Fifth Avenue Baptist 7/28/2024

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Udo S. S.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Good morning. Please join me in the call of worship.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
I pray that according to the riches of God's glory,
the Lord may strengthen you and your inner being with
power by the Holy Spirit. We pray that Christ may
dwell in our hearts through faith, and Jesus will root
and ground us in love. I pray that you may
have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what

(04:50):
is the breadth and length, and height and depth of
God's love, and to know the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with the
fullness of God. Now to the one who, by the
power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly,
far more than we can all ask or imagine. To

(05:14):
God be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus,
to all generations, forever and ever.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Almen, S S.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
S S.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
S S.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
S S. S.

Speaker 5 (08:29):
Gracious and Loving Lord, we gather to praise you and
to thank you for your greatest gift to us, allowing
us to experience the magnitude of your love for us.
Help us to realize that as your hands and feet,
we can work miracles in the lives that we touch.

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And may we fully understand that through your mercy, we
are enough enough to have you, the Lord of Lords,
live and work within us us today and every day.
To honor the temple you've created in us. Let us
learn to share our talents, energy, monetary gifts, holding them

(09:12):
tenderly in our hearts with hope for the future. And
may we each do all we can to build bright
tomorrows and love with our whole hearts, for this is
the only way to truly live. May we always seek
your will as individuals and as of the church. And

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thank you that you are a forgiving God, compassionate, slow
to anger, abounding in love. And we as your children,
are grateful for all your blessings. And may we be
channels of your light and love in everything we do.
And say, now join me in the Lord's prayer. Our Father,

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who are in heaven, Hallow.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Thy Kingdom.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Come.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Day, and maybe.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
As we forgive those who trespass against us, lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil. Where
Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Amen, I'd like to write the children down at this time.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
From the Gospel of Luke, the first of two scripture
passages this morning, beginning with the thirteenth verse of chapter twelve.
Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my
brother to buy the family inheritance with me. But Jesus
said to him, friend, who set me to be a

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judge or arbiter over you? He said to them, take care,
be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for
one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
Then he told them a parable the land of a

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rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, what
should I do, for I have no place to store
my crops. Then he said, I will do this. I
will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and
there I will store all my grain and my goods.
And I will say to my soul, soul, you have

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ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink,
and be married. But God said to him, you fool,
this very night, your life is being demanded of you,

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and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
So it is with those who store up treasures for
themselves but are not rich towards God. Hereins the first
reading of God's word to stay. May God bless it
for our hearing and understandings.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
System chis.

Speaker 4 (13:52):
So you.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
Like sch schar so good morning.

Speaker 7 (15:56):
Please join me in prayer today as we gather our
offer brings in our ties, Please use these to the
glory of God. And during this time of different changes
that are going on, please help us to remember to
always bring the issue to you and to always take
the time to just pause and remember to breathe and
we'll be fine, Amen.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Sil Si s.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Before we join together in prayer, let me remind you
we extend sympathy to Linda Frampton family as they grieve
her death and as we grieve her death as her
church family. The family will have a private graveside burial
service this week, but they are inviting the congregation to
join them Saturday afternoon in the Fellowship Haul for a

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time when they can celebrate together with you Linda's life.
So please, I'll encourage you to be here next Saturday
for that event so you can see Linda's family and
support them in this time of grief in their lives.
Let's pray together all Gracious God, As we come to

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worship this morning, we are thankful to be back in
our sanctuary, this place which olds meaning for so many
of us, for its sense of beauty, for its sense
of place, for a reminder that this is the place
where important things have happened in our lives. Some of

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us were baptized here, some of us were married here.
Some of us came into sanctuary to grieve the death
of loved ones. As we come back into the sanctuary,
we are reminded just how worship and faith are tied
to our physical bodies. Before our HVA system was working properly,

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it was so hot in here. It was hard to worship,
is hard to think, is hard to focus on what
we were doing in worship, but difficult because those metal
chairs aren't are comfortable either. We confess that our relationship
with You is tied to our bodies, how we experience

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the world through them, The sensations we have of heat
and chill, of illnesses and recoveries of surgeries, of disease,
of aging. All these things are tied up for how
we understand ourselves, how we understand our world, and how

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we understand You. So we ask O God that you
would help us to be mindful of our bodies and
of this material world in which you have placed us,
the environment that you created for us to live, and

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how it is coping through all that it is facing
through climate change. We ask o God that you would
help us to be attentive to our bodies and our world,
for we cannot worship you as some disembodied spiritual beings.
You have created us, body and soul fused together. So

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we ask o God that you would meet us where
we are, and we bring to the sanctuary all sorts
of things. We bring to us ideas about what's getting
ready to happen, with school starting in a few weeks,
with maybe one more vacation or one more trip planned.
We bring to you all the concerns we have about
our jobs and all the details and deadlines that are

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before us. We come to you with concerns and ideas
about our health and all that we face. We ask
of God that you would help us to work our
way through all these things that fill our minds and
our hearts, and at this time to set them aside

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and to focus on You and this gift of life
you have given us, and this sanctuary in which we
have worshiped for decades. Open us to your spirit, O God.

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We lift up our prayers of confession to you. In
the way in which we have sinned against you, and
against ourselves and against others. We ask for your forgiveness
and ask that you would help us to live as
the way we want to live, to make amends for
our faults, to repair relationships, and as we do so,

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Oh God, remind us that you give us a clean
slate to begin a new day with. That you do
not hold any of our regrets over us, so help
us to let them go and to live freely as
your children. Oh God. We lift up all those in

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our congregation who are facing their own difficulties in life.
We particularly think of Linda Frampton's family and the grief
that they are facing with the loss of her life.
We think of those around the world which are facing
difficult situations in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine. We ask

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of God that you would give them resiliency to overcome
war and defined peace. We ask go God, that in
all these things your spirit may guide us and how
to live. Renew us for the living of these days,

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for our families, for our careers, for this congregation, that
we may be your light to this community in Christ.
We pray Amen. Our second past is today comes from
the First Testament, the Old Testament, from the Book of Isaiah.

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And it may be a passage that you are unfamiliar with.
We found it to be a fascinating story. Isaiah, chapter
thirty nine, beginning with verse one. At that time, King
Merodoch of Babylon sent envoys, ambassadors with letters and a

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present to King Hezekiah, for he heard that he had
been sick and had recovered. Hezekiah welcomed them, and he
showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices,
the precious oil, the whole armory, all that was found
in his storehouses. And there was nothing in his house

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or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.
Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah, and he
said to him, what did these men say, and from
where did they come to you? Hezekiah answered, they came

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to me from a far country, from Babylon. He said,
what have they seen in your house? Hezekiah answered, they
have seen all that's in my house, and there is
nothing in all my storehouses that I did not show them.
Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the

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Lord of Hosts. The days are coming when all that
is in your house and that which your ancestors have
stored up until this day, shall be carried off to Babylon,
and nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some
of your own sons who are born to you shall

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be taken away, and they shall become eunuchs in the
palace of the King of Babylon. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah,
the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good,
for he thought, there will be peace and security in

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my days. Here ends the reading of God's holy Word.
May God bless it for our hearing and understanding. The
prophet Isaiah scolded King Hezekiah after the king had revealed
all of his kingdom's riches to these Babylonian ambassadors. The

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prophet essentially called the king a fool. They'll be back,
he said, and one day they'll take all of that
gold for themselves and cart away your sons as well.
It was a stunning rebuke from a prophet who for

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many years had been the king's confidant. You would have
expected King Hazekiah to be defensive, to maybe fire back
at Isaiah, as had been the case earlier in the relationship,
and as often was the case between king and prophet

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in ancient Israel. Unexpectedly, however, the king says to Isaiah,
the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.
But here's the kicker. The writer of the book, the

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writer of the collection of Isaiah's scroll, adds some additional information.
He tells us what Hazekiah was thinking in his mind.
He thought to himself, hmm, well, at least there will

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be peace and security in my days. I understand what
happened here. The prophet has said, hear the word of
the Lord. The days are coming when all the riches
of this kingdom, all the riches that you show these
ambassadors from Babylon, the days are coming when they will
come with an army and they will take it all away,

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and they will take away your sons as well. And
Hezekiah thinks, hmm, well, at least there will be peace
in my days. And then he says, okay, Isaiah, whatever
you say. Twenty six years ago, the movie Titanic burst

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onto the American cinemas and became the high grossing film
in Hollywood history at the time. It wasn't just because
of the superb actoring by Kate Winslet or Leonardo DiCaprio
or the music soundtrack that also rightly became a top
ten hit itself. It was that story, right, This story

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of the Titanic, which now is a century old story
of this giant cruiser going down and hundreds of people die.
The drama of the Titanic with the rich and poor,
the working class all fixed together on this cruise ship

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trying to grab the two few seats in lifeboats. It's
irresistible to us, isn't it. I mean, even if you've
never been on a cruise ship, if you know the
story or seeing the movie, you think to yourself, what
would I do in that situation. The whole reality TV genre,

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which by the way, picked up not long after this movie,
led by Survivor. I know some of you all are
probably Survivor watchers. It's kind of acting out the Titanic, right,
whether you make it on the lifeboat or if you
get kicked off and you go down with the ship.
The Titanic was a reality show movie of life and

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depth proportions. There is one scene in that movie, one
fateful scene in the movie. After some people had been
able to get onto lifeboats and safely row a safe
distance from the sinking ship, they are sitting there seeing
the movie. They're sitting their boats, and they're listening to

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the cries of the people jumping off the cruise ship
into the freezing North Atlantic waters. They are watching silently
as the last section of the ship sinks below the
ocean's waters. Most of them have loved ones still on
that ship or jumping into the water. There is grief

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in their eyes and fear. Kathy baits character pipes up,
We've got to go back. We've got to go back
and save them. We've got to save them. They will
freeze in those waters if we don't go back and
pick them up. But the quartermaster, who is in her lifeboat,

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quashes her pleas we can't go back. He says, there's
too many of them. They will swamp our boat and
then we will all die. So nobody else says a word,
and Kathy Bates's character hushes up as well, and they

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return to silence as they listen to the screams a
short distance away. They sit in their lifeboats holding on
to their life preservers. I suggest to you King Hezekiah

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could have been on one of those lifeboats, holding his
life preserver. We live in challenging days in this first
quarter of the twenty first century. The evidence of climate
change continues to pile up, and it appears to be

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rapidly affecting the polar regions even more than what we
are experiencing here in North America. Changes in rainfall and
temperature reinforce the climate science with every new year. Some
of the most disturbing recent scientific data reveals that scientists

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have been too conservative, that the changes seem to be
happening more rapidly than what they predicted a decade ago.
The ever increasing US federal debt is like a ball
and chain weighing down the next generation's economy. We've been

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talking about the federal debt my whole adult life, and
yet our economy moves on. Some economists think we can
just keep kicking this can down indefinitely, but already the
interest payments on our federal debt take up to seventeen

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percent of our federal budget. One of every six dollars
our federal goalth spends is for interest on the debt.
One of every six dollars we pay more in interest
than we do for our military and the US military.

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We spend more money on the military than any other
country in the world, and yet we spend more money
on interest payments than on our military. Think about that
for a moment, or think about this. We spend more
on interest payments than we do on federal dollars on education,

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agricultural veterans, affairs, and transportation all combined. We are spending
our grandchildren's future. We are enjoying tax cuts, but we
are mortgaging their future. These things should matter to us

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as Christians because Scripture tells us that we should be
living for others, not for ourselves. These are not just
political matters. These are spiritual matters, because we cannot be
faithful to Christ without being faithful in how we live

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as individuals and collectively. Are we living only for ourselves
when we think about these things? Or does our baptism,
in which we committed ourselves to following Christ not call
us to also care for the earth and for the

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next generation. I've mentioned just two long term challenges our
society and world face. We could also talk about the
growing income and wealth inequalities of our society, because not
since the Robert Baron error of the late nineteenth century
have we seen rich and poor so far apart. There

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are other challenges we could talk about, but I want
us to think about these because they are on our
minds constantly, and they are challenges for everyone in this
sanctuary who is thirty five years and younger are going
to face to a great deal. Now, if you're as

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old as me or older, we can all be like
King Hezekiah and we can say, well, at least there's
going to be peace and security for our days. The
US federal debt may be a drag on our economy,

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but it's not crushing it yet. Climate change is bringing
us hotter days or sometimes we have to worship in
the fellowship, Paul, But it really hasn't changed our lives yet.
But what about our children and grandchildren's lives? What about
their generations? Even if we don't have children, are we

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condemning them because we are choosing our comfort over their future.
We are grandchildren's keepers. Climate change, expanding federal debt. King

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Hezekiah would feel right at home. He'd listen to those
warnings and think you know what, things are still be
good for the living of my days. And you know what,
he's not so different from the rich fool in Jesus's parable.
The rich man had been bles with an overwhelming, miraculous crop.
We can assume he was a good businessman because he

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already had a ranch. The word used in the parable
is that he had a ranch. We can assume he
was a good businessman. And yet this croop was so
unbelievable that he could not prepare himself ahead of time
with storage barns for the crop. So he had to
tear everything down and build new, bigger ones because this
crop was bigger than he could ever could have imagined.

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It was miraculous. He tore down the old barns built
new ones so that he would have a future for himself.
And it's just his future. Did you catch how the
dialogue in the story goes. It's really a monologue, there's
no dialogue there. He says to himself self, you have

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many good things and a big bank account to take
care of you for the rest of your life. So relax, eat, drink,
and be merry. And God said to him that night,
you fool. He had been blessed with a miracle, and

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he had no idea what to do with it. A
similar miracle happened way back in the Bible, back in Genesis,
and the people who are Jesus tell the story would
have probably remembered that story. You may know about it.
It's about Joseph, who was the right hand man to
the King of Egypt. And Joseph saw in a dream

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that Egypt would have seven years of huge harvests, bountiful harvests,
followed by seven years of famine. And so Joseph told
Pharaoh that they should build big barns for these plentiful
harvests and save up the grain. Store the grain so
that when the years of famine came, they could feed

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their people, and they could sell grain to other peoples
who would come to them for help. Joseph knew that
God expected a rich blessing to be shared, but the

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rich fool wasn't concerned about his neighbors, wasn't concerned about
the next generation. He had enough for himself, thank you
very much. He was already sitting in his lifeboat, maybe
munching on some cheese and crackers and a sip of chardonnay.
And watched others jump from the Titanic. I ask you,

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what do you do when your age presents great challenges
to you? The cross on the communion table is a
symbol for the Christian faith. Some of us have crosses

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around our neck. We have crosses adorning our bibles. We
have them all around this church. The cross upon which
Jesus died, giving his life for many. Katie's sermon last
week talked about when Jesus told his disciples that unless
they carry across daily, they cannot be his disciples. Unless

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you give your life for many, you cannot be my disciple.
To carry the cross is to give your life to others.
To carry your cross is to paddle your lifeboat towards
the swarm of screamers where once the Titanic floated, and
the quartermaster is yelling, no, they'll swamp us. There's too

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many of them. But you anyways, because you are called
to carry across, not sit in a lifeboat. To carry
across is to open your silos and barns when a
great miracle fills them up, so that you share them
with others who need food. Because when you are blessed

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with a miracle, you cannot keep it for yourself. To
carry a cross is to make sacrifices so that we
do not steal our grandchildren's future for our comfort. We
do face great challenges for the living of these days,

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but they can be overcome if we, as Christian people,
are willing to carry across make sacrifices for the next generation.
We may have forgotten this, but twenty five years ago,
our legislators work with the president and we balanced our

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federal budget and had a surplus. Do you remember this?
For four years we actually had a surplus and began
paying down the federal debt. But we just couldn't help ourselves.
We couldn't help ourselves. We had to say, could we
just get a tax cut since we're saving all this

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money and we've been doing so for twenty some years.
But it is possible, and I understand I'm not advocating
any partisan position. What I'm saying is is that we
as a people, as Christian followers of Jesus, have to
begin changing our attitudes or we are going to penalize

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our children and grandchildren. Yes, climate change is huge, but
we can make decisions that make long term differences. A
decisions now can make differences ten years, twenty years down
the road. What about us as a congregation. As we
all know, our hva C system is not the best.
We will probably have to replace it sometime in the future.

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And how will we make that decision. Will we decide
let's just get the cheapest thing we can, or will
we decide to have a system that is best for
the environment as well as for the church. What can
we do now as a congregation to recycle, to cut
down our emissions and our energy use. These are property decisions, yes,

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but they are also spiritual decisions because we cannot separate
our spiritual faith from our physical living as human beings.
They have implications for the world God has given us
and for how we will care for the next generation.

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The issue of all these things, individually and collectively, it's
not about how great these challenges are. The issue of
our lives comes down to a question what will we carry?
Will we carry across or will we carry a life preserver? Amen.

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We conclude our worship service with a hymn of commitment,
as we do each week.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
It is in this.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
Baptist tradition that we open our doors of fellowship to you.
If you've loved God for a long time, but you've
never made a commitment to Jesus Christ. We hope this
would be the day you would want to come forward
and say I want to be baptized and become a
follower of Jesus. Or maybe you've already been a Christian
for some time and you've been worshiping with us and
you're looking for a church home. We would hope this

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would be a day you'd want to say, I want
to be a part of Fifth Avenue Baptist. Whatever decision
you may have, I'll be in front of the communion table.
Let's stand together and say I hope it's been a

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good way to begin your day and your week. And
as we've taken communion, to be reminded that we are
a community together. We are a church, all eating together,
taking this meal together to be here for one another.
We are to be the hands and feet of Christ
to each other and to this community. As you go

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out of this sanctuary, take the spirit of Christ with you.
Let's receive the benediction. Friends, as who go back out
into the world, do justice and love, kindness, and walk
humbly with God, and know that the creator of the

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universe has already set up a pathway for you and
Christ Jesus walks beside of you every step of the way,
and God's love the Holy Spirit surround you and will
protect you and guide you through whatever you face in
the week ahead. So friends, go now with peace. Amen.