens to us all the time; grief. I told the kids that grief is a normal part of life that can happen over many things – from a breakup with and girl or guy, to a the death of a loved pet, to even grieving over childhood simplicity lost in the teen years.

When you think about it, hardly a week or a month goes by when we don’t grieve the loss of something. We still grieve the loss of a loved one years after the actual event. Time heals the pain of it but we remember and even years later, feel some sense of the loss. We grieve the loss of our working life when we retire, the loss of our schooling life when we graduate, the loss of a our dreams in a divorce, the loss of constant contact with kids in the same, the loss of our pristine beauty as we age, the loss of our hair……..
Sometimes of course, there is shocking kind of grief – a loss we did not expect, or even if we did, never really thought it would happen – like a Pastor leaving a congregation. You know it would probably happen one day, but you are never really ready for it when it happens.

It is interesting that God’s word suggests there is a difference between how those who are in relationship with Jesus and his people grieve these things and those who are not in a faith relationship with him and his people. St Paul, in our text, speaks of those who “grieve without hope”, and those who “grief with hope”. So, we baptised people of faith in Jesus Christ can grieve like others, but somehow differently, with the gift of hope – even in our grieving.

This “hope” is the biblical kind of hope; not a wishful thinking for the future kind of hope, but a sure, solid, bankable hope; a hope not in our own ability or wisdom and skill, but a hope in God’s grace, power and future – a hope standing solid on God’s solid promises kind of hope.

So we grieve with solid hope in God’s future for us. Paul outlines the final end to life as we know it – both for those who won’t taste actual physical death, and those who will before Jesus delivers on his promise to bring all things to their rightful and timely end to begin the new age with him.

15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 …. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

In the hope that is Jesus.What does it mean for us to “grieve with hope”? One thing it doesn’t mean is that we will not grieve at all. Jesus’ followers will grieve as often as those who don’t know his grace and power. Grief will happen and grief is not to be denied or diminished as unimportant or treated as “bad”. Grief is grief and that is all there is to it. Grief can make us feel all at sea for a while. Grief can tempt us to give up on things and just go and hide somewhere to be safe. But grief approached like this will do damage and debilitate us further, rather than bring us to new insight, thankfulness and life.
Paul is actually encouraging his people to grieve – or at least not shun or try and hide grief. He is saying, “you will grief”. But what he is offering those who suffer loss is hope in their grieving and a future well-being founded on Jesus and his promises and grace.

Friends, you will grieve as things look and feel different for the next few months after Christmas when I am gone. This is not to be denied, minimised or shunned as unimportant or something to be hidden. In my experience and in this text, grief is best dealt with by talking about it, sharing it and “encouraging each other with these words” as Paul says.

Grief is normal and talking about it with each other is how it is processed well so that grief passes and changes into thankfulness and even a quiet joy about what has been and what is to come in the Lord’s plan for us.

I told the kids to think of grief this way
Grief = I should talk about it


Grief can and does naturally produce anger, confusion and doubt of God’s plan and promises.

Can I encourage you with my words on this? Share your sense of loss at losing your pastor. Talk with me about it if you need to. Share it, speak of it and help each other through it. In this way you will pass over the crossroad before you and with faith in Jesus and his future for you in his plan and promises, grief will turn to thankfulness and even a quiet joy again.

In time I reckon we will all look back on these years together and be able to say, “Thank you, Heavenly Father, for all we shared and did together”. And with that will come hope. You will enter a Call process with the District president. You will be directed to ponder where you are at a congregation in mission and what you might need in the pastor you will eventually call. Eventually, a Pastor you have called will arrive and another leg of the journey will be before you and this will be good. It is then that this grief will be no more and only thankfulness will remain, and that will be good.

On a final note: If you remain a person in the Lutheran family in your life’s journey of faith in Jesus, this very text will be the first word from the Bible that your children, grandchildren and friends will hear as they gather for your funeral.

This text is the Word of comfort proclaimed in the Lutheran funeral rite. Even in that big grief, there will the sure hope of the resurrection from your death proclaimed to all who will hear it.

Ultimately this is all of our ending. Whatever happens, this will happen. You will be gathered into this hopeful “sleep” as St Paul calls it. Rest is as constant a companion as grief for the Christian – we rest in God’s presence every time two or three gather in his name. We rest in his presence every day that we remember our baptism and daily die to sin and live with him. We rest at the last trumpet call as we are gathered together in him.

Grieve with hope, friends. Hope is ours. This too will pass and new things will come and from beginning to end, we will be hopeful and thankful for all that the Lord has given and then gives. Amen.

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm:
be there at our sleeping and give us, we pray,
your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope…

Pastor A Leaving Ocean Forest

Well, it seems that our time at Ocean Forest has come to an end. There is sadness but no regret and a looking forward toi the next leg of the faith jounrye for us as a family.

In the Lutheran Church, there is a Call system where Pastors don;t apply for jobs but are Called to them by the local community or wider church. When a local community is vacant or is ready to call a second pastor, they issue a Call to a particular individual whom they think can come and work with them in their local ministry and mission. The Pastor being Called is notified of this and then has around 4-5 weeks to weigh up all the issues of his existing Call and the one being offered. He then accepots the Call or declines it.

After two months of very intense personal struggle for me, my family and for some of you about the two Calls that have come my way – first to Tuggeranong in Canberra and now to St Petri in the Barossa Valley, SA, – I am accepting the Call to the St Petri. I will be leaving Ocean Forest at the end of the year.



I know that some of you will find this unwelcome news. We will all now go through a tough time of loss and grieving. We have shared our lives together for these 8 years and our relationships will change.


I am accepting the Call to St Petri not beause I am unhappy or unwell or angry or worn out or any of those things. I am accepting the Call and leaving primarily because I believe it is a Call from God. That is always the main thing in all the complexity of these decisions. It is also because I sense that I have done what we were called here to do – to establish a church in cooperation with e new Lutheran college. It is time for me to go and let the local people and another Lutheran Pastor  and the School Principal take the baton and run on.


Just as I sensed that I was ready and “made for” this venture of church planting through a new Lutheran school when I received the Call to come here in 2003, so now I sense the same things about what the Lord is calling me to do at St Petri. I sense that he is has been preparing me for this next leg of the faith journey these eight years at Ocean Forest and now it is time to take what he has taught me through you and put it to use in his church in another place.


I will leave with great memories, great relationships with all kinds of people, some more skills and more experience and take on the next challenge with these as part of who I am and what I am called to do. I think you for your friendship, commitment, care, humour and encouragement over the journey. I am praying to the Lord that he helps Ocean Forest kick on in this challenging thing called Christian education, community and mission.


Please feel free to seek me out and talk about how things are for you and share these things with each other too. In the end any sadness will hopefully turn to thankfulness to God for the many things that have happened in this 8 year journey together.

Sermon

Reformation Day
October 30th, 2011


Refuge and strength
Psalm 46

For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A song.
1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.


8 Come and see what the LORD has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.

10 “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
11 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

It is interesting how different psalms seem to just speak into particular events and moments we face in life. They are words that capture our joy or pain and express them in a way that has been expressed by faithful people of God. It is as if God is actually speaking out our own response to what we are experiencing.


When I think of Psalm 23, I thing of comfort in the face of death – at a funeral, or in a war Zone with the padre reciting those famous words – The Lord is my shepherd…..even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…..”


For those darker days when thing seem to overtake us; Psalm 130…

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
2 Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

When we need to feel the pain of God in the crucifixion of his Son and so, express our own sorrow for our sin and for the evil that we experience and do – Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me….”


As the church gathers in the presence of God and uses those bright words of Psalm 95 to gather:

Come let us worship the Lord, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us shout aloud to him with songs of praise, for he is a great God, a king above all the earth, Come let us worship and bend low before the Lord our maker……”

And so it goes, Psalm after psalm gives expression to who we are , who we are putting our hope in and God’s understanding of our joy and trouble.

I did not really become aware of Psalm 46 until I learnt that it was the Psalm upon which Luther’s most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress” was based. To me, this psalm is all about hope – hope when there seems to be none; strength when there seems to be none left; future when there does not seem to be a good one.

Luther in his great inner struggle obviously found great solace in this psalm. So have others. So have I. It is the psalm for the darkness, the trouble, the evil and fear we face at times. When I think of this psalm I think of a huge castle with towers and turrets and security from the raging battle below. I actually think of the Wartburg Castle in Southern Germany where Luther found refuge when his life was under threat – as he went about translating the Latin, Greek and Hebrew bible into the language of his people – everyday German.

This Psalm covers those moments when despair and fear overwhelm us; it brings God’s hope in hopelessness…

In numerous letters, which she repeatedly begged her superiors to destroy, Mother Teresa describes her experiences of profound spiritual darkness that haunted her for fifty years. She admits that she didn't practice what she preached, and laments the stark contrast between her exterior demeanor and her interior desolation: "The smile is a big cloak which covers a multitude of pains. . . . my cheerfulness is a cloak by which I cover the emptiness and misery. . . . I deceive people with this weapon."

Mother Teresa describes the absence of God's presence in various ways—an emptiness, loneliness, pain, spiritual dryness, or lack of consolation. "There is so much contradiction in my soul, no faith, no love, no zeal. . . . I find no words to express the depths of the darkness. . . . My heart is so empty. . . . so full of darkness. . . . I don't pray any longer. The work holds no joy, no attraction, no zeal. . . . I have no faith, I don't believe." She rebukes herself as a "shameless hypocrite" for teaching her sisters one thing while experiencing something far different. David Van Bima of Time magazine calls this disparity between her private and public worlds "a startling portrait in self-contradiction" (August 23, 2007). The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself, Weekly essays by Dan Clendenin , Essay posted 19 November 2007

Psalm 46 is a psalm for what the 16th century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross (1542–1591) famously named, —the "dark night of the soul."


Some have drawn parallels between the experiences of Mother Teresa and Martin Luther (1483–1546). Luther used the German word Anfechtungen to describe his difficult interior struggles with God.

Anfechtungen; it's a word that's hard to translate but easy to appreciate. Anfechtungen came on before a crisis of certainty for which the believer could only cast himself upon the mercy of God. Martin Marty, the Amercian Lutheran writer, hangs his whole biography of Luther on the word: “God present and God absent, God too near and God too far, the God of wrath and the God of love, God weak and God almighty, God real and God as illusion, God hidden and God revealed.” Anfechtungen, says Marty, are “the spiritual assaults that Luther said kept people from finding certainty in a loving God.” The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself, Weekly essays by Dan Clendenin , Essay posted 19 November 2007

Luther found great solace in Psalm 46, and some have even called it his favourite psalm.

It begins with descriptions of global cataclysms—the earth giving way, mountains crumbling into the sea, and waters that "roar and foam." It speaks of global concerns (not unlike CHOGM concerns this week!). "Nations are in an uproar, kingdoms fall."

Nevertheless, says the psalmist, "The Lord Almighty is with us / The God of Jacob is our fortress." He advises us to "be still and know that I am God," for God "makes wars cease, breaks the bow, shatters the spear, and burns the shields."

In 1527, the "deepest year of Luther's depression" according to Roland Bainton, (Author of one of the Luther biographies) Psalm 46 inspired Luther to write his classic hymn "A Mighty Fortress" (translated from the German by Frederick Hedge in 1853): The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself, Weekly essays by Dan Clendenin , Essay posted 19 November 2007



A mighty Fortress is our God, a Bulwark never failing, Our Helper He amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing…..

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him.


That Word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God's truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever.

For Luther, we believers should not imagine that we will be spared "the flood of mortal ills prevailing." We can, though, experience a deep security in the words of Psalm 46 that however much the earth shakes, a more powerful God is with us and for us wherever we find ourselves.


We rest in the knowledge not that the darkness will always turn to dawn—Mother Teresa's "dark night" lasted fifty years—but in the confidence that God in Christ says to us, “I am more certain to you than your own heart and conscience.”


To unlock the gift of this Psalm and the gift of God’s hope in seeming hopelessness in this Psalm for the inner darkness we experience, we need do two things:


“Be still” before the Lord, and “know” that he is God.


Even when the basics fall away— even the really base basics, the foundations of dirt under our feet (like the people in Thailand are now experiencing) and those higher grounds that will save us from the rushing waters—even then as we free fall, we’ll have a refuge, an outpost, in this God of All Things.


Like an ever-flowing river providing sustenance to its people, He is there always, even as the banks crumble, as branches fall and are drowned in her depths, as giant boulders are consumed. Catastrophes, battles, inner and outward, loss, grief, despair, evil, fear of what will happen…all of them are depleted as the rush of God’s hope from the crucified man on the cross continues.


There He is, our crucified God whose words are cascading across the plains and off into the valleys, their force undiminished as the furthest of the mountains perks up and obeys his commanding voice.“Be still,” He speaks, and so it is, and the nations shudder with shock and awe at this power – the power to forgive and heal the wounded human heart.

Hosanna, Son of David, Save us. All power and glory to our Refuge and Strength, Jesus Christ; his kingdom and his Church is forever.