Compelled Toward Community

  • November 15, 2017
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  • Jon Polk

Scripture: Hebrews 10.24-25
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Reflection: Compelled Toward Community
By Jon Polk

We have been made participants in a New Covenant of grace with God and we are beneficiaries of Christ’s inheritance of forgiveness. Along with these great gifts of love comes a great responsibility for us as God’s people.

God has forged with us and in us a new community of faith. Belonging to this community carries a responsibility to be accountable to each other.

Therefore, let us draw near to God. We have a High Priest in Jesus who has provided us with direct access to God. We have entered into a relationship with God through the death of his Son and we can enter God’s presence confidently. Our response should be to take advantage of this privilege through personal study and devotion and through public worship together.

Let us hold to the hope we profess. We have the promise from Jesus of assurance in faith and assistance in our time of need. We must lean forward into the future of our life in Christ and resist the temptation to lean back into our old lives of hopelessness.

Let us spur one another on toward love and good deeds. We have been given the gift of Christian community for our encouragement and edification. The Christian faith is not merely a personal, individual, internal exercise. It can only be truly lived in community. Even the concept of fellowship is more than simply socializing when we come together at church. True fellowship occurs when we encourage and build up our fellow believers.

Let us not give up meeting together. We have been given the gift of Christian community also as a place for service and ministry. In our consumer-driven culture, we often hear church seekers ask the question, “How will this church meet my needs?” Instead, our driving question should be, “How am I gifted to serve and meet the needs of my church?”

We are called to pursue a life of spiritual maturity and we are reminded that human infants in a physical sense require several things to grow and be healthy: nourishment, exercise and assistance. We receive our spiritual nourishment from God’s Word and exercise from service, but we cannot forget that we require assistance from one another to grow in Christ.

Let us not neglect our responsibility to love, care for, and encourage one another in the body of Christ called the Church.

The Refrain
Send forth your strength, O God; establish, O God, what you have wrought for us. — Psalm 68.28

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Chronicles 5-6 (Listen – 12:23)
Hebrews 10 (Listen – 5:33)

Divine Will and Testament

  • November 14, 2017
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  • Jon Polk

Scripture: Hebrews 9.15
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Reflection: Divine Will and Testament
By Jon Polk

Our High Priest Jesus has mediated for us a New Covenant with God, the terms of which read more like wedding vows than legal terms. In a similar way, the gospel message, the announcement of the good news found in Christ, sounds a lot like a last will and testament.

A covenant is a behavioral agreement between two parties describing certain actions that one or both parties will take toward the other. A testament, however, is stated by one party regarding the disposition of personal property, i.e. an inheritance. The conditions of a last will and testament only take effect upon the person’s death.

The Old Covenant required sacrifices and had regulations for worship and an earthly tabernacle. But the sacrifices and gifts offered by the people of Israel were merely matters of eating, drinking and ceremonial cleansing and were ultimately unable to cleanse the conscience of the people.

As our High Priest, Jesus entered a heavenly tabernacle and offered himself as an unblemished and perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Upon his death, the conditions of Jesus’ last will and testament come into effect. When a person dies, he or she must trust the legal system to insure their will is executed as they intended. For Jesus, however, he has returned to life to personally guarantee that we receive the entirety of his inheritance.

 

The Last Will and Testament of Jesus Christ

I, Jesus Christ, of the city of Nazareth, declare this to be my Will, and I revoke any and all wills and covenants previously made.

I hereby give my grace, love, mercy and forgiveness to all of humanity, past, present, and future. I leave behind for my heirs the promise of eternal redemption. I give them clean consciences for the purpose of serving the living God.

Upon their acceptance of these gifts, freely given, they will also receive a portion of my eternal estate and a place reserved for them in my home in heaven. This inheritance is priceless and is pure, undefiled, and will never decay or fade away.

I declare that this Will for my brothers and sisters has been proclaimed by our Father to be “good and acceptable and perfect.”

The Prayer Appointed for the Week
O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, I may purify myself as he is pure…

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Chronicles 3-4 (Listen – 8:52)
Hebrews 9 (Listen – 4:40)

New And Improved

  • November 13, 2017
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  • Jon Polk

Scripture: Hebrews 8.6
But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.

Reflection: New And Improved
By Jon Polk

The Old Covenant, the Law delivered through Moses, was a covenant of works, a legal contract. Do these things. Observe this rule. Act this way. Don’t act that way. It was full of ritual, hard to understand, and even harder to keep.

There’s the problem. And it is a problem. In fact, if there wasn’t a problem with the Old Covenant, then there would have been no need for a new one.

The people of Israel did not and could not keep the Old Covenant. Because they did not remain faithful to the covenant, God turned away from them. The Old Covenant served to highlight the unfortunate truth that no one is righteous, not even one.

Except for Jesus, the only righteous one. The Son of God, our great High Priest, has mediated for us a New Covenant, a better covenant, with God. This New Covenant is a covenant of grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

The content of the New Covenant, quoted from Jeremiah 31, reads more like marriage vows than a legal document.

Do you, God, promise to put your laws in the people’s minds? I will.

Do you, God, promise to write your laws on their hearts? I will.

Do you, God, promise to be the God of your people? I will.

Do you, God, promise that your people will be yours? I will.

Where God once wrote his laws to his people on stone, God will now write a new law in his people, in minds and hearts of flesh. This law written in us stirs us to obedience because it is inscribed on the deepest parts of our being: our mind where we reason, remember and reflect and our heart where we love, hope and give thanks. This is the soil in which God’s new law of grace and forgiveness takes root.

Where God had once turned away from his people because they were unfaithful, God now promises that he will be their God and they will be his people once again. This New Covenant is not dependent on our faithfulness, but rather on God’s faithfulness.

The New Covenant has made the old one obsolete. In his classic commentary, Matthew Henry declares, “It is antiquated, canceled, out of date, of no more use in gospel times than candles are when the sun has risen.”

Sisters and brothers, thanks be to God that we have this New Covenant because the Son has indeed risen.

The Call to Prayer
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. — Isaiah 1.18

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
1 Chronicles 1-2 (Listen – 11:18)
Hebrews 8 (Listen – 2:22)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel :: Advent’s Hope

  • December 1, 2015
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  • Park Forum

“Caesar is Lord,” the people would shout as his chariot traversed the streets. Rome’s elite culture—philosophy to viaducts, engineering to economics—was unsurpassed, and almost universally recognized as the hope of the world. It was stunning when the empire fell into decline.

In the end, Caesar proved not only unable to save his kingdom, but even himself. The fall of Rome plunged civilization into what historians have long-called the Dark Ages. For hundreds of years battles raged endlessly, pestilence and plague spread freely, and chaos seemed to gain the upper hand all too regularly.

The period isn’t significantly brighter in church history. Scripture was largely inaccessible, starving the Church of sound doctrine and increasing the growth of folk religion, superstition, and far worse. (The devastating interpretations of Scripture that lead to the crusades were brewing during this time.)

“O come, Thou Wisdom, from on high, and order all things far and nigh,” wrote an anonymous monk sometime before 800 C.E. The words to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” cry out from the depths of the Dark Ages—longing for God’s presence, Emmanuel, to rescue humankind.

In some ways the unknown author behind this song is an outlier to his or her world; the lyrics demonstrate intimate knowledge of Scripture in a time of illiteracy. In other ways the lyricist was shaped firmly by the Dark Ages—depravity writ large—and its revelations of humanity’s limits. Even had there been a vision for restoration present, no one on earth would have been sufficient to breathe it to life.

O come, Desire of the nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid every strife and quarrel cease
and fill the world with heaven’s peace.

“Jesus is Lord,” is a revolutionary claim. It upends not only global empires, but whatever we would enthrone on our own hearts to save us from the insufficiency of our world.

In Advent we await the coming of the all-sufficient King; he is the wisdom we yearn for and the power we need. He is God, and his presence brings healing to our world and restoration to our hearts.

Listen: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel by Francesca Battistelli (4:20)

Today’s Reading
1 Chronicles 29 (Listen – 5:50)
2 Peter 3 (Listen – 3:21)

Why We Celebrate Advent :: Advent’s Hope

  • November 30, 2015
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  • Park Forum
As a commercial event, Christmas seems to come too soon each year. In the church calendar—observed by Christians around the world for centuries—Christmas morning marks the beginning of the season, and our hearts now rest in the season of Advent. To put that in the language of modern music, celebrating “Joy to the World” before we cry “O Come O Come Emmanuel” misses the hope of Advent.

“The ancient theologians of the Church, such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, look upon the Christian life as one continual festival,” observes Ida von Hahn-Hahn. “Because the night of sin has been overcome by redemption, because reconciliation with God has brought peace and true joy to the soul, and because from this joy no one is excluded who does not voluntarily separate himself from God.”

Hahn-Hahn, a German countess who wrote a series of books on church history in the late 19th century, highlights the importance of Advent throughout history in preparing the souls of the faithful for Christmas:
Particular times were set apart as festivals, which, like faithful messengers of religion, returned every year, unceasingly announcing the work of redemption, and by their attractive festivity enkindling man, and preparing his soul for the everlasting feast of heaven.

The fast of the four weeks of Advent, to prepare the sinful world for the merciful coming of the Lord… is not to be fulfilled by a trifling and superficial joy, but by the supernatural rejoicing of a heart entirely resting in God, and a life wholly consecrated to Him. Zeal for sanctification should extend over all the aims and objects of life.
Our goal in this season isn’t to usurp materialism only to restore an idyllic image of Christmas-past. Advent is a season where we seek the renewal of our souls in Christ as we prepare for Christmas-present—longing for Christmas-future: the great second Advent where the broken are restored, the dead are revived, and the hope of the gospel brings forth the restoration of all things. So in this season we joyfully, and longingly, sing together, “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.”

Today’s Reading
1 Chronicles 28 (Listen – 4:45)
2 Peter 2 (Listen – 3:52)