I Send You - Rev. Jonathan Warren

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Come into God's presence with joy. In God, we have an inheritance that is imperishable. Come into God's presence with hope. In Christ, we have an inheritance that cannot be defiled. Come into God's presence with longing. In the Spirit, we have an inheritance that never fades. Come into God's presence with love. In God we have an inheritance that brings new life. To prepare our hearts for Scripture, let us pray for illumination together. God of abundant life, your grace is our daily bread. Nourish us by your word and fill us with your spirit, so that we may grow in faith and love through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Scripture reading is from chapter 1 Peter, verses 3 through 9. Let us listen to the word of God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, being more precious than gold, that though perishable, is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. But Thomas, who is called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. And then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe. Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. When Siobhan and I met in seminary, every weekday we went to chapel. Now Siobhan always liked to sit in the third pew on the left. So every time I'd get there after her, I'd go to her pew so I could sit with her. But if I got to the chapel earlier, then I got to pick the pew. And our family was always a few minutes late to church, so we never sat in the same pew. So when I got to chapel early, I'd pick any other pew than the third pew on the left. I mean, the first third pew is like all the way in the front, right? I wanted to see it from different angles, from different perspectives, and try a different pew. Now it wasn't long until Siobhan seemed to always get to chapel first. And guess where we'd always sit almost every day for the next three years? In the third pew on the left. In today's lesson, it's a few days after Jesus died, and he's missing from the tomb. And the disciples are pulled up in their house. They're freaking out, they're worried to death. They're all there, but one disciple. He wasn't with them when Jesus comes into that space. Now it never tells us what he was doing, but I wonder why Thomas wasn't there. Was he in jail? Was he looking for Judas? Maybe he was an introvert. He got tired of all the people. Maybe he was unafraid and just was out. See the one who had to go get the food? Now when Jesus is there with all the disciples except for Thomas, he shows them his hands and the side, and then he says, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. Since the disciples were locked up in a house together, Jesus is telling them that their task isn't to just sit there all scared. Jesus comes to them and tells them, It's time to get out of here. I'm sending you out into the world. Now the interesting thing is God has been sending people out for generations. God sent Abraham and Sarah to a new land. God sent Moses out of the desert back into Egypt. God sends Jonah to Nineveh. But Jonah doesn't listen very well. He goes the opposite direction and he winds up in the belly of a giant fish, and eventually Jonah goes to the very place that God sent him. To Nineveh. People in the Bible are all sent by God to go out into the world. They're not supposed to stay in their comfortable little bubbles. God has always sent them out to be in community with others. Now, somehow with modern conveniences we have, we just we like to be home, don't we? But I'm not gonna blame television or video games or computers and smartphones for making us homebodies. They're easy targets, and they certainly contribute to keeping us home. I'm gonna blame air conditioning. It wasn't too long ago that people used to sit out on their porches. They'd be out there because it was hot indoors. People would keep their windows open to catch a nice breeze. You remember these? Maybe some of you remember these days. Then when air conditioning came, what do you do? You have to close all the windows, you have to close all the doors, you have to seal it all nice and shut. And then slowly but surely those evenings on the front porch dissipated, and new technologies have kept us indoors in our homes with the doors and windows closed. These days, most of us just want to be home. We make our houses nice. We have giant television, so we don't even need to go to the movies. Some of us just like to be homebodies. But that's not what we're called to do. We're supposed to go out into the world. Jesus sends us out. Now, if it were up to us, maybe we'd stay in our little comfortable groups. Maybe we'd sit all the time in that front third pew on the left. However, Jesus sends us out. And the only trouble is our world is a scary place sometimes. Might make us uncomfortable. In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how leading up to World War II, uh, England knew a major air offensive would against London was inevitable. This is what he says. One of the foremost military theorists of the day estimated that in the first week of any German attack, London could see a quarter of a million civilian deaths and injuries. In 1937, on the eve of the war, the British Military Command issued a report with the direst prediction of all. A sustained German bombing would leave 600,000 people dead, 1.2 million wounded, and create mass panic in the streets. People refused to go to work, industrial production would grind to a halt, the army would be useless. And then in the fall of 1940, the long-anticipated attack began. Over a period of eight months, beginning with 57 consecutive nights of devastating bombardment, German bombers thundered across the skies above London. 40,000 people were killed, and another 46,000 were injured. A million buildings were damaged, destroyed. It was everything the British government had feared, except that every one of their predictions about how Londoners would react turned out to be wrong. Panic never came. Many women and children were evacuated to the countryside as the bombing started, but people who needed to stay in the city by and large stayed. And as the blitz continued, as the German assaults grew heavier and heavier, the British authorities began to observe, to their astonishment, not just courage in the face of bombing, but something closer to indifference. He said the bombs divide the population into three groups. Those who were killed, those who experienced near misses, which left them traumatized, shocked, just like they had predicted. And then there was a third group. Those who experienced remote misses. Now, in a metropolitan area of more than eight million people, there were so many more remote misses than deaths, and near misses, the bombing has the opposite effect. Experiencing a morale boost from having survived the experience unscathed is what happened. While we do not want people to go through such things, Gladwell argued that their suffering gives them the courage to challenge conventional ideas and to do things other people are afraid to do. And now they're sent by Jesus with them the power of the Holy Spirit. And they go out to all the people, to all the world emboldened, no longer fearing death or anything. Sometimes I think we wish for God to show up in these magnificent, miraculous, fantastical ways. But this is more like how God has always worked in and through regular, ordinary people who were sent with a mission. A mission to share God's love and kindness and compassion and grace to a world that desperately needs those very things. Now a few years ago, during the sabbatical overseas, a group decided that the pastor wasn't the only one who was gonna have fun. So they made these signs. Remember these? They said, out and about. And we gave them to people popsicle sticks. Take pictures while you were out and about. This is what Jesus calls his disciples to do. He sends us to go out and about. We're called to interact and to get to know all kinds of people. Where is God sending you? This week, a three-week class to learn more about other religions. Christianity, Judaism, Islam is starting. Doesn't matter what religion we believe, we are all God's children, and our task is to learn and respect and to love everyone. God's sending you to go to this world religion class. We have a pack event to help feed children coming up. God sending you to help feed hungry children. Of course, God sends us out to bigger than just church events. Jesus sends us to all the world. The uncomfortable places and to the uncomfortable places. Maybe someone you know needs help. They need a friend. Or maybe you're the one who needs help. Ask someone around here or anyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ. I know some of you are those kind of those when we leave the ark and all the world. As we leave this place. As we go out and about, may we share Christ's love and compassion and kindness. Maybe we share God's grace. And in all the world. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

If you found this podcast inspirational and would like to support the First Love Ministry programs at First Presbyterian Church, please send any contributions to First Presbyterian Church at 870 West College, Jacksonville, Illinois. Our zip code is 62650. Our phone is 217-245-4189. You can contact our secretary there between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Our email is office at firstprezjacks.org. That's office at F-I-R-S-T-P-R-E-S J A S dot O-R-G. Now our in-person church services start at 10 a.m. on Sunday. Access to our online church service starts at 9.55 a.m. You can listen to these live services on our Facebook page, which is www.facebook.com slash first F-I-R-S-T P-R-E-S-Jax. We have a choir that meets from 7 to 8 p.m. every Thursday night, and we welcome all who are willing to sing. We look forward to hearing from you either by email, mail, or phone. God bless. And may you have a peaceful and safe year.