Spiritual Disciplines of Life with God
What are Spiritual Practices for anyway?
Jesus: “Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” In the Sermon on the Mount he focuses that repentance/change of thinking. He talks about very basic challenges: anger, desire, truthfulness, enemies, anxiety, judging others, etc.
He focuses regular religious practices: alms, prayer, fasting. We often think of spiritual disciplines as a way of self-control, finding centering, peace, authentic self, etc.
Jesus always focuses on a living, vibrant dialogue with God. God who is intimate, hidden, knowing. The Abba who is life-giving creator, who is reality itself. The perennial dangers are self-centered distortion and the temptation to use piety as performance. Jesus’ concern is not my sense of authenticity, often distorted, but reality in relation to a God who knows me, who is and gives life. I save my life only by losing/giving it.
Real Prayer and Fasting and Dialogue with God
We begin this afternoon a period of Shared Prayer. Our community prayers flow from experience of personal dialogue with God. Very practical. Not new rules but focus on real relationship. Fathers in ancient world were often controlling, public-oriented. Jesus remakes “Father” as shared image for creative, intimate, challenging God.
Sanctification not Segregation: Growing Together in the Light of the Bible
John 17:1-26
Walter Edwards leads the congregation in a meditation on Black History and the impact of African Americans on the church. Along with Larry Mudd, Carl Garrison, Mary Joseph, Adolf Everett, and Alva Burton. A vital message of hope, repentance, and racial consciousness.
God's Kingdom & Gaining My Life
Matthew 6:5-13
Simple Reality in a Relationship with God
Jesus: “Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Mt 4:17). “Kingdom” points to God’s “Anointed king” – Messiah – Christ. A challenge to every other kingdom: Herod, Rome, myself, the world. But the kingdom is of God’s realm, “the heavens,” permeating all reality, but unrecognized. To people, “kingdom” meant power, conquest, glory, taxing. In SoM Jesus shows God’s Kgd: self-giving love, grace, generosity.
Through teaching prayer, Jesus takes us to the heart of a relationship with God – simple, real. It’s heart is the secret place, pointing to the inmost self. God’s heavenly realm is there in secret. “Your Father” is present, sees, knows, and responds. God’s glory is not for show.
But the dialogue of prayer is profound, all-encompassing! We speak our desire to change our thinking to align with God’s will: God’s Kingdom coming on our earth as in God’s heavens. The union of God’s rule with God’s creation becoming reality personally and universally.
Testing - Revealing True Strength
Matthew 4:1-11
Tempting and Testing – The Coming of the Accuser
God celebrated Jesus and gave a sign of the Spirit’s presence/anointing with him at baptism. That Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be put to the test/tempted (peirasmos). One word for both harsh, negative “testing” and alluring, deceptively attractive “temptation.”
Both challenge integrity, commitment, faithfulness. We experience tests and temptations as deeply personal. Here we’re given an external view, like Job 1-2. The Satan, the Accuser (diabolos, slanderer, devil) seems to appear in personal confrontation. God’s voice... Satan’s.
The narrative is stylized, simple, formulaic. It avoids taking us into Jesus’ psychology – like our inner struggles where we experience the core of testing/temptation. Paul and James focus on desire, law, human choice and weakness. Sin personified. Desires from within.
Here, we’re given a glimpse of the coming battle as Jesus “binds the strong man.” (Mt. 12:28-29) A curtain is pulled back. Jesus has fasted for 40 days. The Accuser thinks he’ll be weakened.
God's Presence as Never Before
Matthew 3:11-17
The Anticipation and Surprise of John the Baptist
In our text we hear the voice of Jesus himself for the first time in Mt. After a 30-yr gap in our knowledge, Jesus comes to John to be baptized and amazing things begin to happen.
John was a prophet like Elijah in wilderness pronouncing God’s coming judgment – especially on Pharisees (Law) and Sadducees (Temple): “brood of vipers” (3:7). He calls all to repent, be baptized to prepare “the way of the Lord” for the in-breaking Kingdom of Heaven.
John proclaims the one who will follow him: his power, worthiness. Beyond plunging in water, he will plunge you in Spirit and Fire. John’s words echo words of scripture in Mal., Isa., etc. The coming one will embody God’s judgment, sifting, gathering wheat, burning chaff. He’s ready.
Then Jesus comes. It doesn’t seem right. He should take over, not be baptized. He should show power, fire, judgment. John expects the Messiah that so many envisioned. Jesus surprises! Not by being more glorious than we expected, but by being one of the crowd of people.
How Can God Rule in My Life?
Matthew 6:19-34
A New Year – Under God’s Rule!
Epiphany – The Magi come seeking the new king. Herod urges them to seek that king so that he may ‘worship’ (kill) him. Mt wants us to think intently about Jesus as God’s Messiah, King. “God’s kingdom is arriving” – breaking in. This is God’s work. Can we participate?
New Year – We stand in the crowd listening to Jesus: “Seek first God’s kingdom, God’s rule and God’s righteousness!” Good! I want God to rule in my life. But it sounds strange.
I don’t have to seek Herod’s rule or Rome’s. They impose it. God’s kingdom comes, but it relates to me as no other kingdom. Jesus says, “Seek it.” I say, “Just tell me the rules – sacrifices, rituals, purities, things forbidden, boundaries, who’s in/out, rules of worship, rewards, punishments.” Jesus looks at the rag-tag, expectant crowd: “Sure, that’s what I’ve been doing. Love God, neighbors, enemies. No anger. No sexual dominance, Speak truth. Don’t resist evil people, but turn your cheek. Don’t show off piety. Pray simply. Give generously. Don’t judge. Give to others what you’ve been given. Don’t worry about your life!
An End and a Beginning - John the Baptist
Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptizer and Elijah
Matthew introduces John as a known person: “Baptizer” (also Josephus). Famous as prophet and martyr killed by Herod Antipas. He is the renewal of prophecy cut short by corrupt power.
Mt illuminates his role by two scripture references. Isaiah 40: Wilderness, Exodus, hope for end of exile, renewal. Preparation for God. This is what the Gospel is about. Nothing less.
Also the sign of Elijah that ends Malachi. The call for renewal before God’s Judgment.
The surprising way that God comes. “God with us” as the exiled son. God as human Messiah.
A Baby and Wise Men from the East
Matthew 2:1-12
How Do You Know What is Happening?
Matthew wants us to see beyond the surface: Jesus Messiah, Son of David, Son of Abraham. He led us through royal/mixed genealogy. He showed us Mary’s unusual pregnancy, Joseph’s challenge of faith, new meaning of “God with us.” He says hardly a word about Jesus’ birth itself, but brings in other eyes, outside witnesses of events around the birth.
The gifts of the Magi are vulnerable to misuse, adapting the story to our worship of Mammon. But for Matthew this is the clash of two visions of kingship, power, what really matters. The Magi are the world/nations at large, given an opportunity to see what God’s people, who should have been eagerly looking, cannot see because of corrupt, blinding power.
The Surprising Birth of Emmanuel
Matthew 1:18-25
The Messiah’s Coming and a Crisis of Faith
This is the first of four Sundays of Advent: Our faith in a God who intervenes, comes into human life and experience in a totally remarkable way: incarnation to resurrection. He unites the life of God with the life of God’s creatures, us humans. He changes Human possibility by what he does and how he remains with us. Jesus is that event of intervention, Advent.
Messiah means “Anointed King”– the promise to David. Mt’s tells Jesus’ birth stressing the confrontation between the coming of God’s Messiah and Herod the “King of the Jews” established on his throne not as “son of David” but by normal power, Rome, conquest, control. We’ve reflected on his royal genealogy, but strange. God’s work, like Genesis.
God's Story: Generations of Anticipation
Matthew 1:1-17
Behold Your Anointed King – Think of the Pattern
We like to think in patterns. Generations: Lost (1880-1900), GI (1901-24), Silent/Beat (1925-44), Boomers (1945-64), Gen X (1965-84), Millennials (1985-2004), Post Millennials (2005-). Now many are absorbed with personal genealogy, genetic background, forensic genealogy.
Matthew is beginning Jesus’ story. Genealogy says something. This is a king’s list of ancestors. Few ordinary people could show such a list. Few today could without computers, databases. It is by fathers only, thus a single line, not a family tree. Thus through Joseph, not Mary.
The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month
Mark 13:6-8
The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month.
We arrive this morning at the hour when 100 years ago the guns fell silent at the end of the most destructive war the world had ever known: “the Great War” 1914-18.
Nearly 10 million dead or missing, 21.2 million wounded that 4 years earlier had been the pride and hope of their various nations. Armistice Day / Veterans Day.
We also are in a time of “peace” when there is a “mass shooting” on average about every day. Fires. Hurricanes. Floods. Global warming. We feel the trauma, the fragility of life, frustration at injustice, persistence of evil, the desire to know what really matters.
Jesus on the Mount of Olives looking at Herod’s Temple.
The disciples impressed with magnificence. Jesus knows the impermanence. Beware of deception. It is hard to keep clarity in the welter of “great” events. Wars and rumors of wars. Rise and fall of peoples, kingdoms. Famines, earthquakes. Evil, struggle. Things that seem cataclysmic and final aren’t. “Definitely going to happen...”
There is an end, a goal toward which God is moving, but it’s in the hands of God, not humans.
The Great War to end all Wars.
"Come, Everyone Who is Thirsty!"
Isaiah 55:1-13
True Grace, Costly Grace
This text concludes Isaiah of the Exile, 40-55, in a playful, powerful way. A water-seller’s cry! But no sale, no cost. Wine, milk, bread provided free! The people have so missed real life that they labor to eat the dust and tree bark of their self-made powers. If they could listen to another story, God’s story, everything would be gourmet! Their broken life could become really alive.
Behind this lies a complex story of brokenness and exile. God’s promise of renewal seen through God’s self-giving love embodied in the Suffering Servant. God is king renewing through a servant.
If people are going to really hear this, they must listen carefully, to grasp a new kind of Grace! We’re sure there must be a catch: God is wanting to snatch life away, fill us with guilt. True, we are guilty, but God’s aim is to share the living water, rich food of his own life with his creatures.
Israel’s Covenant and Story Extended to All People
Isaiah stresses that the God Israel knows is the only God. All other gods are human constructions. But the only God must be the God of all the world, all nations and peoples, even Persians, etc.
God’s promises extend out from Israel/David to all. A strange dance of new knowledge will come. Israel will impact peoples they don’t know and those strangers will run to a God of such grace.
A Greatness so Vast, We Struggle to See It
"He Has Carried Our Sorrows"
A Vision Planted in the Heart of God’s Story
This text in Isaiah is one of the most important in history. But it is filled with mysteries. The Ethiopian in Acts 8 shows the challenge. Great scholars like W. Brueggemann point to its difficulty. As Christians with help of Acts we hear it as a direct prediction/description of Jesus.
A text nearly 600 yrs old when Jesus lives. People puzzled. Who are the people in the poem?
God, “Arm of Yahweh,” the “many,” “nations,” “kings.” “The Servant” – is that Israel as in
Is 49:3? Or a person turning Israel back to God as in 49:5? Then “we!” Who are “we”? Israel? Those who have seen the Servant but misperceived him and now have realized a greater reality about him? Us today, now reading this text? We recognize ourselves in the “sheep gone astray”!
The Servant is in the midst of this swirl. As we see him, he is with the sinful many, bearing their sorrows and sins. He embodies God’s will and delight; he is the “Arm of Yahweh.” He is the one whom people see but do not see, hear but do not hear. Till he astonishes us by transforming us! He is God’s people but also the appalling/exalted sign for all nations. Israel and humanity. The vision uses both future verbs and past tense verbs. Is it describing past or predicting future?
"Your God Reigns!"
Isaiah 52:1-12
The Kingdom of God and a Captive People
When Isaiah of the Exile writes in about 545 b.c. nothing has yet really happened to change Israel’s situation. Yes, Cyrus the Persian is advancing, but Babylon’s empire still reigns. Even when Isaiah’s prophecies are fulfilled and Persia allows some of the exiles to return to Jerusalem, it’s not as an independent kingdom but only as a small sub-province within the Persian empire.
God pushed Israel to deal with the paradox of human power. As a kingdom, Israel had failed. Even David was not great on policies, but on knowing God as God. Corruption, injustice, idolatry became so ingrained that God abandoned Jerusalem. Now God awakens Jerusalem to beauty and captivity. Isaiah announces a new Exodus: Knowing God. God reigns as king. God intervenes.
God is king over all nations! Yes, but Israel wanted that to mean Israel is a powerful, independent empire of its own. How can God be king if He and his people don’t rule over surrounding powers.
The Lord’s Servant and Light for the World
Isaiah 42:1-10, 49:1-6, 50:4-9
Isaiah, Exile, and a New Vision for Israel and the World
We’re focusing on Isa 40-55, but in scripture it is part of a large book spanning centuries. Israel as independent kingdom protected by God. Jeremiah, that’s past, God’s judgment by Babylon. Now a people in exile, looking forward to Cyrus of Persia, God’s chosen agent for this moment.
Who are we? What is happening, coming? Son of David bearing God’s Spirit (Is 11:1-2, 61:1-2). Son of Man = saints of the Most High receive kingdom but suffer defeat (Dan 7:13-14, 18-22)
Servant of Yahweh in Isa becomes a central focus for revelation, reflection, anticipation of the new. The Servant is Israel as a whole (Is 41), object of God’s pleasure, receives God’s Spirit. How? No longer a warring nation but healing, caring servant, uncrushed, bringing justice to nations. How?
Vision of God: Creator of earth and all people. Servant is God’s agent for covenant, new creation: Light to the nations. Healing blindness, prisoners in darkness. This is God’s glory, true God, not idols. New Event brings a New Song from ends of the earth. All peoples are called to the One God.
The Servant Sings to the World: Is 49:1-6; 50:4-9
People on the Move with God – Feast of Booths
Leviticus 23:33-44
Autumn in New York
New York has 2 new years: Jan 1 and Sept. Israel also had 2 new years: Passover and Trumpets.
God gave to Israel a cycle of Festivals and other annual days: To remember the story of God’s deliverance, how God made them a people, preserved them. To have times of communal celebration and grief. To harmonize religious life with cycles of nature through the year. Three pilgrimage feasts. Often neglected till after Exile. Great power for renewal (Ps 42).
Passover and Pentecost were permanently linked to Jesus’ crucifixion/resurrection and to the coming of the Holy Spirit: Exodus the great event of deliverance and Giving the Torah.
The Fall with New Year, Day of Atonement, and Sukkoth carried the joining of penitence and celebration (Isa 55). Entering Holy of Holies (Heb 9:24-25), Booths and water in the desert.
Jesus at Sukkoth – the Feast of Booths
Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem for Sukkoth (Jn 7). People are expecting the prophet. Who is he? Messiah? His brothers don’t believe. People know about him but don’t know him. Jesus links to the Sukkoth ritual of bringing water from Siloam to the Temple.
Jesus gives Living Water (Jn 4:10)–a future unfolds of God’s Spirit/Life in us. Water in the desert!
"I wanna see Jesus!"
Mark 5:21-43, Luke 19:1-4
Deacon, Reggie Jackson preaches on Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and Luke.
*Please Note* we experienced some technical difficulties and the recorder stopped recording roughly ten minutes from the conclusion of his sermon. We apologize for the abbreviated sermon.