|
||
Sermon
Summary Please press the play button below to hear the sermon (mp3 file).
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
For some of you who are visiting with us we need to fill you in a little bit on what is happening. Some of you that are regulars here are still wondering, “My word, is this guy still here?” Last January it was announced that I was going to a new ministry position
as the superintendent for the Fort Wayne area and I’m starting to
do this countdown now, but it’s been a long countdown, but it’s
coming up. Next Sunday, we’re going to preach on as Heather said,
we’re finishing up the Starbucks thing today and next week will
be on Memorial Day, remember that prayer request about that young man
who was killed in Iraq this last week. He’s from Rome City but he’s
been in the homes of people in our church and close friends with some
families here in this church. Next Sunday we’re going to mark Memorial
Day in kind of a special way, then the Sunday after that is the Graduation
Sunday and our family has our middle child who will be graduating high
school. So we celebrate that and then starts a one week of good-bye, June
6 is a final coffee house here where I get to play one more time with
the musicians here and enjoy that. And then on June 10th is the last Sunday,
the sermon I’m calling, “The Last Word”, and then on
the 13th, a Wednesday night, is a roast and a celebration. I guess we’ll
call that, “The Word After That”. “The Last Word”
and “The Word After That” is what we’re calling them.
But for right now, one of the things I want to do in a lot of my sermons
is my aim is to teach at least one thing you may not have known before.
And I’ve found that that’s better if I’m learning something
that I did not know before. And then challenge you in one way to make
a connection between that and your life as a Jesus follower. One practical
way to either rethink or re-look at or act out our life as a Jesus follower
and at least this last week for me, I’ve learned both. We’ve
been talking about coffee and coffee houses, and this is the jumping off
point to talk about church and the life of a Jesus follower. And a couple
of things I learned this last week that I did not know before. This I
knew, a lot of religions have a spiritual drink, a drink that they kind
of incorporated into their spiritual practice and walk, for instance,
for Christians and Jews, the spiritual drink is wine, or in our tradition,
unfermented wine, I guess. Like the wine that’s used, Jesus lifted
up the cup that’s at the lords table and for Jewish folks on the
Sabbath they lift up the cup of blessing which is a cup of wine they pray
about. There are all these things with wine. For Buddhists, do you know
what the sacred drink in Buddhism is? Anybody? In the last service somebody
said, “Budweiser?” No, not that! It’s tea. Tea is the
sacred drink in Buddhism. How about Hinduism? What is the sacred drink
in Hinduism? It’s milk. From all those holy cows they have in Hinduism.
What about Islam? It’s coffee. One of the brands of beans or one
of the families of coffee beans that they use is Arabica. Arab coffee
was so identified with Islam that around 1600 as coffee was kind of invading
Europe there were some people who asked the Pope, Pope Clement the 8th
around 1600 to outlaw coffee, because it was an insidious Islamic threat.
And so the Pope decided before he would make a decision on whether or
not to ban coffee that he would actually drink some. And so he gave it
a try and he liked it. And so he baptized it and called it a Christian
drink. But it didn’t quite get elevated to the level of wine. It
did come to be associated with some spiritual practices and in monasteries
and churches they would especially encourage the use of coffee before
long prayer services or church services to keep folks awake. So that’s
why we’ve been handing it out here recently. Now there’s something
else I learned about this last week, and that was the big cultural shift
that happened with coffee in European and Christian culture, the kind
of things that all kind of came together. As the consumption of coffee
went up, something else went down in consumption, and that was beer and
wine. In Medieval Europe, they drank a lot of beer and wine; it was safer
to drink than the local water. Waterways had become polluted and people
would get sick from drinking it and so the per capita consumption of beer
and wine was huge. In some countries, the per capita consumption was about
2 (two) 6-packs of beer a day and beer back then had a much higher alcohol
content than today. Now that per capita consumption included women and
children. In fact, the Norwegian army was rationed 4 liters of ale a day,
that is the equivalent of about 40 cans. Now the Norwegians have never
been known for their effective and on-target fighting force. It’s
a wonder they could even march in formation at this point. Here’s
something I learned, the consumption of alcohol was so high at one point
in Europe, beer and wine, that the levels of fetal alcohol syndrome were
almost universal. Children were born affected by what their mothers had
drunk. They didn’t realize the kind of connection between the two
back then and as the consumption of coffee went up and for breakfast the
consumption of beer and wine went down, the coffee supplanted wine and
beer as the most prevalent drink. If fact today, coffee is the second-most
traded commodity in the world after oil. Second highest. But there were
a number of things that happened, and I did not realize this, as coffee
consumption went up several other things came along beside it. If it wasn’t
caused by it at least it maybe had an indirect influence on it. For instance,
public health went up with the consumption of coffee because the alcohol
consumption went down, children were born healthier, people’s bodies
were healthier and sickness didn’t go away but the plagues did.
Plagues where 1/3 of the population would be killed off due to the black
plague or small pox or different kinds of influenzas, the mortality rates
went way down, maybe people’s bodies were a bit healthier, they
were able to fight things off or who knows what. But people were a little
bit healthier. Families were a little bit healthier, a little bit stronger.
The whole protestant work ethic and the industrial revolution, what would
you rather have your workforce drinking? This (coffee) or the other stuff?
And, this is something I had not put together, coffee and the development
of the renaissance the reformation and exchange of ideas and literacy
in general went hand in hand and in fact even the spread of democracy
was enhanced by coffee. Now how did all that happen? Well, think about
it, in places where beer and wine are served in the taverns, there was
a sense of camaraderie and talking but it tended to be kind of befuddled
every once in a while. In coffee houses on the other hand they were well-lit,
sunny, good furniture, mirrors, books, newspapers, and pamphlets or tracks.
It was said that you would go into a coffee house and the greeting was,
“What’s new?” And peopled talked about what was new.
They read the newspapers in coffeehouses and talked about them. In those
days, a city the size of Fort Wayne might have 20 or more newspapers that
each kind of advocated a specific area of thought. In colonial America,
newspapers were the early internet. It was how the exchange of ideas happen
and before public libraries, the coffee house was where you could go and
read and discuss ideas. In fact, different coffee houses came to have
kind of their own culture, their own constituency. There would be some
places where medical doctors would come together, and the reading material
there dealt with public health. And they would talk about health issues.
Other coffee houses came to be known as the place where the professors
from the local seminary would teach and clergy would come and they would
talk about the reformation, the new things happening. A lot of coffee
houses became centers of political discourse. People would come and read
about John Lock, Thomas Payne, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams. In fact,
this became so prevalent that people would come together and talk about
the new ideas of politics that in 1675 the advisors to King Charles II
encouraged him to outlaw coffee houses. Nobody paid any attention to it.
Why did they do that? Because the advisors said in these coffee houses
they are fermenting rebellion. And here’s the way they put it, the
plowman, the person who would work with his hands, would come into a coffee
house and they would consider themselves statesmen. And they would think
that they had something to say about politics and the monarchy and representative
of government and revolution and what was going on around the world and
so they told King Charles to outlaw coffeehouses because they were places
where rebels would get together and learn unsafe ideas and undercut the
monarchy. But nobody paid any attention to him. Because the coffeehouse
lived on the monarchies fell. Isn’t that a strange thing that coffee
invading Europe caused all these different things to change? Now it’s
a little bit different in that we have other exchanges of information.
If the coffeehouses were the early internet and the blog and the editorial
page we have all different kinds of ways to do that now but it’s
kind of flipped. You go into coffee houses now and you got to learn stuff.
What you have to learn is how to order coffee. I mean, I’m a pretty
casual occupant of coffee houses. I go in and I order, I say, “I
would like a cup of coffee, please.” But I hold in my hand here,
a pamphlet that teaches us how to order coffee. Published by St. Arbucks
so that you know how to walk in and I quote, “Order a grande quad
restretto nonfat dry cappacino.” I have no idea what that is, OK?
When my wife goes in, she orders and Americano, which sounds patriotic.
I don’t know what that has to do with coffee. There are a couple
of pages in here on just how to order the milk with the coffee. You know,
do you want it half and half, cream, dry, steamed, cold. All these different
things you can do just with the milk, let alone all the sweeteners, the
syrups all the different kinds of coffee grounds that there are. There’s
different forms of filtering: sharp filters, flat filters, steamed through
the stuff, hot water through the stuff, by the way if you go into Europe,
and especially into the Middle East order your coffee filtered because
if you just order coffee the bottom one-fourth of it is sludge, OK. Because
they leave all the grounds in there! Full bodied coffee. We’re used
to it filtered, do you ever think to order coffee filtered? You better
think of it over there because you’ll be picking it out of your
teeth if you don’t. I’m pretty casual, I go in and just order
coffee. Some of you may order quad restretto nonfat dry cappuccinos. I
don’t know what that stuff is. Have you ever thought about how the
church reflects that coffeehouse culture? Different churches have different
things to them. Different kind of set of words, even, that a newcomer
coming in will wonder what some of these words are. Even today’s
title, kind of fell along with that. Today’s title has this word
in it: Jehovah, what is that? Jehovah is a European-German form of saying
the Old Testament word Yahweh. Yahweh means a sovereign God. Even today’s
title, you probably didn’t know, but it’s a takeoff on an
Old Testament phrase Jehovah Jira. Jehovah Jira is the Lord God who provides
for His people. So Jehovah Java is the Lord God who provides coffee for
His people. Churches have cultures. We have a lingo that people have to
learn about to become a part and know what’s going on. Even the
things that we call or label different rooms are weird. That space out
there is a Narthex. I have heard people call it Northex because they thought
it was a direction thing we were talking about, but it’s not. A
Narthex is a place that’s a gathering place just outside the chancel.
That’s what you’re sitting in. Which is on a lower level than
the sanctuary. That’s what this is and that little room out there
is called the vestibule. Even the place we sit and the places we gather
and then when you think of Jehovah’s and all these other words and
even words people might know but they mean something different here than
it means out there. Grace means something different here than it means
on the athletic field. Justice means something different here than it
means in a court of law. Mercy is strength here, it’s seen as weakness
out there. Disciple, we almost don’t use that word out there because
each person is to be their own boss. And we talk about being followers.
We have a jargon and a language that we learn about here just like each
coffeehouse did back then. And just like those coffee houses took on their
own culture, churches take on their own culture. The danger is sometimes
we’ll start to worship that culture instead of just realizing that
it’s something that comes along. Everybody has to inhabit a culture
in some way. But the culture is not the main thing. I thought of this
when somebody was asking me, we prayed this morning for Lifebridge Church
because they’re dedicating a new building, there’s all these
new facilities going on out here, we’re building one on Highway
3 and somebody said to me once about 3 or 4 months ago, they said, “Why
are all these different churches getting built? Why can’t we just
all belong to a church?” “Why do we need so many different
ones?” And I got to thinking about it and that Lifebridge Church
that we prayed for this morning is a four square gospel denomination.
That means they speak in tongues in worship. They are having a great guy
in there Dr. Jack Hayford whose kind of one of my teachers. I got to spend
10 days with him with another 20-30 pastors and he prayed over each one
of us. And he warned us. He said, “I’m going to pray over
you but you may not realize what I’m praying, because when I pray,
I pray in tongues.” It’s that angelic language, the language
of heaven, and he prayed over me and I’m not sure what language
that was or for sure what he meant. I know I was blessed. I appreciate
that tradition, but if you’d go to worship there, during their worship,
somebody might just stand up and start talking in an angelic language.
They have rules about how you do that. And then there’s somebody
who was supposed to offer an interpretation. You go down the road and
there’s another Pentecostal Church and they don’t do interpretation,
they just kind of are even wilder with it and then there are other churches
that don’t speak in tongues. And there are other churches that will
even say women aren’t supposed to speak at all. No teaching, no
preaching, no worship leading. A woman is to be silent. Some of you may
like that as a part of your church culture, some not. I would not. My
wife told me so. No. I think she was here at the first service, I hope.
There’s some churches you go to, the pastor or the priest is not
to be married. Other churches, they would kind of look at you funny that
you’re not. There are some churches you’d go to that you wouldn’t
be welcome at the Lord’s Table. In fact, if you go to the Lord’s
Table and you’re not supposed to, you would get a letter in the
mail that week telling you that you’re not supposed to do that.
And there are other churches that don’t have the Lord’s meal.
They don’t have any sacraments, no baptism, no communion. There’s
a Quaker church on the north side of Fort Wayne like that. One of my favorite
uncles, a brother of my dad, he’s a great guy and he married a Quaker.
And so he became a part of the Quaker church and it seems like, he thought
this was a conspiracy, for a while here before his health kind of went
downhill, he would come to visit maybe twice a year here and it seemed
like every Sunday he came we were either doing baptism or communion. And
he thought I was tricking him, saying, you know, the best sacrament is
silence. They didn’t do that and I just said it was God showing
him something, you know? There’s some churches that would only worship
with an organ, some churches only with a guitar, some with no instruments.
Everybody has to have a culture and I guess that’s why we have so
many churches, because we have a culture to speak and relate to different
places. The thing that is most important is not that culture but is the
content of what is taught and what binds us all together. Let’s
take a look at today’s scripture. This was the first church in Jerusalem
and this is what it said of them. That they committed themselves, they
were not casual shoppers they would not be in a coffee shop, they were
committed to what? The teaching of the apostles. Those people who had
been called out by Jesus who taught what Jesus was and is and taught how
we’re to live as Jesus followers. They were committed to learning
what was in the book. They were committed to life together. So that no
matter what happens to you, what ever life throws at you, whether it’s
a 20-year-old killed in a war, a 16-year-old in a car accident, a new
baby delivered from the Philippines, or a baby home grown, sickness, health,
life, death. No matter what life throws at you, you’re committed
to going through it together. And they committed themselves to a common
meal and a common drink. And I’m not sure what this phrase means
“and the prayers”. They committed themselves to the main thing
and that’s what held us all together. And the rest of it we enjoy,
there are different flavors, but it’s the main thing that holds
it all together. We are going to go as a church through a culture change.
Because a month from now, you are going to be welcoming a new pastor into
your midst and Pastor Greg Hiatt is going to be different than Pastor
Dave and some of you are looking forward to that. And some of you are
worrying about that. God speaks through culture, he speaks through personality.
But I have known Greg Hiatt a long time and I’ve watched his ministry
from afar. He is a fully devoted follower of Christ, and he will do things
different than me. And there will be parts of that that are really good.
Because the main thing will still be preached. The apostles teaching.
Life together. The common meal. And the prayers. There’s going to
come a time when I’m going to step down as pastor and I’ll
continue to connect as friend. But someone else will step into that, because
that is who God called for that time and that place. But the main thing
stays the main thing. There was a time when the church had a lot of different
voices and a lot of different things going on and the very earliest days
they were struggling to establish their culture and their identity and
what’s the main thing and what’s all the extras. And the church
came together in a counsel and they said, “We need something that
keeps us grounded in each other, things that are common that we hold and
somebody else may speak it in a different language. Somebody else will
sing it to a different tune and somebody else will have different parts
of courses to the main meal. They hammered out for themselves common ground.
So that whenever they came together they knew where they stood. And what
they established together wasn’t exactly scripture but it came to
be lifted up as an important statement of who they are. And we came to
all it the Apostle’s Creed. And no matter what we are, where we
are, where we find ourselves, all of the different things that happen
to us in life, we hold this as common ground. I’m going to ask you
to stand. And we are going to together profess this ancient creed, this
summary of what we are about. And they would do it like this. The pastor
or the priest would stand up in front of folks and say, “Do you
believe in God?” And they would all join together and say, “I
believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.”
And then they spent the most time on this, if you look at it the Jesus
part of it is a good half of the creed. Because that’s the foundation
stone. And they would be asked, “Do you believe in Jesus?”
And they would all say, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His the Son
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilot, was crucified, died and was buried, he descended
to the dead, on the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven and
is seated at the right hand of the father and will come again to judge
the living and the dead.” And then they said, “Here’s
what we believe, about the church.” “Do you believe in the
Holy Spirit?” “I believe in the Holy Spirit, one holy church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of
the body, and life everlasting. Amen.” This is what we stand on.
This is the foundation. This is the core of the Apostle’s teaching.
This is what keeps us connected with the believers of the past, it will
keep us connected with the generations that will come after. If there
is one thing I would have to really encourage you, that I want to encourage
you to do is to keep that main thing, the main thing. And continue to
grow as fully devoted followers, committed followers of Jesus Christ.
Figure out what that is and how to live it in this culture. God, I pray
for your family gathered here, and I thank you for them. Help us to be
committed to the holy teachings of your Apostles who have pointed us to
Christ. Be committed to sharing each other’s lives and the journey
and all the things that come along with it. To come together around your
table, to lift each other up in prayer. Now as we go out into a world
that so often seems bent toward darkness and destruction, Lord may we
be a reflection of your light, acknowledge that it’s not us, it’s
the light of Jesus Christ at work through us. Help us to keep him as the
main focus of our lives, forever. Amen.
|
||
|
Scripture & Prayer Guide
|
|
|
