Pastor's Blog May 30, 2015

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Saturday, May 30, 2015
Jeff Lampl

       

“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare”
Isaiah 55:2
 

As you read this Steve and Jeanne Cowen, Kathy and I will be landing Budapest (“Budapescht as they say”) and from there will be traveling about four hours to Timisoara Romania where I’ll be preaching at three churches tomorrow.  

Isaiah 55:2 occurs to me as I think about what’s ahead.  The four of us are the 1%ers, as are you,  those living more luxuriously than 99% of the rest of the world, and we are headed to a part of the world that doesn’t have what we have, but certainly would love to have what we do.   But it’s a real problem, isn’t it?   We 1%ers spend lots of cash on bread that does satisfy, but only for a while.   Our “bread that is not bread” has a short shelf life and then we need to clear the shelves and get something else, nice and new and shiny, but it too has a short shelf life and then we do it again, repeating he cycle over and over and over again.   Should we wish that on the 99%ers?  

I suspect that I will be encountering a lot of people who know better than I what it is to eat bread that is good and that I will be “delighting in the richest of fare” when I meet these people.   Frankly I expect to learn a whole lot more from the faithful Romanian believers than I will be able to bring to them.  

In the next three weeks you are being given a treat.  Ben Dieterly, Megann Graf, and Mark Cirino will each share with you how God got hold of them, brought them to himself, and how God is at work right now in their lives.   These messages will be real and personal and will give you a new glimpse into how the God of the universe works in each of us in an individualized way.   You’re going to be very, very blessed.  

“Lord, your Grace is the greatest thing is the world.   May you make us, the CLC family, the most grateful church on planet earth.   Amen”

 
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Eat This Book

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Thursday, May 28, 2015
Jeff Lampl

The voice said to me, "Son of man, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll!
Then go and give its message to the people of Israel."
"Eat it all," he said. And when I ate it,
it tasted as sweet as honey.
Ezekiel 3:1, 3 (NLT)  

“To know much and to taste nothing- of what use is that?”
St. Bonaventure

 

Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, “I am the bread of life”?   Have you ever thought of Communion or the Lord’s Supper as kind of a weird practice, taking into ourselves in some kind of a quasi-real sense the body and blood of Jesus Christ?  

Of the many things we can say about this, there is this:   in the end Christianity is not about head knowledge.  It’s not about getting doctrine right as our endgame.  The endgame is connection with God.    

This is why Ezekiel tells us that scripture is all about tasting, experiencing, imagining, taking it into our hearts, and souls and life and letting it merge with our will, our vision, our attitudes, our yearnings, our hopes, and our dreams.   Scripture is to be devoured as a nourishment to the soul.  God designed it to be meditated on, reflected on, thought about, considered, remembered in a way that it re-members us, takes us apart and puts us back together again in a new way.  

If God is the artist then he wants his “art” to shape us.   CS Lewis puts it this way:  

“When we receive it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist.  When we use it we treat it as assistance for our own activities.    Using is inferior to reception because art, if used rather than received merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not to add to it.”   

Choose a passage of scripture today or as soon as you can and chew on it.  “Eat the passage”.  Let it sink in.  Go on a meditative adventure and see what it, God actually, does to you.  

“Lord, take me to a brand new place with scripture.  As I “chew” on your Word this week give me the Grace of experiencing the nourishment that You want it to provide.  Amen”

 
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What is Christianity?

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Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“Behold, I am making all things new”
Revelation 21:5

David Bentley Hart, editor of First Things Journal, uses a lot of really big words because he wants to be precise.  And I find this section of his latest article to be precisely and wonderfully correct in his description of what the Bible teaches.  I find this, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to be the most compelling, uplifting, exciting, hope-filled, adventurous, enticing, encouraging story and message that exists in the cosmos.   I hope you read it and reflect on it and meditate on it and let it sink today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year, this decade, and in this one lifetime that you have.  If that happens then you will find your future to be incomprehensibly awesome.  “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepare for those who love him”  1 Corinthians 2:9.   Enjoy.  Jeff  

(Anyone) fortunate enough to be catechized into (Christian) Orthodoxy rather than (something other than orthodoxy), he would surely have been told that salvation is cosmic in scope and includes all creation; that the promised Kingdom of God will be nothing but this world restored and transfigured by the glory of God, in its every dimension, vegetal, animal  , rational, and social; and that a deified humanity will serve therein as a cosmic priesthood, receiving that glory from Christ and mediating it to the natural world. He would also undoubtedly have encountered the now quite standard eschatological motif of the redeemed cosmos as the burning bush: pervaded by the divine glory, but unconsumed—an infinitely realized theophany.

Now, this may be just so much fabulous Oriental flummery but, for what it is worth, it is also quite literally the only eschatology on offer in Scripture—not, moreover, in the occasional fugitive metaphor, or as a collection of vague images, or in disparate hints and fragments, but as a quite explicit theology, reiterated again and again, from the prophets, through the Gospels, right to the end of Revelation (when, rather than the saints ascending to the Empyrean, the New Jerusalem descends to earth). So perhaps one can be forgiven for concluding that the eschatological language of the New Testament is more than a congeries of mythic ciphers: that Christ really is the “savior of the cosmos” and “of all creation”; that the “glory” for which creation in its labor pains expectantly “groans” will be revealed when creation is “liberated from decay”; that the general resurrection will bring about the “glorious freedom” of all creation; that there really will be a “restoration of all things,” “a new heaven and a new earth,” when “everything in heaven and on earth” will be “subordinated to”—“hierarchically arranged below”—the Son, and through him the Father, and God will be “all in all.”. . . . .

. . . . .  certain things are not open to debate. From the New Testament and the apostolic age, we have inherited only one vision of the consummation of all things in Christ: that of a cosmic restoration in the age to come, a new heaven and a new earth, paradise regained and perfected (whose biblical depiction insistently includes the mineral, vegetal, and animal realms). Is it true? . . . . . All that can be said with certainty is that no other promise has been given, and so any eschatology that cannot truly accommodate that vision cannot be regarded as credibly Christian.  

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Prepare for the Sabbath Day

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 Friday, May 22, 2015
     Jeff Lampl        

Somewhere it’s written, “God rested the seventh day, having completed his work,”
but in this other text he says, “They’ll never be able to sit down and rest.”
So this promise has not yet been fulfilled. Those earlier ones never did get
to the place of rest because they were disobedient.
Hebrews 4:4,5 (Msg)

Think

What is wrong with me that I am seldom, if ever, able to take a full 24 hour Sabbath rest in any given week?     Is it that I am truly unable or am I unwilling?
 

Consider

The writer to the Hebrews indicates that it's a matter of obedience.  What does it say about your view of God when you choose to pursue your "worldly" activities over activities which differentiate your Sabbath for God?  


Plan

What one thing will you decide ("ruthlessly" if necessary) to do tomorrow (in addition to worship) in order to obey God's command (not suggestion) to keep the Sabbath?



Suggestion   

Locate yourself (with your family) such that all temptations to do tasks are minimized.  Walk White Clay Park, go to a museum, prepare an exotic meal or go to a concert.



Prayer

Lord, I'm in.  Tomorrow is the Sabbath and I will keep it.  Thank you for loving me enough, not just to suggest that I keep the Sabbath, but to tell me to.  Amen



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Attentiveness

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Thursday, May 21, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Scripture  

“I don't make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.“        John 14:24 (GW)    

Reflect  

“Attention is the highest form of prayer”    
               
                       Simone Weil (20^th century French atheist, activist, intellectual turned Christian)  

Spend a few moments reflecting on Weil’s insight.  She is making an observation that was a hallmark of the Life of Jesus himself.   He did nothing but what the Father told him.  In what ways are you attentive to the “voice” of the Father?  How are you honing your ability to hear?

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The Ultimate Confidence in God

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The Ultimate Confidence in God 
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Scripture  

“In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach ²  until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit.”                               Acts 1:1-2 (NLT)  

“So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!”     Acts 2:36 (NLT)

Reflect  

In the first two chapters of Acts Luke records the ascension of Jesus to the position of ruler of the Universe, with all authority over heaven and earth.  Jesus has become Lord.  

For most of my adult and Christian life I had no idea why the ascension mattered.   I’ve finally come to understand what the disciples experienced.   Peter makes it clear that the ascension is far more than a momentary disappearing act.  Rather, just as a monarch’s ascension to the throne means the assumption of authority over a kingdom, Jesus’ ascension meant to the disciples that Jesus was Lord, that Jesus is ruling the world, not Caesar, not the corrupt tax collectors, not the Roman military, not oppressors or enemies or bad circumstances.   Jesus is Lord.  And those three words were the Gospel that the disciples spread throughout Judea and beyond.  

In order to understand how huge this is take time to reflect on the following quote from scholar and author J.I. Packer.  

               "‘God is love’ is everything.   Every single thing that happens to me is an
               expression of  God’s love for me . . . at every moment and in every event
               of every day of my  life. Even when I cannot see the why of what God does
               or doesn’t do, The Gospel tells me that there is love in it and so he can
               rejoice always, and therefore when things are going wrong. I know that the
               true story of my life and my family’s  life, if I could see it now, will prove to be,
               as the hymn says, ‘amazing, amazing, amazing Grace!!”

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Knowing God

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Knowing God  
Wednesday, May 13, 2015




“Now this is eternal life:  that they know you, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” 
John 17:3  (NIV)

"When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side.  If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him.  And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition.  Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as a clean one.

You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self.  And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred - like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope.  That is why horrible nations have horrible religions:  they have been looking at God through a dirty lens."
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Have you ever tried to practice the Jesus Prayer?

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Have you ever tried to practice the Jesus Prayer?

Monday, May 11, 2015
Jeff Lampl

 

Scripture

"As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind beggar was sitting beside the road.  When he heard the noise of a crowd going past, he asked what was happening.  They told him that Jesus the Nazarene was going by.  So he began shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”                                                   Luke 18:35-38 (NLT) 
 

Reflect

Fr. Dn. Charles Joiner shares his thoughts on one of the most practiced prayers in Christian history, the “Jesus Prayer”  

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”  

“This prayer has the potential to transform your consciousness and bring you closer to God. It is a prayer rooted deeply in the tradition of the Church. It is a prayer to be repeated over and over, many times. You can begin to develop the use of this prayer by incorporating a number of repetitions in your daily prayer rule. It is a simple prayer and you can learn to say it everywhere and at any time. In fact, your aim should be to make it an unending prayer. In this way your whole life becomes a life of prayer.  

Recognize, however, that this prayer is incredibly difficult to practice even though it seems to be very simple. In its practice, you continually recite it so that it permeates your heart and focuses your mind, predisposing you to follow God’s will instead of your own ego-directed will.  

Start by repeating it for ten minutes in the morning or evening. Begin by saying it out loud or at least by moving your lips. Eventually you will repeat it mentally, but start with a verbal prayer. Add more repetitions, slowly building up the time you are able to concentrate on the prayer. When your mind wanders, bring it back to the prayer. Concentrate, but do not be harsh on yourself. This is not something you will master with your self-will. Ask God to help you conquer the restlessness of your mind. With persistence, humility and patience, the practice of this prayer will prepare you for God’s grace to work actively within you.”


Prayer

                  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”  

Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

 
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Pastor's Blog May 9, 2015

 

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Saturday, May 9, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“Each of you must show great respect for your mother and father,
and you must always observe my Sabbath days of rest. I am the LORD your God.”
Leviticus 19:3 (NLT)  

Notice

Notice two things about today’s passage.   First the writer connects the fourth and fifth of the Ten Commandments, honoring father and mother and keeping the Sabbath.   Second, the author in a surprising counter cultural move places mother before father.

Consider

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.   Reflect on the female images of God in the Bible.  

Genesis 1:27  Women and Men created in God’s image

“Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them."  

Hosea 11:3-4  God described as a mother

God: “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I who took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.”  

Hosea 13:8  God described as a mother bear

"Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and tear them asunder. . . . ”  

Deuteronomy 32:11-12 God described as a mother eagle

“Like the eagle that stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young, God spreads wings to catch you, and carries you on pinions.”  

Deuteronomy 32:18  God who gives birth

“You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.”  

Isaiah 66:13  God as a comforting mother

God: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”  

Isaiah 49:15  God compared to a nursing mother

God: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” 

Isaiah 42:14  God as a woman in labor

God: “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept myself still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant.” 

Jeremiah 44:25  Queen of Heaven

“Thus says . . . .the God of Israel: You and your wives have accomplished in deeds what you declared in words, ‘We are determined to . . . .  make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out libations to her.’ By all means, keep your vows and make your libations!”  

Psalm131:2  God as a Mother

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.”  

Psalm 123:2-3  God compared to a woman

“As the eyes of a servant looks to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to you, YHWH, until you show us your mercy!”  

Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34  God as a Mother Hen

Jesus: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” 

Luke 15:8-10  God as woman looking for her lost coin

Jesus: “Or what woman having ten silver coins, is she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Plan

How will you honor God and your mother on Sunday?  Even if you perceive your mother as a negative in your life, nevertheless there is something in her that stretched her beyond herself for your sake.   That was God loving you through her.   You can honor God by thanking Him and forgiving her.  Even better you can ask her (whether she’s still alive or not) for her forgiveness of you for judging her.  Now that would be an incredible Mother’s Day gift!!!!!
 

Prayer

“Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you for this reminder!  It was always way, way, way too easy for me to take my mother for granted, just as I have also found it way, way, way too easy to take you for granted.  I am so sorry for that.  I both ask for your forgiveness and thank you for having granted me forgiveness even before I asked (actually just like my mom, who loved and forgave me before I ever asked – something I’ve learned about you, Lord, through the mother you gave me)   Amen.”

 Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

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