Advent 2006

Hello all. So much for global warming. This balmy Pacific Island (Vancouver Island) is blanketed in snow and ice.

Advent begins this coming Sunday Dec 3rd.

COOL Berwick:

• Dec 3rd. We meet at Berwick at 9:30 for the Eucharist.
• Friday 15th we shall be holding a carol sing at 7pm in the Berwick foyer for the residents there.
• Sunday Dec 17th Service of 9 lessons and carols at 9:30 a.m

COOL Comox:

• Sunday evenings each week for potluck supper at 6pm at 1523 Eton Rd followed by Prayer and Praise plus Youth Quest series.

COOL Christmas:

• We join our Common Cause partners at Living Word Episcopal Church on Mission Hill in Courtenay for Christmas Eve.
• Their services that Sunday are 10 a.m. & 6p.m. and we shall join them for the 11pm "midnight mass" service with David celebrating.

Unpacking our Mission Statement - Fifth Instalment - Worship

Mission: To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.

So far we have discussed how Jesus’ teaching can be summarized by two statements: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which give us the five purposes in our mission statement.

Great Commandment:
Mark 12:29-32 (New International Version)
29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."
Great Commission:
Matthew 28:19-20 (New International Version)
19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Today we look at the final part of our mission statement: loving God with all that we are. This is what worship, in its most comprehensive sense, means. Worship is at the heart of all that we do, as the most important of these purposes.

What is worship?
To worship something or someone is value them above everything else. It is to ascribe worth to them. We uses the concept in a non-religious sense when we ask what something is worth, or when we refer to the mayor as “his Worship” or we read about some “worthy fellow” in a story about merry England. Or when we say a soldier is worth his salt.

Reverence, awe, fear, wonder, and amazement are some of the feelings we may have when we participate in worship. Words we use to describe what we are doing include: exalt, glorify, magnify, praise, venerate, or revere. The highest of all of these terms is the worship which belongs to God alone. We may respect or revere humans we hold in high esteem but Christian worship is reserved for God.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Our worship should reflect the fact that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. What our preferred way is to worship God has a lot more to do with our personalities than with what is necessarily the right way to worship. Different denominations and traditions tend to emphasize or specialize in these different elements of worship. Some emphasize the mind, others the spirit. Heart speaks of emotion and enthusiasm. Soul refers to the core of our mortal beings. Mind speaks of the intellect and will. Strength reflects the physical part of us. Unlike some other religions and philosophies, Christians and Hebrew believers in God reject any dichotomy between the spiritual and material. God is Lord of both. In our Gospel passage today Jesus said God seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Truth is something we grasp with our minds as God illuminates our thinking. It also affects our emotions as we respond to it's truth, and it helps bring our spirits to life as his Spirit touches ours with the truth of his word.

At Church of Our Lord we try to bring a balance of these different aspects to our worship. We honour God’s Word, the Bible as we try to understand it with our minds and obey it with our strength. We are open to God’s Holy Spirit so that we can worship with our spirits or souls. We use our bodies to worship him as we sing, stand, sit or kneel, raise our hands or clap. We receive him spiritually by the physical act of eating bread and wine, when accompanied by faith.

What it is not:
Worship is not for our selves. It’s for our Saviour.
The Puritan Shorter Westminster Confession describes the purpose for which we are created as this: “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” St Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We are wired for worship. Worship of some sort of deity or some sort of spirituality is common to all cultures even though some have tried to stamp it out and it is no longer fashionable in Western Society to believe in God. Human beings are incorrigibly religious. We are made that way because God made us for himself. Worship does bring us benefits, but that is no why we do it.

Unlike some other spiritualities, we do not worship in order to appease him, or earn something, or to manipulate him through magic. We worship because he is worthy of it. We worship him because of who he is. We worship in response to what he has already done.
Worship is not for sissies. It’s a sacrifice.

Salvation is free. Christ has made the sacrifice on our behalf. There is no sacrifice we can make to earn our salvation. But that does not mean the Christian life will always be easy or that there is no cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. We love him because he first loved us. He calls us to love the same way, to follow in his steps.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote from the Nazi prison: “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” For many Christians around the world, admitting one’s allegiance to Christ or worshiping him openly or meeting with other believers is a life-risking affair. Whether or not we shall ever be called to pay that price is something we don’t know. We do know however, that we are called to present ourselves, our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Not just our words, or our time, talents and treasure but also ourselves – all of us.

The psalmist tells us to give God a sacrifice of thanks and praise. There are times when worship comes effortlessly, when we are lost in wonder, love and praise. There are other times when we do not feel like worshiping. It is not hypocritical to do s at those times. It is in fact a sacrifice: it takes effort to worship when we are tired or cranky or feeling off-sorts. When we honour God on such occasions by approaching him anyway, we are often surprised by how our feelings follow along afterwards. At other times, God tests us through what St John of the Cross called “a dark night of the soul”, when God seems distant and we wonder why we bother. He wants us to trust him even when we don’t have the feelings. He is trust-worthy and worthy of our worship regardless of our feelings.

Worship is not for Sundays (only). It’s a seven-day a week activity.
Christian worship is not limited to a special day, a special time, a special building, nor even only when a special class of people is present. The Samaritan woman tried to draw Jesus into a religious controversy over whether the Jews were right about worshiping in Jerusalem or the Samaritans at Mount Gerazim. Jesus ignored that. He said “neither”. God is Spirit, implying that he is not confined geographically. We can worship him any time and anywhere. But we are to worship him in spirit and in truth. The early Christians worshiped in synagogues and the temple until they were expelled. They also met in homes, or rented rooms or in the open air or in the catacombs in Rome. The Celtic Christians worshiped in the open air, under trees, in simple church buildings. They had prayers for every occasion: milking cows, getting dressed, going to work etc.

We too can do what the medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, called “practicing the presence of God”. We can worship our Father Monday to Friday too, and in every situation.

Unpacking our Mission Statement – fourth instalment. Discipleship.

Mission To serve the people of the Comox Valley, introducing them to Jesus Christ, welcoming them into His family, equipping them to follow Christ's example, and loving Him with all that we are.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever.
Amen.

So far we have looked at Service, Evangelism and Fellowship. Today we look at what is means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. At COOL we want to be an authentic community which encourages each other to grow in maturity as followers of Jesus Christ, to discover the gifts he has given us and to use those gifts for him.

Jewish rabbis of the day used to teach their students or disciples in small groups. A person who wanted to learn from a rabbi would ask to become his disciple. If accepted, he would become part of a small group of followers who would spend all of their time with the rabbi, eating, travelling, studying, discussing the Jewish law etc. They would even share accommodation and spend all their waking moments together. They attempted even to walk and talk like their teacher. Jesus’ small band of closest followers was similar, except that he chose them.

A disciple is a follower or student, one who patterns his life on his teacher. The term comes from the same root as “discipline”. Just as an athlete or musician develops skills by practice and exercises, so to develop as a disciple of Christ involves practicing spiritual disciplines, such as regular prayer, scripture reading, participating in worship and times of solitude, silence, meditation on scripture etc. Peter tells us that Christ left us an example to follow in his steps. God’s intention is for us to become like Christ. And that we are to be partakers of the divine nature.

Jesus’ disciples noted that he was a person of prayer and so they asked him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer had taught his disciples. He gave them what we know as “the Lord’s prayer “ as a template for our prayers.

The topic of Christian discipleship is an enormous one. While preparing for today I thought that we could use the Lord’s Prayer as a framework, especially as we were looking at this prayer during our adult and youth Bible studies this week.

Our Father in Heaven: Jesus introduced them to a relationship with God as Father. This expression is only used of God a few times in the Old Testament. Jesus’ relationship with God as “Abba” or “Daddy”, as we would say, was entirely novel. What Jesus enjoyed by his very nature as the eternal Son of God, we can enjoy by adoption and grace. He said to say ”Our Father”, indicating that, in Christ, we collectively are God’s children.

John 1: 12 tells us But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

Romans 8: 15 puts it this way: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.

A disciple of Jesus is one who knows God as heavenly Father.

May your name be honoured: In Hebrew thought a person’s name represented who they were. To honour God’s name is to show him reverence and respect. It means not taking his name in vain or speaking disrespectfully of him. It means not bringing his name into disrepute, not being ashamed of him. Similarly we honour the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit.

A disciple of Jesus honours him.

Your Kingdom come:
Jesus constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He indicated that in his own person the kingdom of God had arrived. He also said that the Kingdom was within or among them and that they could enter that kingdom by believing in him and being baptized. He further indicated that they were not to worry about material things. Matt 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

How many of you are familiar with the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men? Of maid Marion, Little John, Will Scarlet etc? Richard, the rightful king of England, was away on the Crusades and had been abducted on his way back through Europe. His brother, Prince John had usurped control of the Kingdom. Robin and his band of men in green were loyal to Richard the Lionheart. They were outlawed and hunted down but on Richard’s return they helped him regain the throne. The Christian community is like that merry band, longing for the return of King Jesus, facing danger for him and remaining loyal regardless of the apparent futility of it.

A disciple of Jesus is a citizen of God’s kingdom, an ambassador for the King, a member of the church which is an outpost or colony of the kingdom.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven:

A disciple of Jesus surrenders his will to God, says “not my will but yours be done.”

Give us this day our daily bread

This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer which asks for something material. Bread is the staple food. Daily bread means essential nourishment enough for the day. While the Hebrews were in the wilderness during the Exodus God gave them manna from heaven enough for the day. Except on the day before the Sabbath they were only to collect enough for the day. Jesus taught his disciples total reliance on God. He also called himself the bread of heaven. He invites us to receive this bread at his table.

A disciple of Jesus relies on God for his needs and receives Jesus in the bread and wine of communion regularly.


Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us:

As creatures, we owe our creator a debt of obedience. Our rebellion incurs a debt, as it were, of what we owe him. Christ paid that debt by his perfect obedience as perfect man on our behalf. Through Jesus we have been offered forgiveness for our sin and a restored relationship with the Father.

A disciple of Jesus is one who knows he has been forgiven and who has learned the difficult lesson of forgiving others.


Lead us not into temptation (or save us from the time of trial)

God neither can be tempted himself nor tempts us. However, temptation is part of life. The same word is used for trial or testing and for temptation as temptation to do what is wrong is a test of our submission to God. He has promised us that we shall not be tempted beyond what we can bear.

We also have an advocate in heaven, Jesus, who was tempted in every way that we are so he is able to sympathise with our weaknesses and intercede for us before the throne of God. Christ gave us his example of resisting temptation.

A disciple of Jesus is one who faces trials in His strength, who avoids unnecessary temptation and who turns to God for forgiveness when he falls.

Deliver us from evil (or the evil one)

Christ has conquered death and evil by his crucifixion and resurrection. We have his promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.

A disciple of Jesus resists evil and has God’s promise that we shall overcome evil eventually.

We end the prayer as we begin, by worshipping God: For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

This brings us to the topic of worship which we shall be discussing next time when we look at “loving Him with all that we are.”