2017 Jan 29 Youth Sunday
Today was Youth Sunday and I delivered the sermon!
Youth Sunday 29th January 2017. Theme: Jesus is Life. Sermon by Manuel Sieunarine.
Hymns: The Book of Praise 2002 - Opening hymn #433 “All creatures of our God and King”; 2nd hymn #441 “Can a little child like me”; offertory hymn #344 “The wise may bring their learning”; scripture readings hymn #505 “O Christ, the Word, incarnate”; closing hymn #358 “There is a redeemer”
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Psalm 51:10-17 New International Version (NIV)
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
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John 14:1-7 New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
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Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to You, O Christ, our Strength and our Redeemer, amen. The New Testament reading takes place just after the Last Supper. It is Passover. The disciples are greatly troubled: Judas just betrayed them, and their leader, their teacher and their friend has told them that he is about to die. Understandably, the remaining disciples are having a hard time absorbing all this.
I relate strongly to Thomas who craved sufficient knowledge to guide him in the present crisis. In my personal quest for knowledge, I have consumed a great deal of literature that offers a message of hope; stories of heroes, stories of healers, stories of adventurers, of kings and gods who defeat evil so that honour and justice will triumph. In front of my computer and in front of my books, I have spent my entire life eating up these stories that tell me that good will win and that evil will lose. Unfortunately, fiction is no match for reality. Though I have read and even written stories of hope, the harsh reality is that the world is lost to sin. Despite this sobering thought, I found hope: not in a story, but in a person.
Thomas did not receive some mysterious knowledge to help him come to terms with the looming crisis of the crucifixion. Jesus did not offer Thomas a pamphlet, or a self-help book, or a five-step method for curing his worries. Instead, Jesus offered Himself. He told Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What a statement! What man, woman or child in the history of the world could say such a thing? Who would dare equate themselves with God almighty? No prophet ever did. We must either accept what Jesus said or reject Him. There is no in-between. Either we believe Jesus is God or He is not. As Christians, we believe that He is. Remember, the disciples rejected Jesus at first. They all ran away from Him when the Roman soldiers came to arrest Him. They did not believe Him until He returned to them as the resurrected Christ. As Jesus said, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
Returning to the New Testament reading, Jesus offered Himself as the way to Heaven; God’s kingdom. If Jesus is the Way, that means we cannot get to Heaven through religion. You must understand that religion is just a system of faith and worship. Religion is a tradition of laws. Neither tradition nor the Law can save us. Only the person of Jesus is the Way, and we must believe in Him, not in religion, not in the Law. Our God is alive. Our God is not a book. Our God is not a story. He is a living person who wants to have a family relationship with us, His children.
Jesus did not stop at the Way. He also said that He is the Truth. This is a radical statement because it completely changes everything humanity understands about the nature of God. Before, it was widely accepted that God was spirit only. However, Jesus was a living human being, made of flesh and muscle and bone like everyone else. By declaring that He is the Truth, Jesus says that He has united the nature of God to the nature of humanity! That is the truth. He is the bridge between God and humankind.
A couple hundred years ago, humanity believed that the Earth was flat and that the Sun was a small glowing ball that orbits the Earth. Today, with all our tools of science and philosophy, we have barely begun to understand the tiny corner of the vast universe we live in. As a species, what will we know in a hundred years? In a thousand? Yet we have one person, who lived two thousand years ago, claiming that He is the truth, and none other. Today we know so very little about the nature of this physical reality, yet so long ago there was someone claiming that He fully represents God’s spiritual kingdom… a kingdom that is not of this world. As a modern critical thinker, there is no way I could accept this, unless that extraordinary person was alive to verify His claims… and He is alive, for He also said that He is the Life.
In the crucifixion, death swallowed up Jesus and overshadowed the remaining eleven disciples. They spent the next three days in misery and defeat, huddled together in a small house, hiding from the authorities. Then the resurrected Christ stood among them, and said the same thing that He had told them after the Last Supper: do not be afraid; do not worry. I imagine that the disciples rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. They would have laughed, cried, and even danced upon realising that everything Jesus had told them was true. He is the Life: not just physical life in this world, but also spiritual life in the kingdom not of this world. He embodies both physical and spiritual forms of life, and His life is so powerful that it swallowed up death. He is the light of life, and because He is a human being who defeated death, then we too can live if we believe in Him.
The Old Testament reading is radical because it rejects the traditions and laws of religion. Before Christ came, the nation of Israel sacrificed animals to obtain forgiveness of sins. However, this reading says that animal sacrifices and other burnt offerings do not satisfy God. Instead, the psalmist says, “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” This psalm rejected the old ways in favour of a personal relationship with God. This is, again, radical because before Christ came, only the priests and prophets could talk directly to God. The average person could not claim a special friendship with God. Thankfully, Christ fulfilled the Law when He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
The words of the psalmist ring true today. Jesus needs us to admit our sin before coming to Him for forgiveness. We cannot stand before Him with arrogance and pride, because He knows our hearts. He is still a human, after all; He understands humanity better than we know ourselves, and He knows God the Father because He and the Father are one. They are the same person. Jesus understands the human realm and the heavenly realm perfectly; He is the bridge between them, and if we wish to cross that bridge, then we must believe in Him. Nobody can cross a bridge unless it extends fully across both sides. If it stopped halfway, we would fall. Before crossing a bridge, you have to believe in the bridge. You have to trust that this bridge will see you all the way across. Jesus is not just a man, and Jesus is not just God. Jesus is fully human and fully God. He is the master of both physical and spiritual realms, of this world and the next, and He can see us all the way across.
Let us bring our broken and contrite hearts to God, and He will receive us. He will soothe our sorrows, heal our wounds and drive away our fears because His life is powerful enough to swallow up death. When we are whole again, with the life of Christ beating within us, we are called to service. Receiving love prompts us to give love in return. As God’s people, we naturally move towards those who are in pain, or lost, or lonely. We do not merely offer healing, or guidance, or companionship. Physical comforts are never enough. We offer the life of Christ Himself; we pour Him into the world, and we discover that His grace is sufficient for the whole world. As God’s people, we offer the world nothing less than the person of Jesus. He lives in us, and so when we help others, the Holy Spirit helps them, too.
The great mystery of service is that we, as God’s people, are not the first ones to arrive on the scene. We reach out to discover that Christ is already there, before we even knew something was wrong. This is because, as the Life, Jesus lives with all people everywhere: saints and sinners alike, believers and non-believers. We do not simply bring Christ to the world; we encounter Christ in the world. This is a source of great comfort, because we learn that everything that happens in the world first happens to Christ. Everything that happens in life passes through Him first, because He is Life. Every sorrow, every joy, every pain, every worry in the world first passes through Him before it hits us. This is why He understands. He feels it before we do. He hurts with us, He weeps with us, and He laughs with us. We can rely on Him.
So do not be troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit will help you repent of your sins by guiding you to Him. He is willing to forgive you. When His life becomes part of your own, you will move out into the world to find Him already there. You will encounter the risen Christ with the people of the world. You will see Him everywhere, and you will pour out His healing grace upon His broken people. Through Him you will save your own life, and you will save the lives of others. In the next world, we shall truly dwell in God’s kingdom, where we will meet Him face to face along with everyone else who went before us. Amen. Let us pray. Come, my way, my truth, my life: such a way as gives us breath; such a truth as ends all strife; such a life as killeth death. Amen.
Youth Sunday 29th January 2017. Theme: Jesus is Life. Sermon by Manuel Sieunarine.
Hymns: The Book of Praise 2002 - Opening hymn #433 “All creatures of our God and King”; 2nd hymn #441 “Can a little child like me”; offertory hymn #344 “The wise may bring their learning”; scripture readings hymn #505 “O Christ, the Word, incarnate”; closing hymn #358 “There is a redeemer”
--------------------------------------------------
Psalm 51:10-17 New International Version (NIV)
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
--------------------------------------------------
John 14:1-7 New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Comforts His Disciples
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
--------------------------------------------------
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to You, O Christ, our Strength and our Redeemer, amen. The New Testament reading takes place just after the Last Supper. It is Passover. The disciples are greatly troubled: Judas just betrayed them, and their leader, their teacher and their friend has told them that he is about to die. Understandably, the remaining disciples are having a hard time absorbing all this.
I relate strongly to Thomas who craved sufficient knowledge to guide him in the present crisis. In my personal quest for knowledge, I have consumed a great deal of literature that offers a message of hope; stories of heroes, stories of healers, stories of adventurers, of kings and gods who defeat evil so that honour and justice will triumph. In front of my computer and in front of my books, I have spent my entire life eating up these stories that tell me that good will win and that evil will lose. Unfortunately, fiction is no match for reality. Though I have read and even written stories of hope, the harsh reality is that the world is lost to sin. Despite this sobering thought, I found hope: not in a story, but in a person.
Thomas did not receive some mysterious knowledge to help him come to terms with the looming crisis of the crucifixion. Jesus did not offer Thomas a pamphlet, or a self-help book, or a five-step method for curing his worries. Instead, Jesus offered Himself. He told Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What a statement! What man, woman or child in the history of the world could say such a thing? Who would dare equate themselves with God almighty? No prophet ever did. We must either accept what Jesus said or reject Him. There is no in-between. Either we believe Jesus is God or He is not. As Christians, we believe that He is. Remember, the disciples rejected Jesus at first. They all ran away from Him when the Roman soldiers came to arrest Him. They did not believe Him until He returned to them as the resurrected Christ. As Jesus said, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
Returning to the New Testament reading, Jesus offered Himself as the way to Heaven; God’s kingdom. If Jesus is the Way, that means we cannot get to Heaven through religion. You must understand that religion is just a system of faith and worship. Religion is a tradition of laws. Neither tradition nor the Law can save us. Only the person of Jesus is the Way, and we must believe in Him, not in religion, not in the Law. Our God is alive. Our God is not a book. Our God is not a story. He is a living person who wants to have a family relationship with us, His children.
Jesus did not stop at the Way. He also said that He is the Truth. This is a radical statement because it completely changes everything humanity understands about the nature of God. Before, it was widely accepted that God was spirit only. However, Jesus was a living human being, made of flesh and muscle and bone like everyone else. By declaring that He is the Truth, Jesus says that He has united the nature of God to the nature of humanity! That is the truth. He is the bridge between God and humankind.
A couple hundred years ago, humanity believed that the Earth was flat and that the Sun was a small glowing ball that orbits the Earth. Today, with all our tools of science and philosophy, we have barely begun to understand the tiny corner of the vast universe we live in. As a species, what will we know in a hundred years? In a thousand? Yet we have one person, who lived two thousand years ago, claiming that He is the truth, and none other. Today we know so very little about the nature of this physical reality, yet so long ago there was someone claiming that He fully represents God’s spiritual kingdom… a kingdom that is not of this world. As a modern critical thinker, there is no way I could accept this, unless that extraordinary person was alive to verify His claims… and He is alive, for He also said that He is the Life.
In the crucifixion, death swallowed up Jesus and overshadowed the remaining eleven disciples. They spent the next three days in misery and defeat, huddled together in a small house, hiding from the authorities. Then the resurrected Christ stood among them, and said the same thing that He had told them after the Last Supper: do not be afraid; do not worry. I imagine that the disciples rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. They would have laughed, cried, and even danced upon realising that everything Jesus had told them was true. He is the Life: not just physical life in this world, but also spiritual life in the kingdom not of this world. He embodies both physical and spiritual forms of life, and His life is so powerful that it swallowed up death. He is the light of life, and because He is a human being who defeated death, then we too can live if we believe in Him.
The Old Testament reading is radical because it rejects the traditions and laws of religion. Before Christ came, the nation of Israel sacrificed animals to obtain forgiveness of sins. However, this reading says that animal sacrifices and other burnt offerings do not satisfy God. Instead, the psalmist says, “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” This psalm rejected the old ways in favour of a personal relationship with God. This is, again, radical because before Christ came, only the priests and prophets could talk directly to God. The average person could not claim a special friendship with God. Thankfully, Christ fulfilled the Law when He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
The words of the psalmist ring true today. Jesus needs us to admit our sin before coming to Him for forgiveness. We cannot stand before Him with arrogance and pride, because He knows our hearts. He is still a human, after all; He understands humanity better than we know ourselves, and He knows God the Father because He and the Father are one. They are the same person. Jesus understands the human realm and the heavenly realm perfectly; He is the bridge between them, and if we wish to cross that bridge, then we must believe in Him. Nobody can cross a bridge unless it extends fully across both sides. If it stopped halfway, we would fall. Before crossing a bridge, you have to believe in the bridge. You have to trust that this bridge will see you all the way across. Jesus is not just a man, and Jesus is not just God. Jesus is fully human and fully God. He is the master of both physical and spiritual realms, of this world and the next, and He can see us all the way across.
Let us bring our broken and contrite hearts to God, and He will receive us. He will soothe our sorrows, heal our wounds and drive away our fears because His life is powerful enough to swallow up death. When we are whole again, with the life of Christ beating within us, we are called to service. Receiving love prompts us to give love in return. As God’s people, we naturally move towards those who are in pain, or lost, or lonely. We do not merely offer healing, or guidance, or companionship. Physical comforts are never enough. We offer the life of Christ Himself; we pour Him into the world, and we discover that His grace is sufficient for the whole world. As God’s people, we offer the world nothing less than the person of Jesus. He lives in us, and so when we help others, the Holy Spirit helps them, too.
The great mystery of service is that we, as God’s people, are not the first ones to arrive on the scene. We reach out to discover that Christ is already there, before we even knew something was wrong. This is because, as the Life, Jesus lives with all people everywhere: saints and sinners alike, believers and non-believers. We do not simply bring Christ to the world; we encounter Christ in the world. This is a source of great comfort, because we learn that everything that happens in the world first happens to Christ. Everything that happens in life passes through Him first, because He is Life. Every sorrow, every joy, every pain, every worry in the world first passes through Him before it hits us. This is why He understands. He feels it before we do. He hurts with us, He weeps with us, and He laughs with us. We can rely on Him.
So do not be troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit will help you repent of your sins by guiding you to Him. He is willing to forgive you. When His life becomes part of your own, you will move out into the world to find Him already there. You will encounter the risen Christ with the people of the world. You will see Him everywhere, and you will pour out His healing grace upon His broken people. Through Him you will save your own life, and you will save the lives of others. In the next world, we shall truly dwell in God’s kingdom, where we will meet Him face to face along with everyone else who went before us. Amen. Let us pray. Come, my way, my truth, my life: such a way as gives us breath; such a truth as ends all strife; such a life as killeth death. Amen.