Fellowship Reformed Church of Holland

September 4, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Matthew 11: 18-20 & Luke 10:38-42

We were running late.  We missed our turn and had to back track, which meant we’d be cutting it close for dinner.  The irony is not lost on me as I’m speeding up and down the winding rural blacktops near Three Rivers, Michigan.  A friend and I are on our way to St. Gregory’s Abbey for a three day retreat.  The point of the retreat is to slow down and rest.  Here I am, watching the clock tick on my dashboard, breaking the speed limit and feeling anxious that we’re not going to get there on time.

My Honda Civic careens around the corner and pulls into the parking lot.   Car doors slam, followed by the click of automatic locks, and we hustle up to the dining hall in a near sprint.  The dinner bell has already rung.  The monks and a few guests are already seated, and the Abbot is perched in his pulpit and has started reading from the Rule of St. Benedict.  The monks are kind and hospitable, but they also like order and are sticklers about staying on schedule.  Being on time for meals and for the Divine Hours is important to them.

The Abbot sees us out of the corner of his eye and motions for us to come in.  We walk in, embarrassed and still feeling the rush of adrenaline.  We find the place that has been set for us at the table.  I even eat hurried.  I take a few deep breaths, try to settle in and relax.  

After we eat, we stand and say a prayer of thanksgiving. The monk who leads us speaks the words slowly, and invites us to do the same.  It feels unbearably slow, saying these words (like listening to the Ents in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings).  I’m present to how agitated I feel.  Yet everything within my body and soul is crying out for rest.

That’s the crazy thing.  My body and my soul cry out for rest; and yet I don’t like to rest.  Rest doesn’t come easy for me.  I’m not sure I even know how to do it.   I like to go, do, accomplish, crowd my schedule with tasks and activities and get things done. Even when I plan a retreat specifically for the purpose of rest, I bring my hurried, anxious self into and struggle to just stop and be still.   Can you relate?

In his book The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap, John Koessler says that most of us suffer from “a deficiency of rest.”  Our “culture of productivity” assumes that busier is better and that devotion equals more activity.  “No matter what we are doing now, we should do more.  No matter what we have done in the past, it has not been enough,” (p.19).

The result is a highly driven lives (and churches) that constantly strive to exceed our current level of activity but, in the end, only contributes to souls feeling exhausted and burdened by anxiety.  The one thing we desperately need, Koessler insists, is rest. Not fake rest but the real thing.

            “Come to me, all that are weary and caring heavy burdens,” says Jesus.  “And I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

            This was Jesus invitation to two sisters whom we encounter in Luke’s Gospel.  Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus enters a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomes him into her home.  In the gospel of John, we’re told that Martha and Mary are the sisters of Lazarus, and the village where they live is Bethany (John 11:1, 12:1-3).

            Martha welcomes Jesus, and then she gets busy doing all the right things that make forgood hospitality.  She cleans the house, prepares a meal, goes out of her way to serve her guest.  Luke isn’t clear if the disciples join Jesus in Martha’s home.  If so, all the more work to feed that many mouths. 

            But Mary, Martha’s sister, doesn’t lift a finger to help.  Instead, she sits down at the feet of Jesus.  This is a Jewish posture of discipleship--a student sitting at the feet of a rabbi to take in his teachings.  So there Mary sits, fully absorbed in what Jesus is saying, impervious to the way Martha is scramblingaround to get everything done. 

            Martha’s heart smolders with resentment.  She hits her breaking point and charges into the living room: “Lord, don’t you see how I’m scrambling around here in a frenzy, trying to get everything done!  I’m only one person!  I can’t do it all!  Do you not care?  Do you not care about me? Tell my sister to get up and help me then!”

            It’s a reasonable request.  The problem isn’t that Martha asks her sister to lend a hand.  The problem is that Martha is worried and distracted by many things, which is preventing her from being fully present to the Messiah, to rest in the presence of the one who graces her home!

            But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

            Jesus calls her name. Not just once but twice.  Why does he call her name twice?  Perhaps to get her attention, all frazzled as she was.  Perhaps to show her compassion, to let her hear in his voice that, though she questions it, he does care for her.  Perhaps he says her name twice because he is calling her, summoning her.

            This is what God does throughout the Bible when he places a call on someone’s life.  “Abram, Abram!”  “Moses, Moses!”  “Samuel, Samuel!”  It is an indication that God is speaking and summoning them to a life and a purpose greater than themselves.

            “Martha, Martha.”

            Could it be that Jesus is summoning Martha, out of her worry and distraction, into a new way of being?  Could it be that he is calling her to cease her striving and working and worrying and simply come to him?  Like her sister, to come and sit in his presence?

            Martha, Come to me.  Sit.  Rest.  Just be with me.

            One of the surprising things about this story of Martha and Mary is that it comes right on the heels of Jesus sending out seventy of his disciples to do the work of mission, and then the parable of the Good Samaritan.

            Do you remember that parable?  It turns out that the Samaritan, the least likely of all the characters in the story, is the one who helps the injured man on the road and shows genuine love of neighbor.   Then Jesus ends with this command, “Go and do likewise.”

            But what’s so odd is the next story is Jesus going to Martha’s house, where he commends Mary not for “going and doing” but for “sitting and staying.”  Do you find that confusing?  Which is it?  “Go and do” or “Sit and stay?”

            It’s both.  But the “going and doing” arises out of the “sitting and staying.”  In other words, before we are called to do anything, we must first be.  Our doing flows out of our being.  So Jesus seems to be saying, “Don’t do something, just sit here!  Just be with me!”

            Richard Foster tells a story about when he was in college, and he was distracted and pulled apart by many things—the pressures of school, working a job, volunteering at a church, and a host of other things.  He found himself, like Martha, exhausted and feeling resentful.  One night he went for a walk in the woods, and he was complaining to God and feeling sorry for himself.  Then, he heard the Lord say in the quiet place of his heart: “You are frustrated and feeling sorry yourself…because you do not have all your desires satisfied.  But if you will be with me you do not have to have all your desires satisfied.  With me is ultimate and complete satisfaction.  If you are genuinely with me, you are in the best place possible.”

            Foster goes on to reflect on that experience: “That was all [God said].  No promise to transform my life circumstances.  No guarantee of wealth and prosperity and all my worldly desires.  No pledge to change a single thing.  And yet those words quietly dissipated my frustration and overcame my self-pity.  I walked out of the woods with a fresh spring in my step.  I had been addressed personally, intimately.  The voice of the true Shepherd was altogether sufficient” (Sanctuary of the Soul: A Journey into Meditative Prayer, InterVarsity Press, 2011, pp.11-12).

            If you are genuinely with me, you are in the best place possible.  No matter where you are or what is going on around you or in what kind of circumstances you find yourself.  To be with Jesus is to be in the best place possible. 

Ok, all of this sounds good.  But how?  Do you know how hectic my life is?  Brian, you’re preaching a sermon like this on Labor Day Weekend, right at the beginning of the hurry and hustle of a new school year?  Do you know how many tasks need to get done?  What kind of pressure I’m under?  I wish I could just come and sit at the feet of Jesus, but I don’t have that luxury right now!

            Jesus does not tell us this is easy.  It is simple, but it is not easy.  It requires a choice.  Mary and Martha each had to make a choice.  And no one can make that for us.  “Mary has chosen the better part,” says Jesus, “and this will not be taken away from her.”

            Choosing the better part—to be with Jesus—does not mean that we must give up our many tasks and withdraw into a reclusive life in a monastery.  That’s not realistic for most of us.  But Jesus does call us to abide in him, to trust him and make him the center of our lives, even as we go about our many tasks.  As author Leighton Ford explains, the secret to finding rest is not at the circumference (merely reducing our activities—although we may need to do this) but at the center (refocusing our heart). 

            Spiritual writers of the past have talked about the importance of cultivating “the monastery of the heart.”  By this they mean that no matter how busy life gets, we stay centered in Christ in our innermost place.  So we can be with Jesus wherever we go and whatever we do, because he is in us and we are in him.  We are simply called to pay attention to the Christ who is always with us.  And to rest in his care for us, his strength and power.  To stay joined to Jesus, attached to him, and let him pull us into the unforced rhythms of grace rather than pushing so hard on our own effort.

            A few weeks ago my brother and his wife, who lived over in Zeeland, moved to Chicago so my sister-in-law can begin a Ph. D. program at Wheaton.  They were downsizing and thus tried to sell many of their things.  I bought their John Deer push lawn mower, since our old lawn mower was in rough shape.  I had that old mower for 15 years, and had just gotten used to mowing with it.  It pushed hard and the handles shook to the point it would give you blisters.

 Well I decided a couple weeks ago to try this new John Deere lawn more (new to me),  and I squeezed the self-propel level, and it pulled me with such force that I nearly tripped over my own stumbling feet!  Mowing the lawn was a night/day difference!  When I was pushing that old mower, all on my own strength and effort, it was a chore.  But with this new mower that was self-propelled, suddenly I was being pulled along, and not only was mowing the lawn easier but it made it a lot more enjoyable!

            So it is when we rest in Christ—stay joined to him.  Life becomes less about pushing, striving, and hustling, driven by our fears and anxieties, relying on our own strength and effort.  It now is about being pulled along, filled with Jesus’ life in us, swept into the unforced rhythms of grace.  It’s still hard at times and takes effort, but we have the sense that we are being carried by a strength greater than ourselves.

            Where are you today?  What is your soul saying to you, if you dare to stop, get quiet, and listen?

            In the silence, do you hear Jesus’ invitation-- calling out to you today, summoning you to come be with him?  Come with your worry and distraction, your fear and heartache, come and lay it all before him.  Surrender.  Let it go, whatever you brought into the sanctuary with you today.  “Cast all your anxieties on him,” says 1 Peter 5:7, “because he cares!”  Yes, Martha, he does care! 

            Let him cultivate in you a monastery of the heart so that rest might become for you not just something you do now and then or when your busy life affords it, but a constant state of being, a regular way of life.   Let us hear Jesus say… “Come to me, you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

            In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

September 4, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Matthew 11: 18-20 & Luke 10:38-42

We were running late.  We missed our turn and had to back track, which meant we’d be cutting it close for dinner.  The irony is not lost on me as I’m speeding up and down the winding rural blacktops near Three Rivers, Michigan.  A friend and I are on our way to St. Gregory’s Abbey for a three day retreat.  The point of the retreat is to slow down and rest.  Here I am, watching the clock tick on my dashboard, breaking the speed limit and feeling anxious that we’re not going to get there on time.

My Honda Civic careens around the corner and pulls into the parking lot.   Car doors slam, followed by the click of automatic locks, and we hustle up to the dining hall in a near sprint.  The dinner bell has already rung.  The monks and a few guests are already seated, and the Abbot is perched in his pulpit and has started reading from the Rule of St. Benedict.  The monks are kind and hospitable, but they also like order and are sticklers about staying on schedule.  Being on time for meals and for the Divine Hours is important to them.

The Abbot sees us out of the corner of his eye and motions for us to come in.  We walk in, embarrassed and still feeling the rush of adrenaline.  We find the place that has been set for us at the table.  I even eat hurried.  I take a few deep breaths, try to settle in and relax.  

After we eat, we stand and say a prayer of thanksgiving. The monk who leads us speaks the words slowly, and invites us to do the same.  It feels unbearably slow, saying these words (like listening to the Ents in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings).  I’m present to how agitated I feel.  Yet everything within my body and soul is crying out for rest.

That’s the crazy thing.  My body and my soul cry out for rest; and yet I don’t like to rest.  Rest doesn’t come easy for me.  I’m not sure I even know how to do it.   I like to go, do, accomplish, crowd my schedule with tasks and activities and get things done. Even when I plan a retreat specifically for the purpose of rest, I bring my hurried, anxious self into and struggle to just stop and be still.   Can you relate?

In his book The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap, John Koessler says that most of us suffer from “a deficiency of rest.”  Our “culture of productivity” assumes that busier is better and that devotion equals more activity.  “No matter what we are doing now, we should do more.  No matter what we have done in the past, it has not been enough,” (p.19).

The result is a highly driven lives (and churches) that constantly strive to exceed our current level of activity but, in the end, only contributes to souls feeling exhausted and burdened by anxiety.  The one thing we desperately need, Koessler insists, is rest. Not fake rest but the real thing.

            “Come to me, all that are weary and caring heavy burdens,” says Jesus.  “And I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

            This was Jesus invitation to two sisters whom we encounter in Luke’s Gospel.  Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem, and Jesus enters a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomes him into her home.  In the gospel of John, we’re told that Martha and Mary are the sisters of Lazarus, and the village where they live is Bethany (John 11:1, 12:1-3).

            Martha welcomes Jesus, and then she gets busy doing all the right things that make forgood hospitality.  She cleans the house, prepares a meal, goes out of her way to serve her guest.  Luke isn’t clear if the disciples join Jesus in Martha’s home.  If so, all the more work to feed that many mouths. 

            But Mary, Martha’s sister, doesn’t lift a finger to help.  Instead, she sits down at the feet of Jesus.  This is a Jewish posture of discipleship--a student sitting at the feet of a rabbi to take in his teachings.  So there Mary sits, fully absorbed in what Jesus is saying, impervious to the way Martha is scramblingaround to get everything done. 

            Martha’s heart smolders with resentment.  She hits her breaking point and charges into the living room: “Lord, don’t you see how I’m scrambling around here in a frenzy, trying to get everything done!  I’m only one person!  I can’t do it all!  Do you not care?  Do you not care about me? Tell my sister to get up and help me then!”

            It’s a reasonable request.  The problem isn’t that Martha asks her sister to lend a hand.  The problem is that Martha is worried and distracted by many things, which is preventing her from being fully present to the Messiah, to rest in the presence of the one who graces her home!

            But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

            Jesus calls her name. Not just once but twice.  Why does he call her name twice?  Perhaps to get her attention, all frazzled as she was.  Perhaps to show her compassion, to let her hear in his voice that, though she questions it, he does care for her.  Perhaps he says her name twice because he is calling her, summoning her.

            This is what God does throughout the Bible when he places a call on someone’s life.  “Abram, Abram!”  “Moses, Moses!”  “Samuel, Samuel!”  It is an indication that God is speaking and summoning them to a life and a purpose greater than themselves.

            “Martha, Martha.”

            Could it be that Jesus is summoning Martha, out of her worry and distraction, into a new way of being?  Could it be that he is calling her to cease her striving and working and worrying and simply come to him?  Like her sister, to come and sit in his presence?

            Martha, Come to me.  Sit.  Rest.  Just be with me.

            One of the surprising things about this story of Martha and Mary is that it comes right on the heels of Jesus sending out seventy of his disciples to do the work of mission, and then the parable of the Good Samaritan.

            Do you remember that parable?  It turns out that the Samaritan, the least likely of all the characters in the story, is the one who helps the injured man on the road and shows genuine love of neighbor.   Then Jesus ends with this command, “Go and do likewise.”

            But what’s so odd is the next story is Jesus going to Martha’s house, where he commends Mary not for “going and doing” but for “sitting and staying.”  Do you find that confusing?  Which is it?  “Go and do” or “Sit and stay?”

            It’s both.  But the “going and doing” arises out of the “sitting and staying.”  In other words, before we are called to do anything, we must first be.  Our doing flows out of our being.  So Jesus seems to be saying, “Don’t do something, just sit here!  Just be with me!”

            Richard Foster tells a story about when he was in college, and he was distracted and pulled apart by many things—the pressures of school, working a job, volunteering at a church, and a host of other things.  He found himself, like Martha, exhausted and feeling resentful.  One night he went for a walk in the woods, and he was complaining to God and feeling sorry for himself.  Then, he heard the Lord say in the quiet place of his heart: “You are frustrated and feeling sorry yourself…because you do not have all your desires satisfied.  But if you will be with me you do not have to have all your desires satisfied.  With me is ultimate and complete satisfaction.  If you are genuinely with me, you are in the best place possible.”

            Foster goes on to reflect on that experience: “That was all [God said].  No promise to transform my life circumstances.  No guarantee of wealth and prosperity and all my worldly desires.  No pledge to change a single thing.  And yet those words quietly dissipated my frustration and overcame my self-pity.  I walked out of the woods with a fresh spring in my step.  I had been addressed personally, intimately.  The voice of the true Shepherd was altogether sufficient” (Sanctuary of the Soul: A Journey into Meditative Prayer, InterVarsity Press, 2011, pp.11-12).

            If you are genuinely with me, you are in the best place possible.  No matter where you are or what is going on around you or in what kind of circumstances you find yourself.  To be with Jesus is to be in the best place possible. 

Ok, all of this sounds good.  But how?  Do you know how hectic my life is?  Brian, you’re preaching a sermon like this on Labor Day Weekend, right at the beginning of the hurry and hustle of a new school year?  Do you know how many tasks need to get done?  What kind of pressure I’m under?  I wish I could just come and sit at the feet of Jesus, but I don’t have that luxury right now!

            Jesus does not tell us this is easy.  It is simple, but it is not easy.  It requires a choice.  Mary and Martha each had to make a choice.  And no one can make that for us.  “Mary has chosen the better part,” says Jesus, “and this will not be taken away from her.”

            Choosing the better part—to be with Jesus—does not mean that we must give up our many tasks and withdraw into a reclusive life in a monastery.  That’s not realistic for most of us.  But Jesus does call us to abide in him, to trust him and make him the center of our lives, even as we go about our many tasks.  As author Leighton Ford explains, the secret to finding rest is not at the circumference (merely reducing our activities—although we may need to do this) but at the center (refocusing our heart). 

            Spiritual writers of the past have talked about the importance of cultivating “the monastery of the heart.”  By this they mean that no matter how busy life gets, we stay centered in Christ in our innermost place.  So we can be with Jesus wherever we go and whatever we do, because he is in us and we are in him.  We are simply called to pay attention to the Christ who is always with us.  And to rest in his care for us, his strength and power.  To stay joined to Jesus, attached to him, and let him pull us into the unforced rhythms of grace rather than pushing so hard on our own effort.

            A few weeks ago my brother and his wife, who lived over in Zeeland, moved to Chicago so my sister-in-law can begin a Ph. D. program at Wheaton.  They were downsizing and thus tried to sell many of their things.  I bought their John Deer push lawn mower, since our old lawn mower was in rough shape.  I had that old mower for 15 years, and had just gotten used to mowing with it.  It pushed hard and the handles shook to the point it would give you blisters.

 Well I decided a couple weeks ago to try this new John Deere lawn more (new to me),  and I squeezed the self-propel level, and it pulled me with such force that I nearly tripped over my own stumbling feet!  Mowing the lawn was a night/day difference!  When I was pushing that old mower, all on my own strength and effort, it was a chore.  But with this new mower that was self-propelled, suddenly I was being pulled along, and not only was mowing the lawn easier but it made it a lot more enjoyable!

            So it is when we rest in Christ—stay joined to him.  Life becomes less about pushing, striving, and hustling, driven by our fears and anxieties, relying on our own strength and effort.  It now is about being pulled along, filled with Jesus’ life in us, swept into the unforced rhythms of grace.  It’s still hard at times and takes effort, but we have the sense that we are being carried by a strength greater than ourselves.

            Where are you today?  What is your soul saying to you, if you dare to stop, get quiet, and listen?

            In the silence, do you hear Jesus’ invitation-- calling out to you today, summoning you to come be with him?  Come with your worry and distraction, your fear and heartache, come and lay it all before him.  Surrender.  Let it go, whatever you brought into the sanctuary with you today.  “Cast all your anxieties on him,” says 1 Peter 5:7, “because he cares!”  Yes, Martha, he does care! 

            Let him cultivate in you a monastery of the heart so that rest might become for you not just something you do now and then or when your busy life affords it, but a constant state of being, a regular way of life.   Let us hear Jesus say… “Come to me, you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

            In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

August 28, 2016

Preaching: Tim Brown

Text: A Witness from the Apocalypse of St. John

August 28, 2016

Preaching: Tim Brown

Text: A Witness from the Apocalypse of St. John

August 21, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

 Text: 1 John 1:1-10 & 4:7-21

            John Wooden is considered by many as the all time greatest basketball coach in NCAA history.  Wooden, who coached the UCLA Bruins from 1948-1975, led his team to win ten NCAA championships in a twelve year span.  Whenever Wooden would begin a new season, with a new team, the very first thing he did was spend 30 minutes teaching his players how to put on their socks properly.  He would give them deliberate, careful instruction on the right way to wear your socks.

            Really?  Instructions on how to put on socks?  Isn’t this something every child knows how to do?  Apparently not.  Wooden was convinced that you need to begin with the basics.  And putting on socks properly is foundational.  If you don’t put your socks on properly, you get blisters.  And if you get blisters, it impacts everything else you try to do as a player and team.

            The writer of what we call the epistles of John is a wise and seasoned pastor-coach, like Wooden, who understands the importance of always going back to the basics.  The three letters he writes, and especially the first letter, are written to help the early church learn to put on their socks properly so they won’t get blisters as they walk together as children of God.  It’s back to the basics, which is to point them back to the beginning, to the very heart of the gospel and what God has done for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

            When we set the preaching schedule for the summer, we weren’t sure when we would be moving into the new sanctuary.  In the beautiful providence of God, it just so happens that on this historic Sunday in the life of our church, as we move from the old sanctuary into the new, we get to hear this message of 1 John.  A voice of wisdom that calls us back to the beginning, back to the basics.

            “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…”

            1 John needs to be heard with the Gospel of John in mind, and no doubt this opening line is intended to point us back to the opening prologue of John’s Gospel:  “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  And all things came into being through him….What came into being was life, and that life was the light of all people…And the Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.”

            When John points us back to the beginning, he’s going all the way back, to the dawn of creation…to the Word of Life and Light that was spoken and brought all things into being…

            But he’s also pointing his hearers back to the beginning of his own experience of walking with Christ…and their experience of Christ in their own lives.   He’s reminding them of how he is passing on to them a message he experienced firsthand, this gospel, this Word of Life, and testifying to it.  And throughout the letter he will point them back to their own experience of the Word of Life, Jesus in the flesh, so they don’t forget the simple heart of the gospel.

            John wants to do this for us today as well.  He reminds us that this message comes down first hand from those who walked with Christ.  And he wants to remind us of how we’ve experienced Christ in our own lives.

            But this passage from 1 John has even extra significance for us today, as we enter into a new season that we’ve been sensing is really a “new beginning.”  1 John:1-4 is the Scripture from which our name, Fellowship Church, is derived and it is this passage that, almost from the beginning, has been our church’s “life verse: “We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

            So here we are, in a new sanctuary, in our 50th Anniversary as a church, embarking on a new season, a new beginning.  And yet with all the newness, there are some things that have not changed and will not ever change (God willing).  And that is the heart of the gospel that first birthed this church fifty years ago in a school gymnasium, burgeoned a congregation of 100 people into a church of over a thousand, involved building a sanctuary 45 years ago that has been such a special and meaningful place for us to encounter the living Christ personally and together.

            Today, we’re being called back to the basics, back to the beginning, back to the heart of this beautiful Gospel.  Which is all about Jesus and his death and resurrection.  And a simple call to love God and others.  This is what it means to put on our socks right so that we don’t get blisters; so that everything else we do might flourish.

            There are three key things I want to say about what it means, then, to put on our socks right. John loves imagery and metaphor, and so I’m going to point to some important symbols in our sanctuary today to emphasize these three key points.

            First, putting on our socks right it is about experiencing fellowship with God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  God made us for relationship with him, for deep and intimate communion (or connection).  This is symbolized in a tree—look at how this main vertical beam in the sanctuary is shaped like a tree (do you see it?).  In the Garden of Eden, after God made humanity in his image, he set them in the Garden with two trees that were of ultimate importance.  The tree of life—from which they could eat and enjoy.  This tree represented their life in communion with God, their life with each other and the rest of creation.  There was another tree, you know it: the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And God forbid them to eat from this tree.  Yet, coaxed by the lies of the serpent, Adam and Eve chose to distrust God and his love for them; instead, they hustled to be their own gods.  And we know the rest of the story.  That communion with God is disrupted, broken; communion with each other, with all of creation is fractured.  Where there was life is now tainted with death; light is encamped by darkness.

            But God….we’ve been saying this all along, since we began this sermon series almost a year ago…but God stays in the story and the Bible renders to us the story of God active in the world to bring light and life and restore all that is broken.  To bring us back into communion, life and flourishing.  And that’s where the cross comes in.  Let me point to the cross—the cross that was hanging central in our former sanctuary, we’ve brought into this new one.  A symbol of how Jesus himself has gone before us into this new space.

            It is in the person of Jesus—fully God and fully human—and his atoning work on the cross that God brings light into the darkness, replaces life where there is death, engrafts us once again into the Tree of Life, which is Jesus himself.  It’s back to the basics: Jesus came into this world, suffered on the cross and rose from the grave, so that we might have true fellowship with God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And as we abide in Jesus, confess our need for his love and grace, we flourish as children of light.   We find the power to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength.

            Here’s the second main thing I want to say, and it is intimately connected with the first:  the cross of Christ is also the way in which we have fellowship with one another.  Sin not only breaks communion with God, but with each other.  It is in Christ that we are made a new community, the family of God, brothers and sisters.  And so as we abide in Christ, we are empowered to love one another. 

Even with our differences, even with our imperfections, even with our own brokenness, we are made one in Christ and commit to learning to love one another.   It’s back to the basics.  Love God; love each other.  John says it so clearly: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” (4:20-21). 

John tells us that love is not just about what we say—it is “truth in action.”  It is following the pattern of Jesus, who demonstrates love by laying down his life for his friends. Maybe this will help.  There is a parable the rabbis of old tell about two brothers who farmed the same land together.  Each day during the harvest season, they would divide up the grain and deposit it in their separate granaries.  Well, one brother was single; and the other was married with several small children.  The single brother was concerned for his married brother, with all those mouths to feed, and so each night he would take grain from his own granary and deposit it in his brother’s.  The married brother was concerned for his single brother, wondering who would provide for him in old age, so each night he would take grain from his granary and deposit it in his brother’s.  One night, while they were each doing this, they ran into each other beneath the moonlit sky.  Each discover what the other was doing—this love that went beyond speech but was “truth in action”, and they embraced.  As the rabbis tell the story, God saw what happened, this kind of sacrificial love, and he said, “On this spot I shall build my Temple.  For it is here, in this kind of love, that the world shall know who I am and human beings shall discover each other in love.”

Fellowship Church, this is the kind of fellowship Christ has made available to us in him, and to which God is calling us.  It is the kind of fellowship that has characterized our church from the beginning.  And this is why we’ve designed the new sanctuary this way—to see one another, to have a sense of connection—because when we love one another we are seeing God and how he lives in us and how his love is perfected in us.  It’s back to the basics.

            The cross.  A tree.  Which converge at a table with bread and wine.  All pointing to fellowship with God and fellowship with one another.  We’re learning to put on our socks so we can walk in the light of God’s truth.  But there is one more thing that must be said today as we get back to the basics.  The cross, the tree, the table...all is symbols of our fellowship with God and fellowship with each other.  Thirdly and lastly, let us not forget the heartbeat of our mission: to be a church for others.  “We declare to you [others who are not yet part of our church family] what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us…”

            This is ever and always a call to face out towards our community and world.  To be witnesses, to invite others into this fellowship with God and God’s family.  The cross, the tree, the table, all of this is not for us alone but for the sake of the world.  And so there is one more important symbol I must mention today: the bell. 

Pastor Lindsay told the story of our church bell, which belonged to Lakewood Elementary School and was given to June Reimink at her retirement.  Church bells have a long history, and were originally intended to be a way to call people in a community to gather for worship.  When you hear the church bell ring, you come and worship our Maker and Redeemer. It’s a summons.  But this bell, our bell, isn’t just a call gather but a call to scatter—it sends us out into the community and world to walk in the life of God’s love and join God’s mission.  It reminds us especially of our mission field with Lakewood Elementary and the entire West Ottawa school district.  When this bell rings, it sends us out.  Revelation 21 brings us back to the beginning of Genesis with a tree: a tree whose leaves will be for the healing of the nations!  The life and light we have in Christ is for all the nations, for the whole world!  It’s back to the basics, why we exist in the first place.

            This new sanctuary is beautiful…I’m so pleased with how it has been designed and built.  I can’t wait to learn how to inhabit this space and all the stories that will be birthed in this place over the next 50 years.  But as we get back to the basics today, back to the beginning, let me just remind you of something I was adamant about when we began this discernment process about a new sanctuary.  It’s ultimately not about the building; it’s about what happens in the building, and what happens as we are sent from the building.  It’s about the mission—to love God and others, as an accepting community, centered in Christ, focused on developing faithful followers of Jesus.  This building is a mission station—to which we are gathered and from which we are sent to walk in the light of God’s love and truth.

            Remember, to be disciples is to be a pilgrim people—a people on the move with the living Jesus.  We learn to put our socks on right so that we can walk well, faithfully, courageously, as children of God.

            Did you know that when the first sanctuary was built forty five years ago, for the first worship service in that space, the people called “Fellowship Church” walked from Waukazoo elementary school down the country roads and into the new sanctuary?

            Like we walked today, from the old sanctuary, into the new, with our children leading us.

Like we walk out into the world at the end of this service, with the benediction.  Gathered and sent by a tree, a cross, a table, and a bell.  So that the world my know the light and life we’ve found, or which has found us, in the love of Savior.

And we keep walking.  Abiding in Jesus, committed to the most important things of fellowship with God and others, we walk into a new beginning, a new chapter of our church’s story.  A new chapter that begins today…

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…we declare this to you so that you may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

            In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

August 21, 2016

Preaching: Brian Keepers

 Text: 1 John 1:1-10 & 4:7-21

            John Wooden is considered by many as the all time greatest basketball coach in NCAA history.  Wooden, who coached the UCLA Bruins from 1948-1975, led his team to win ten NCAA championships in a twelve year span.  Whenever Wooden would begin a new season, with a new team, the very first thing he did was spend 30 minutes teaching his players how to put on their socks properly.  He would give them deliberate, careful instruction on the right way to wear your socks.

            Really?  Instructions on how to put on socks?  Isn’t this something every child knows how to do?  Apparently not.  Wooden was convinced that you need to begin with the basics.  And putting on socks properly is foundational.  If you don’t put your socks on properly, you get blisters.  And if you get blisters, it impacts everything else you try to do as a player and team.

            The writer of what we call the epistles of John is a wise and seasoned pastor-coach, like Wooden, who understands the importance of always going back to the basics.  The three letters he writes, and especially the first letter, are written to help the early church learn to put on their socks properly so they won’t get blisters as they walk together as children of God.  It’s back to the basics, which is to point them back to the beginning, to the very heart of the gospel and what God has done for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

            When we set the preaching schedule for the summer, we weren’t sure when we would be moving into the new sanctuary.  In the beautiful providence of God, it just so happens that on this historic Sunday in the life of our church, as we move from the old sanctuary into the new, we get to hear this message of 1 John.  A voice of wisdom that calls us back to the beginning, back to the basics.

            “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…”

            1 John needs to be heard with the Gospel of John in mind, and no doubt this opening line is intended to point us back to the opening prologue of John’s Gospel:  “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  And all things came into being through him….What came into being was life, and that life was the light of all people…And the Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.”

            When John points us back to the beginning, he’s going all the way back, to the dawn of creation…to the Word of Life and Light that was spoken and brought all things into being…

            But he’s also pointing his hearers back to the beginning of his own experience of walking with Christ…and their experience of Christ in their own lives.   He’s reminding them of how he is passing on to them a message he experienced firsthand, this gospel, this Word of Life, and testifying to it.  And throughout the letter he will point them back to their own experience of the Word of Life, Jesus in the flesh, so they don’t forget the simple heart of the gospel.

            John wants to do this for us today as well.  He reminds us that this message comes down first hand from those who walked with Christ.  And he wants to remind us of how we’ve experienced Christ in our own lives.

            But this passage from 1 John has even extra significance for us today, as we enter into a new season that we’ve been sensing is really a “new beginning.”  1 John:1-4 is the Scripture from which our name, Fellowship Church, is derived and it is this passage that, almost from the beginning, has been our church’s “life verse: “We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

            So here we are, in a new sanctuary, in our 50th Anniversary as a church, embarking on a new season, a new beginning.  And yet with all the newness, there are some things that have not changed and will not ever change (God willing).  And that is the heart of the gospel that first birthed this church fifty years ago in a school gymnasium, burgeoned a congregation of 100 people into a church of over a thousand, involved building a sanctuary 45 years ago that has been such a special and meaningful place for us to encounter the living Christ personally and together.

            Today, we’re being called back to the basics, back to the beginning, back to the heart of this beautiful Gospel.  Which is all about Jesus and his death and resurrection.  And a simple call to love God and others.  This is what it means to put on our socks right so that we don’t get blisters; so that everything else we do might flourish.

            There are three key things I want to say about what it means, then, to put on our socks right. John loves imagery and metaphor, and so I’m going to point to some important symbols in our sanctuary today to emphasize these three key points.

            First, putting on our socks right it is about experiencing fellowship with God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  God made us for relationship with him, for deep and intimate communion (or connection).  This is symbolized in a tree—look at how this main vertical beam in the sanctuary is shaped like a tree (do you see it?).  In the Garden of Eden, after God made humanity in his image, he set them in the Garden with two trees that were of ultimate importance.  The tree of life—from which they could eat and enjoy.  This tree represented their life in communion with God, their life with each other and the rest of creation.  There was another tree, you know it: the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And God forbid them to eat from this tree.  Yet, coaxed by the lies of the serpent, Adam and Eve chose to distrust God and his love for them; instead, they hustled to be their own gods.  And we know the rest of the story.  That communion with God is disrupted, broken; communion with each other, with all of creation is fractured.  Where there was life is now tainted with death; light is encamped by darkness.

            But God….we’ve been saying this all along, since we began this sermon series almost a year ago…but God stays in the story and the Bible renders to us the story of God active in the world to bring light and life and restore all that is broken.  To bring us back into communion, life and flourishing.  And that’s where the cross comes in.  Let me point to the cross—the cross that was hanging central in our former sanctuary, we’ve brought into this new one.  A symbol of how Jesus himself has gone before us into this new space.

            It is in the person of Jesus—fully God and fully human—and his atoning work on the cross that God brings light into the darkness, replaces life where there is death, engrafts us once again into the Tree of Life, which is Jesus himself.  It’s back to the basics: Jesus came into this world, suffered on the cross and rose from the grave, so that we might have true fellowship with God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And as we abide in Jesus, confess our need for his love and grace, we flourish as children of light.   We find the power to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength.

            Here’s the second main thing I want to say, and it is intimately connected with the first:  the cross of Christ is also the way in which we have fellowship with one another.  Sin not only breaks communion with God, but with each other.  It is in Christ that we are made a new community, the family of God, brothers and sisters.  And so as we abide in Christ, we are empowered to love one another. 

Even with our differences, even with our imperfections, even with our own brokenness, we are made one in Christ and commit to learning to love one another.   It’s back to the basics.  Love God; love each other.  John says it so clearly: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” (4:20-21). 

John tells us that love is not just about what we say—it is “truth in action.”  It is following the pattern of Jesus, who demonstrates love by laying down his life for his friends. Maybe this will help.  There is a parable the rabbis of old tell about two brothers who farmed the same land together.  Each day during the harvest season, they would divide up the grain and deposit it in their separate granaries.  Well, one brother was single; and the other was married with several small children.  The single brother was concerned for his married brother, with all those mouths to feed, and so each night he would take grain from his own granary and deposit it in his brother’s.  The married brother was concerned for his single brother, wondering who would provide for him in old age, so each night he would take grain from his granary and deposit it in his brother’s.  One night, while they were each doing this, they ran into each other beneath the moonlit sky.  Each discover what the other was doing—this love that went beyond speech but was “truth in action”, and they embraced.  As the rabbis tell the story, God saw what happened, this kind of sacrificial love, and he said, “On this spot I shall build my Temple.  For it is here, in this kind of love, that the world shall know who I am and human beings shall discover each other in love.”

Fellowship Church, this is the kind of fellowship Christ has made available to us in him, and to which God is calling us.  It is the kind of fellowship that has characterized our church from the beginning.  And this is why we’ve designed the new sanctuary this way—to see one another, to have a sense of connection—because when we love one another we are seeing God and how he lives in us and how his love is perfected in us.  It’s back to the basics.

            The cross.  A tree.  Which converge at a table with bread and wine.  All pointing to fellowship with God and fellowship with one another.  We’re learning to put on our socks so we can walk in the light of God’s truth.  But there is one more thing that must be said today as we get back to the basics.  The cross, the tree, the table...all is symbols of our fellowship with God and fellowship with each other.  Thirdly and lastly, let us not forget the heartbeat of our mission: to be a church for others.  “We declare to you [others who are not yet part of our church family] what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us…”

            This is ever and always a call to face out towards our community and world.  To be witnesses, to invite others into this fellowship with God and God’s family.  The cross, the tree, the table, all of this is not for us alone but for the sake of the world.  And so there is one more important symbol I must mention today: the bell. 

Pastor Lindsay told the story of our church bell, which belonged to Lakewood Elementary School and was given to June Reimink at her retirement.  Church bells have a long history, and were originally intended to be a way to call people in a community to gather for worship.  When you hear the church bell ring, you come and worship our Maker and Redeemer. It’s a summons.  But this bell, our bell, isn’t just a call gather but a call to scatter—it sends us out into the community and world to walk in the life of God’s love and join God’s mission.  It reminds us especially of our mission field with Lakewood Elementary and the entire West Ottawa school district.  When this bell rings, it sends us out.  Revelation 21 brings us back to the beginning of Genesis with a tree: a tree whose leaves will be for the healing of the nations!  The life and light we have in Christ is for all the nations, for the whole world!  It’s back to the basics, why we exist in the first place.

            This new sanctuary is beautiful…I’m so pleased with how it has been designed and built.  I can’t wait to learn how to inhabit this space and all the stories that will be birthed in this place over the next 50 years.  But as we get back to the basics today, back to the beginning, let me just remind you of something I was adamant about when we began this discernment process about a new sanctuary.  It’s ultimately not about the building; it’s about what happens in the building, and what happens as we are sent from the building.  It’s about the mission—to love God and others, as an accepting community, centered in Christ, focused on developing faithful followers of Jesus.  This building is a mission station—to which we are gathered and from which we are sent to walk in the light of God’s love and truth.

            Remember, to be disciples is to be a pilgrim people—a people on the move with the living Jesus.  We learn to put our socks on right so that we can walk well, faithfully, courageously, as children of God.

            Did you know that when the first sanctuary was built forty five years ago, for the first worship service in that space, the people called “Fellowship Church” walked from Waukazoo elementary school down the country roads and into the new sanctuary?

            Like we walked today, from the old sanctuary, into the new, with our children leading us.

Like we walk out into the world at the end of this service, with the benediction.  Gathered and sent by a tree, a cross, a table, and a bell.  So that the world my know the light and life we’ve found, or which has found us, in the love of Savior.

And we keep walking.  Abiding in Jesus, committed to the most important things of fellowship with God and others, we walk into a new beginning, a new chapter of our church’s story.  A new chapter that begins today…

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…we declare this to you so that you may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

            In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Preaching: Nate Schipper

Text: Jude (2 Peter)

Preaching: Nate Schipper

Text: Jude (2 Peter)

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: 1 Peter 1: 1-25

Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: 1 Peter 1: 1-25