“I Promise: To Choose You”
Scripture Reading: Luke 3:15-17
Sermon Transcript for December 17, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
Yes, it is difficult at times, particularly this time, in the calendar and the rush of events to set aside a few moments to contemplate the deeper understandings of God’s promises. This Advent season we have chosen the overall theme of God promising things to us. So the phrase starts in God’s own word, “I promise”, today, “to choose you”. Actually all of Scripture is filled with God choosing people—Abraham, Moses, Sarah, Miriam, Rebecca, the prophets to speak for God at different times through God’s people. The choosing is clear, but we almost always relegate that choosing to somebody really important, not to us. What I want you to hear today is that God chooses you—very clearly, very simply, very straightforwardly. The Scripture that comes for today at first doesn’t seem to fit with that except that there are two people who are chosen—John, the Baptist and Jesus. But we all know about Jesus and most of us knew about John. The choosing started very early in their life when they were both in their mother’s womb. The story is when Elizabeth was carrying John when Elizabeth met Mary who was carrying Jesus the baby within Elizabeth leapt for joy. Joy along the side of the type that you heard Pastor Nancy read from Philippians today. John had been chosen to become the preparer of the way for this Jesus. So, John is chosen and Jesus is chosen. So is Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, and all the other people, the shepherds, the wise men, chosen to fulfill their part, do what God calls them to do. What I would like for us to see and hear now, the gospel lesson, which relates primarily to John. It is in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 3, Verse 15. “The people were waiting expectantly all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. John answered them all, ‘I baptize you with water but One more powerful than I will come. The thongs of His sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn. But He will burn out the chaff with unquenchable fire. And with many other words, John exhorted the people and preached the Good News to them.”
John has been chosen for a moment in time to fulfill a purpose—to tell about Jesus coming. But our choosing starts just like John, the Baptist and Jesus in our mother’s womb. God chose you there. As it says in Psalm 139 in selected verses, “He created my innermost being and He knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I know that full well my frame was not hidden from you but I was made in a secret place. And I was woven together in the depths of the earth and your eyes saw my unformed body. And all the days ordained for me were written in your book before I was born.”
That’s a powerful message. It was written by a person who believed truly that God chose him back in his own mother’s womb. So are you! From that moment when you were created, God has chosen you. The question is for what purpose and what is God wanting you to do or wanting you to be? It’s a question for all of us. And we all are unique in that request that God makes. It is still true that with six billion people walking upon the face of the earth, that we are all so unique we stand alone and special in God’s creation. Now you think in six billion people there ought to be somebody. I grew up in high school and we’d go to debate events and someone would say when I didn’t go, “Well, we saw you there. We thought you weren’t coming?” I said, “No, I didn’t go with you on that.” “Well, you were there, we saw you. We waved but you didn’t wave back.” Somebody who looked almost identical to me was from another school at that speech meet. So I’ve got a twin, I think, running around. But even if that twin walked in here today, he would have to be different from me and I would be different from him. Think of our parents and somehow reflective of the two of them if you see a picture of my father, now gone eight years, you would say, “I’m his son.” No question, I have that identification. But there are four other people who shaped my life. My sisters—nobody has that set of sisters like I do. Believe me, you don’t have that set of sisters like I do! You haven’t met them all yet. We’ll get them all together. They will be here; we are planning a family gathering the first weekend in January. If it all works out, most of them will be here and you’ll get a chance to meet them. I’m here and I’m who I am because of them.
The other events that have taken place, in high school and on, you just go down through the list. There’s the heredity of our parentage and our family that shapes us. There’s the environment and the decisions, right ones and wrong ones. So I stand here today uniquely Bob Coleman and there is no other duplicate. And each of you can say that too. What a powerful message that is. When God chooses you then, God chooses you as a unique and special individual just like these babies that we are recognizing today. Now we all get very teary eyed, kind of a little bit smiling when we see babies. Our daughter reported that she was visiting or doing her exercises in a local gym and she took the baby along with her. And there was Jacob lying in a little basket and along comes a father and an eight-year old boy. And he just says, “Oh isn’t he so cute.” And, you know, “Come here son, and look at this little baby.” It does wonders to people when you see children like that because there is something deep within us that calls us out and says, “This is a special child”. We all are!
And then God forms us in another special way. When we open our hearts, we become a channel for a recognition of the gifts that God gives us that again makes us more especially unique than before. God has uniquely formed us, shapes us physically, mentally, and spiritually. And in those gifts that we are given, when we recognize them, they should be like children on Christmas morning. There was one family, the Newton family; they had some of their Christmas last night. And they were telling me about their gifts this morning. Now how many children would act like this? They would go down on Christmas morning and look at all of the packages and say, “Oh, they are so wonderfully wrapped but, gee, I think I’ll wait until next year. Yeah, no I don’t think I want to open them. I just kind of want to savor the moment and make it last all year.” Children aren’t like that. Maybe as adults we can postpone some things that we put off until the future. As well we might. But what I am saying to you is that God gives us gifts wrapped especially for us to open, to recognize, to let them grow in us and to make us even more of a special creation. No, that scene on Christmas morning is a scene that we should all feel when we discover what God has given us and joyfully receive it.
Now my grandson, Jacob, this Christmas is enjoying Christmas on the line of maybe his eyes will follow the bright lights and look at them. Do we know what he is thinking or feeling at this point? No, we don’t do we. But we know when he will be hungry next or when he is discomforted by something in his diaper. Those are the things that tell us that he is aware of his world. Last night, Zach was crawling around and checking out the church. Less than a year old we gave him the book, First Baby’s Bible, and he carried it around with him and sat down and looked at it. It was a joy to watch him explore his book. Can’t we, even at the age of 80, look at our world that way? No, we get trapped. And unfortunately time. We get trapped into thinking that everything is just going to be today, tomorrow, and what do I have to look forward to then.
I want to give you a concept today that someone jokingly said last night, “It takes a village with a Greek language to raise a child.” But the two Greek words that I want you to learn if you do not already know them are chronos and kyros. You see, when we read the Scripture we start at the beginning as if that is time itself, creation moving towards revelation. Richard Kroner says that you can take chronos and place it in the Bible and look at it and say, “History has a beginning in God, it has a center in Christ, and its end is the final consummation of the last judgment. And that’s true--true in a chronos time line. But remember, time is something that has been created for us to get some sense of where we are in our world. Were you aware of a good research I’d forgotten? There was no time zone division of the world before about 1850. Congress finally said, “We’ve got to get some organization at this time. We go to one country and they pick whatever time they want? We don’t know when we are arriving or when we are leaving.” That was true in the United States, by the way. They finally had to organize it. But that’s a creation for us to live in to get a sense of what’s the beginning and what’s the end. And we look at our lives. These children were born this last year, where will they be twenty, thirty, forty years from now? What will they look like? Will they be successful, married, college-degree? What will they be? And we think of it only as today, tomorrow, and the next day. That’s the chronos of life.
And we live there. We can’t get away from it. But I want you to know about the kyros of life. That’s God’s time. You see, God is in the creation and God is in the revelation. And God is always in between. So kyros is not a linear understanding of time but is the moment that is of all time. When Jesus came, it says in Mark 1:15, when He came the first time it was a definite kyros moment, a time for fulfillment, a time of judgment, a time for God’s promises to become operative. It does not mean it’s started on the clock. It meant that God had been in action throughout and this was the moment of creation when things would take place.
So we live in the chronos, we live in the kyros. But the kyros is the one that helps us to keep our minds and our hearts together. Because, believe me, if you look at history we don’t have a very pleasant past history. Larry said last week with all of the wars and terrible events of the 20th Century we look at the past and say, “Why would we want to go back there?” And then we look at the future in time chronos and we say, “What beautiful things are still out there.” But we live in the kyros moment. It’s when we look at these children and say, “It’s not how long they live, it’s that they live at all and they are created and chosen by God to be God’s people.”
I came here on March 1. My chronos time as pastor began then and it will end sometime in the future. Pastor Nancy came September 1; that was her beginning chronos time. Sometime in the future, that too will end. But while we are here, and particularly because of the crises lately that has happened in the church, we have been focused on the moment of time but what’s the problem? And I believe that God has given us a kyros moment where we can see us as a church not trapped by the events but free to be open to what God has for us greater than ourselves. Not to plot it on a future map or calendar, but to be aware and open to what God has for us now and at all times. We can call it a crises but a crises means that there is both fear and opportunity. Fear is that which traps us as human beings. But the opportunity is for us to look at ourselves and say, “God, in the midst of all this maybe we can quote Esther as Nancy and I do.” In the Book of Esther, for Queen Esther is told that if she remains silent at this time, relief and deliverance from the Jews will arise from another place.” Hear that clearly--that the relief will arise in another place. He knows that you have come to this royal position for such a time as this. These children that are in our midst now, that have been born to us in this last year, they are chosen for such a time as this. It is for us to help them to grow to accept that God is with them and giving them and understanding of their focus. It may be more than living a very ordinary life. A few might become leaders in some sense or the other, but all have that potential in God’s time. These children born this year are like you and I—we’re not just turning the pages of a calendar of the chronos, but we are living in God’s moment. It is for us to be open to that meeting.
There are many opportunities that will be before us in this next calendar year. But there is no greater opportunity than the one here, now, in God’s presence and time. We are going to take a few moments to pray for these children again in a little bit different setting. It is for us this morning to recognize first that these children have been chosen by God—truly and literally formed in their mother’s womb. The belief in that and the faith that God will drive their lives as they are open to God’s guidance gives us a great opportunity as a church to do all that we can to open the world of God to them so that they might choose Jesus Christ as their Savior as God has chosen them as His children.
But then there is also for each of us here to think about how God has chosen us and is still choosing us to be in God’s time and in God’s way. So we will have a moment of silence. And I would like for you to particularly, an eye’s open prayer if you want to look at the bulletin, and pray for each individual child that they will be open to God’s choosing. God has already chosen; that’s a truth. But they can accept that gift of the choosing is the most precious part. So this is going to be an active prayer for you. And once you have finished praying for each individual child in a time of quiet, then we will focus upon ourselves because we are children also. God has and is choosing you.
That’s the beauty about God’s kyros—the choosing in the womb is the past, the choosing now is the present, and the choosing for the future is still to come. In that expectancy then, truly each day you await, God has a present for you. God’s gift is God’s love and grace and presence. Let us take a moment then to focus in our own silent prayers for each of these children. Or anybody can add a grandchild of your own or a neighbor’s child or whatever you would like to focus on. But let God’s spirit lead you in that way. Then I will conclude our time together with a further prayer. Let us join our hearts and minds now in this quiet moment.
“Lord we humbly come before you. You have blessed us with each of these children just in this last year direct in this congregation and so many others born to our extended families and friends. What a gift that you have given us. They are precious in your sight and ours. We want to be a part of your time to see these children as that which is eternal not trapped by a few days or years upon this earth but be prepared for a long time, for eternity. For all the children in our midst, gracious God, we are indeed grateful beyond expression. Their smiling faces, their anticipation of hope and joy, love and family. We thank you for each. And we thank you, oh Lord, for ourselves--each of us chosen by you, being chosen by you, continuing in that choosing by you. Forgive us when we have set aside the choosing. We become trapped by only this time or this world. Open our eyes and our hearts to see beyond the calendar and to experience your presence in eternity so that each day we awake and each day we live no matter what the circumstances may surround us and seem to drag us down, we will rise above them. For we will see that your Kingdom, your time, your eternity, that you choose all of your creation to the end. Let us be restored now, re-created as only your Spirit can. May each of us here today have glimpsed just a precious open window of understanding into your plan, your purpose, your choosing for us. In your precious name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray, Amen”
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