People who study trends in today’s churches have made one thing clear: the greatest indicator of a church that is alive and growing isn’t its theological positions or the size of its building or parking lot or even how well the preacher might preach. The greatest indicator of a healthy church is the level of participation; the greater the number of “ministers” with practicing ministries, the greater the health and growth.

How does a person or a church get more participatory, interactive, and experiential? The answer is something of a paradox. While it is about “doing” it is also about “waiting” and “watching.” In his book, Taste and See, Tim Dearborn tells the story of a woman in his church named Grace. For 40 years, Grace had a very successful ministry to street people in Seattle. When asked her secret, she replied, “If you want to have ministry on the streets, then walk slowly and it will happen to you. If you want to avoid it, then walk
fast.”

Jesus teaches us that if we want to develop our spiritual senses and if we want an effective ministry, we also need to walk a little more slowly. We need to learn what spiritual directors call the act and art of “noticing,” and from there begin to get involved.

It is easy to get so caught up in our own concerns and compulsions that we literally walk right past opportunities to be a part of God’s mission. We’re looking one direction when God is actually working, or could be working through us, right where we’re at. The late Jesuit priest and author, Anthony DeMello, describes folks who do this in this way: “They are like the Jews who were straining their eyes toward the future in expectation of a glorious, sensational Messiah, while all along the Messiah was beside them in the form
of a man called Jesus of Nazareth…. You wish to see God? Look at the face of the man next to you. You want to hear him? Listen to the cry of a baby, the loud laughter at a party, the wind rustling in the trees. You want to feel him? Stretch your hand out and hold
someone”

The call of Christ is one of active service to the world. It is participatory, interactive and experiential and always has been. In other words, it asks something of you. So slow down… open your heart and your eyes and prepare to be a part of something that will not only change you – but change the world at the same time.

There are so many ways to illustrate the importance of working together as the Church: parts in a machine, organs in the human body, even the ecosystem in which we live. We are learning, more and more, that if anything gets out of balance, the whole system suffers. In both the physical and spiritual realms, we are dependent upon each other for entering into the abundant life God has promised.

So how are you doing at exercising the gifts God has given you? Are you encouraging others to exercise the gifts God has given to them? How well are you operating as a part of a living body – made up of distinctly different, but completely essential parts? How you answer that question may be more important than you realize. Life – both in this world and the next – depends on it.

I found a story that is a stark reminder of this very fact. It happened in South Dakota some years ago when a little boy wandered away from his home. The parents couldn’t find him. For three days hundreds of people moved through the prairie, hoping to find the boy before he succumbed to the elements. On the morning of the fourth day, one of the searchers said, “Let us get organized in one long line. We’ll join hands and sweep up and down the prairie until we find the boy.” They formed a line a quarter of a mile long. On the third sweep they found the boy. He was lying dead, in a small ditch behind some brush. Gently the boy’s body was carried to where the mother was waiting. When they put the dead boy in his mother’s arms, there was complete silence for a moment. Then she looked up and said: “Why didn’t you join hands sooner? Why didn’t you join hands sooner?”

Why didn’t we?

Those wise men that came looking for Jesus were outsiders. They had no commitment to the Jewish way of life – and yet Jesus came to them just as much as he came to save his own people. That is the whole point of Epiphany. Christ has been revealed to the entire world so that we might all show forth his life through our lives.

It seems appropriate to me that Epiphany should fall at the beginning of the New Year. The New Year offers us a new beginning, a chance to start over fresh and perhaps do a little better. Indeed, a lot of us make New Year’s resolutions – determined to make some change for the better in our lives.

A couple of years ago, about a minute after midnight on New Year’s Eve, my brother laid claim to the New Year as “his” year. My brother’s theory was that everything was going to go his way. Of course, he also has a theory that no one ever loses weight in our family – we just pass it from one member to another. So, during his year, he claimed the rest of us would get fat while he got skinny. If I remember correctly, it didn’t quite work out that way.

But no matter how things have turned out in the past, New Years is still a good time to resolve to begin moving in healthier directions in our lives. Therefore, it is also a good time to make a rededication to God.

The ancient Hebrews understood the importance of continual rededication to God. They, too, had a New Year’s celebration. But their celebration wasn’t just an excuse to eat, drink and watch football. For them, the beginning of a New Year was a deeply religious occasion. It symbolized the end of winter and the bounty of harvest as well as the promise of new life in the spring. At this festival, all of Israel, from the King to the poorest peasant, pledged their renewed commitment to God.

In this New Year we have a new opportunity to share in Christ’s vision for the world and for our lives. Of course, finding vision is not something that can be achieved as easily as saying, “this year is going to be the year things go well for me…”, but it’s a start.

Embrace Christ’s vision of God’s kingdom, with all its mystery and wonder, and enter into the New Year resolved to draw upon that vision every day.

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

The Church celebrates certain special seasons of the year. We even have colors and names for each of them. Advent is blue or purple. Christmas, Easter, and Epiphany are white. Pentecost for just one Sunday is red. But the vast majority of the year is what is called “ordinary time” – which is associated with green, the color of life and growth.

This is the tradition. But I think that there is something about Christmas – something about the incarnation – that reminds us there really isn’t such a thing as ordinary time. Nor is there ordinary anything else.

God loved us so much that despite the mess we’ve made of our world God sent his son into our midst anyway. Max Lucado, in his book God Came Near, put it this way: “He looks like anything but a king. His face is prunish and red. His cry, though strong and healthy, is still the helpless and piercing cry of a baby. And he is absolutely dependent upon Mary for his well-being. Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Holiness in the midst of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter…”

Join us this Sunday, and every Sunday, as we explore the extraordinary miracle of the incarnation – Emmanuel, God with us.

The other day I listened to a song called “Jazz Police,” by Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite songwriters. The line in the song that caught my attention contained the words: “Jesus taken serious by the many, Jesus taken joyous by a few.” It occurred to me that in the angry defense of Christmas I hear coming from so many Christians, we may wind up  sounding more like King Herod and less like Mary. In other words, we find ourselves in danger of taking Jesus’ birth seriously, but somehow losing sight of the joy.

The birth of Jesus – the incarnation of God – was intended to alleviate fear and anxiety and bring hope, peace, joy and love to God’s people. That’s why we dedicate a Sunday to each of those ideas in the month leading up to Christmas – with this coming Sunday being focused on Joy. While I understand those who want to defend Jesus in the “war on Christmas” – I also believe a church that demands everyone take us seriously is much less likely to attract seekers than a church that simply responds to his coming in joy. In my experience, the natural human response to fear and anger is more of the same.

There is no question that anger, fear and despair are contagious. We see it and experience it every day. The good news, however, is that joy works the same way. Joy is also contagious. We are not called to be carriers of bad news. We are messengers of joy – even as the angel Gabriel was a messenger of joy to Mary.

Joy is God’s gift to our world. When the angel appeared to the shepherds, he said, “”I bring you tidings of great joy that will be for all people.” In other words, you don’t have to wealthy, or healthy, or educated, or powerful. God’s joy is available to you now.

In the middle of your stressful life, God wants you to experience joy. He wants you to know that he favors you, that he treasures you, and that he will never let you go.

There are plenty of good reasons out there for choosing fear and doubt. There are plenty of unanswered questions and landmines in your future, just as there were for Mary. But God extends to you an invitation to joy now. Receive it. Be filled by it. Pass it on to others – and like Mary, Jesus will come into your life and you will never be the same again.

Likewise, as People of the Book, we have come to understand God as one who works in the midst of history – oftentimes with the most unlikely people. Therefore, even though we live nearly two thousand years after the final words of the New Testament were written – we believe the same God who was revealed through the prophets and most fully in the person of Jesus Christ – is still at work in the world today.

God continues to guide and to shape history – even when we don’t see it clearly. As human beings it is oftentimes only in retrospect we really understand what was going on right under our noses. The great preacher and evangelist Billy Graham once put it this way: “I am convinced one of the joys of heaven will be discovering the hidden ways that God, in his sovereignty, acted in our lives on earth to protect us and guide us so as to bring glory to his name, in spite of our frailty. As I look back over the years, however, I know that my deepest feeling is one of overwhelming gratitude. I cannot take credit for whatever God had chosen to accomplish through us and our ministry; only God deserves the glory, and we can never thank him enough for the great things he has done.”

I believe God has been at work setting the stage for the present moment – just as God set the stage for Jesus through the prophets. The question is not whether God is at work, but rather whether or not you have decided to join him in that work. I believe even now God is setting the stage for a new thing.

God has so much he wants to do. But as I once heard someone say, “Without God, we can’t and without us, God won’t.” God needs you to become a conduit of his life and hope and peace to the world.

The stage has been set… and we are the current actors on that stage. Each of us has a role… and each of us has a part to play. But never forget it is God who directs. Follow him, surrendering your life to his direction and guidance, and you can be certain that everything will turn out just as God has planned. In a world of uncertainty, conflict and pain that is… and will always be… the Good
News of God’s peace to all people.

I have always described the people in the churches where I have belonged as being part of my church family. Whenever we come together, we are at home. Whether it’s in the sanctuary, or in the fellowship hall, or anywhere else, when we’re together we have the freedom to let go of our grasping and reaching for a little while and simply enjoy and give thanks for what we have — for each other.

“Home” is not a place. Home is relationships. And that is what I think Thanksgiving is all about – stopping for awhile and being thankful for what we have, and who we’re with. And I believe that there’s no better place to do that than the church.

I found a short essay in a journal I think expresses this feeling of being “at home” very well. The author writes: “Some words are like fine crystal or a good bell. Strike them, and they ring for a long while at the back of your mind. So with  home. There are echoes. Home is what you long for. It is where we imagine ourselves being when our urgent searching has burnt itself out and there is nowhere else we are driven to go. “Lord,” says Peter, after the crowds have lost interest and drifted away, “where else shall we go; you have the words of eternal life. We believe you are the Messiah.” Peter is home. So home is not a matter of place. Home is a matter of being with. “Son,” said Jesus from the agony of the cross, “see your mother. Mother, see your son.” John and Mary were not safe; they were not protected, but they were with each other. And they were home. The first and last promise of the Bible is that God will be with us. The Holy One shall be our God, and we shall be God’s people. When we are with God, we are already at home, even while en route.”

How true that is. In God we have a home, no matter where we might wander, or where life might take us. True thanksgiving always represents a turning towards home – not only to the warmth and security of our biological or adopted families, but to the home we find in the presence of God through his son Jesus Christ. In him, we all take a place in the family of God. And in him, we all look forward to our final and eternal home.

During this Thanksgiving holiday, may we turn our hearts towards home – toward the treasures in our lives we sometimes overlook, toward the family of love and forgiveness we find in the church, and finally toward our relationship with God and the home we find in him, both now and in the life to come. Then, let us lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving, to the God that created us – for we are indeed his people and the sheep of his pasture.

I once heard someone say Jesus “lived right side up in an upside down world.” But you might say it was in his genes. The history of Israel is filled with people who didn’t fit in. For instance, the very first ones to make a covenant with God were Abraham and Sarah. They were two people who had the ridiculous notion that even though they were in their nineties, God was calling them to leave their home, wander off to a new land, and start a new nation! Or how about King David as a boy, standing up to Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and a rock?

From beginning to the end, Israel’s history is filled with people who defied the logic and common sense of the world. And, of course, God’s craziness reached its apex in the person of Jesus. Even though he was born out of the kingly line of David, he actually arrived as the son of a poor carpenter and a young girl who claimed to be a virgin even though she was pregnant. And throughout Jesus’ unpredictable life, he did and said many things that seemed to be crazy until his last and perhaps craziest act of all – death on the cross.

For many years, the cross was a problem for the early church for this very reason. To put it in more modern terms, the cross was lousy PR. As Paul said, it was a stumbling block to the Jews (many of whom would never believe that the Messiah could actually be executed like a common criminal) and it was just plain foolishness to the Gentiles (which was everyone else). But, as Paul exclaims in 1 Corinthians, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

Jesus reminds us that the world as we know it is upside down. The question is… are you brave enough to live a life that is right-side up – even when that might make you look like a little crazy to those who are still upside down?

Join us for worship this Sunday as we explore further Jesus’ call to live faithful lives in a world that often pulls us in other directions.

As has been our tradition for a number of years, All Saints Sunday is the day we remember those who have died in the past year, dedicate memorial gifts to the church, lift up our special memorial funds, and pass out Bibles to our Kindergartners and High School freshman (compliments of the Ruth Anderson Memorial Fund).

According to the number of files saved in the “Funerals” directory of my computer, I have officiated at over 200 funerals over the past 15 years as pastor of Central Christian Church. So many dear ones have made the transition from this life to their eternal home. On Thursday of this week, I will again be officiating at two funerals – one for a long time church member whose wife’s funeral I did several years ago and another for a man whose wife’s funeral I did earlier this year. Just as I stood with them besides their wives’ graves and spoke words of hope, I will now stand with their children and grandchildren and seek to speak words of comfort and peace.

The New Testament reading for this Sunday is taken from 1 Thessalonians 3:13-18. The opening words of that text are sometimes used to imply that people of faith should not grieve the loss of loved ones. “Grieve not…” begins the text. But that is not Paul’s entire thought. Paul’s message to the people of Thessalonica was “Grieve not as those who have no
hope.” There is a big difference.

Perhaps you have lost a loved one in the past year – or in the past 50 years – and continue to struggle with grief. The sermon for this Sunday will be entitled “Good Grief,” not after Charlie Brown’s famous words, but because grief is very much a part of life. Grief is not something we seek out, but when entered into in faith can be something that ultimately leads us into a deeper appreciation of life, a stronger relationship with God, and a better capacity to minister to others.

Next week, I’ll have an extra hour of sermon preparation, but I promise not to go on too long. I’ll try to be like another preacher I heard about whose sermons never went over 20 minutes. The services in that church were over like clockwork every Sunday. Then one Sunday, the impossible happened. He preached for his normal 20 minutes and just kept on going. The service which normally ended at noon went all the way to 12:30. On the way out, one of his elders asked, “What happened to you?” The preacher answered,

“For years I have always put a mint in my mouth as the service started, and I would tuck it away in my cheek. It was always gone at exactly noon. That’s how I knew it was time to wrap up the service. But this Sunday it didn’t go away, and that was when I realized I had put a button in my mouth instead.”

Of course, preachers aren’t the only ones who need to keep track of time. We all do. In fact, we live in an era when our lives are more tied to the clock than ever before. Watches and clocks and digital read outs are always there to remind us of the constant progress of time.

C.S. Lewis was fond of reminding his readers that human beings were not created for time – but for eternity. Lewis believed that through the power of God’s love, some were being made into creatures so beautiful that if you could see them the way God does, their glory would leave you breathless. Likewise, others – even some who may be beautiful by the world’s standards – are becoming hideous creatures such as you only find in nightmares.

Henry Blackaby also picked up on this theme in his book, Experiencing God. He wrote: “If you just live for time, you will miss the ultimate purpose of creation. If you live for time, you will allow your past to mold and shape your life today. Your life as a child of God ought to be shaped by the future (what you will be one day). God uses your present time to mold and shape your future usefulness here on earth and in eternity… You need to begin orienting your life to the purposes of God. His purposes go far beyond time and into eternity. Make sure you are investing your life, time and resources in things that are lasting and not things that will pass away… This is why a love relationship with God is so important. He loves you. He knows what is best for you. Only he can guide you to invest your life in worthwhile ways.”

See you Sunday. Until then, invest your time and resources in things that matter forever. Blessings!