Second City Sermons

Psalm 122 is a Psalm of Ascents. It’s part of a group of Psalms comprising Psalms 120 – 134. Each year, as they traveled up the hill the temple was built on, the people of Israel would sing these Psalms to remind themselves of God’s grace and love for them. So, these Psalms were used to gather the people’s hearts together in preparation for worship. Israel was gathered as God’s inheritance. Jesus has broadened that gathering and this Psalm directs us to him.

Life is full of times of great difficulty, times when we are faced with deep tragedy and sorrow, times when we wonder if we will make it through and if the foundations of our lives will be shaken to their core. We long for a strong stability, a place of comfort and stability. We might run to all kinds of things for this stability, or even to run away from feeling how deep the need is. But the Bible, and Psalm 61 specifically, tell us that God is the Rock, the fortress, the high tower, the tent (home). He is the one that is above us and able to be secure and strong in the midst of all the instability.

Psalm 60 is sort of a strange psalm. The heading that we are given in the Hebrew is the longest in the Psalms. It takes up two verses in the Hebrew. And the heading speaks of victory, but the psalm puts us in a place of despair and or crying out for God to do something. Like David, our lives are often filled with sorrow. The travail of this live is deeply hard, sometimes unbearable. David’s life, even as king, could be like ours, yet David speaks in the confidence of God.

Psalm 59 continues on with the theme that we have been in through most of the 50s, namely David fleeing from Saul and finding refuge in God. The title of Psalm 59 tells us that it was written when Saul sent men to watch David's house to try to kill him! People are out for him. A whole group of people are out for him. And they are people that have the backing of the king. Some of us know this kind of experience, others of us may not know that exact kind of experience. Either way, what this Psalm tells us is that we can both cry out to God for help and that will sing to him because of his steadfast love for us. His steadfast love for us is so often seen in how he comes and he answers the prayers of his people in the midst of the chaos of this life

Enemies are all over the Bible and they are all over the Psalms. The Psalms take life seriously - there's no tidying it up! - and so they take enemies seriously. It seems, as Walter Bruggeman says, that "the Psalms are full of enemy talk." There are 94 terms in the Psalms to describe enemies! Friends can have become enemies, our own selves are at times our enemies, leaders can be enemies, and all kinds of others are enemies. Here in Psalm 58 the leaders, the ones who rule, the ones who are in some respects like God, are the enemies. They have used their power for their own self-serving end, they have abused those under them. And David sings about the desire for their destruction. He doesn't take vengeance, but he lays it before the Lord and asks him to deal with it. One of the great acts of faith, of trust, is the act to not seek vengeance but to believe that God will judge. This psalm ends with intense sobering language, but it is also comforting language. It is language that allows God to be judge, God to rule, God to execute justice rather than that ourselves. The psalms never gloss over the really difficult and painful dynamics of this life, and neither should we, but we also must live a life of faith, faith in God who will judge the living and the dead.

Almost everyone prays. But what is prayer? More importantly how would God direct us to pray. All important questions David considers as he contemplates his difficult situation in Psalm 5.

During the summer it is our practice to return to the Psalms. This being the ninth summer we have followed this course, we start with Psalm 57. The Psalms are wisdom literature, the inspired contemplations and prayers of David, Asaph and others. The Psalmists lift their lives up to God, sometimes with praise, but often with the struggles of life. As they do this the Psalmists show us a God who cares deeply about our condition and a God who shows up!

During nearly every worship service, countless Christians around the world say the Lord's Prayer every time they gather together. When they do so, they end with words that aren't found in the best manuscripts we have of the gospels of Matthew and Luke where we find Jesus teaching his disciples to pray this prayer. So, why do we, as Christians end this prayer of our Lord with the words "For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen!" Why? Well, two reasons. (1) It is wide widely agreed that no Jewish rabbi would have ever taught his disciples to end a prayer with a reference to the evil one. So, many think that Jesus would have assumed this kind of doxology by his followers. But the big reason is (2) that it is only this God's kingdom that has at its root the belief is sufficient for today and will supply the needs of today; that he uses his power to forgive us and calls us to follow in his ways; and (3) he will deliver us from evil and lead us into his glory. This is the Kingdom, power and glory that we see in Jesus parable of the Prodigal Son (really, Prodigal Father) and this is the Kingdom, power and glory that we long for.

We come to the last petition of the Lord's Prayer on Pentecost Sunday, the Sunday that we remember the gift of the Spirit to lead and to guide the church. How appropriate then that we pray in this last petition, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil", for as you trace the indwelling of the Spirit through the life of Christians in the Old Testament epoch and through the life of Jesus and his church it is apparent that it is the Spirit that leads not into temptation. When we consider Jesus, it is apparent that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness and safely through it even with the minefield of temptations by the Tempter. Jesus goes through this wilderness of temptation and delivers us from evil on the cross. So, though it all, we pray "Lead and deliver us!" and this is done by the gift of the Spirit and the work of Jesus!

In much of Jesus's earthly ministry, He was challenged in His authority and as to His identity. He was popular among the common people, but the Jewish leaders threatened by His popularity took various opportunities to challenge Jesus by trying to trap Him in His words and hopefully turn the people against Him. But Jesus always had the right answer for all to hear, even when He was asked the wrong question. Jesus uses this parable as He has used other parables to make a significant point and expose the sin in our hearts as we are challenged with our preconceived ideas about God, ourselves, and how we are to live in light of God's glory. Two questions are in play here. What shall we do to inherit eternal life? And who is my neighbor?

We are all debtors! We are all up to our noses in debt. Not exactly the thing we want to hear. But we are called to love God with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. God and all of those made in his image are worthy of such love. In fact, their very being demands such love. And we don't give it. We are debtors. But God, in his infinite grace and kindness is the great Debt-Forgiver. And he says, if we understand that forgiveness we can't help but give it to others.

"Give us this day our daily bread." Many have broken the Lord's prayer into six petitions, the first three directed godward and the last three directed towards the needs and dynamics of humankind. We have just prayed "on earth as it is in heaven" and now when we turn to the needs of this earth, Jesus gives us a petition that encompasses all things. To ask God to give us our daily bread is to ask him to provide all things necessary in this life; good governance, the blessing of rain, machines and skills to grind, creative hands to fashion and all for the sake of the well-being of this world, the sustenance of humankind. To ask for our daily bread is to ask for neither poverty nor riches, but to ask for dependence on God for our needs to be met that humankind might flourish in this life for which God made us. He cares about all of it.

The Lord's prayer is often divided into two major sections, the first three petitions being directed godward and the final three being directed earthward. The turning point is said to be the phrase "on earth as it is in heaven", which is to say, the hing of the prayer, the focus of the prayer is the hallowing of God, the will of God, the Kingdom of God here, with us, on earth. That is then lived out through our resources, of forgiveness, or not giving into temptation and evil. The whole object of the Bible is the restoration of the marriage of heaven and earth, a restoration of Eden. As parts of the New Creation, God is already doing that here and now through his people, his church, his body, but what we really long for is that reality that we just now have glimpses of to overtake all things.

What do we pray when we pray that God's name would be hallowed? We pray that there would be no imposters, no false gods in his place. We pray that he would be rightly recognized for who he is. He is the great I Am, the One who was and is and is to come. We pray that he would make his real identity properly known so that we and all others would recognize and then honor him as he really is, the true and living God. Remarkably, this true God who exists as the I Am, outside of our categories and our complete comprehension, chose to reveal himself in Jesus, the Great I Am and the name above all names!

It was common for a rabbi, for a great teacher, to teach others how to talk to God. When Jesus' teaches his disciples to pray he does so in response to their request for him to teach them "as John taught his disciples". But Jesus begins his prayer "Our Father", an incredibly intimate and therefore entirely radical way to approach God. Ever since, the Lord's prayer has been the foundation of all Christian prayer.

Easter is a time of reversals, the cross becomes the empty tomb, death becomes life. In his gospel, John shows Thomas' doubt turning into faith, the disciples' fear into courage, Mary's sorrow into joy. But it's not a story of such life-changing reversals only for those long ago. The same God does this Easter-shaped, god-inspired work all of the time in the lives of the greatest skeptics, the people that are full of fear and the lives that are full of sorrow. Easter good news continues today. Jesus rose from the dead and because so countless lives have been transformed throughout history and even today.

What answer do you have to our suffering world? How do you make sense of it? A hard and bitter heart? The idea that it's just the way it is so eat, drink and be merry and live a take-it-when-you-can-get-it life? What about religions? What do they say? The Christian good news is that God himself suffers. Wherever all of the suffering comes from, the Bible tells us that it is related to sin and human rebellion against God. Beyond that, whatever you think of the cross, the gospel tells us that it is God's answer to sin and to suffering. God takes on our sin in the cross that our suffering isn't the end of the story.

How in the world, within the course of less than a week, does a crowd go from shouting "Hosanna!" to shouting "Crucify Him?" How, well, the same way we do. Jesus didn't just go along with the party lines. In fact, he rubbed all of the lines wrong. Just like he does today. He pushed the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the common people. Everyone wanted him to be their tribal King, their tribal God (or they already wanted him dead). They also had all of their ideas about what salvation meant and what it looked like. So do we. And when Jesus doesn't fit our party (which he never does) and when he pushed against our thought and our actions (which he often does), well, let's just do away with him!

Hypocrisy has long been the bane of the Church. Yet, its hardly a new condition. In Jesus day is was obvious to most folk as they interacted with the religious leaders of their day: the scribes and pharisees. Being at the temple as he teaches these things Jesus also comments on giving.

It's Holy Week and the tension is rising. Jesus flipped over tables and called out the religious leaders. And they're getting mad. So they send someone to ask about taxes, about money, about who has say over our lives and our hearts. And what about the afterlife, if there is one? Jesus responds to those questions, but his big response has to do with their so-called desire for the king to come in the line of David. Well, he says, David even calls the One to come his Lord! So maybe Jesus is Lord over all and maybe he doesn't come and do what we think he should do and in the way we think he should do it.

Jesus has spent the last three years of his life preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God (Luke 5:43) and now he has just entered Jerusalem, being the very visitation of God to bring his redemption and peace. But by what authority has he preached? By what authority has he healed? By what authority does he enter Jerusalem as a King? Well, that's the question the chief priest, the scribes and the elders want an answer to. And it's sort of the answer we all want. Who do we give authority to? Who has say in our lives and why do they have say? And should Jesus have authority? Why? What right does he have to it? Well, Jesus will give an answer, but he gives it in the form of a question and a parable, as he often does. He tells it slant, but it's clear for those who have ears to hear. He has the authority of Heaven. Heaven came down at his baptism by John at the Jordan three years earlier and he enters Jerusalem now as the one who was sent by the father to claim what is his own.

Jesus enters into Jerusalem with crowds shouting that he is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, but we know that Jesus knows what his reign will cost him. This may be a triumphal entry, but it brings with it the tragedy of the world that brings peace in heaven and earth. He weeps over Jerusalem, Zion, for even there they have exchanged the things of God for the things of this world, they have made the house of the Lord a den of robbers. The wrongs of the world must be put to right and that will mean the tragic death of the world's true king.

Jesus gives us this parable of the coins (or Matthew tells us the talents) right before he enters Jerusalem, because, Luke tells us, the crowd supposed that the Kingdom of God would appear immediately. Well, what do we do with what has been given to us while we wait? What do we do with grace? What do we do with love? What do we do with forgiveness? How do we evaluate the risk of extending these things out into the world? If we invested them into the world do we believe that they will grow? Do we believe we might grow? And what does all of this have to do with what we believe about God? Is he stingy with these things?

Luke 19:1-10 tells us about the interaction between Zacchaeus and Jesus. The story is a well known Sunday School story. Zacchaeus was short, not only of stature, but he was short of honesty, compassion and even societal acceptance. He just didn’t measure up. Yet, Jesus pursued him. Zacchaeus didn’t know it when he climbed the tree but he had an appointment with Jesus.

The blind beggar cried out to Jesus, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” In this broken world we have a longing for recovery! Jesus, full of mercy and compassion, will meet us where we are when we call out to him in faith. There can be significant recovery in this life for those who look to Jesus. As we come together at Second City as a community of faith, we help each other enjoy the light of Christ and the healing that he brings.

What do you need to do to have eternal life? Get your life all in order? Don't drink, smoke, or chew or go with the girls who do? Obey all of the commandments from when you were young? And who gets eternal life? The people who are able to help a lot of people in this life? The people who ask the right questions, who study hard, who sit in the front row? Or maybe the people who are vocal about all of the right issues? This week in Luke 18, the rich young man who has it all together, who's worked hard and been diligent with his money and his time and his morals and asks the right questions still doesn't get it. He wants the Kingdom of God, he wants eternal life, but not so much that he can't give up his wealth. Jesus teaches us, and he embodies for us, that in order to live you must die, but dying is always worth it!

Luke is adamant - you can't do a thing to enter the Kingdom of God! It's grace alone! None of this works stuff. The tax collector gets it better than the Pharisee and the widow understands better than the Rich Ruler. And maybe the ones who get it better than any others are the infants. The Kingdom is for the utterly dependent, it's for those who have to be carried everywhere and spoon fed. It's grace alone!

What are the signs that you are trusting in yourself that you are righteous? Jesus speaks to this by way of a parable in Luke 18. What he says is that how you approach yourself has everything to do with how you approach your neighbor and ultimately how you approach God. Even more than how you approach neighbor and God, the real determining factor in how you engage yourself, others and God, is what you believe about how God approaches you. Is God the one who is merciful and loves sinners, or does God just want to make sure that you have it all together?

Why is prayer so hard? Why is it so hard to continue in prayer? Jesus says through this parable in Luke 18 that it has to do with how we understand God. Does he care? Is he just? Can we trust him? In this short parable, Jesus compares and contrasts an unjust judge with God himself. If an unjust judge will eventually yield to the persistent pleading of a widow, will God hear us? Well, is God just? Does he care? What do you think? Your prayer life will answer that questions for you.

Epiphany is the revealing of God as the God for the World. The wise men from the East remind us that Jesus hasn't jus come for the Jews or that God's grace isn't localized to one place and to one people. Even so, though God's grace may be for the world, few have the eyes, ears and hearts, to see it, hear it and receive it. So, Jesus here in Luke 18 tells us, "The Kingdom of God is coming in ways that cannot be observed." The Kingdom of God was in their midst as Jesus and yet, as he goes on, he explains that he was rejected. The very thing that was longed for in Jesus is rejected when he came among them in ways that they didn't expect.

We were made for Relationship. Relationship with God and with one another. The Bible's big story is the restoration of relationship, of life together, a dramatic movement from intimacy to hiding to God's consistent pursuit. His pursuit of his people out from Slavery, in the cloud and pillar of fire, in the tabernacle and the Temple. God keeps coming down. But the greatest pursuit is his coming in the flesh, his incarnation in Jesus. We finally come to the last O Antiphon. O come, o come, Emmanuel, God with us!

We celebrate each Christmas the birth of the one who is the desire of the nations. The unheard of occurs - God comes wrapped in our flesh, into our broken world. He comes for our world and for all types of people in our world. He comes to save men and women, young and old, poor and rich, kings and beggars, Jew and Gentile, all of us.

A teenager, seemingly pregnant outside of marriage. An old woman, miraculously pregnant. A betrothed man gets a visit by angel, and takes his pregnant bride on a trip to Egypt. A king, so corrupted by his own power, that he orders the killing of all the boys who might be his predicted successor. A troupe of star-gazers from the east, seeking a royal birth. The circumstances of Jesus birth are anything but story-book. Why would God send his son into this mess?

Part of the beauty of O Antiphons is that they rehearse for us the great movement of God's redemptive work through the Old Testament. As we reflect on Jesus as the Wisdom of God, or as the Lord of Might, or as the Root of Jessi and the Key of David, we enter into the long waiting story of Israel. This week we see Jesus as "great David's greater Son"! As God's promise to Abraham was a promise that he would bless everyone, so his promise to David was that his throne would be established forever! Jesus comes for all of creation and to redeem it completely and forever!

Part of the beauty of the great O Antiphons is that, like the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, they lead us chronologically through the story of redemption history to Jesus. As we sit in them, we wait with Israel for the Emmanuel, but with Israel we see pictures of God's great grace and power towards his creation and his people as the story unfolds. This week, we remember God's greatest act of redemption in the Old Testament, his bringing his people out from slavery in Egypt and to himself at Mount Sinai. We also remember the gift of the Law and look forward to the one who fulfills it! "O come, o come, Great Lord of Might"!

This Advent and Christmastide we are looking at the ancient "O Antiphons" and considering what they teach us of what we long for and what we are given in the gift of Jesus. This week with Pastor Peter down with the flu one of our Ruling Elders, Bruce Weatherly, invites us to consider Psalm 73 in-light of Christ’s arrival in our lives. Advent marks the arrival of the “word made flesh” to a waiting, fallen world. To those who believe, Jesus arrives in our hearts with grace and faithfulness. But how should we react? What should one hope for from a relationship with a perfect God?

This Advent and Christmastide we are looking at the ancient "O Antiphons" and considering what they teach us of what we long for and what we are given in the gift of Jesus. The first stanza speak of Jesus as the "Wisdom from on high". Wisdom is something that is sought the world over and what the Bible tells us is that it is found in Jesus. Wisdom, after all, is skill in the art of godly living, living as God made the world. It's for this reason that the Bible tells us in Proverbs 8 that Wisdom was present at creation and John 1 and Colossians 1 catch on to this and say that Jesus is that Wisdom made flesh.O come, Thou Wisdom from on high, Who orderest all things mightily; To us the path of knowledge show, And teach us in her ways to go.

We come to the end of Nehemiah and sadly what we find is the people are going against the Lord in the very ways that they had said they wouldn't! The book ends with Nehemiah calling people back to the Lord and doing so in dramatic ways - pulling hair! But this chapter is about grace. This Nehemiah community lives not in its own ability, but in the Lord's! We are left at the end of the book having no doubt that their success in the wall and in the rebuilding of their community has nothing to do with them, but only to do with the grace of God.

As we near the end of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah once again gives a list of who is around. Recording who has come to do the work, who has stuck around through the internal and external conflicts, and who exactly has decided to give themselves to this community is an important part of this book. Here near the end though not only is the variety of the community highlighted, but the fact that what unites this people is that they are a community of thanks. They are a community that gives thanks to God, which is to say that they are a community of worship and praise!

Nehemiah 9 is almost all a long prayer of confession. The people have settled into the land, heard the Word, celebrated, and now they are confessing. But what is confession? Confession, maybe more than anything else, is confessing that we have not responded to God properly, to his work, to his ways, to his history and his grace. The problem then is not sins (that's just a pharisaic / fundamentalist take on sin); the problem isn't sins, it's sin. The problem is our response to God.

During His famous sermon of the mount, Jesus directs the listeners to notice the difference between the two ways of life, one is through and broad gate of one’s own making that leads to death, or by a narrow gate that is made of Jesus which leads to life eternal.Jesus also warns against false prophets that act like sheep but really are ravenous wolves, but they can be identified by their actions and words, the fruits of their lives. So, take careful notice because only good trees (lives) can produce good fruit, and bad trees (lives) can produce bad fruit. All people can be recognized by their fruit.

What forms a community? What makes it what it is? Nehemiah 7 and 8 show the people settled in the land, but gathered around the Word of God. Preaching, teaching, confession, sharing. And what happens when the people do this? The fear that has been so present in the book turns towards joy, the greed of chapter 6 turns towards generosity. The returned people are a word-shaped community.

In Nehemiah six the wall is completed, and the work is done in record time. Even so, the chapter is full of fear, or the life of fear and the attempt to instill fear. That forces the questions: Who are you afraid? Who do you stand in awe of? But also, related to all of this is who is part of the community of faith? And what does it mean to be a Christian? The wall may be up, but the work isn't done.

Sandwiched between two chapters that highlight the external opposition that Nehemiah and the people who were rebuilding Jerusalem faced, chapter 5 shows us that often the greatest hindrance to the work of the church is not those on the outside, but those within. Usury, the charging of interest, plagued these people and it ate them alive to the extend that they “were forcing their sons and daughters to be slaves”. It’s the Corinthian problem in the Old Testament; division that detract from the message of the beauty of Jesus. But it’s also in this mess that we see the loveliness of the gospel; God loves the unlovely.

Nehemiah 4 is a history of opposition. One might think that with the blessing of a powerful king and a commission from the King of Kings that all would go easy for Nehemiah. But, no, mockery and opposition wait for Nehemiah in Jerusalem, even as the people band together to repair the walls. Nehemiah 4 provides a guide for dealing with opposition.

Nehemiah 3 the work of rebuilding the wall that was placed on Nehemiah's heart in chapter 1 and whose risks were overcome by God in chapter 2. Though Nehemiah may be the great leader, what is clear is that everybody is to lend their time, their treasures, their talents. Everyone is called to be "All In!" since there is no bench-warming in the Kingdom of God.

Nehemiah has a mission, a calling. Like our own callings, it’s fraught with opportunity and challenge. But when God calls someone to do something, he always provides, even sometimes through the most unlikely means.

The book of Nehemiah begins with a broken situation and a heart that breaks for the world to be right. Nehemiah sits in the mess, in the trouble, the shame and the sadness of it all, but he isn’t alone. God meets him there and from there we get the glimpse of what God might do through him.