Merredin Uniting Church

Hello all, here is a copy of our reading from yesterday. It explains a bit about Advent and why we light the candles…

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  Advent means “coming” and in this season we prepare for the coming of Christ. One of the ways we prepare for his coming is by making an Advent wreath and lighting its candles to remind us of the gifts Christ brings to the world.

The Advent wreath includes many symbols to help us think about Christ and his gifts. The wreath itself is in the shape of a circle.  A circle has no beginning and no end.  This reminds us that there is no beginning and no end to God and that God’s love and caring are forever. The light from the candles – which grows stronger each Sunday in Advent, reminds us that Jesus is the light of the world.

Today we light the candle of hope.  The people of Israel hoped in God’s promises and were not disappointed.  Again and again God delivered Israel from its enemies.  We too have the same experience of salvation.  That is why we believe in God’s promise to send Jesus to us once again to judge the world and establish his kingdom forever upon the earth. (Light the candle)

Hope is like a light shining in a dark place.  As we look at the light of this candle we celebrate the hope we have in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:  Thank you God for the hope you give us.  We ask that as we wait for all your promises to come true, and for Christ to come again, that you would remain present with us.  Help us today, and everyday to worship you, to hear your word, and to do your will by sharing your hope with each other.  We ask it in the name of the one who was born in Bethlehem.  Amen.

Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36

It’s Advent – the beginning. It’s a season of anticipation and hope, not just for the remembrance of that event in history when God came amongst us in Christ but also for the time when Jesus shall come again in glory.

“The days are coming, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David, and he will do what is just and right in the Land.”

Stop with me and let’s think about it for a while.

What does it mean to us now, this promise of God, that He will cause a Righteous Branch to spring up?

• What does it mean too when Jesus says to us that there is a day coming when the Son of Man will come to us in a cloud with power and great glory?
• What do these promises mean now in the midst of our busy lives and hectic lifestyles?
• What does it mean for me right now when the harvest is ripe and my header is broken?
• What does it mean when there is so much to do and so little time or energy to do it?
• What do these promises about the future mean when we are caught up in trying to do all we can do right here and now in the present – what do they mean when we are struggling to live one day at a time – when we are trying to be all things to all people?
• What do they mean when we watch the news or read the newspaper and discover that senseless horrors continue throughout the world; that crime and starvation and terrorism and war and earthquakes and floods abound and indeed seen to be increasing?

I think that they mean that we should rejoice and stand up and watch and pray

• that I might escape all that is about to happen
• and pray that I might be ready for Christ’s return
• and pray that I might be able to stand before the Son of Man
• and, to pray for revival in Christ’s Church, for that is the only way in which we can help other people to also be ready to enter into the fullness of God’s Promise

The promise of God – the promise of Christ – is that the future is not going to be like the present.
His promise is that those things that we see that are wrong in this world, those things that we hear of that are evil – will perish away, and that a new heaven and a new earth will come upon us – a heaven and earth of everlasting peace and justice, joy and love.

And I think that this anticipation and the preparation for a future hope is important.

And so does Jesus. That is why he talks about the future – that is why he mentions the signs of His coming, how the stars and the moon and the sun itself will appear to go off course and terror will be felt among the nations, and fear among the peoples.

And that is why he says:

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. 35 For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

Be careful, be ready, be prepared … for the day will come upon you suddenly like a trap …
When we are not anticipating that which is to come, we can slip easily into careless walking. We will dissipate – waste away by careless living, we will seek pleasure in selfish indulgence and we will be distracted by the anxieties of life.
We will be trapped!

And the thing about traps is that they don’t hunt us down – they just wait for us to come on by … happily not paying attention.

I once heard a story of a man who was having a horrendous week. His wife was expecting a baby. He had a million and one obligations to take care of. He felt rushed off and his feet and distracted and unable to appreciate what was happening around him.

He wrote this, “I’m trapped. I have been so caught up in everything that I had no idea what else I missed. I was feeling sorry for myself, and for my wife. I was grumbling and hard to get along with.

I missed the excitement of my kids when their uncle, my own brother, came to visit. I didn’t thank God for the smiles and support other people were giving us as we waited for the baby. I didn’t watch for what else God was doing around here this past week.” And then he asked – “Now how about you? I’m curious, what one thing or couple of things do you tend to be so focused on that you kind of lose your context?”

Well, for me it’s my work. I can get so involved in it, so caught up in it, spending hours before the computer, and then rushing around doing visits and getting ready for meetings and then going to them – that I forget what it is that I am actually meant to do – that I can miss my family’s joys and the way in which God is actually touching people’s lives all around me,

What about you? What busy-ness keeps you from the joyful anticipation of what God intends for you?
Is your love weakening rather than overflowing? Are you feeling guilty about your lack of attention to God and to the people round about you?

In our reading from Thessalonians, Paul prays that these things would not happen to the church there in Thessalonica and he prays that the way would be clear for him to come to them to supply to them what is lacking in their faith – perhaps it was the focus on the distractions of everyday life. He is coming to build up their faith in the God who came in Christ and who will come again in glory.

Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading not to be distracted by the big issues: warfare, floods, famine, creation seeming to fall apart. But rather to see them as signs of what is to take place.
But he is also telling us that personal things can be more distracting than any civil war halfway around the planet.

It’s those personal events – the anxieties of life – that are so dangerous, because they are subtle and sneaky. We don’t realise what is happening until it is too late. All of a sudden we’re trapped, feeling sorry for ourselves, working so hard, being so focused on one thing, that we miss the bigger picture.

That’s why Jesus tells us to be alert. To watch. To not get so caught up in the everyday things or the big tragedies that we lose sight of the larger scheme, that we fail to look down the road, that we fail to see the presence of the Kingdom looming towards us with all its hope – all its promise.

The kingdom is coming. A righteous Branch has sprouted from David’s line; and he will do what is just and right in the land. He has come – and he is returning. We are called to be ready for him when he does, to be praying and loving and doing the things he has commanded us to do.

And that is the attitude of Advent. To be alert to what is going on around us. To understanding the signs around us and to anticipate the fulfilment of God’s word in our midst. Out of a sure hope to be readying ourselves by prayer and faithfulness. Readying ourselves by having in us the holy hope od Emmanuel – God with us – a hope that is promised to us and to those around us.

Jesus doesn’t tell us about the signs of the end and the coming time of judgement in order to frighten us, but rather to assure us that God is keeping his promise – and that the time of his rule is at hand.

He tells us about the signs of the coming of the kingdom so that we might get ready..
That we might be careful and, with our heads held high, to walk the road towards the approaching Kingdom in prayer and in hope, in righteousness and in love, knowing that as so many of promises of God were fulfilled at the birth of Christ, so the rest will also be fulfilled – to His praise and his glory.

Keep focused, don’t give up, hold fast to the promise, live as if it is already fulfilled – for it already is .. and will be .. in all power at the coming of Christ.

We praise God as we start the new cycle of the Christian Year today on the First Sunday of Advent – the season of anticipation and hope. The word “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival”, and the focus of the entire season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Christ in His First Advent, and the anticipation of the return of Christ the King in his Second Advent. Advent is far more than simply marking a 2,000 year old event in history. It is celebrating a truth about God, the revelation of God in Christ whereby all of creation might be reconciled to God. In this double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of individuals and a congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That acknowledgment provides a basis for Kingdom ethics, for holy living arising from a profound sense that we live “between the times” and are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people.

So, as the church celebrates God’s in-breaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a future consummation to that history for which “all creation is groaning awaiting its redemption,” it also confesses its own responsibility as a people commissioned to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

In this season we seek a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression. It is the cry of those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of oppressed slaves and brought deliverance!

It is that hope, however faint at times, and that God, however distant He sometimes seems, which brings to the world the anticipation of a King who will rule with truth and justice and righteousness over His people and in His creation. It is that hope that once anticipated, and now anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, who will bring peace and justice and righteousness to the world.

Part of the expectation also anticipates a judgment on sin and a calling of the world to accountability before God. We long for God to come and set the world right! Yet, as the prophet Amos warned, the expectation of a coming judgment at the “Day of the Lord” may not be the day of light that we might want, because the penetrating light of God’s judgment on sin will shine just as brightly on God’s people. We must be aware of this in the Advent Season and yet there will be time enough during the rest of the journey through the Christian Year to remember our sins. It begins in Epiphany when we hear about the brotherhood of the Kingdom, and realize our failure to effect it. Then as we move toward and through Lent we realize that the coming of Jesus served more to lay bare our own sin than it did to vindicate our righteousness. And there will be time to shed Peter’s bitter tears as we realize that what started with such possibility and expectation has apparently ended in such failure.

It is only as we experience that full cycle, beginning with unbridled joy in Advent that slowly fades into the realization of what we have done with and to the Christ, that the awful reality of Good Friday can have its full impact. And in that realization we can finally be ready to hear the Good News on Resurrection Sunday! That is the journey that the disciples took. And so there is value in taking the same journey beginning with the anticipation and joy of Advent!

After the service today we will have a Merredin Congregation Meeting and being the 5^th Sunday, Margie and I don’t have to rush off somewhere else. And I understand that we are going to have a bring and share congregation lunch after that, so none of us needs to rush off. I said to the Parish Council that we are able to interact more with those in the outlying congregations than with the folk in Merredin because we have time after the service in those places to chat, so today is a valuable time for us. Perhaps we might also think about being innovative to create value in the other times when we meet for worship. In Mukinbudin, we have a cuppa before the service – that’s good. Last Sunday evening in Southern Cross, we didn’t have a service at all. We just talked about life and faith and prayed together. And we began to think about having the service on Tuesday evenings. It’s good, it’s all good because it’s God’s.

Texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, John 1:35-42

Being a Christian is a dreadful anomaly.

We live as a people trying to balance virtually impossible tensions.

We are in the world but we are not of the world ….

We proclaim that the Kingdom of God is already here but it clearly is not yet…

On the one hand we say that we are saved by faith and not by works and on the other we claim that faith without works is dead.

These, and many other tensions in our faith, are Biblical truths … and we say that the Bible is without contradiction.

How do we hold all of these things together ? When they seem to be so filled with contradiction …

The reality is that we struggle, and in our humanness find ourselves pulled to one or other of the extremes. And Satan plays on our weakness : he challenges the tensions we struggle with and finds great delight when we give up and are drawn to one of the extremes. The first recorded words we have of Satan are of him causing Eve to doubt God’s motive in prohibiting them from eating from one of the trees when they had permission to eat from all the rest. His strategy of temptation is always to challenge the incongruity of God’s word so that we lose the radical middle of affirming God’s yes and God’s no at the same time.

It is extremely hard to sustain this radical middle and so to keep the biblical balance at all times … simply because it is a place of tension. It needs us to step forward in trusting faith and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as Peter challenges us in his 2nd letter.

Its no wonder that non-Christians call us hypocrites. I recently read an editorial article by someone who professes to having been a Christian but who no longer is a Christian. His complaint was that he did all “the things” as a child but that as he grew up he found them to be empty and meaningless … so he decided to give  up being a Christian.

He almost certainly was never a Christian – he had been introduced to the Christian faith at one end of the tension spectrum :

where one does Sunday School,

attends church,

and is introduced to the morality and legalism of the Christian faith etc

but he had never been introduced to the other end :

where one lives by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit

and the reality of God who deals with us in our everyday

and he certainly had no understanding of the tension of holding both these extremes in the tension of the radical middle.

This is what had happened at the time of Eli, when Samuel was a boy …

The word of the Lord was rare, and there were not many visions …

Eli, the senior priest of the Lord had eyes so weak that he could hardly see …

BUT the lamp of God had not yet gone out !

And Samuel was in the temple of the Lord where the Ark was !

And so God called him …. Samuel, Samuel ….

But Samuel did not know the Lord and so he thought it was Eli who was calling him.

God called twice, and Samuel didn’t know who it was.

The third time, the Bible tells us, “The Lord came and stood there ! and then called.

This time Samuel responded, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”

You see, the Lord is always in the radical middle. He is in that place of tension where He is both the object of our faith and the reality of our life.

Samuel didn’t know the Lord other than as the object of his faith. He went through all the temple rituals : said prayers, learned scripture, offered sacrifices ….

BUT he didn’t know the Lord as subjective reality.

He had been brought up in a world that only knew one side of the bipolar tension.

It wasn’t always like that. His mother Hannah … barren for most of her life, had held on to the truth of the God who answers prayer, who had given the scripture, to whom sacrifices were offered. And despite her barrenness, she kept up her prayers that God would give her a son. And He did … because she made her place in the radical middle, holding the tension between the reality of her barrenness and the reality of the God who could answer her prayers.

Its a tough place to be … and its even harder to remain there when the reality of your situation is pulling you away from the centre.

Even Eli, who had observed her in her prayers accused her of drunken babbling.

Its a tough place to be … in the radical middle … where you believe not only the words of God in the Bible with your head but also the reality of His being in your heart.

Samuel was the greatest Judge of Israel … because he sought to hold the tension of the radical middle in his life, in his faith, in his concept of God. In his time God’s people turned again to God … they moved from empty religious gestures to a reality of the living God.

When John the Baptist pointed out Jesus as “the Lamb of God”, Andrew and John left him to follow Jesus. John had been challenging the people of his time about their religious indifference. He had been calling people into a deeper relationship with God – into that place where God is apparently invisible and distant but is also real and always nearby. He had been calling people into the radical middle.

Andrew and John had responded and became disciples of John the Baptist. But when he pointed out Jesus, they understood, quite rightly, that only in the presence of Jesus, and as His disciples would they be able to hold the inherent tensions of the radical middle.

They followed behind Jesus until He turned and asked them, “What do you want ?”

Their reply is interesting …. “Sir,” they said, “where are you staying ?”

They wanted to be where He is … they wanted to be in the radical middle !

Just as I said about Samuel, when the Lord came and stood there to call him :The Lord is always in the radical middle. He is in that place of tension where He is both the object of our faith and the reality of our life.

Yes, you might say. This all makes a kind of sense … but where is the radical middle? How do I get there ? Is it possible for me to live in this world under the incredible pressure it places on me to conform to its ways, and at the same time believe God with all my heart and soul and spirit ?

It seems that my choices are limited : either I conform to the world, or I become a religious nut. I don’t want to do either and yet I’m still not happy here at this place in the middle where I try to compromise on both extremes.

That, my friends, is precisely the problem. And you have understood exactly what I mean by the radical middle.

It is definitely not the place of compromise. It is the place of tension ! It is where you radically believe and act as if you are in the world but not of it …. and as if you are not in the world but are of it.

It is the place where Jesus – God made flesh – is a consistent reality of your life.

It is where you understand that “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.”

Our text from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is not so much about sexual immorality as the NIV editors have indicated as about spiritual purity in the radical middle.

Everything is permissible but not everything is permissible.

I can eat anything but it is not all good for me … and that’s perhaps more true in today’s world of fast synthetic foods that it has ever been.

You belong to Christ … you are His ! And so don’t seek solace elsewhere.

Paul says that it is the same as sexual immorality … you can gratify your flesh with a prostitute but you will find no satisfaction.

True satisfaction comes only from a spiritual relationship with God – one who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit.

I started by saying that “Being a Christian is a dreadful anomaly. That we live as a people trying to balance virtually impossible tensions”.

These tensions pull us from either side all the time …

There is the world/God tension …

There is the Word/Spirit tension …

There is the Head/heart tension …

The only resolve to these tensions is not compromise – as mostly happens in the life of the church and in the life of the church.

It is not holding fast to just one of the poles – the head OR the heart

the word OR the Spirit

the world OR God,

this leads to cultism and false religion.

The only resolve is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ, who though fully God has dwelt amongst us as man. He has set the place for us in the radical middle, where the object of our faith is also the reality of our life.

Amen

Good Day. We had a really great service last week in Merredin with the folk from Sing Australia. Its good to have additional voices and a good crowd but all that really matters is that the Lord is with us, and I am sure that will be the case again today.

Today we will welcome Gerhard Seymour into membership at Merredin during the course of our service. Gerhard is from South Africa where he lived in a town called Nelspruit, a thriving town on the edge of the Kruger National Park – the largest game reserve in the world. He is in Australia on contract as a train driver but is planning to settle. Gerhard was an elder in his congregation back home but admits that it was here in the church in Merredin that he came into a life giving relationship with the Lord. Now he is one of the early ones at church on a Sunday along with Harry and Betty Townrow. He has taken responsibility for the sound system and sees that as his present ministry. His wife, Yolanda, and children Belinda (18yrs), Mariska (14yrs) and Mauritz (11yrs) are still back in South Africa but it is Gerhard’s fervent prayer that they will join him in the new life which he has found in Christ and in Australia.

The new life which we have in Christ constantly puts challenges before us. In Christ we are no longer of this world, and yet we are still in it. We are caught in all kinds of tensions between the world and God, between the Word and the Spirit, between the head and the heart, between law and grace. So today I want to speak about finding ourselves in the radical middle of our faith, in that place between law and grace, where we can keep the radical tension in perfect equilibrium by being fully connected to Jesus. It is when our eyes are off the Lord, trying to balance the demands of the world with our intellectual understanding of God’s word, that we find ourselves confused. Jesus is right there in the Radical Middle. And that is in itself an anomaly: how can you be “radical” and also in the middle of the road? Does “middle” mean compromise? And if we compromise, how can we be radical? I looked up the word “radical” in a dictionary. It can mean “going back to the root” and it can mean “extreme”. It can also mean “of strong convictions”. In choosing to use that word as an adjective to “Middle”, I want it to mean all these things because my life in Jesus must be all these things and He must be the middle of my life. He is my source, my beginning, the root of my existence; He also calls me to extreme living in a mediocre world and He calls me to strong convictions, or certain faith.

Today is the last Sunday of the Christian Year. It is called “The Feast (or Festival, or Celebration) of Christ the King.” It is the apex of the Christian Year, it is what every celebration through the year has been leading us towards. And the message today calls us to the place where the object of our faith is also the reality of our life. Where we live in this world, and yet born again into the Kingdom of God; where the Promise is already revealed and faith is a certainty. The Celebration of Christ the King is a celebration of the Radical Middle.

The Christian Calendar begins afresh next week with Advent. As Christians we don’t have to wait for New Year’s Day – we’re already a month ahead of the rest of the world. Advent is a celebration of the coming Messiah. In the four weeks before Christmas we look at the prophecies of Christ’s coming, both in the flesh as a celebration of history, and His second coming as a celebration of ultimate glory. At Christmas we celebrate the Word made flesh, Immanuel, God with us. And we share gifts to bless each other in this incredible celebration. From Christmas onwards we focus on Christ’s life on earth – we remind ourselves of the events which marked His journey to the Cross, we build faith as we share His journey of incarnation. Onwards, onwards we go to Calvary and stand in stunned silence before the Cross on Good Friday and wonder what is good about it. Then comes Easter – the tomb is empty, He is risen. Amazed at our encounters with Him on the road to Emmaus, at Galilee, we stand watching Him ascend to heaven to take His place on the glorious throne and patiently wait instructions. Then the Spirit comes at Pentecost. Everything in the world is suddenly upside down; the words Jesus spoke become clear, and in a weird and crazy way we suddenly understand what life is all about. We know our purpose, we are content, we trust God in every situation, we have no fear, we are loved. And in the long season of Pentecost (which is a Harvest Celebration) we become harvesters. It is the Season of Mission. It is a celebration of Good News, it is a reaping of the harvest sown by the Word. All the way from Festival of Pentecost to Celebration of Christ the King (today’s celebration) we have (or should have been) at work reaping the fields which Jesus said were “ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). And then on the Celebration of Christ the King we celebrate that Christ is indeed the King and that His Kingdom has come, that He reigns in glory over all things, and that He calls us His own. That is why our evening readings for the past few weeks have been focused on the Book of Revelation – unseen and yet revealed the Kingdom has crept upon us and overwhelmed us. Like John’s vision we were caught up in the midst of the tragedies and tortures of this world and the impact of its sin and then, suddenly, we looked and there was there a new heaven and a new earth and the Holy City, the New Jerusalem came down from heaven. And there was peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Hallelujah!