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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our Lenten sermon series is: For This I Rejoice, centering around the Letter of the Philippians. Enjoy.
Be a Joyful Witness
March 16, 2025 2nd Sunday of Lent
Philippians 1:12-26 Matthew 28:18-20
Being a witness to Christ is sometimes daunting. It's called evangelism. Sometimes I refer to it as the E word because evangelism has become a bit of an uncomfortable topic. But it shouldn't be. The word Gospel is from old English and means “good news or story.” The Greek word for that is euangelion, from which evangelist and evangelismderive from. So, evangelism is about joyful good news. Why then is it so daunting or uncomfortable to deal with?
There are a few reasons why it can be an uncomfortable concept and sometimes tough for us to do. First of all, you might have had a negative experience from people who were trying to be evangelical to you. When I was in college a group of my peers, who were together in a Bible study, confronted me and wanted to know why I wasn't a Christian. I was told that since I was carrying a philosophy-religion major and studying other religion, this was going to cause me to go to hell, and my unconventional thinking was polluting other people's souls around me. This confrontation surprised me because I knew these people and, before they got all caught up in their Christianity stuff, was actually friendly with many of them and enjoyed their company. But all of a sudden, I was the evil outsider.
I am sure that several of us in this room have had encounters like this at one point or another in our lives. Maybe we don’t want to be in those situations, or be perceived as the person who is doing the pushing, so we avoid talking about our faith altogether. But the problem is not talking about faith, the problem is when we don’t listen to other people’s faith journeys or dismiss them as not being valid.
Another reason why I was shy about sharing my Christianity is because it's been a pretty average experience. I've had a few special spiritual experiences, but nothing like Paul’s event on the road to Damascus. Paul was a pretty evil person when he was on that road. His goal in Damascus was to arrest, imprison, and execute any Jewish-Christian who wouldn't renounce Christianity and go back to being simply Jewish. He got struck down by a light and Jesus confronted him with blindness then healing. His conversion to Christ was pretty dramatic. And all my life I've heard similar stories. I've heard stories of people in prison or people with terrible addictions, who had been saved by Christ and became amazing people and are doing good work in the world.
My connections with Christ have been ordinarily joyful, in the forms of God's breezes and gentle nudges in directions. I'm more like John Wesley, who one day during a time when he was questioning his faith what God in Christ meant to him, was walking down the street and suddenly found his heart strangely warmed. It wasn't a flash of light or a burst of angelic song, it was simply a warm feeling of a blessed assurance that God loved him, that Christ loved him, and that the Holy Spirit was working with him every single day. But you know, the interesting thing is that from that simple warm moment of blessed assurance, John Wesley launched the Methodist movement and here we are today.
Witnessing to Christ doesn't have to be pushy. It doesn't have to be condemning. It doesn't have to be dramatic and all saving. All you need to do is to recognize for yourself: What does all this Christianity stuff do for you? Maybe your personal experience with Christ was dramatic or maybe it was quiet and simple, and that’s great because you’ve had an experience of connecting with God. That's your journey and it is precious and wonderful. God and Christ don't judge how each of us make the journey; they’re just happy and rejoice that we are making the journey and that they’re walking along with us.
The first step in our evangelism journey is to remember, that the gospel is good news, and that sharing good news is a joyous experience. We don’t need to yell or berate; or think that we have to be dramatic about our Christian experiences. Or even think that it’s our job to change someone’s mind. When you witness you tell the story of what you’ve experienced. So, to be a witness for Christ, we just need to know in our hearts and minds what God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have done for us and, if someone asks us about our faith, tell them our stories.
This is what Paul does. Let’s read the first part of today’s scripture. I want to report to you, friends, that my imprisonment here has had the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of being squelched, the Message has actually prospered. You see the people who put Paul in prison brought false charges against him to get him out of the public so that he wouldn’t be preaching the gospel.
But Paul used his opportunity to talk about the good news to the ones who were in jail. All the soldiers here, and everyone else, too, found out that I’m in jail because of this Messiah. That piqued their curiosity, and now they’ve learned all about him. When the jailers or fellow inmates would ask why he was in jail, Paul simply answered that he was there because he was preaching about Jesus. Then when they asked, Whose that? he took the opportunity to tell them about him. We don’t have any indication in the scriptures that Paul ranted at people and told everyone that they were going to hell if they didn’t believe. He just told them what Jesus did for him and what Jesus meant to him, and those who wanted to know more asked more, and those who begin to believe found their faith in Christ.
Paul shows that we do not have to create occasions or special circumstances to share the gospel. We can share it anywhere. Some of the best evangelism we can offer comes from sharing how responding to the gospel directs our daily decisions, like how going to church helps you out or why you work at core or at Heart of the Catskills.
There is another aspect of witnessing to Christ that might be a little uncomfortable. Sometimes when we talk about our own personal encounter with our faith, we might feel like we're drawing too much attention to ourselves, rather than to the larger story of God's work in the world. When we practice seeing what God and Christ do for us, and then practice seeing how those blessings and guidance impacts the world around us, then we are no longer just focused on our own experiences but also on our communities experiences and then the experiences of the world.
You notice I used the word practice. Practice is a big part of evangelism. Looking back, I really can't be too angry at my college friends. They really wanted to share their faith with people, they just didn't know how to do it effectively. No one had told them that their job was simply to witness or tell the story of the joy that finding Jesus had given to them: What it was doing for their lives, and what they could do to show God's love in mission work. They fell into a pretty common misconception that the goal of Witnessing to Christ meant changing people's minds to what you think. And so, they alienated a lot of people, not just me.
But witnessing is not just what you speak it's also how you act. Any action that you do to help someone out, to show kindness to your neighbors, to give a blessing to someone else or to reach out to people who you don't know, is a witness to the message of the gospel. That message is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, because by loving and caring for God's creation that is how we show God that we love Him.
And witnessing ranges from being personal, like when you take a casserole to someone who's sick; slightly personal, like when you donate school supplies for kids in our community who maybe need a little help; to completely impersonal, such as when you send a check to the Rotary Club’s polio eradication campaign. You know your neighbor, you might know one or two kids in the community who needs supplies, but you probably don't know the kids overseas who are receiving that medical attention.
I think the best example that we have in our own parish is our monthly community potlucks. Think of what happens when we have one. First of all, it's an opportunity for people in the host church to create a fellowship that everyone in our parish and community can come and have a good time at. That church is witnessing their love for everyone who walks through the doors with their food and hospitality. Then when the community gets together over good food, we tell our stories about the good or bad things in our lives. If it's a good thing we share the joy, and if it's a bad thing then there are people to give advice and support. And finally, we have a mission project which might be close to home, like what Bloomville will to do this month to support the Heart of the Catskills (something that is very dear to many people in this community) to a mission project has nothing to do with our community, like last month when we raised money for people affected by the California fires.
The chance to be a joyful witness to God and Christ are all around us, both in our words and deeds. What is your story to tell about how They work with you and the world around you? Don’t be afraid to tell your story and don’t be afraid to listen to the stories of others. Every time you do your knowledge of how God is working in the world will multiply and give you strength to keep on in your faith journey.
Joyful Prayer
March 9, 2025 1st Sunday in Lent
Philippians 4:4-7 Philippians 1:1-11
How many of you think of Lent as a gloomy sort of time? It's understandable. After all we’re in the time of year when we’re getting tired of winter; it’s cold and we want some warmth; and it’s still pretty dark in the morning and evening. Somedays I just want to sit under a blanket with some cocoa and good book. And really, you want me to give up something right now? You want me to be fasting? I don’t know about this; talk to me when the weather gets better.
Lent has a negative image. Even before Lent became incorporated as part of our Christian custom it was a time of year that was very uncertain. At the end of winter, when food stores and fuel would begin to run low, most households would have to start rationing food and fuel in order to make it to spring. Once the snow melted then more firewood would be available, animals would start to be born, and greens would start coming up. Fasting during this time was something that people needed to do along with restricting your activities so that you could conserve your energy.
In our modern day and age, we don't need to worry so much about our food or fuel running out so it’s more of an imposed fast. When I was a kid, it was presented to me that you should give up something that you like to do or have, like chocolate or chewing gum, or a favorite TV Show. Today parents might say that their kids should give up a video game.
But as a kid I could never quite understand why I should give up something that was pretty harmless. I didn't eat that much chocolate or chewing gum to begin with and I was pretty busy, so I didn't have a lot of TV shows that I watched. I didn't really see the point of giving up something, because how is it going to do any good?
It wasn't until I got into seminary, and we started to have discussions about Lent that I realized that Lent is an opportunity to give yourself some time to get closer to God. Instead of fasting by giving up something that you like, it's a chance to deliberately get rid of things or organize stuff so that you can move forward with a more intentional life towards God.
Now it doesn't have to be a massive reorganization, in fact I tried a massive reorganization one year, and I did too much at once and totally defeated the process. But for a Christian the 40 days of Lent is the perfect structured excuse to say: I want to change something for the better. I’ve found that the best way to do it is to give up one thing that is keeping you away from God and add one thing that gets you closer to God.
I think that the best way to pinpoint if something is keeping you from God is to evaluate it as distracting stress. Is there something in your life that is stressing you out; that is on your mind constantly; that is just getting in the way of your daily thought process and taking away some joy from your life?
This could be chocolate. Maybe you have an addictive craving for chocolate, and it causes your blood sugar to spike, and every time you eat it you stressfully think: This is really not healthy, and I shouldn’t be doing this to myself. That’s what I would call distracting stress, so you should probably stop eating it. Another behavior might be that you're not getting to bed as early as you should, so you wake up tired the next day. Perhaps your Lenten fast should be going to bed an hour earlier. I know one person who shifted all their reading time to the evening and found that just by being in bed reading they were getting to sleep earlier and solving the problem.
Or perhaps your distracting stress is not behavioral but something that you need to take care of. Perhaps you haven't cleaned your closets out in several years and every time you walk by those closets you think: I really need to get in there and clean out that closet because there's so much stuff in there and I don't even know what’s in it anymore. It distracts you and adds stress to your life just by being there.
Whatever you feel you need to do to relieve a distracting stress in your life you should give yourself a gift of time during these forty days tackle it. And don't keep it to yourself. Tell your family about your Lent project and they'll probably help you out. In fact you can make a family project of it.
But now we come to the other half of Lent which is adding something that helps you to get closer to God. Dawn and I are going to be preaching to you on the Letter of Philippians, which contains some great ideas on ways to get closer to God.
This letter was written by Paul to the congregation in Philippi, Greece. Paul is at the end of his life and is in prison in Rome. Even though Paul is in prison, and he knows he's probably not going to get out of prison, he’s very optimistic and encouraging. Paul doesn't want the people reading the letter to think: Oh, poor me. I'm locked up in prison. I can't do anything. Instead, Paul wants the people reading this letter to see the joy that he has in serving Christ, wherever he can, whenever he can. Paul isn’t going to use being in prison as an excuse to not be a Christian or spread the Christian gospel.
Look at how Paul starts this letter: We greet you with the grace and peace that comes from God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ. This doesn’t sound like a man who's saying woe is me in a prison cell. And next he says: Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart.
During Lent we are told that the two things we should do are fast and pray. Max Vincent in his book, Because of this I Rejoice, talks about the dilemma that he used to have with prayer. How his prayers, always seemed to be a chore and gloomy. He realized after he read about Paul praying with a glad heart that he had been focusing on the intersession part of his prayer – in other words, please dear God help me or help so-and-so with this problem. It’s important to pray about people’s concerns, but he had been leaving out the joy part, so he always felt obligated and sad when he prayed.
He changed his way of praying to a new system of Thanksgiving/Intersession/Doxology.
First, he starts out by giving THANKS for all the good stuff in his or in the other person’s life. If he is praying about another person, he will mention a particularly wonderful aspect about that person. Then he will pray about the problem and ask for INTERSESSION. Then he will give praise to God, the DOXOLOGY, for being able to take care of the person.
Let’s say you want to pray for a friend who has cancer. You might say your prayer like this: Dear God, I want to thank you so much that Jane Doe has a place in my life and is my friend. She is such a wonderful person who always helps others, and she’s done so much for me over the years, especially on my last birthday when she took me out to that nice restaurant, and we had that wonderful meal. But dear Lord, now she has cancer, and I want to pray that she will be given the strength to fight it, so please make her strong. Also sent her the people she needs to help her through this, and help me to know how to help her. I know that you have the power to help her healing, for you are a healing God and merciful. Thank you for Your great goodness that you will give her in her life. Amen
So, we started out by thanking God, then we asked for God’s help, then we praised God for the healing power that he gives to us. This is what Paul does in his letter. First, he praises the Philippians for their faithfulness and friendship, then he prays that they will continue to work hard at being Christians, then he praises Christ and God. When Max Vincent started to use this method, he said that his prayers became less of a routine chore and more joyful and meaningful to him. For himself, he saw more of his blessings and how God was working in his life. When he was praying for others, he felt that he connected more deeply with them and that he saw how God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit were working in their lives.
So, I invite you this Lent to work on getting rid of or managing one of your distracting stresses and to try out the prayer method of Thanksgiving-Intersession-Doxology. Getting rid of the distracting stress will give you a little more space for the Holy Spirit to live with you. Then, lift up at least one person in prayer a day (of course you can do more) and see how it makes you feel. I’m sure that by talking to God everyday will get you in closer connection to His power and glory. And I think we will be able to lift the gloom of winter from our hearts and minds and get them all ready for spring and Easter, which is soon to come.