Hot Topics: Open or Closed Communion

Sermon Summary:
There are varying practices of the Lord's Supper across the Christian church.  No matter what churches' differences might be in their understanding of the Communion meal all agree that Communion is a significant part of our practice of our Christian faith.  In this message I explore the origins and possible biblical direction for the practice of open or closed communion - are all believers invited to the communion meal or only those who are baptized.


Questions for Reflection:

1. What is your earliest memory of the Communion meal?
2. What was the practice of the church where you first partook of Communion?  Was it an open Communion or a closed Communion?
3. In our current culture, what might be a benefit of the practice of closed Communion or even making Communion something that requires a special effort to attend?
4. In our current culture, what might be a benefit of the practice of open Communion?  What is gained when everyone who attends a worship service where Communion is celebrated being invited to attend?

Sermon:  Hot Topics:  Open or Closed Communion

This is Communion weekend here at Grace Church.  We try to celebrate Communion about five times a year.  This particular celebration of Communion falls within the Hot Topics series this year.  As I wondered what to do about that I thought about talking about something that generates vigorous discussion within the church about Communion.  In the past couple of years a couple of the churches where friends of mine are pastors have worked at whether or not to change what their constitution says about who is invited to the Communion table.  Their constitutions said that only baptized believers were invited to the table.  They wondered if they still wanted to say that.  The issue is often called Open or Closed Communion - is the meal open to any believer or only to baptized believers.  In fact in some denominations that practice closed Communion the table is only open to members of their particular conference or even their local church.

I want to tell you that I am very thankful for the church in which I grew up.  It was a church of godly people trying to follow God’s call in their lives.  I tell you that because last week as well as this week I want to share with you some of the things that were unique and, last week in particular, a struggle for that church and I don’t want you to think it was a bad church.  It was and it is a church filled with people just like Grace Church and that brings with it struggles and questions at times.  But Whitewater Mennonite is my spiritual home and I thank God for the way He raised me up in that church and the fantastic godly men and women who mentored and discipled me in my faith in that place.

I think I’ve shared before about when I was a kid in Whitewater Mennonite it was the practice of the church to limit Communion to those people who were baptized believers.  In fact everyone who wasn’t a baptized believer was asked to leave the sanctuary during the Communion meal.  The very first Communion meal I ever witnessed in my home church was also the very first time I ever ate the Communion meal in that church.  That sounds kind of strange to any of you who’ve grown up in Grace Church where we don’t ask anyone to leave for the Communion meal.  Who do we invite to eat the meal with us?

The earliest constitution I could find in the church office was the 1988 edition of the Grace Mennonite Church constitution.  In that copy of the constitution it said that “we practice open Communion by which we mean that an invitation is also extended to all adult believers who have made a responsible decision for Christ, are at peace with God and men, who try to live a godly life, and who wish to express their faith in this manner.”

I don’t know when the church adopted that wording for the celebration of Communion or if it that was always the way it was at Grace Church.  The best I can tell that’s the way the constitution stayed until 2005 when we decided to remove the word ‘adult’ before the word ‘believers’.  Now it simply says that an invitation is extended to all believers.

I remember two conversations happening with Grace Church people over the years about this issue of who should be allowed to eat the Communion meal.  The first conversation went like this.  Someone would come to me about a week or so after Communion and they would say, “I noticed a youth or an adolescent eating the Communion meal on Sunday.  I don’t think that’s right.  We need to make sure that only those who are baptized or who are adults or who are older than that person should be eating the meal.”  I would talk about that with the person who came to talk to me about their concern.  I would ask why it was a problem.  They would usually speak about tradition and respect for the meal and not eating in an unworthy manner; all of which are valid concerns.  We’d talk about it for awhile and sometimes I would maybe change the invitation next time the meal was served; to tighten it up a little bit.

The other conversation went like this.  Someone would come to me again some time after Communion and they would say, “I noticed a youth or adolescent eating the Communion meal on Sunday.”  At this point I would brace myself for another discussion on who should be invited to the table, but instead the person would surprise me and they would say, “I was deeply moved to see a young person confident enough in their faith to eat the meal.  I’m so glad that we as a church invite any believer who wants to eat the meal to eat with us.  What a beautiful thing to not deprive this young person of such a significant experience.”  So what’s the right way to go on this?  Who should be invited to the table.

If you’ve got your Bible with you I would invite you to turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 11.  Last week we looked at the verses immediately before today’s section.  You might remember that last week I said that this section of the book of 1 Corinthians is a section where the apostle Paul deals with some of the struggles that were part of the Corinthian church.  They were struggling with women’s roles and particularly what was appropriate and inappropriate for women in worship.  We talked about that last week.  The Corinthians were struggling with the Lord’s Supper and with spiritual gifts and with Christian freedom.  I mentioned last week that one of the key verses in figuring out women’s roles in ministry is 1 Corinthians 10:23 where we read,

²³“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.

When we talk about open and closed communion in some ways that’s still a useful verse.  In verses 17-22 of chapter 11 we read about the problem the Corinthians had that when they got together for the Communion meal.  What was happening was that everyone brought their own food and drink to the meal.  The wealthy people brought a lot of food and were getting drunk and over eating.  The poor people couldn’t bring much food and they would eat their morsels and go hungry while they watched the wealthy over eat and get drunk.  Those who had plenty weren’t sharing with those who didn’t have enough and it was creating disunity within the Body.  There wasn’t a problem that some people weren’t invited to attend the Communion celebration.  Everyone was invited but since it was a bring your own food sort of meal, there was a disparity and some people probably felt less welcome than others.

Beginning with verse 23 we read this,

²³For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,

²⁴and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

²⁵In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

²⁶For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

These are Jesus’ words of invitation to the meal that Paul repeated to the Corinthians.  Jesus invited those who are His followers to come to the table to eat, drink and remember what He did for us.  What had been happening was that in the Corinthian church there were people who were being excluded for all the wrong reasons.  They were being excluded or degraded because of their economic station in life.  That’s not a good enough reason to be excluded from the table of the Lord.

Verse 27 says this,

²⁷Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

²⁸A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.

²⁹For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

In these three verses Paul gave a warning to the church at Corinth not to eat the Communion meal in a frivolous way.  Paul said it was possible for them and for us to eat the meal frivolously in three different ways.

The first way we could do that is found in verse 27 where Paul warned about eating from the table in an unworthy manner.  To eat in an unworthy manner is to eat with the attitude that we’re so good on our own that it really wasn’t that big a deal for God to save us.  When we eat like that we minimize Jesus’ sacrifice.  The other way we can eat in an unworthy manner is to somehow have the attitude that says there is no possible way that God could ever save us because we’re so all around awful.  When we think like that we’re saying that the sacrifice of Christ which this table represents is not sufficient for us.  We eat the meal in an unworthy way.

We can also eat the meal frivolously when we do so without examining our lives and our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Is there unconfessed sin in our lives which we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that God overlooks?  Is there a relationship that is broken that we’ve done nothing to correct?  If we come to this meal and think that sin and broken relationships within the Body of Christ don’t matter we’re eating the meal frivolously.

I read this week that the early Anabaptists, when it came time to eat the Communion meal, before the meal was served they would take a vote to see if people thought the church could eat the meal.  If too many people voted no, the meal would be put off until such a time and greater unity was part of the church.  They took very seriously the warning Paul gave about eating the meal without examining their lives; not just their personal lives but their collective life as well.

In verse 29 Paul said it’s also possible to eat the meal frivolously by eating the meal and not recognizing the body of the Lord.  I think that means if non-Christians eat the meal without recognizing Jesus as their Lord and Savior they eat the meal frivolously.  They eat and drink judgment on themselves.  They think that they know Jesus, or they want others to think they know Jesus so they eat the meal.  They fool themselves and they will be judged as not having known Jesus.  Paul warned the church not to serve the meal to everyone because maybe not everyone in their meetings would be a believer.  The church is not to help people eat and drink judgment on themselves.  The church is to point people to Jesus.

You’ve probably noticed by now that there really doesn’t seem to be a spot in this section of Scripture or for that matter in the other Scriptures that describe the Communion meal that limits which believers can and can’t take part in the meal.  There is nothing that says anything about needing to be baptized to eat the meal.  It warns that non-believers shouldn’t be served but I think we should allow those present to determine if they are believers or not.  I can’t say who is a believer and who isn’t but we each know that about ourselves.

So how did the practice of closed Communion get started?  It actually started within the first century church and it’s a product of persecution.  It was risky to serve just anyone the Communion meal because they might report you to the authorities and that would result in persecution and torture and even death.  Every expression of their Christian faith was done in secret.  In order to be sure that those who were served Communion really were believers and not just pretending to be believers only those who had been baptized were allowed to be present for the meal.  Their lives depended on it (Eleanor Kreider “Communion Questions” The Mennonite - 02/17/09).

The early Anabaptists didn’t announce where or when the Communion meal would be served.  If any government or state church official found out where and when they were meeting it would mean persecution, torture and death.  Instead the family of believers sat around a table, read the Scripture, broke the bread, distributed it and drank wine from a plain earthen crock.  It looked to anyone who might see it as an ordinary meal between ordinary people.  Often no words were spoken so that they could not be accused of taking a role that belonged only to the priests.  Closed Communion at one time was a matter of survival and safety (The Lord’s Supper in Anabaptism by John Rempel).

For that reason I like our invitation to all believers who are in a right relationship with God and with their fellow believers and who are seeking to live a godly life and want to express their faith in this way.  I like the way we extend the invitation at Saturday Night Grace.  That group is smaller and so we serve Communion differently; it’s much less formal.  We invite people to come forward to the table and serve themselves after we’ve spoken the words of institution and prayed a prayer of thanks for the meal.  We invite families to come together and we place the onus on parents to decide at what level their children will participate.  We try not to turn anyone away and we try not to coerce anyone to come forward who doesn’t want to or who might not be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Once again with this issue I come back to the verse in 1 Corinthians 10:23,

²³“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.

I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong with the Closed or Open Communion discussion.  There is something to be said for eating the meal surrounded only by brothers and sisters in Christ who want to be there and have deliberately chosen to be there.  There is also something to be said for eating the meal among those who do not believe in Jesus Christ and for eating the meal in front of our children who aren’t yet ready to eat with us.  It models discipleship and it invites questions about what this all means.  As a church we’ve chosen to be open and to eat in a way that invites others to join us.

Hot Topics: Women in Ministry

Sermon Summary: 
Paul speaks with a different voice when he speaks about women's roles to the church in Corinth than he does when he speaks about women to the church in Galatia.  How might we reconcile these conflicting words of Paul regarding women and their role in the church?  In this message I offer the place to which I've arrived in my thinking around this difficult and at times divisive issue in the church.


Questions for Reflection:

1. How do you react when you encounter two sets of rules, one for women and one for men?  Why do you react that way?  Where or when did you learn that response?
2. What do you believe are appropriate roles for women in the church?  On what do you base your opinion?  How long have you held this opinion?
3. In your opinion does the Bible speak with a conflicted voice about women's roles?
4. What difference does it make to you whether the person who is leading something of which you are a part is a servant leader or a leader who is more concerned about their position?  What changes for you in that situation?
5. How does someone having a different view than you affect your ability to love them?

Sermon:  Hot Topics:  Women in Ministry

Most years in June we as a pastoral staff go away for a week of Study Leave.  During that week we spend some very intentional time in evaluating one another’s work as well as some time reading and thinking about big picture type things.  During Study Leave I use some of the time to plot out the coming year’s preaching themes and topics.  In June it always sounds like a really good idea to preach through a series of what I call Hot Topics; come January it’s a bit more tense, however.  Hot Topics are those topics, which, when we discuss them in groups or as individuals, tend to generate more heat than light.  Hot Topics are topics that are uncomfortable to talk about in public settings, especially in church.  In June I ask my pastoral colleagues to think with me of what topics to address.  Most anything is fair game.  If it’s a topic that we encounter in our lives as Christians in the 21^st century we need to be able to talk about it and teach about it in church.  So, for next year, if you think of something you’d like me to talk about during this series, drop me a note, or an email or something that I can put in a file where I’ll remember it when I plan next year’s preaching schedule and I’ll give it my best effort.

Women in Ministry.  If there’s an issue that has generated more heat than light in the church and in other places it’s this issue.  In some ways the Women in Ministry issue in the church is linked to the larger Women’s Liberation movement and Feminist Movement in our society; the one has kind of followed the other.  Women in Ministry was probably a bigger deal a couple of decades ago than it is now, at least in our church and conference.  Probably the issue of homosexuality has risen up to take its place in the last years as the really hot topic.  The Women in Ministry issue is not an issue that is settled in the sense that everyone in all the churches in our city, much less in our conference or in the global church have come to an agreement about it.  We’ve kind of decided to agree to disagree and move along or to live and let live.

Every once in awhile I find out it’s an issue for people when they’re new to Grace Church and interested in making this their church home.  They learn that we have a female pastor on staff and some have the integrity to say something to the effect of, “I have an issue with female pastors.  I’m not sure we would be able to attend a church that has a female pastor on staff.”

It’s an issue that’s out there.  It’s an issue that’s not as volatile as it once was, but it’s still there.  I want to take some time today to look at some of the biblical writings around this topic and then offer ways in which I’ve come to make my peace with the issue over the years.  I hope this proves helpful for you.  If you want to talk about this issue some more feel free to call, email or come by and see me.

The Scripture reading this week is an interesting passage of the debate in the issue of Women in Ministry.  Turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.  In point of fact this Scripture is a passage about the posture of women in worship but it’s been used in the debate about women in ministry.  As research for this message I read a portion of the book Slavery Sabbath War & Women by Willard Swartley.  Willard Swartley was for many years a professor of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana.  Essentially what Willard Swartley does in the book is work through issues where the Scripture seems to say two different things about an issue.  The Bible seems to speak to both sides of the issue when it comes to slavery; is it allowed or not.  The Bible isn’t specific which day of the week should be observed as the sabbath.  The Bible, as we Mennonites are very aware, speaks in different ways about the rightness or wrongness of war.  The Bible also speaks in different ways about the role of women.  I’ve been told that after the book was published, Willard Swartley was challenged by some that he should also have included the topic of homosexuality in his book.  He disagreed and said the Bible speaks consistently about homosexuality and he later wrote another book called Homosexuality: Biblical Interpretation and Moral Discernment.  I hope to read that book and I’ll speak more about homosexuality later in this series.

1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is a very curious passage.  The place where this Scripture sits within the book of 1 Corinthians is in the middle of a number of issues in Corinthian church which Paul addressed.  In chapter 10 he talked about idolatry and idol feasts and believers’ freedoms.  Perhaps a key verse in that discussion which has something to say to this issue is 1 Corinthians 10:23 where we read,

²³“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.

Later in chapter 11 Paul talked about the Lord’s Supper and what the people were doing in that meal that was dishonoring to one another and to Jesus.  In chapter 12 and 14 he talked about Spiritual Gifts and in between those chapters he wrote that beautiful chapter on love, not love in marriage but love in the body of Christ which must moderate everything we do.  Love must moderate how we determine roles for men and women.  Love must moderate how we celebrate the Lord’s Supper so that we don’t exclude anyone and destroy the unity of the Body of Christ.  Love must moderate how we exercise our Spiritual Gifts.  The measure of a church is how the church loves, not it’s programs or worship styles or anything else; what matters is how we love.

1 Corinthians 11 has an interesting feature which you will probably see in the margin or the footnotes of your NIV if you have an NIV bible.  The interesting feature is found in verses 4-7.  In the main body of the text of the NIV we read this,

⁴Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.

⁵And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved.

⁶If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head.

⁷A man ought not to cover his head,

That’s an interesting section all by itself but what’s really interesting is that there is a reading in the margin or in the footnotes that reads like this,

⁴Every man who prays or prophesies with long hair dishonors his head.

⁵And every woman who prays or prophesies with no covering of hair on her head dishonors her head—she is just like one of the “shorn women.”

⁶If a woman has no covering, let her be for now with short hair, but since it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair shorn or shaved, she should grow it again.

⁷A man ought not to have long hair

Essentially what the NIV has done is offer two translations.  One uses the words head covering or head uncovered - which, as I checked with Gerald, seems like the best translation.  The other translation uses the words ‘long hair’ or ‘short hair’ instead of head covering.  I can see where verse 7 in the marginal reading would have been very handy back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the Beatles and long hair were all the rage and the church was deciding how to deal with young men who wanted to grow their hair long.  I vaguely remember this verse being referenced in some discussions.  

What’s weird or interesting is that so far I’ve not been able to find another version of the Bible that uses this second translation.  The one thing that Gerald and I found is that Greek women, and Corinth was a Greek city, Greek women all wore some sort of covering on their hair.  The only women who didn’t wear those coverings were high priced mistresses of the rich, convicted adulteresses and temple prostitutes.  Beyond that I’m not sure what’s up with these verses and translations.  If you know or find out please let me know, I’m curious.

It all feels very restrictive for women in 1 Corinthians and our modern culture is quite sensitive to anything that feels restrictive toward women.  Our culture doesn’t like it when there are two sets of rules for men and women.  We don’t like it that there’s a restriction on a woman’s freedom to choose how to style her hair or whether she should wear a head covering or not.  1 Corinthians feels especially restrictive when you consider chapter 14 verse 33-35 where we read,

³³For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.  As in all the congregations of the saints,

³⁴women should remain silent in the churches.  They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.

³⁵If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

What do these passages mean for us as a church?  What do we do with these verses when we talk about Women in Ministry or the roles of women?  I think there must have been some sort of issue or problem in the Corinthian church that led Paul to write these words.  The reason I say that is because Paul does not have one consistent way of speaking about women’s roles particularly in the church.  Paul wrote to the church in Galatians chapter 3:26-28.  These are the Call to Worship verses in your bulletins where Paul wrote,

²⁶You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,

²⁷for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

²⁸There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Here Paul said all those dividers, those things which kept us separate and in different classes and some of us subject to others of us, all of those things disappear when we are in Christ.  In fact all of us, no matter our gender, are sons of God through faith in Christ.  We’re all favored children of God when we come to faith in Christ.  We’re all most important children of God when we come to faith in Christ - that’s what sons were in the ancient near eastern culture to whom Paul was writing.  Those things that used to divide us and subjugate us - Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female - they all disappear when we come to faith in Christ.

Paul speaks in two ways about the role of women.  He speaks restrictively to the Corinthians about the role of women and he speaks in a freeing way to the Galatians about the role of women.  Wait a minute.  Who is the author of Scripture?  We believe that the author of all Scripture is God.  I should really say that God speaks restrictively about the role of women to the Corinthians and God speaks to the Galatians in a way that frees women.  God seems to take both sides on the roles of women.

I can very clearly remember about a decade in my teens and twenties when this discussion about women in ministry was intense in the church in which I grew up.  I remember being at a membership meeting where I was afraid I was watching a church blow up in front of me because of this issue.  That meeting was so intense that the chair of the meeting would not close the meeting in prayer because he said to pray after such a meeting would mock God.  There was some truth in what he said, God could not have blessed what we did at that meeting; we probably should have prayed prayers asking for forgiveness.

After that meeting we were afraid that we would not be able to have a worship service the next Sunday.  Somehow we managed to find enough people willing to serve so that we could worship together the next Sunday morning.  I don’t remember exactly what happened after that but I know that there were more meetings and the church continued.  Not only did it continue but there came a time when they hired a woman from within the church to be their lead pastor.

I grew up learning and being taught that women were limited in their roles in the church.  Sunday School was okay.  Playing piano and organ for worship was okay.  Leading the choir was okay.  Preaching and being a deacon was not okay.  As I went to college I was able to find authors who agreed with that position and supported it biblically and I felt affirmed in my position.

During that time I also met women who insisted they should be allowed to hold positions in church leadership because it was their right and they demanded that role.  They argued, “Why should I be excluded from that role just because I’m a woman?”  Their arguments made sense but they did nothing to change my mind; in fact they only served to strengthen my resolve.  Being in our conference and being exposed to more inclusive roles for women, I was able to intellectually agree that there were more roles available to women in the church than I had grown up thinking there were; but many of the women I saw in pastoral roles or asking for leadership roles didn’t seem to have pastors’ hearts and didn’t seem to have servants’ hearts.  They all seemed like activists intent on making a point.  I struggled with that.

I know that Grace Church at one or more points in our history has grappled with the issue of women in ministry and I have heard from those who were there that this issue created tension and pain and division and may even have hurt friendships and relationships within our church.  The result of that churning and tension and struggle is that our constitution and by-laws now state that all positions in Grace Mennonite Church with the exception of the Senior Pastor role are open to any qualified member of either gender.

I learned this when I came to Grace Church to interview and read the constitution - I may even have been told in one of the interviews or meetings, I can’t remember.  I thought I could live with that but I wasn’t sure the church would ever hire a female pastor.  What I didn’t know was that Katie Booy had already served on the staff of the church as a Youth Coordinator.  About seven months after I got here Sharon Peters began work as our youth pastor - youth pastor not youth coordinator which I think was an important distinction.

I was somewhat nervous, but I’m always somewhat nervous how it will work out when a new staff person begins work here.  You as a congregation were convinced and voted convincingly to extend the call.  Clearly the way Katie went about her work had shown you that a female in a pastoral role could be a good thing.

Pastor Sharon did more to change my mind about women in ministry than any lecture or book or discussion ever has or could have done.  Pastor Autumn has picked up right where Sharon left off.  These women are gifted by God for pastoral ministry.  They came as servants of God and of His church.  There isn’t an ounce of activism in them, unless certain male staff behave like jerks.  They are called by God and they come to serve, not to demand.  That to me makes all the difference.

That’s my history with this issue.  There’s three conclusions I’ve come to about Women in Ministry.  Number One:  The Bible speaks in conflicting ways about the roles of women.  In the Old Testament Deborah was a judge - the same rank and role as Samuel but women were not part of the priesthood nor did they serve in the Temple.  We have the Corinthian passage about head coverings and women not speaking plus we have the Galatians passage about all dividers being gone in Christ.  We have women like Junia in the list of the apostles and Priscilla listed before her husband and they are described as leaders of the church.  Both sides are presented as right and proper in the Scripture.  Both restrictive and freeing views are obvious within the Scripture.  What that tells me is that to God it really doesn’t matter that much what we decide about the roles of women in the church.

In the things that matter the Scripture is very clear and never speaks with more than one voice.  Salvation by Christ alone is the one voice of Scripture when it comes to how we can have a right relationship with God.  In that the Bible is very clear, but on the issue of women’s roles it’s less rigid and I think that’s a model for us.  We should be less rigid as well.  There’s a freedom to be in a number of places along a spectrum of women’s roles in the church.

Do you remember the verse I mentioned from 1 Corinthians 10?  It said, 

²³“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.

Maybe that’s instructive when it comes to this issue as well.  When it comes to Women’s Roles in Church everything is permissible but not everything may be beneficial or constructive.  We have freedom but how we use it matters.  That brings me to my second thought on Women in Ministry.

Number Two:  The heart of the servant matters more than their position.  This is the difference between demanding a position because it is our right and obeying a call of God on our lives and offering ourselves to serve.  This applies to men as much as to women.  It is just as unattractive when men demand roles simply because of their gender as it is when women do it.  People who demand roles because it is their right seem to forget that when Jesus talked about those who would occupy roles of leadership and authority He spoke about them needing to be servants and needing to be willing to do the menial jobs.  When we are called to positions of authority and leadership we are called to take the lead in serving the church.  It’s servanthood and a willingness to be used by God for the benefit of His church and His Kingdom that matters most of all when it comes to filling roles in the church.  When we agree and we achieve unity as a church around this issue of gender roles what we decide doesn’t matter - servanthood matters.  Christ calls servants.

Number Three:  Love is the bottom line.  I notice that when someone disagrees with me I find a term to describe that person.  We do that all the time in our society.  In the Abortion issue there are terms like Pro-Choice and Pro-Life which are the nicer of the terms that are thrown about.  Around the issue of Women in Ministry some use terms like hierarchical to describe those who see limited roles for women in the church and liberationist to describe those who see all roles available to women.  What I find I do with terms like that is when I attach a name or a term or a designation to people I usually stop referring to them as brother or sister in Christ and I refer to them by some other title or term than I would use for myself.  Usually the term I choose for them makes them somehow less than me and makes me better than them.

Sometimes I stop loving people because they don’t agree with me.  Do we use someone’s views as an excuse to withhold love from them?  When a person’s position on an issue affects whether or not I love them the enemy wins because he’s used an issue where God is good either way to divide the Body of Christ.

Women in Ministry.  It doesn’t really matter to God where we come out on this - the Bible speaks in conflicting ways about the issue.  Everything is permissible but  not everything is constructive.  What matters is that those in roles in the church are servants.  What matters is that we love.

How to Waste Time and Ruin a Year

Sermon Summary:

As we begin a new year I would like to offer to you a series of suggestions on ways in which we can waste an incredible amount of time and probably ruin an entire year.  If you stay with this long enough we ask two important questions at the end of the message.  Happy new year.

Questions for Reflection:

1. In your life what were the best times of 2011?
2. In your life what were the hardest times of 2011?
3. How was God involved in both the good and hard times of 2011?
4. How would you improve the way in which God was involved in your life in 2011 this coming year?
5. What are going to do to make this happen?

Sermon: How to Waste Time and Ruin a Year

Today is New Year’s day.  We are in the first hours of a brand new year.  New Year’s is an occasion when we naturally think of the passage of time.  This is a time of year when we talk about how we hope to spend our time in the coming year and how we hope to use our time and what we hope to accomplish.  Today the expanse of time that will be 2012 stretches out before us.  Today 2012 seems a bit like a guest whom we’ve just met, a guest around whom we’re still a little unsure.  We don’t know what this year will bring; we have no experience with this year.  We were familiar with 2011.  Be December 2011 felt like a pair of comfortable slippers but we don’t know about this new year.

Our society is very time conscious.  So many of the things we do are regulated by time. We govern our lives by what time events start and end.  We, as a society, believe it is necessary to have clocks hanging all over the place, except maybe in malls and stores.  If we aren’t within sight of a clock we can get a little fidgety and panicky.

Because of that we wear wrist watches and we have desk clocks and clocks on our computer screens and clocks in our phones.  We have clocks in our cars, trucks and clocks on all our appliances and time and temperature displays on signs on buildings in our city.  Some churches even have clocks built into the pulpits with the objective that then the preacher will quit on time so the people can get to wherever they are going next on time.  Some preachers thwart that by not using the pulpit.

Isn’t it amazing how much of our lives are governed by the clock and by keeping track of time.  I remember when I worked at a job where we had punch cards and a punch clock.  I remember seeing people dashing to the punch clock so that they wouldn’t be a minute late; we also weren’t supposed to punch in a minute early.  We pack our lives so full of things to do that we have to keep such close track of time and we need to keep calendars and write down everything we’re going to do so that we don’t double book ourselves.  In some cultures people can get by without a calendar or a watch but not in ours.  We’re much too time conscious for that.

Years ago we bought a computer program that did nothing but create calendars.  When I first saw this program I was amazed at how many different kinds of calendars there were.  There was the calendar where you could see only one week on every page and write down what you do or hope to do every hour of every day.  There was also the calendar for the person who was extremely busy that has only one day on every page so that you can pack a lot of things into every day.  There was the calendar where you could put a month on each page or the one where you could put a year on each page.  And every one of those calendars came in a variety of sizes, styles, shapes and colors and you could custom fit them exactly as you would like them.

If calendars in varying shapes and sizes weren’t enough to help us organize our lives we could also buy books and take courses on how to manage our time; probably there’s an app for that.  These things are supposed to teach us how to plan and plot our days and weeks and how to set priorities so that we can put in order of importance the things that need to be done and the order in which we will do them.  This assumes that we have the discipline to actually do what it is we’ve written down.  This all reminds me of the words of Will Rogers who once said,      “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”

In answer to this whole hubbub about time in our society the apostle James perhaps gives us a different perspective when he said in chapter four of the Epistle of James beginning with verse 13

¹³Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”

¹⁴Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

¹⁵Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

¹⁶As it is, you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil.

¹⁷Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

In answer to a society that is obsessed with saving time and being good time managers and being efficient I would like to offer us some suggestions for this new year not on how we can be more efficient but on how we can waste time.  I think if we look somewhat tongue in cheek at how to waste time we might gain insight into how to make better use of our time.  These suggestions come from Chuck Swindoll’s book The Finishing Touch.

The first thing that we can do to waste time is to Worry a Lot.  Get up early in the morning and begin the day by worrying about all the things that can possibly go wrong.  Worry that you might get run over by a bus or that your children might get severely injured while playing.  Worry that you might burn yourself on the stove or that you’ll electrocute yourself with the Vacuum Cleaner.  Worry that you might be in a bad car accident.  Worry that you might be involved in a grisly industrial machinery accident.

Worry about what might have been or what could have been if only you had done this or that differently.  Worry about what you might have done wrong, mistakes that you might have made but aren’t sure whether or not you actually made them.  Worry about things you could have done but didn’t do.  Worry about your weight, your marriage and the fact that we’ve just begun a new year so that means you’re getting older.  There is almost no limit to what there is we can worry about in our lives if we set our minds to it.  And worry is one of the most wonderful time wasters there is.

Should you run out of things to worry about within your immediate family then you can start to worry about other people’s affairs - you could even worry about the affairs of people on your favorite TV program.  Turn on the radio, watch T.V or read the paper and worry about what you hear on the news or the weather or the sports reports.  Worry about what the unusual weather this winter might mean - heard a guy the other day who had a whole year of things to worry about because of the lack of snow cover so far this winter.  He was obviously an accomplished worry-er.  Worry about crime in our country.  Worry about youth gangs and the federal deficit and increasing taxes and decreasing government services.  Worry about whether or not our province can support both the CFL and the NHL.  There are so many things that you could be worrying about; probably most of which you’ve not yet worried about.  Worry that you’ve been underachieving in your worrying.  Whatever you do make sure that you never think about the fact that the vast majority of the things you worry about won’t happen.  Or, if you happen to think of that then convince yourself that clearly your worrying is effective because what you’re worrying about isn’t happening.

Wake up at night so that you can lose sleep worrying about some things that you didn’t get around too worrying about during the day.  Need some help with things to worry about?  Spend time with negative people like the Pessimist who was the neighbor of an Optimist.  One bright sunny summer day the Optimist said to the Pessimist, “My what a lovely sunny day.”  The Pessimist replied, “If this heat keeps up the grass will be all brown and withered before we know it.”  Several days later it began to rain and so the Optimist greeted his Pessmist neighbor by saying, “My what a lovely rain we’re having.”  The Pessimist replied, “If it doesn’t stop raining soon my garden is going to float away.”

The Optimist bought a hunting dog and eagerly asked his Pessimist neighbor if he wouldn’t go hunting with him one day.  The Pessimist looked at the dog and said, “Looks like a mutt to me.”  Eventually with great persistence the Optimist was able to persuade the Pessimist to go hunting with him.  They got out to the swamp where they were going to be hunting and quite soon the Optimist scared up a flock of ducks, fired and hit one of them.  He snapped his fingers and his new dog walked out on top of the water and picked up the duck and walked back on top of the water.  The Optimist turned to the Pessimist and said, “What do you think of my dog now?”  “Humph.  Dumb dog, can’t even swim”  (Illustrations for Biblical Preaching #988).

Worry more and spend time with negative, pessimistic people.  If all goes well we can be riddled with ulcers within a month.  The best part is that if we’re worrying we’re not doing anything and we’re wasting time.

The first key to wasting time is to worry a lot.  The second key to wasting time is to Make Hard and Fast Predictions.  State in categorical terms what it is you will be doing.  Then follow through on those statements as though your life depended on it.  Forget what it says in the passage we read from the book of James about not knowing what our life will be like tomorrow.  Make predictions and set your expectations in motion.  Be as specific and as forthright as possible and follow in the footsteps of other hard and fast prediction makers who have gone before us.

If all goes well we might end up like Irving Fisher the economist who, in 1929, just six weeks before the great Stock Market Crash said, “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.”  He then added in a speech made just nine days before the stock market crash, “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”  Or, we could be like the manager of the International Monetary Fund who in 1959 said , “In all likelihood, world inflation is over.”  I did some research this week and found that in 1959 the price of gas was 25 cents a gallon back then.  I think inflation somehow squeaked through.

Maybe we could be like Joseph Califano Jr. who said of Jim Jones the cult leader who killed hundreds of his followers, “Your commitment and compassion, your humanitarian principles and your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity”  (776 Stupidest Things Ever Said  pp.51, 52, 146, 21).  Or like Jimmy Hoffa who one week before he disappeared in 1975 said, “I don’t need bodyguards.”

Make hard and fast predictions and stick to them.  Don’t pray about your intentions or desires  Don’t subject them to the Will of God.  Don’t seek His will for your life.  Determine yourself what you want to do and then set out and do it.  Be the master of your own fate.  As you’re spinning your wheels you’ll pursue your selfish goals and neglect what is best for your life; what God wants for you.  Worry a lot, make hard and fast predictions and follow through on them are the first two ways we can go about wasting time this year.

The third thing to do that will help us to waste time is to Fix Our Attention on Getting Rich.  Make the chief end of your life the acquisition of more money.  If you need help just go to the local bookstore and look on the shelf under self-help books and you’ll find lots of books telling you how you can get rich.  If you’d really rather not read about getting rich, you can watch late night T.V infomercials, they’ll tell you how to subscribe to a series that you can listen to in the car or while you’re walking and this series will make you a millionaire before you’ve got them paid for in three easy payments on your credit card.

If we make the acquisition of money the focus of our attention we won’t have to worry about building relationships with family and friends.  We won’t get bogged down with all the hassles of building and maintaining friendships and caring about people and being there to support them in difficulties or having to celebrate with them when they reach milestones.  If we focus our attention on getting rich we’ll be able to hang out with high pressure salespeople and we’ll never have to worry about being home for an anniversary or birthday party again because that’s not important since it doesn’t contribute to our goal of making more and more money.

If we are successful at this when we grow older we can look back at our friendless lives, at our families who at best don’t know us or at worst won’t speak to us because we’ve neglected them all our lives and we can feel satisfied that we have chosen what really mattered, that which was really important: money.

Focus our attention on getting rich, make hard and fast predictions and stick to them and worry a lot.  Three ways that we can waste time in this new year.

The fourth way that we can waste time in this new year is to Compare Ourselves with Others.  This time waster has a dual benefit.  The first benefit is that we will bounce back and forth between feelings of arrogance and worthlessness.  If I compare myself with this person I can see that I am a lot better than they are.  “Man, I am good and you are lucky to know me and have me associate with you I am so good.”  Arrogance.  But if I compare myself with this other person well you see they’re a lot better than I am.  “Oh, I am such scum.  Look at what a lousy person I am compared with him or her.  I’m not worthy of anyone loving or caring about me.  I’m so terrible.”

As long as we focus on comparing ourselves with other people we bounce back and forth between those two extremes: a sense of arrogance and worthlessness and we accomplish nothing because we either are too good to do that job or we’re too worthless.

The second benefit of comparing ourselves with others is that we will spend our lives not knowing who we are.  Am I a good person or am I a lousy person?  I don’t know because I’m never in one spot long enough to find out for sure.  I have no idea who I am.

This idea of comparing ourselves to others is, potentially, a wonderful time waster in our society because in our society no matter what we’re into we can find out about people who are really good at that and compare ourselves to them or we can find really average people and compare ourselves to them.  If we’re into sports we can learn about professional athletes or Olympic Athletes or we can go to the local arena or ball diamonds and compare ourselves to people there.  If we’re into cooking and things around the house we can buy magazines like Good Housekeeping and compare ourselves to the people and the pictures in those magazines or we can visit a house or two that we know about where the family isn’t as neat as we are or where they don’t do things in the way that we do.

Comparing ourselves with others is a wonderful method of wasting time.  We can add it to fixing our attention on getting rich, making hard and fast predictions and worrying a lot.

The final time waster that I want to share with you this morning is to Lengthen Our List of Enemies.  If there’s one thing that will keep our wheels spinning and keep our minds racing around unproductive topics it’s the old Blame Game.  “Oh, there’s this and this that’s wrong in my life and it’s all that person’s fault.  I could be ... if it weren’t for what they did to me way back when.”  If we want to lengthen our list of enemies we need to cultivate suspicion.  Always question other people’s motives when they offer to help us or do something for us.  If we want to lengthen our list of enemies we need to become more paranoid, more worried that people are always out to get us.  We need to adopt the saying, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me,” as our life’s motto.  If we’re going to lengthen our list of enemies we need to foster resentment.

One Christmas we were out at my parents’ place in Brandon and one of the T.V stations in Brandon during the Holiday season ran Christmas greetings and New Year’s greetings from area businesses.  These commercials really are rather predictable after a while and they get rather tiring actually unless you recognize someone on one of the greetings.  That’s what happened to me.  I was watching T.V when up on the screen pops the picture of the bully who used to beat me up in school when I was a kid.  I said, “Hey, that’s the guy that used to be the bully in school.  He’s got a respectable job, he’s on T.V extending Christmas greetings to me.  I still don’t like him because he used to beat me up.”  It’s been more than 35 years since I last laid eyes on the man much less since he last beat me up, you’d think I could have gotten over it by now.  But I keep extending the list of enemies, harboring resentment.

If we cultivate suspicion and paranoia and resentment we can wile away the hours reveling in our feelings of hate and bitterness while stewing over folks who have made or might yet make our lives miserable.

Five suggestions for wasting time: Worry a lot, make hard and fast predictions, fix your attention on getting rich, compare yourself with others and lengthen your list of enemies.  If we can only set these surefire suggestions in motion we can attain to new heights of wasting time in 2012.  As an added benefit we can also forget all about the hassles connected with being happy and efficient and productive and contented.  If we focus on these time wasters, it is quite conceivable that within a few months we can be the most miserable people who have ever lived.

I suppose I need to offer an apology to you this morning for the tone of this message.  It’s been sarcastic and grossly exaggerated.  But my point in presenting a message like this is to ask us two questions as we close this morning.  Number 1: As exaggerated and overdone as what I’ve said this morning has been, how much our our lives have we wasted in the past doing any one or a combination of several of the things I have just talked about?  How much time have we wasted worrying instead of praying?  How much time have I wasted setting my own predictions and agendas instead of becoming familiar with the mind and the Will of God?  How much time have I wasted focusing only on the money end of my work and complaining about not being rich instead of focusing on the enjoyment of being able to work and being allowed to do a job that I enjoy and still being within the top 5% of the richest people in the world?  How much time do I waste annually comparing myself to others and becoming arrogant or feeling worthless and not knowing who I am instead of recognizing the person that God has made me and striving together with God to make the best of that personality?  How much time do I waste cultivating enemies and lengthening the list of people whom I dislike instead of forgiving and being free?

Question Number Two:  How do we want to spend this coming year?  Do we want to waste it in the five areas I mentioned this morning or in others that we can think of?  Or, do we want to invest it in our relationships with people and with God, those things that are truly important and will bring contentment, peace and joy in our lives?

As I close this morning I would like to direct our thoughts to the words of Ephesians chapter 5:15 & 16, which are also printed in the bulletin as our Call to Worship verses this morning, where Paul wrote,

¹⁵Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise,

¹⁶making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

My challenge to us for this coming year is to make the most of our time, to not simply spend it but to invest it in those things that last forever.

Wise Man Seeking Christ

Sermon:  Wise Man Seeking Christ


Once again this year for the Christmas morning message I have chosen to share with you a story.  This year the story is of a member of the magoi who came to see the child Jesus and to worship and bring Him gifts.  I trust you be blessed by the story.  May God bless you with a Merry Christmas, filled with an awareness of God's presence in your life.

Good morning!  It is good to be with you this morning.  I have never been in a Mennonite church before, especially at Christmas time.  This is quite different from the region of the world from which I come and needless to say quite different also from the time in which I lived.  Do any of you know who I am?

If you have looked in the bulletin this morning you may have deduced that I am one of the Magi.  Do you want to know my actual name?  I’m not going to tell you my name; the Bible doesn’t give you my name and if the Bible doesn’t give you my name then Yahweh must have His reasons.  In the Bible we are simply called the Magoi which is translated as Magi in English.

Do you know how many of us there were who followed the star to visit the child?  Be careful.  Children in Sunday School quizzes have gotten this one wrong for centuries.  How many of you were going to say there were three Wise Men or Magi?  Yahweh has never told you how many of us there were that came to visit His son.  He only told you that we brought three gifts.  He told you that there was more than one of us; magoi, you see, is a plural noun.  I know how many of us there were, I was there, but like Yahweh I’m not telling.

I must tell you my story, the story of the Magoi and the star.  The word ‘magoi’ literally means ‘magician’ and later in history it was a term which came to define those hucksters and charlatans like Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:9, 11), people who traded in the magic arts and attempted to use their skill to cheat people out of their money.  During my lifetime the magoi had not yet stooped to such depths.

The magoi had a long and proud history.  In fact a very famous character in Yahweh’s Bible was a member of the magoi.  The magoi are the priests of the Medes.  One of the Median kings was a man named Darius the Mede who retained a certain Hebrew named Daniel as his Rab Mag - the head Magoi.  Magoi were experts in interpreting dreams and there was none better in his time at interpreting dreams than the great Daniel.  The magoi were, for many years, advisors to kings.  Daniel was perhaps the greatest advisor to a king in the history of Israel - he and perhaps Joseph and the Pharaoh of Egypt.

The magoi were the supreme priestly magistrates for the Medes and the Persians and when those nations were conquered the magoi continued as the supreme magistrates for the Seleucids, Parthians and the Sasanians.  The magoi held absolute decision making authority as to who would be king.  We were king makers, not just in Parthia but throughout much of the region to the east of the Roman Empire.  When we rode into Jerusalem that day we were a group of world renowned Parthian king makers.

Yahweh’s Bible says that pretender king Herod was disturbed when we arrived in Jerusalem.  He had good reason to be disturbed.  When the magoi ride into your foreign city in force we are not coming to make a social call - it was a business trip.  Frequently, when the people of foreign nations heard of our choice of king they would foment rebellion and pogroms until our choice was eventually installed as king.  Herod knew he was only half Jewish and half Edomite, and that he was only tolerated as king because of the force of the Roman empire on his behalf.  He knew the Jews were waiting for the day when a full-blooded Jew would once again ascend the throne.  Herod was terrified of that eventuality.

The period in history during which we rode into Jerusalem was a worldwide time when all peoples of the world were waiting for the dawning of a new age.  Roman historians such as Suetonius and their poet Virgil wrote about a coming age when a new king would rise and a new era would dawn on the earth.  Surprisingly, there were even those who said this king would come from the eastern portion of the Empire, from Israel of all places.

We were astrologers, which in our time, was a mix of astronomy and astrology.  In our country every man believed that we could tell the future by looking at the stars.  We believed that the star under which a man was born set the direction for his life.  We watched the stars.  We knew the stars and their courses as well as you know the streets of your own city.

One day a strange phenomenon occurred.  We had been observing the sky when a star of unparalleled brilliance appeared.  Not only did it appear but it moved.  All stars seem to move ever so slowly but this star moved quickly - as though it were inviting us to follow it.  The star seemed to be moving in a westerly direction.  The next night the star was there again, the same place it had been when it appeared the night before and once again it moved toward the west.  If stars could speak I imagine this one would have said, “Follow me.  I will show you something no one has ever seen before.”

Since the magoi were part of the government establishment it was necessary for us to appoint a committee to study what should be done because of this star.  While that committee met and deliberated, each night the star appeared and moved and invited us to follow.  We knew we had to follow the star.  With the worldwide expectation of a new era about to dawn it made sense that there would be a new star to herald the beginning of this new time in human history.

Well, it takes time to put together an expedition of government officials traveling uninvited to what, in all likelihood, would be a foreign nation ruled by a hostile foreign power.  There were security considerations.  Being government officials, king makers at that, we would be targets for every robber and rebel along the way.  We didn’t know the countries through which the star might lead us.  We didn’t know how long our journey would take or how far we would have to travel.  We didn’t know our destination before we left.  Do you ever leave on a journey where you don’t know your destination?

We would carry treasure as a gift to whomever we would find at the end of our journey.  We would carry additional treasure with which to purchase provisions as well as to pay for safe passage as we travelled through countries of which we did not yet know.  We needed an armed cavalry of sufficient size to ensure our safety and the safety of our treasure as well as to ensure that hostile foreign powers would take us seriously.  It was a very complicated and involved process to plan a voyage the length of which you do not know before you leave to a destination you will not know until you arrive following a star which you have only seen for a month or two.

We as magoi needed to decide who would go on this journey and who would stay behind.  We had no idea what we would encounter on our arduous trip, a journey which might take months or years in both directions; we didn’t know.  Oh the meetings we had to decide who would be the ones to follow the star.  Since it was such a momentous occasion the most senior of the magoi were insistent they should go.  However, the most senior of the magoi were also the most frail and least able to endure a hazardous journey of unknown length.  In the end we struck a balance between vigor and experience and I was among the magoi selected to go.

Of course when you are going to see the one who has been born the king of a new era of human history you cannot go empty handed.  We agreed on which gifts to bring.  Our gifts were gifts fit for the station of the one whose appearance was heralded by a unique star but our gifts could also be used as currency in the region through which we projected we would travel.  We brought with us gold which is a gift fit for a king but which is also a readily accepted currency the world over.  Frankincense is the gift that represented the priesthood - being the highest order of priests in the world we thought it right to bring this to the one who would begin the new era.  Frankincense, also, was traded around world and could be traded for food or safe passage should the need arise.  And, we brought myrrh, the traditional embalming spice of the eastern regions of the empire.  We thought it fitting to bring myrrh to the new king to celebrate the death and the burial of the old and to herald the beginning of the new era.

The day we left we travelled in the direction the star had been tracking every night since it had first appeared months earlier.  That night the star did not appear in the spot where we had grown accustomed to seeing it appear.  Instead it appeared over the place where we were and proceeded from there.  The star led us across the Syrian desert between the Euphrates and Syria.  The star led us to Tudmar and then turned us toward Damascas.  The star led us south along on the Great Mecca route.  We continued to the south along the east side of the Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee.  The star wisely elected to show us and our extensive entourage to the Romans from a safe distance at first.  We hoped to communicate that ours was a peaceful journey not an attempt to trigger some sort of border incident.

When we did cross the Jordan at the fords of Jericho it still caused a stir.  We were greeted by platoons of soldiers and commanders who vigorously demanded to know what business we had crossing into their territory.  We told them that we were searching for the one who had be born king of the Jews.  One born king of the Jews would be in sharp contrast to Herod the half-breed pretender to the throne who currently went by the term ‘king’ in Israel.  We were searching for one who would be the rightful heir to the throne of Israel.

We were directed to Jerusalem - where the temple and the seat of Israel were located.  We entered Jerusalem with all the pomp and circumstance we could muster after eight months of travel.  We were, admittedly, a rather impressive entourage of Parthian cavalry and Persian magoi the priestly magistrates who were world-renowned king makers.  These king makers appeared before the pretender Herod and asked him to tell us where the rightful king of Israel had be born - not appointed to the throne by Rome after a purchase had been negotiated - born King of the Jews.

Herod was visibly shaken by our presence.  He assured us there had been no royal birth since the time we had first seen the star.  We pressed him further assuring him that we knew that a new and great king had been born in the nation of Israel because a new star had led us to this place.  Largely to appease us he called upon the priests of Israel and asked them if they knew of any place other than Jerusalem in the palace of the king where a royal birth might take place.  The priests looked no more thrilled to see us than Herod had but they answered and told him that their prophets had foretold that in the town of Bethlehem there would one day be a royal birth.  We asked if this birth had taken place at some point during the previous year.  They had no idea and even if they had known they would have never admitted it in the presence of Herod, that most vindictive and paranoid of rulers.

Finally, we knew we were on the last leg of our journey.  After weeks of planning and gathering provisions.  After a seemingly endless stream of meetings to determine the logistics of a journey whose length and destination we did not know.  After months of travel through nearly 1200 miles of difficult terrain and danger and discomfort, through cold and heat and rain and arid spaces.  After having endured an audience with that insufferable Herod finally we were traveling the last six miles to our destination.  To our great relief and joy the star led us on from Jerusalem to Bethlehem where it appeared to stop and, if anything, it grew brighter.

We stopped on the outskirts of Bethlehem to review our protocols.  Our most basic assumption was that we couldn’t just burst in to visit the king who had been born to begin this new era of human history; it would be presumptuous and undignified and unbefitting either of our stations.  Furthermore, we knew that any king so great as to command his own star which had led us to the place where he was had to be a king whom we could not merely greet with a casual hello and a wave of the hand.  A king this great had to be greeted with the greatest display of deference and reverence we could muster.  Such a great king must be worshipped by all who came into his presence.  If the king makers of Persia worshipped a king, he was a king of the highest order.

For months, I had imagined the moment when we would first set eyes on this great king.  I had constructed in my mind a grand and magnificent scene; a scene of utmost pomp and splendor.  Then the star that led us stopped over a house; a house not a palace.  It was a peasant home, not the palatial mansion I had imagined.  For the first time I doubted the star which had so faithfully led us to this point.  The star must have made a mistake, this couldn’t be the home of the child born to be the king who would usher in a new era of human history.  I looked to the sky to see if the star had moved but clearly the star shone brightly on this peasant house and only on this peasant house.  There could be no doubt this was where the star wanted our journey to end.

The star didn’t seem to know or care that in our experience kings don’t live in peasant homes amid squalor; kings live in palaces amid splendor.  Kings should have an aura of majesty and royalty about them; this king had only the odor of a stable in a poor part of town about him.  What king is born and lives in such commonness?

When we entered the home and saw the child he was overwhelmingly normal.  He looked and sounded like any other Israelite child.  His voice was loud and his demands were insistent like any other child his age.  Protocol demanded that we pay homage to this child.  We did so.  We did our duty and we bowed low.  We soiled our splendid clothes on the earthen floor of the peasant home as we prostrated ourselves before this most ordinary of children.  No act of worship was ever carried out more reluctantly and with greater scorn than my act of worship before this child on that day so many years ago.  I followed the demands of protocol with my body but my heart and spirit didn’t believe what my body was doing; my heart and spirit were disgusted by what my body was doing.  I felt so cheap and used and dirty.  I could not wait to leave that house.

What an unmitigated disaster this journey had turned out to be.  How embarrassed I was to have been part of the group of magoi who had been selected to make this arduous journey.  How I wished I had been either old enough or young enough to be allowed to stay home.  I turned to leave the house completely deflated.

Not only had we prostrated ourselves before a peasant child and given him our valuable gifts, we also faced the prospect of having to pay a return visit to Herod to inform him of what we had found.  How could we appear before Herod and tell him that we had indeed seen the future king of an new era of human history when all we had seen was a peasant child?  How could we hold our heads up when we arrived home?  The shame of having to admit we had invested nearly two years of our lives and an enormous fortune from our kingdom’s coffers on a trip and gifts for a peasant child who happened to live beneath the path of a strange and unusual star.  King makers, indeed.  Surely, this was the beginning of the end of the reputation of the world renowned magoi.  Thankfully we were saved a measure of ignominy when each of us, on that very night, dreamed an identical dream telling us that we should not return to Herod but should travel home by a different route.  What a relief to leave and to finally cross the Jordan river and see the scene of the greatest embarrassment in magoi history fade out of view.

No doubt some of you are stunned to hear that I left the presence of the child as one who didn’t believe.  Indignantly you ask, “How can you encounter the living Son of God and not believe?”  Let me answer that by saying there are thousands, no millions and millions of people the world over throughout human history who have encountered the living Son of God and refused to believe.  There are thousands of people in churches this very morning worshipping and singing songs of praise to the newborn King of Kings who do not believe.  I may have been among the first but I was certainly not the last to encounter the living Son of God and not believe.

I did, however, return home a changed man.  What changed was I no longer had the absolute belief and trust in our abilities as magoi.  If we could have made such a colossal blunder in the case of the moving star who was to say that we would get anything of note right in the future.

For some reason I could never get that whole sordid incident out of my head.  I never forgot the star and I always wondered what had gone wrong and what we had misinterpreted.  I never forgot that journey; it is impossible to forget an ordeal that lasted more than two years from the time we first saw the star until we returned home from Bethlehem.  I remembered the hardships and perils of the journey.  I remembered Herod and wondered what had happened after we chose not to keep our appointment with him.  Most of all, for some strange reason, I could never forget the face of that child - so ordinary but for some reason it was that very ordinariness of his face which was deeply embedded in my brain and I was never able to get rid of it.  I tried to forget.  It would have been more comfortable for me in my life if I had been able to forget but I couldn’t forget.  I often wondered what had become of that peasant child.  I wondered what that family had done with the treasure we had brought them, which must have seemed to them as though they won the lottery.

It must have been more than 30 years later when a man named Thomas ventured east from his native Israel into the land of the magoi.  I heard him speaking one day of a man with whom he had spent three years of his life.  Thomas spoke of this man, Jesus was His name, as being God who had become a man and lived among human beings.  He spoke of how this Jesus had been born to an ordinary, peasant family in Bethlehem.  Thomas said that he had once been told that magoi had come to visit this child after he had been born and he asked if any of those men might still be alive.

I searched out this Thomas and told him that I had been on that journey and I had often puzzled over that child.  He told me of the teachings of Jesus.  He told me that Jesus had spoken of a God of grace and mercy and love and forgiveness.  He told me that this man, Jesus, had been killed by the Romans at the insistence of the Jewish religious leaders but that He had been raised back to life after three days.  I must have looked completely dumbfounded at his story.  He looked at me and nodded and chuckled.  He then told me that he too had refused to believe that a man put to death by the Romans could come back to life after three days.  When Romans kill people, they stay dead.  Thomas told me how one evening he and his friends had been locked in a room for fear of the authorities.  He told me that Jesus had appeared to them and had invited Thomas, by name, to put his hands in Jesus’ wounds.  At that point Thomas fell on his knees and worshipped Jesus.  He worshipped Jesus because at that point he believed.

I told Thomas that I had worshipped Jesus all those years ago when He was a young child, yet I hadn’t believed Him to be worthy of worship at that time.  As Thomas and I spoke together over the years I came to believe that the story of the Star had been true.  I came to believe that the historians and poets of the day had been correct.  A new era of human existence had begun when Jesus the King of kings was born in Bethlehem.  A new era had come.  An era where people could know God and have a relationship with Him had begun on that day.  I believed that the magoi, the king makers, had gotten it right after all.  Eventually, Thomas baptized me and I spent the rest of my life worshipping and serving the King who had been born as a peasant in Bethlehem.

If I might I would like to leave you with one final thought.  Some of you worship Jesus in buildings like this on a regular basis, yet, by the way you live your lives, it’s obvious you don’t believe.  My challenge to all of you is to worship Jesus every day, in the songs you sing and in the way in which you live your life.  Merry Christmas.