(Opening Song)
You may have
Realized that for our
Opening him we sang
Tonight we use words from
Sol.
96 to call us into worship.
You will find that
Response of reading in your
Bulletin in the order of worship.
If you join me in the bold
Parts and I ask that you rise in body or in spirit as we read these
Words.
Sing to the
Lord a new song.
Sing to the
Lord.
Stays his name.
Declare his glory among the nations.
The fireless peace among all peoples.
For the greatest of the Lord in most worthy of praise.
The
G. S.D.
Fear to the God of the gods.
Ascribe to the Lord all you families of nations.
The Lord of the glory and the spring.
Ascribe to the
Lord the glory do his name.
For during the life
You can accomplish
His sports.
Worship the Lord in the
Splunder of his holiness.
From the church of all
You are all here.
Say among the nations
The Lord reigns.
The Lord is all here.
Lord Jesus Christ through the mighty and transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
We welcome all of you to worship this evening at LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church.
It's good to see all of you gathered here in the sanctuary and we're glad too for the
people who are gathering and watching online.
We also extend a warm welcome to Reverend Lori Tenehape Chapman, who is a LaGrave member,
we thank you for coming and preaching tonight.
We're glad to have you in the pulpit.
As we think tonight about people in this world who have questions, questions about faith,
especially, and the answers we should have for them, we read together this confession
of faith.
This comes from our contemporary testimony, our world belongs to God and we'll read this
responsibly and we'll remain seated for the reading and then we'll stand for the hymn
that follows.
Joining the mission of God, the church is sent with the gospel of the kingdom.
The
Spirit calls all members to feed the hungry, bring water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger,
loathe the naked, care for the sick and free the prisoner.
With the thoughts of that reading and that hymn on our hearts and our minds and also
taking into account the words we read from Psalm 96 at the beginning, where the Psalmist
says declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all people.
Tonight in our pastoral prayer we'll spend a significant amount of time praying for a
number of our missionaries and those causes.
Would you join me in prayer?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and for the truth it declares when it says
that we are to declare your glory among the nations, your marvelous deeds among all peoples.
Father indeed you are great and glorious and if we were to spend time counting your
marvelous deeds we would be at it for eternity.
Thank you for being the God you are.
Father we do ask for forgiveness for the times wherein we have not proclaimed your
kingdom work, your good news.
Father and yet we thank you for those who have answered your call.
We think of some of our missionaries who are serving in here in North America.
Father we pray that you would bless the work of Tim and Barbarans as they minister to
Iranians in the Toronto area.
We thank you for the work of Emily DeRider as she creates videos for crew to help draw
people to Jesus Christ as their Savior.
We think of the work that Gwen Hannah does in Colorado as she serves as chaplain for
that ranch that provides therapy for those with special needs.
Father we know that Gwen is often the only person that people see who represent Jesus
and we pray that she would shine the light of Christ into those families who are in need.
Lord our God we lift before you, Betsy Hubner as she serves at U of M in Ann Arbor, ministering
to students there at the university.
Use her in powerful ways.
And we thank you too for Zuni Christian School in New Mexico and for the way that church
seems to be a light amidst the darkness there in that area of bringing the gospel to children
who are not even from Christian homes sometimes.
Father provide all that Zuni needs in staffing and finances and wisdom.
Father as we think of some of our missionaries who serve in Haiti the Morissettes, the Lazars
both seeking to bring stability to that area of that country.
Father we know that there has been much chaos in Haiti and yet the work of the Morissettes
and the Lazars are shining the light into the midst of that darkness.
Father we pray too for others who serve in that Central America area.
We think of Dave and Blanca Gifford and their work in Mexico.
For the work they do teaching seminary students, training in leadership areas and evangelizing
children, Father may their work bear much fruit.
We pray too for Scott and Jen Mirima as they are in the Dominican Republic and serve with
young life.
Father provide all that they need, grant them wisdom and insight into the work they do
and we pray that you would bless the efforts of young life there and around the world.
Father we think of those who serve in administrative roles with our resonates, the mission arm
of our denomination.
We pray Father that you would bless Stephen Christ Vincenin and their work as well as
the work that Steve will begin this fall at Calvin Seminary.
We pray too for your blessing upon Michael and Meghan Ribbons as they oversee missionaries.
Father give them clarity and insight into all they do.
We also lift before you the ministries that are going on in Africa.
We think tonight of Cal and Jamie Hofflin and the seeds they continue to plant in West Africa
and that very heavily Muslim area.
May those seeds, O God, bear much fruit for your kingdom.
We lift before you hope, Okene, as she works in Uganda helping to bring stability and healthcare
and community development.
Bless her work.
Bless the work of fan and Rethina Veltman in Ethiopia.
As fan teaches and as Rethina has leadership responsibilities at the school there, Father
may others, students and families who are around them, may they see the light of Christ
shining through fan and Rethina.
We pray that you would bless the work of the Halwardas, Tim and Tammy as they serve in Egypt
with Heliopius Community Church.
Father we pray that that church would continue to grow not only in numbers but also in closeness
to you.
We pray as well for John and Kristi Nykamp who are also in Egypt as they are discerning
direction for what you would have them to do next.
Grant them clarity, insight and wisdom into where you are leading them.
We think as well of ministries that we support in Asia, bless Charles and Hensil Oel and
the work they do in Japan working with young people and diaspora people.
Father may they support them but also point them to Jesus.
We pray for Joshua and Emily Zhang who are serving in South Korea as they work with Chinese
pastors even from a distance.
Father bless that work.
For Joel and Marvel of Androkoye as they work in Thailand and their school there, Father
provide all that they need.
We pray that the Spirit of Jesus Christ would permeate that school and that students in
all will be drawn closer to you.
For Joel and Dana Mulhagen in the home they help run there in India for abandoned children.
Father, the tremendous work that is there, the tremendous need that is there.
We lift them before you and pray protection for those children.
We pray, Father, that as they are out and about in the community, that people would see the
difference that is in their lives.
You would bless the efforts there.
And we think, Father, too, of the Vander Kody's who are serving in South America and Peru
as they are training local leaders.
Father, bless their efforts as well to help expand your kingdom in that place.
Father, we pray too that you would use us to witness to others, to be prepared to give
an account of the hope that is within us.
We ask for forgiveness as we said before when we should be speaking words or we should be
doing things and yet we fail to do so.
And now, Father, for a few moments in silent prayer, we lift before you those on our hearts
and minds who do not know Jesus as Savior, who are wandering in the faith or who have
left the Christian faith.
Father, we lift those names before you know.
Father, thank you for bending down, turning your ear and listening to the prayers of your
people tonight.
We trust that you will answer our prayers in your way and in your time.
We ask them all in the name of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Our Scripture passage this evening is from the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles,
chapter 8, verses 26 through 40.
If you'd like to follow along in your Pew Bible, you'll find it on page 1704.
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes
down from Jerusalem to Gaza.
So he started out and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in
charge of all the treasury of the khandake, which means queen of the Ethiopians.
This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship and on his way home was sitting in his chariot
reading the book of Isaiah the prophet.
The Spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it.
Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.
Do you understand what your reading?
Philip asked, how can he?
He said, unless someone explains it to me.
So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
This is the passage of the scripture where the eunuch was reading.
He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer is silent.
So he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants for his life was taken away from the earth?
The eunuch asked Philip, tell me please, who is the prophet talking about?
Himself or someone else?
Then Philip began with that very passage of scripture and told him the good news about
Jesus.
As they traveled along the road they came to some water and the eunuch said, look, here
is water.
What can stand in the way of my being baptized?
And he gave orders to stop the chariot.
Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.
When they came up out of the water the spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away and
the eunuch did not see him again but went on his way rejoicing.
Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about preaching the gospel in all the towns
until he reached Caesarea.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is the word of the Lord.
Several years ago my daily commute took me south on 131 from Rockford down to about
68th Street.
I was confronted for about three months of that year that I made that commute every morning
with this big billboard on the side of the highway that profolitized a business that
I had never heard about and that quite frankly confused me.
So every morning I would see this church cannabis company, baptism by fire, exclamation
point.
So I don't know about you but I don't see those words going together very easily.
There's one word, if we pull cannabis out of that, I get that.
The Holy Spirit has power.
We see things that happen that are amazing.
We're not too far removed from Pentecost the day that we celebrate the gift of the Spirit
being given.
The Holy Spirit can bring life out of death.
The Holy Spirit can bring healing for those who are alienated from one another.
It can bring hope to those who are grieving.
But what does cannabis have to do with church?
Can a mind-altering substance produce the kind of baptism fire that we encounter in the church?
So I found myself regularly trying to think about.
So how am I called to interact with a pleasure-seeking culture as a Christian?
How do I put that together with my understanding of what is truth and looking at something
like that and so many other signs that come at us from all different angles, we ask what
is truth in this advertising that confronts us?
And I think of Pilate when he's interviewing Jesus and saying to him, sneering at him,
what is truth?
And how ironic that he would say that to the man who said, I am the way, the truth and
the life.
We continually have to sift through these elements of our culture and our world to try
to discern what is truth and what is deceptive.
What or who will support us when the storms as we experience this last week blow in and
our plans are put on hold and we find ourselves running for shelter and trying to stay safe.
To whom will we dare to ask the questions that come from the deepest parts of ourselves?
Lot of green up here today.
We are in the season of ordinary time.
We are two weeks into it and it goes for a full 28 weeks that we are in the season of
ordinary time and green is the color it represents growth which makes sense because
in the last weeks we've seen our world grow green lawns all of a sudden are productive
and happy and need to be mowed and a whole progression, a cycle of flowers shows up and
that brings us great delight.
So as our world greens we enter into this season of growth and what we're focusing on in the
church in the season of ordinary time these many weeks that we have together is the growth
of the church because Jesus has died, resurrected, ascended, the gift of the Holy Spirit has
been given and now the disciples like dandelion seeds are all over that ancient Near East.
They are preaching and teaching and planting churches wherever they go and it is because
of their bold obedience to go places and to face hardships that we gather as a church
tonight.
So I wonder we have this great rich story from the book of Acts about Philip and the
Ethiopian which might be a different kind of context for us to think about in many different
ways.
We learn that the unique was CFO on the court of Queen Candace of Ethiopia.
We learn that he was a convert to the Jewish faith.
We know that Isaiah is the prophet who predicted that Yahweh, the word of Yahweh would reach
Ethiopia and it had and this official had converted to the Jewish faith and done what
every good Jew wants to do and that is to travel to Jerusalem for a holy day and to worship.
So he was on his way back.
That had happened.
He was in a chariot which was the Rolls Royce of his day.
That journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem depending on what part of Ethiopia would be anywhere
from a thousand to fifteen hundred miles if you can imagine that.
And even in a chariot which was the rare exception for travel it would have been well
over a month each each way to get there and then to get home.
So he was an educated man.
He was reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah.
He had access to a library full of scrolls which was highly unusual for that time.
And he was trying to understand the truth in this complex passage about the Lamb of God,
the slain Lamb that was in Isaiah.
Meanwhile you have Philip minding his own business and God the angel tells him, go.
There's someone who needs you.
And Philip had just finished this fantastic crusade.
Lots of converts in Samaria and he's told there's no time to sit there and bask in your pastoral
prowess.
Move on.
You're needed somewhere else and it's not for large crowds.
It's for one individual, one man, one stranger who needs you.
And so when the horse drawn chariot went by him there's almost a comedic image of Philip
having to run after it and keep alongside of it and try to get their attention.
And it's sort of like he went up against the bodyguard who was blocking the celebrity person
and tapping on the darkened glass and hoping that he could talk, have an audience with
this important person.
But Philip didn't see anything like that.
None of that rank, none of those differences mattered to him.
And there were a lot of differences in that encounter, race, nationality, religion, spiritual
worthiness.
And yet Philip just knew that he was called.
Like Jesus pointed out so many times that the interruptions are the ministry.
You are called right now to be present to this man and he was ready.
And so the convert to the Jewish faith said, I don't understand this passage.
And Philip was then ready to engage with him.
He preached about Jesus as the fulfillment of all Old Testament prophecy.
Jesus was the lamb that was slain who now reigned over an eternal kingdom more glorious than
even a man who served on the court and Ethiopia could ever imagine.
He was an avid reader who wondered what is the truth of this scripture?
And so Philip dropped everything to give interpretation so that that man could then
have an understanding of what that passage meant.
Jesus, you see, is the long-awaited Messiah for the Jewish people.
The Son of God, the resurrected Savior, he taught him, the African man from the royal
court sees a body of water and says, what is to stop me from being baptized into this
faith?
And so Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch head into the water and he welcomes one of the
least likely candidates from membership in the early church into the church full baptism,
full immersion, great power.
And that's the kind of power that the Holy Spirit can give from the one who is the way,
the truth and the life.
The gospel accounts according to scholars tell us that Jesus asked 307 questions in
the course of his ministry and others asked of him 183 questions and of those 183 questions
asked of him, how many do you think he answered directly?
Three.
1.6% were answered directly by Jesus, which if you look at rate your professor, that
might not have gotten a very good rating in that era.
But of course we know Jesus was not trying to be deceptive, he was not trying to be clever.
Jesus was the master of answering a question with a question.
And the questions that he asked broke the individuals open to what they needed to understand about
their own lives, about their own faith, about who or what they had trusted that had failed
them.
And so Jesus met them in the fullness of their humanity, whether simpleton like Philip or
royalty and invited them then to embrace sacred answers to their questions.
T.S. Eliot wrote, oh my soul be prepared for the coming of the stranger, be prepared for
him who knows how to ask questions.
Have you ever thought of how important it is to be able to not just ask questions but
ask good questions that open people up to greater understanding about their worldview,
the challenge that comfort, that confront, that show love.
When I was leading a spiritual growth group on a locked site, there was a man who stormed
out of the class midway through an angry at what another class member had said that he
perceived to be false.
And so I followed after him after the class to apologize that somehow the dynamics in
that class had been disturbing to him, but before I could even fully get that apology
out, he interrupted me and he apologized and said, you know, I shouldn't have been that
explosive.
And as a chaplain, my role is to talk with people, to find out who they are, where are
they coming from, what's going on that maybe I can be present to you for that.
And after saying he was sorry and giving a little bit of that background, what he blurted
out to me was, who will teach me about Jesus?
I was surprised by that.
I was surprised by how blunt that was.
I'd gone in to placate someone about his anger in a class.
And now he was asking for a Sunday school lesson.
My job as a chaplain was to invite patients into deep reflection of their own convictions
and to get in touch with those core questions that just nagged at them.
And so I spent time with him trying to understand his circumstances.
And he talked about his life.
In fact, he was packing up.
It was his last day there.
And he was going to be picked up soon.
So in the midst of packing his suitcase and talking, he let me know who he was.
It was because of his mental illness and addiction that he landed in this like unit.
It had cost him, he told me, his marriage and custody of his three young children.
And he grieved deeply as a young father who had not seen those children for over a year.
His career as a financial advisor had ground to a halt.
And all of these things had happened in a relatively short period of time that he had
much going on that was beautiful in his life.
And now that had fallen apart.
He was hopeless about dealing and escaping from a mental illness diagnosis over which
he felt like he had no control.
And it had put his life on this downward spiral that seemed to have not even hit bottom yet.
And then he went on to tell me he was raised in a home where he was told everything was
his fault.
He was always to blame.
There was no spiritual perspective on anything in that home to offer any sort of support.
And yet he said there was always this force and he dared at points to call it God.
This force that was present to him from early on.
He said there was a home invasion and at that home invasion he'd cried out and God had rescued
him.
His addiction had brought him near death several times and yet God had revived him.
And so the questions that came from a deep place were why?
Why am I here?
And who is this God, this force, this being that's rescuing me?
And he spoke of them many times that he could hear this voice giving him directives that
helped him go down right paths.
It made me think of the psalmist, the 23rd psalm.
He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
And God had done that for him time and again.
And so this class member's worldview was shaped by a home life where he was always to blame.
He had lost then his own wife and children because of a mental illness that he could
not conquer.
And he was filled with countless questions and very few answers.
So he said to me after all this lengthy background information he said recently what
I would call the Holy Spirit said to him, learn about Jesus.
Learn about Jesus.
And I have to confess that I was astounded that the Holy Spirit acts in that kind of specific
way to prompt this individual to look into who Jesus is.
And he heard that and he was following that prompting.
Learn about Jesus.
I was called as a chaplain for that moment to run alongside of him before he got out the
door and to listen to him, to connect with him and to give him some interpretation.
And so at this point as again he said, who will tell me about Jesus?
I was ready for my Sunday school 101 lesson for him.
I was aware as I did that of how unlikely a lot of our beliefs are.
This Jesus who is central to our faith, born of a virgin from Nazareth, a backwoods town
in an unimportant part of the world that he died on a cross and that it was a public
death so that it would discourage people from disobeying the mighty Roman Empire.
This is our savior.
This is the holy one around whom we shape our lives.
But we know the Sunday school lesson doesn't end there and it didn't end there for me either
as I talked with him.
We know that he was buried in a tomb.
We know that a huge boulder was put in front of it so that no one could get in and so that
Jesus couldn't get out.
And yet by baptism fire the Holy Spirit moved in such a way that Jesus rose from the dead,
resurrected there was new life that was given.
We are incredulous about this story even after years of baptism commitment.
There are so many people who yearn for truth aren't there.
And the easy path of course is to follow the dictates of a rather self-serving society.
It's the easy way to go.
And yet almost always those answers come up empty.
And a lot of questions don't know the question, a lot of people don't know which questions
to ask.
And I know that all of us at some point in our lives have been those people who have
been searching and who have had way more questions than we have had answers.
And then perhaps someone has come along and listened well to you and invited you into
some dialogue together.
And as you opened your heart to this Jesus that they spoke of, the questions melted away
because his presence is enough.
His presence is enough.
The Spirit directed you to people and places and peace that you might never have found
on your own.
We are seekers of the truth on a daily basis and yet it's very easy to lose our spiritual
mourning.
So this young in-patients question awakened me to the ongoing need to preach my faith
in the one who is the way, the truth and the life.
And like the Apostle Paul, I seek to deliver it in a manner that is most likely to be understood
and heard.
When I have an opportunity and an invitation to share what I believe, my beginning point
is a readiness to hear who they are and where their questions are coming from.
And I'm called to trust that the Holy Spirit is already at work in their lives like the
Spirit was in this Ethiopian eunuch.
It's not all on me.
God is at work and I'm a conduit for that holy word.
And when someone asks me about my belief like Philip, I need to be ready to say, this
is who I am and where I derive my strength.
For those who are not raised in the faith tradition, they may not know which questions
to ask.
They may be struggling and coming up empty.
And we remember that every crossroads of our lives, there are those who are seeking truth.
And we need to be ready to minister to them.
So we are newly in the season of ordinary time, just two weeks into it.
And we don't have those high points of advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, the joy of
Pentecost.
These are ordinary days.
And that's when it is crucial that our faith be strong.
39 years ago today, my husband Garrett and I were ordained into the Christian ministry.
It was a very hot day and we were ordained in a sanctuary that had no air conditioning,
which of course was normal back then.
Sweat dripped down our backs as we stood there in our robes in front of people.
And we took vows saying that we would minister to the people that God would bring before
us in the course of the years of head and the power of hands upon us that went back through
the sanctuary were heavy and wonderful as the power of the Holy Spirit was invoked
not just through those were present in body, but also that we know were from the other shore
joining us in that celebration.
And the very first act that we did as ordained individuals as an ordained couple was to baptize
our two month old eldest daughter with the cooling waters of baptism on a very hot day.
And like all vows that are spoken with the sense of innocence and some degree of naivete,
we could not know what challenges would come with that ordination and what we would be
called to do.
And of course, as the priesthood of all believers, all of us are called to this kind of ministry
of being attentive to those that we encounter that God brings before us.
But we also couldn't know the deep riches that come from being invited into the lives,
the intimacy of the lives of individuals that we served over the course of time, whether
in a church setting or in any other setting that we were in during the course of a day.
Sometimes folks will be so bold as to ask out loud, who will teach me about Jesus?
But most people are searching without voicing out loud that that's what they're looking
for.
And so we need to be asking the sorts of questions like Jesus did that will break them open to
be honest about who they are and that they can receive Jesus because their defenses are
gone and their weary from trying to pretend.
And so we run out to meet those sojourners.
We let them wrestle with their faith like our dear beloved Jacob did all through the
night when he was heading home to make amends with his brother.
When we approach God with humility, with confession, with honesty, then our questions fade away
as Jesus is enough because he is the answer, because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the
life.
Let's pray together.
We thank you, God, of miracles, for faithful Philip and the searching Ethiopian emboldened
us to pray big prayers and to listen for your quiet whisper that redirects our steps onto
right paths.
Remind us daily that you are already work within us and with those around us be our
guide, Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus who continues to be the answer to our prayers.
Amen.
Lord our God, send your Holy Spirit so that this bread and cup may be for us the body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May we and all your saints be united with Christ and remain faithful in hope and love.
Gather your whole church, O Lord, into the glory of your kingdom.
We pray this in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray, saying,
Our Father, who art in heaven, how will we die in name, die in them come, die in them
come, die in them come, on earth as it is in heaven.
We have also to say our daily life and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts and
believe us not in temptation but to deliver us for you for the highest in kingdom and
the power and the glory of our brother, amen.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and after he had given thanks, he broke it.
And he said, This is my body given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, he took the cup and he said, This is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
For whenever you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until
he comes again.
Friends, we stay together what we believe.
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come in the coming.
Christ will come in Father the Democrats.
Sir, virtual
sacred abin
There is no place for me,
We are the world of the world of the world.
words from Psalm 103 in Revelation 5.
And would you stand if you are able?
The psalmist says, praise the Lord, O my soul.
All my...
Oh, me, praise His holy name.
Praise the Lord, O my soul.
And forget that all is benefits.
Who forgives all your sins.
And inhale from all your diseases.
Who redeems your life from the pits.
And crowns you with love and compassion.
Worthy is the lamb who was slain.
To receive our and God and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and grace.
Go deep.
Go tall, sprint!
Go deep.
Climb Him just up for allangle and insight
We are now free, free, And the world of the free and the home of the brave.
They love thee, glory, and glory.
Thank you!
Peace be upon you, glory, and glory!
And the home of the brave, glory, glory.
And now receive a word of God's blessing.
And now unto Him who was able to accomplish exceedingly, abundantly, far more than we can
ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus now and forevermore.
Amen.