I. The Readings Have Gotten Intense 00:03
Lord Jesus, we just pray that as we listen to your testimony, Lord, coming down off the mountain from the men’s retreat, and we listen to the words that you’re speaking to us, that we would be encouraged to bring the light of you to the world, to a dark world. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that our readings have gotten a bit intense lately. “Don’t hope for the day of the Lord. It’s like if a man puts his hand on a wall and a snake bites him, or he meets a bear in the woods” (Am 5.18–19). Pretty intense. I don’t know. Paul said, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2.12). I’m feeling a little of that when you hear these readings. Yet we are the people who look forward to what? A wedding feast, just like the one that they had yesterday. We’re the people who look forward to a big party in heaven, and I guarantee you the wine there will be better than anything we’ve had here.
II. God's History in the Church Year 01:22
What is going on with these readings? Well, we have this beautiful thing that is part of our Christian tradition that’s called the liturgical calendar, and what it does is it frames the entire year around God’s history. Not man’s history, not what we’ve experienced so far, but God’s history that we find in his book, the Bible. So let me just talk through that real quick. We’re not going to have a very long message today. We’re really excited to hear from some of our men who went to the men’s retreat, what God’s doing in their life. But I have a couple of things that I wanted to share with you as we began this morning.
When we look at the liturgical calendar, it starts, as you might know, with the season of Advent. And what’s Advent all about? We know it’s looking forward to the sweet baby Jesus. We’re looking forward to that day when God becomes man, that we can become like God. Amazing. What a beautiful message.
And then we go from Advent to Christmas, where the miracle arrives, and we celebrate by giving each other gifts and having parties and going to work events that are kind of awkward but really fun. Well, my work events are the best, but your work events might be kind of awkward. But the point is, all of the world revolves around the joy of Christ coming. That’s amazing, even if they don’t know it.
Then we celebrate Epiphany. What’s Epiphany about? “We three kings of Orient are.” I don’t know if they were from the Orient; we kind of just made that happen. But these wise men came from the East to worship the King, because they had a revelation of the reality of God that broke beyond the Israelite people and encompassed the entire world. We all get to be a part of this salvation. That’s what Epiphany is all about.
And then we have Lent. So we’ve celebrated everything: we looked forward to our Savior’s coming, he came, he opened it to the whole world. And then we get to learn how to live it. In Lent we take forty days focusing on how to actually walk the Christian walk.
III. Crucifixion and Resurrection 03:45
And the revelation within Lent is that the way to be a Christian is the way of the cross: taking up your cross, letting Christ crucify your flesh, that you might live with him. And it’s a hard season, but it’s so good. Thank God we have Lent every year. Otherwise we might forget that actually the hard things you go through in your life are a part of God’s plan, that he can actually incorporate the most difficult things and make them into something beautiful. And so we celebrate Lent, and we remember what Christ did as he went the way of the cross and he died for all of our sins. Although he was sinless, he took on him the sin of us all.
And then we celebrate Easter. He didn’t stay on the cross, but he rose again. And so that whole walking-the-way-of-the-cross thing gets its right and proper understanding only in the light of the resurrection. Did you know that the point of Christianity is not to make you miserable? Some people don’t know that. Christianity is a crucifixion, but thank God, it’s also resurrection. So even our misery has a timeline, and it ends, and we can celebrate the resurrection.
IV. Ruling and Reigning 04:56
Then, guess what? Jesus goes and he reigns over the entire world. Everything that is, everything that will be, is under Jesus’ authority now. We celebrate that in the Ascension. And then he says, “I want you to rule and reign with me,” not only in heaven but even on earth. Some of us do a little more ruling and reigning, by God’s grace, on earth than others. I want to be one of those guys who does the ruling and reigning. Not being in charge of a lot of stuff, but ruling and reigning like Christ ruled and reigned: serving, loving, leading, being a light to a dark world.
And to accomplish that, we have the celebration of Pentecost. Pentecost is when God sends his Spirit to live within each of you, so it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me (Gal 2.20). Every problem you face, it’s not you versus the problem. It’s you and God versus the problem. And what’s God plus anything? Well, it’s infinite. It doesn’t matter how much of a zero you are. You have God on your side, and guess what? He’s going to make you a hero. Love that Hercules song, “Zero to Hero.” Just like that. It’s not really just like that; it takes a lifetime.
But Pentecost is about you being God in the world, bringing God. Let me be clear: you don’t become God. I know I’m getting a little sloppy with my words here. But you have God in you, and you bring him into the world, that he might conquer, that he might save, that he might heal, that he might set free. There are people who are broken, who are hurting, who are imprisoned, literally and figuratively, who need God, and you get to bring him to them. You get to be the bearers of God’s healing to the world. That’s what Pentecost is about.
V. Kingdomtide 06:16
And then we go to good old Ordinary Time. Just another day? No. Another word for Ordinary Time is Kingdomtide, because we have redefined ordinary. Ordinary is about every one of you waking up every day and living in the eternal victory of Christ. Doesn’t sound so ordinary to me. And you know what? That takes up the majority of our year, because that’s the age that we live in. We live in the church age, the age where we live and reign on earth and bring his kingdom.
Did you know that the devil has no authority? The enemy has no authority. All authority has been given to Christ (Matt 28.18). There’s none left over for him. His only game is to trick us into using our God-given authority to support his mission, to lie to you, to tell you, “Hey, that girl wasn’t really nice. You should just be really mean to her.” It’s a little immature, but I guarantee you you’ve felt that. I know I have. Jane pisses me off sometimes. No, just kidding. That one was so clearly a joke I didn’t even feel like I could go with it.
So there are people in your life, though they may not be Jane. They may be, you know, more like I am: a little obnoxious, a little ornery, a little arrogant. And they piss you off. But guess what? It’s no longer you who live; it’s Christ who lives within you. And so even in those moments, we remember that Ordinary Time is actually loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you (Matt 5.44). That is a high calling. It takes a little crucifixion to be the type of person who can love your enemies. You’ve got to beat up that old man that holds on to that pride, that “I deserve to get my way.”
VI. The End of History 08:44
And then we come to the end of Ordinary Time, and that’s why the readings are what they are. Because what we’re looking at in these next few weeks is the end of history. Unlike many religions and philosophies throughout the world, Christianity knows that time started and time will end. It will end in a wedding feast, but it’ll also end with the judgment. And that’s what we’re being told about by Jesus today in our Gospel, and by our Old Testament prophet, who said the end of times is like a man putting his hand on the wall and a snake bites it that he didn’t know was there.
So we remember in this time to not just get lost in the day to day, but to remember that everything we do has eternity in the balance. You get to establish on earth the kingdom of God and bring your family along with you, and then you get to enjoy that for eternity, in glory unimaginable. But there are some people who don’t. There are people who turn away and turn aside. There are people who are pretty darn sure that all that matters is enjoying their life right now. They forget about eternity. And so our readings are a little intense, because the God of the universe cares whether you sin or not. He cares how you live your life.
And we see (I’m just going to use this as an example) what happens when people reject God, in things like the Hamas bombing in Israel and the slaughter that happened there. What happened? They’re pretty sure that eternity is going to reward them for evil. It’s completely backwards from the Christian view. They have a staunch belief that if they commit those genocidal, homicidal, atrocious acts, they will be rewarded for eternity. That’s the opposite of what we do. We walk around dying that others may live. They walk around killing that they might have a kingdom. That is not the Christian way. Thank God that we live in a better kingdom. Thank God that Jesus came and he did not come with a sword. He came and died on a cross. That’s the God we serve. That’s pretty stark. That’s pretty clear.
VII. More Than Fine 11:16
But let me talk about one more thing before we wrap up and go to our men to hear about the men’s retreat. One more idea. There’s a lot of people who think that you can just live in the middle: “I’m a pretty good person. Why would God send me to hell? I do good things. I give to a charity. I serve at a food pantry. I sometimes go to church. I’m fine.” And Jesus’ heart breaks, because there’s so much more for them that they are rejecting every day by living fine.
Switchfoot has that song, right? “More than fine, more than bent on getting by, more than just okay.” God invites us to live death and resurrection. How boring is fine? How abysmally boring! I mean, we have movies about it, where you have the guy who punches in and he’s completely depressed, and then somebody comes in and his whole life falls apart, but he loves it because he’s on an adventure for once. That’s what we’re invited into.
Don’t be evil, but also don’t be stupid and lazy. Let’s be kingdom bringers, kingdom worshipers, evidence of Christ in the world. That’s what these readings are about. They’re not to scare you. They’re to wake you up, like a nightmare. You wake up terrified of being the one who puts your hand on the wall and the snake bites it. No, we’re going to be the one building the kingdom. Amen.
VIII. Testimonies from the Men's Retreat 12:29
Jesse: Okay, we’re going to stop there. Record time: Jesse’s shortest sermon. But we have more to talk about today, because we went up to the mountains and God spoke to us. God met us in the mountains. It’s amazing. It’s like we didn’t do anything special. We showed up, and because he was there, it was life-changing. Not because we did anything special. And so we’re going to ask any men in this room who were at the retreat, who want to share what God did in their life or what God said to them, to come up and give a testimony of what God was doing. So if you want to stand up and share something that God said to you, I invite you now to come forward. Otherwise you get to listen to me for a lot longer.
First man: I think the biggest message I took from this weekend was messages that were already coming to me for months here, and those messages were planting your roots by the river. And this is the river. We were all invited up to the lake, and the love of God came to all of us and basically filled the entire lake. So I hope your roots are planted, because there’s going to be so much water and love from God coming down that mountain. It was just super powerful.
Thomas: You know, I was just seeking the Lord about what I might share, and I got this prophetic word up there that I believe wasn’t just for the men, and your sermon really connected it, because of what the vision is. So I’ve got to let you know that the day before the retreat, I was on my patio. Because of the weather patterns we’ve had, there’s all the spider activity. The webs collect on all my patio furniture, and they hang out in the arms of the chairs and everything. And I haven’t been tending to it, because it just comes and comes and comes. So it’s like, “Man, when it cools off, I’ll just get rid of them all.” And I went out there and it just looked like, “Man, there seems like there’s way more than normal.” And then all of a sudden the Lord said, “I want you to look again.” And where the webs were, fruit was coming out. I had lemons and berries and limes and apples coming out of where the webs were, taking the place of where those webs were.
And what I believe the Lord is saying to our community is that there are areas that have been untended, areas in our hearts that have become dormant, where once there was passion. An aspect of your… I’m going to dare to say this: a dream that has fallen asleep and not been active. And what’s so funny is this transition happening, transitioning towards Advent. We’re invited to let the Lord in to those areas that have become dormant. What dream does God want to birth in you? That we seek the Lord in this time, this semi-penitential season, where we say, “What do you want to birth? I’m ready for you to do the work in me, to have what you want to birth.”
Third man: You can’t shut me up. What I got out of this is, you know, Bishop Kessler’s retiring, and it’s hard for him, I know that. He’s been kind of forced to by his physical problems. But what the Lord spoke to me to encourage him (and I know it was a word from the Lord) is that the last two guys that held his position, the last two leaders here of Saint Michael’s… This is a new chapter, say the third, the fourth chapter. We had Chris’s dad, chapter one. We had Bishop Randy Adler, chapter two. We had Bishop Kessler, chapter three. And now we get Father Lewis. So, Lewis, this is a new chapter, and it’s going to be written down. But the last two guys, they didn’t finish well. And I just wanted all of you to know how well our bishop’s done. He’s finished well. He’s run the race. He’s still going to be around, but he’s going to be able to sit down and look back and say, “The enemy attacked me in every way. The enemy tried to destroy me,” which he did, and hurt people before him that held that position. When you’re at the top, you get all the rain. When you’re at the top, you’re the umbrella covering everyone, and so you have to take the hits. And so I was just so blessed and so encouraged to be there, and to be able to stand with my bishop and encourage him and tell him, “Well done, faithful servant.” Praise God. I’m looking forward to chapter four, Father Powell.
Fourth man: I was only there like five minutes, and then I had to come back. But in the little time I was there, I was really encouraged with Father John House. He’s not here; he’s in Las Vegas, ministering, just to make that clear. And then (I’m sorry, whoever this was who spoke next) Father Ed. Father Ed gave his story, and it was very encouraging, and it reminded me of our past days. I think I’m 25 still, and of course I’m not. And so he brought up some foggy memories that were very, very encouraging. And then Father Jim spoke, and I had to leave right after he spoke. But he spoke about dreaming, and the dreams, like Thomas just got through talking about, were really important.
But what I got out of it was that when I was there, God is pulling us together as men, a brotherhood. He’s knitting our hearts together again. It’s easy in this Southern California life to live as individuals and to be transient, and to want our own little space and live our own little lives. But he’s really drawing us into a body again. He’s drawing us into that body, and he’s knitting our hearts together, not only as men but also as a church, with everyone who’s here. I see it in the young people. I see it in Jane. I see it in Kristen and Michelle. They have this heart for what’s going on here. And I believe he’s knitting our hearts together, not only for the sake of the church or for the sake of what we’re doing, but for the sake of you individuals. He doesn’t want any of you to be alone. He doesn’t want your hearts to be broken. He wants your hearts to be filled with hope. And where you find hope, you find it in community, and you find it with people who love you, people that care for you. I can’t imagine being out there in the world by myself and trying to deal with the problems I face by myself. That’d be horrible. But he’s knitting us together, and he wants to give you abundant life by bringing your hearts together and knitting you together.
And those of you who may be off on the fringes or on the outskirts, because of whatever, it doesn’t matter. God doesn’t care. God loves you. God wants to draw you in. He wants to bring you abundant life. And I believe he’s knitting us closer and closer together now as a church, and we’re getting ready to enter into a phase where… You know, we talk about the good old days. The good old days haven’t happened yet, guys. The good old days are coming. So I just want to encourage you: draw near together, be close together, open your hearts up, and let God heal those spots in your heart and bring you abundant life with everyone around you.
Jesse: Amen. Praise God. What you need to know is that God is moving in Saint Michael’s. There is hope. There is life. And you should hear those words, and you should go out there and you should be excited for what God’s going to unleash in our midst. Amen.