The "Closer"

Man, I want to thank by co-hort in crime here at Washington St., Brad Sullivan, for the great job he did in "closing" my recent sermon series from Genesis this past Sunday. Its great to get away for the weekend every now and then, but I sure do hate being away from my church family and the opportunity to preach. I did so this past weekend, however, confident that Brad would do a great job filling in and wrapping up some of the themes we've been exploring lately... I wasn't disappointed. I rushed up to the sound room this morning to grab the CD of yesterday's sermon and then listened to it over lunch. Man, outstanding and challenging! Thanks, Brad. We really do have the best youth minister around... (he's going to kill me for stealing this pic of him off of his Facebook page!)
The whole purpose of our study thru the book of "beginnings" hasn't been to wallow in the past, but to remind ourselves of WHO WE ARE and WHERE WE CAME FROM so that we would be better prepared to face the future! I believe God is still doing great things at Washington Street and that he wants to continue to do great things in each of our lives... but will we be ready to face the challenges ahead? That's the thought I want us to explore this coming Sunday. And I am VERY VERY interested in hearing what you have to say. Here are some questions that I would like to hear back from you on...

• How do you feel about the future of the church here at Washington Street?
• What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that we as a church face?
• What specific ideas do you have that would help us in the future?

Our Elders, deacons & ministers will be meeting together soon for our annual Leadership Summit to discuss just some of these very things. We value your input and suggestions.

Babel

An unfinished skyscraper in the Gulf state of Dubai has become the world's tallest building, at 141 storeys, its developers say. Emaar Properties said the 512m (1,680ft) Burj Dubai is now taller than Taiwan's 508m (1,667ft) Taipei 101. It is thought Burj Dubai will eventually be 693m (2,275ft) tall.

"Burj Dubai has now reached 141 stories, more stories than any other building in the world," the company said in a statement. There is speculation that, spire included, the final height could be more than 800m, but Emaar is keeping structural details secret.

It's curious to me after reading through Genesis 11 again that we're still building buildings all these years after Babel and still trying to reach toward the heavens. I did a Google search on the world's tallest buildings and learned that there's quite a competition going. Every year it seems a new building beats the record and arguments are raged about exactly WHAT is being measured. Does the spire count? What about the cell phone towers on top? Everybody wants theirs to be the tallest building. And they want to put their name on it. Funny.

Given all this interest in tall buildings... it makes me think again about the tower at Babel. What exactly was the problem? It sounds to me like a good thing that the people were able to come together and building something so monumental using such archaic tools and methods. I look back at history and see some of the great architecture from some of the great civilizations of antiquity and wonder... what was the problem? It is beautiful, much of it. Why did God get so upset at Babel... and why did he confuse their languages? THAT one especially get me! If it weren't for Babel I could go to Honduras and order a hamburger and be understood! Aargh!

This Sunday we're going to be looking together at Gen. 11 and the story of Babel. Read it again this week and let me know what you think...

Flood

To be honest I’m not sure what is more difficult… to preach a text that is familiar to all of us or a text that isn’t.  If it’s just the same, I think I would rather preach on one that nobody has ever read before, actually.  That way, who’s going to argue with me?  But this Sunday as a part of my “In the beginning” sermon series I come to Genesis 6 and the story of Noah and the flood.  It’s going to be a great challenge on the one hand because it’s a story that we all know!  I mean, it’s probably the first story (other than maybe Adam & Eve) that I remember from Sunday school as a kid.  I know the story… Noah, a righteous man (in fact the only one of his kind in those days) is instructed by God to build a big boat.  He does.  He follows the instructions meticulously.  Then he loads up the animals “two by two” and down comes the rain… just as God said it would.  The world is destroyed.  Noah and his family are saved.  Great story!  What’s next?  You see the challenge, right?  It’s a challenge precisely because we all think we know the story.  I can just imagine the snoring I will induce on Sunday when I say, “Let’s all talk about Noah…he was a righteous man.” 

 

On the other hand, I wonder if there might be something I have missed?  I wonder if the story’s familiarity has kept me from seeing the point of it all?  Why was the flood necessary?  Why did God act then to enact judgment on the world?  Might it be time for another one?  How would this story have encouraged the Hebrews as they were preparing to enter in to the land of Promise following their Egyptian bondage?  More importantly, what does the story have to say to those of us living in the twenty first century?  Surely it is more than a children’s tale designed to make us appreciate rainbows!  What do you think?  What is the significance of the biblical flood story for Christians today?

Rick Burgess... "A Father's Heart"

Part Two

Part Three

Broken

As I stood with my dear friend, Jason, beside the casket of his wife a couple of weeks ago… my heart was filled with almost unbearable sorrow for him and his family.  As a minister, I have had the privilege to walk with a lot of families through the difficult time of a loss of a loved one… but I cannot remember one that has come close to the grief of that moment.  Not only is he a dear friend, but his wife, Evette, has been as well.  For my wife she was about as close to a family member as you can get without actually sharing the same DNA.  Evette was 32.  She and Jason have been married just over 10 years.  They have three beautiful children, two girls and a boy.  She practically grew up in my brother-in-law’s home… alongside his girls, Jenny and Tara.  Jason preaches for the church in Pegram, TN where he has been for a long time.  He went there to be their youth minister when we were still in college.  In these last almost fifteen years he has served as Family Minister, Worship Minister and is now their Preaching Minister.  They love him and he loves that church! 

As we stood there beside the casket, near the pulpit where he regularly brings a word from the Lord… I desperately searched for a word… ANY word, but particularly a word from the Lord.  I don’t think I ever came up with one.  All I could do was wrap my arms around him and promise to pray.

I wish I understood such things.  I wish I had something wise and spiritual to offer.  I didn’t.  And even as I have reflected on it these last few weeks, I’m not sure I’ve got anything better now.  It still doesn’t make sense.  Life can be so unfair.  It can be so fleeting.  And it just stinks sometimes!

My text for this Sunday is Genesis 4… some of the first happenings after the fall.  The story actually makes more sense to me now than it ever has.  After the appearance of sin on the scene in chapter 3, the story of Adam and Eve takes a backseat to the soap opera that their family becomes.  One of their precious sons is cut down in the prime of his life, before he ever even gets a chance in this life… by his own brother.  Cain, apparently jealous that God loved Abel more, lures him out into a field and viciously slaughters him.  Imagine the grief of Adam and Eve… knowing that this is what the result of their “wanting to be like God” has brought upon the world.  As a result of the brokenness of this world death is the new reality.  Even Abel’s name says it all.  It means literally “vapor” and is the same word Solomon uses in Ecclesiastes to talk about life being as a “vapor.”

But there is still hope in this story and if you look closely towards the end of chapter 4 you find it.  Read it this week and see if you see the same thing I do… hope amidst a fallen and broken world.

Two Trees

Every now and then while I'm preaching I get the feeling that I've just lost some folks.  I got that feeling Sunday as I started out with a joke... not always a good idea!  It seems God came to Adam and seeing that he was lonely and downcast offered to make for him a woman.  This woman would be the most beautiful thing in the garden.  She would be witty and intelligent, warm and friendly, and always by his side... never condescending, or nagging, or hateful or flippant with him.  "Wow," said Adam.  "That's liable to cost an arm and a leg!"  God agreed that it would to which Adam replied, "Well.. what can I get for just a rib?"  Badda bum!

The joke worked... with some people.  Some actually laughed out loud (men not sitting with their wives.)  Some chuckled lightly  (not right to laugh in church).  There were some men who pretended not to think it was funny because their wives were sitting right next to them poking them in the side with their gentle elbows.  I guess it was the women mostly who were shaking their heads and wishing for a preacher who would just preach Bible.  But I couldn't help it.  I've always been amused by the story of creation in Genesis 2.  Nobody can tell me that God doesn't have a sense of humor!  He creates man... gives him a job to do (work & care for the garden) and then he creates woman to be his 'helper'.  And they are so vastly different.  Then God tells them to live together in unity... in fact to 'cling to' one another and make more.  There's a lot of humor there.  I had fun reveling in the story last week, partly because the story this week is so tragic.  Chapter three is not nearly as much fun as chapter two.  In episode three sin enters in to the camp... and things are never the same.  The love and harmony that existed in chapter two is shattered.  The peace is broken.  The relationships that the first man and woman had with God and with one another are twisted, distorted, perverted.  That's why they hid and that's why they went looking for clothes the minute their eyes were opened.  Its a sad tale... tragic and horrible.  But, that's our text for this Sunday... Genesis 3.  We'll begin by asking the question, "Why?.... why did God put TWO trees in the garden?"  More specifically, why did he put that one tree there and then tell us not to eat of it.  Didn't he know that would only make it more enticing?  Read it again this week and then comment... tell me what you think.  Why TWO trees?

In the beginning... EDEN

We are continuing our study through the opening chapters of Genesis on Sunday morning and I am again blown away by the honesty and frankness of the Bible.  I have heard it said that it is usually the teacher who learns the most from the lessons he or she presents.  That has certainly been the case here!  The camera angle shifts from the ‘big picture’ of creation depicted in chapter one to the more personal account of Adam and Eve in chapter two.  I am struck by several things.  Let me encourage you to explore this chapter this week.  Of all the creation there was one thing that God said was not good.  That struck me as odd, because in the account in chapter one God makes a special point at the end of each day to say, “It is good.”  What could God have created that could have failed on this point, I wonder?  But then, I understand.  “It is not good for man to be alone,” he says in vs. 18.

To remedy this “problem” God sets about the task of creating woman and goes on to establish for us the grounds which will become the marriage relationship in vs. 24 and following.  But back up with me just a moment.  What is at the heart of verse 18?  Man wasn’t complete until God made for him a friend.  This sounds like such a simple thing and yet it is really quite profound.  Man (and woman for that matter) was created from the very beginning with the innate need for friendship… for relationship with others.  You would think that would be a fairly simple thing and yet it can be so difficult.

It seems to me to be especially ironic in our day and time that people have such a difficult time with relationships.  We live in a world where the ability for people to connect is easier than ever before… and yet there are so many who continue to live “alone” without personal relationships of a substantial nature.  Why is this?  We have technologies today which are designed to connect people.  From the old-fashioned telephone and the increasingly dated “e-mail” to the more tech-savvy text messenging and Facebooking… the opportunities to connect with people are like never before!  Why, then, would anybody be lonely?  Yet that is what so many of the statistics are telling us today.  The overwhelming need for people in the 21^st century is relationships!  This shouldn’t surprise us.  Genesis 2 tells us that God hard-wired us this way.

There is much to explore in this great chapter and I am sure that we won’t exhaust its riches this Sunday… but let me encourage you to seek out people this week to connect with.  Look for those who don’t have the relationships in the body of Christ to draw support from.  Seek them out.  Encourage them.  Befriend them.  And, as you have opportunity, tell them about your relationship with the Lord… the ultimate need that each of us have!