Traveling Light Relay

Lenten Sermon Series: What So Good about Good Friday?
The Fifth Word: I Thirst

John 19:28-37, NRSV

Reflections

The stories in John of Jesus offering living water, of those following him never being hungry or thirsty, only heightens our sens of horror and awe, as we get the full impact of what John is saying, at the thought of Jesus himself being….thirsty. Had the water of life failed? Had the wine run out for good? He saved others; could he not save himself? As with the crown of thorns and the mocking purple robe, this (John is saying) is part of the truth of it all. This is how Jesus must do what only he can do. He must come to the place where everyone else is, the place of thirst, shame and death. That, too, is a fulfillment of scripture (Psalm 69:21). That is his glory and, yes, his joy.
– N.T. Wright, from
John for Everyone

• Plan
  • fulfill the scripture
  • promise of God, something great coming out from darkness
  • provision, not fatalism
  • our view to the struggle is changed
• Promise
  • to be present in our lives
  • you’ll always thirst, until Christ is the center of your lives
• Purpose
  • the cross re-purposing you
  • take up the cross and follow Him
  • we reorient our lives

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

Lenten Sermon Series: What So Good about Good Friday?
The Fourth Word: Forsaken by God

Matthew 27:45-46, NRSV

Reflections

To speak of sin by itself…is to forget the resolve of God…. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly–to say to the world “I have some bad news and I have some bad news”–is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior. To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.
But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better. To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ…. What had we thought the ripping and writhing on Golgotha were all about? … In short, for the Christian church…to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.
– Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

• Model of Humanity
  • It’s lament, it’s authentic prayer, Psalm 36
  • It’s human, in the middle of darkness, with absence of God
  • All the doubts, anguish, questions to God, a model of lament
• Model of Discipleship
  • Place of scripture in our lives; not pick and choose parts of scripture
• Model of Self-sacrifice
  • So that we don’t have to “earn” it
  • Contrary to the ending of the movie Saving Private Ryan, where Private Ryan feels the need to “earn it” for others’ sacrifice
  • Sometimes we value more on things we earn, rather than things that were freely given

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

Lenten Sermon Series: What So Good about Good Friday?
The Third Word: Woman, Behold Your Son

John 19:23-27, NRSV

Reflections

Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world…. Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services…. For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.
– Rodney Stark
The Rise of Christianity

• Ordinary care (physical)
  • Care for well being of Mother Mary
  • Not just forgiveness of sins, or renewal of the soul, but ordinary matters to Jesus too
  • God has not forgotten you in this physical world
  • You may grow indifferent to God, but God does not grow indifferent to you
• Savior’s Grace
  • Grace to John: even with failures, he can always go back to Jesus, to the foot of the cross
  • In the mist of “failure”, John goes to Jesus
  • Do people come to you when they feel they have failures? You having Savior’s Grace?
  • He recommission John in ministry, to take care of His Mother
• New Creation for the world: like the birth of a new baby, the new creation of community, with spiritual transformation
• To be “clothed with Christ”: feeling shameful is not when we did something wrong, but when we think something is wrong with us, like being naked

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

Lenten Sermon Series: What So Good about Good Friday?
The Second Word: You Will be With Me

Luke 23:32-43, NRSV

Reflections

Whoever heard of a suffering God? The idea is plain daft. God is up in heaven, and there he will stay. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true? If God came to visit us, like a great king visiting his subjects? Or, even better, if he came among us as one of us, sharing our way of life, with all its tragedy, sorrows and grief?
– Alister E. McGrath
What Was God Doing on the Cross?

• “The foolishness of the Cross”
• Rejected King
  • There won’t be transformation until we stop seeing Jesus as someone we can use, and start seeing Him as beautiful
  • We put criteria, to have Jesus be personal assistance, to be useful to us
• Received King
  • Prayer won’t be focusing on personal situation/circumstances
  • Prayer would be about stability of soul
• Relational King
  • Jesus responded with relationship
  • The relationship is the paradise

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

Lenten Sermon Series: What So Good about Good Friday?
The First Word: Father Forgive Them

Luke 23:32-34, NRSV

Reflections

Instead of genuine forgiveness, our generation has been taught the vague notion of “tolerance.” This is, at best, a low-grade parody of forgiveness. At worst, it’s a way of sweeping the real issues in human life under the carpet…. Jesus’ message [of forgiveness of sins] offers the genuine article and insists that we should accept no man-made substitutes.
– N.T. Wright
The Lord and His Prayer

• Teach us about ourselves
• We don’t know what we don’t know (v34)
• Soul Ignorance

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

The Nature of Faith

1 Peter 1:3-9; Hebrews 11:1,6, NRSV

Reflections

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
– St. Augustine (354-430) in
Patches of Godlight

• The Nature of Faith
• Faith involves thinking
• Life is unstable, cannot use bible in a superstitious way
• Where is faith placed?
• Historical Faith:
  • Understanding – to conclude from evidence
  • Belief – conviction
  • Commitment – trust, growing confidence
• How faith brings stability to your life?
• Faith is not a talent, it is a necessary human condition
• You don’t lose faith, you place it in difference places
• It is not the strength of your faith that matters, it is the object of your faith that matters

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

Called to Community: Mission

Mark 2:1-12, NRSV

Reflections

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
– St. Augustine (354-430) in
Patches of Godlight

• Community into Ministry
• Effort:
  • It is hard work, it requires money
  • People can be cantankerous
  • But when people’s lives are changed and transformed, that’s God’s Kingdom advancing
• Faith:
  • Barrier always exists
  • We need to remember the grace miracle of your own salvation
  • “No one is a lost cause”
• Ultimate Issue:
  • Sin, to be forgiven

  Tags: city church sf, rev fred
  

Called to Community: Intensity

Matthew 5:23-24; 46-48; 7:1-6, NRSV

Reflections

Sin, both our own and that of others, drives us into customized selfishness. Separation from God becomes separation from neighbor. The same salvation that restores our relation with God reinstates us in the community of persons who live by faith. Every tendency to privatism and individualism distorts and falsifies the gospel. The Bible knows nothing of the soul who is, in Plotinus’s words, “alone with the Alone.”
– Eugene H. Peterson
Reversed Thunder

• Community of Intensity
• Truth-telling
  • aggressive to seek reconciliation
  • aggressive to be known by other people
  • aggressive to be part of community
• You are accountable to other people’s growth
• Others are also accountable to your growth
• What happen when one of us is harden in our heart?
  • exalt one another every day
  • it is not negotiable, only community can soften your heart
  • to speak truth to our lives
  • to be completely known, not rejected, but loved

Tags: city church sf, rev fred

The Light Has Dawned

Matthew 4:12-23, NRSV

Reflections

The ants know the formula for their ant heap; the bee knows the formula for his hive (they may not know it in human terms, but they know it in their own way and it is enough); human do not know their formula.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Writer’s Diary: 1877-1881

• How to find the light in the darkness
• Darkness confuses us, lead us to sin, to violence
• With emotional and spiritual darkness, we have freedom to mess up (as described by Dostoyevsky)
• How to welcome the light, the dawn
  • Repent – change direction, rethink the way to light darkness
  • Hearing the proclamation (v17)
  • Following the teacher (v19)
  • Reflect on scriptures; Bible, a way to receive the light
  • Not just the knowledge, but also through fellowship

Tags: city church sf, rev scot

Called to Community

Matthew 5:21-24, NRSV

Reflections

Typically an American today would say “I want to be spiritual but I don’t want to be religious” and what they mean by that is that “I want to have a personal experience of divine reality but I don’t want to have to deal with other people, I don’t want to have to join an institution, I don’t want to be part of a body.” And the God of the Bible says, “I don’t work like that, if you want something like that you are going to have to make up another God. The only way you can hold on to Me is if you hold on to brothers and sisters… people who you would not have chosen to be friends with in the first place. Because they are related to Me you have to be related to them and you must hold on to them and love them and know them.”
– Tim Keller

• Being part of a family and community
  • could be afflicted, confronted, but also healed
  • it’s hard work
• Church is a community of family, not a community of friends
  • as a Christian, you are obligated to one another in a community
  • decision you make is not just a personal decision, but a community one
• Living within the community helps us to understand the gospel

Tags: city church sf, rev fred