Sermon Mar 22, 2020
First online sermon in response to COVID-19 and the California "Stay at Home" order.
https://youtu.be/njnBnhkGQwA
Sermon, March 22, 2020 – Chris Coon, Park Boulevard Presbyterian Church
Friends, we find ourselves in a very difficult time. I won’t even try to summarize what is happening with the coronavirus, both because most of you are keeping up with the news and because anything I say will be out of date by the time that you watch or read this. But suffice it to say that probably none of us expected that we would be facing a crisis of these proportions during our lifetimes. So we are in a new and very challenging season of life.
If you were at our worship service last Sunday, some of this may sound familiar to you, but it’s very important that we acknowledge and address our fear and uncertainty at this moment of time. First of all, and most obviously, we are afraid of this disease – we are afraid of getting it, we are afraid of what it will do to us, and we are afraid of dying. For some of us, this is a much bigger threat than it is for others. Some of us may not be fearing for ourselves because we are not at high-risk, but we are very worried about our loved ones. And it’s very important right now that we don’t give false hope by simply saying that everything is going to be alright, that this too shall pass. It looks like we are in for a very hard time, and it’s natural to be afraid.
A second thing that we may by fearing is how this is going to affect our jobs, our livelihoods. Already many people have had their work reduced, places of work shut down, and the future doesn’t look good for our national economy. There is some hope for government assistance, but much uncertainty remains. Some of us just don’t know how we’re going to pay the bills in the days and weeks ahead, and this could go on for a long time.
And then there are the questions of what the future will look like: how long will this go on? How long will be sheltering in place? How will life be different – will we ever get back to any semblance of what we consider to be normal? How will the larger world be affected? Lots of questions, and lots of uncertainty, which provides plenty of room for lots of anxiety.
Times like these are when our faith is truly tested. I don’t mean that the purpose of this crisis is that God is testing us. The fact is that we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, and God has never promised us that we get a free pass, that we will not have to face the challenges that the rest of the world faces. On the contrary, we are right there in the midst of it, along with everyone else. By testing, I mean that we find out if our faith is real, is adequate. Remember that when I say faith, you can understand it as Trust. Do we actually trust in God? Not only that he is going to “get us through this” – we really don’t even know what that means! No, the question for us is this: do we trust God with our very lives? And not just our physical, material lives, but with our souls, our hearts, our eternal existence?
Matthew 6:19 says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
If you were with us for our Lenten study a couple weeks ago, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the idea of treasure. Treasure is what is most valuable to you – your money, your most prized possession, your reputation, a person – it can be anything, but it is what you prize more than anything. And Jesus points out to us that any treasures that we have in this world are so easily lost: jobs can be lost, investments can lose their value, possessions can be lost, stolen, burned, and so on; the people we treasure can drift away, reject us, or they can die; even our own health is tenuous and limited, our life is unpredictable. Loss of any treasure on earth is inevitable. This does not mean that we shouldn’t have these things, but it means that our truest treasure – what is most valuable to us – should be that which is stored up in heaven.
Now by this we don’t mean physical treasures that are on a layaway plan, the proverbial pie in the sky. The point is that heaven is God’s home, the place where God’s presence is constantly. If we treasure God, if we take the commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” seriously, then God will hold the chief place in our hearts. Our hearts and our very lives will belong to God, and nothing that God holds onto will ever be lost.
The result of this sort of treasure is that we can trust that we belong to God, and that will change the way we live right now. We can live lives of freedom, because we know that our lives belong to God, and that he loves us. So we can face very difficult, even dreadful circumstances here, but we will know that God is with us and that he has promised us eternal life. So the length of our lives here will no longer be such a big issue to us, and we do not need to grasp at what we think we need to survive. We have a bigger view and we see a bigger picture.
The words of Isaiah 43 are worth repeating:
“But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
Do not fear…I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, and you are mine. You will not be overwhelmed or consumed. For I am the Lord your God. Remember that it says 365 times in the Bible not to fear… God does not want us to fear. And we can live without fear knowing that we belong to him, and that he loves us, and that he is trustworthy. Whatever happens – whatever happens! – God is faithful, even to the point of becoming a human being and dying on the cross for us so that we could be forgiven and rise with Him to eternal life. So he is not going to abandon us now. Let our hope be placed alongside the hope of all Christians who have ever faced difficult times, declaring our hope is in the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
Let us pray: Lord God, these are difficult times, and we need you. Thank you for the blessings that we have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. As we face the prospect of loss – loss of health, loss of freedom, loss of security, loss of life – we ask that you will give us strength and courage to face what is to come. Remind us of what we have and of what is most important in our lives – your love and your redemption and your promise to be with us always. We cling to you during this time, putting our trust in you – Lord, help us to put our trust in you. Amen.
Friends, as the days go on, please know that you are in my prayers, and let us all pray for one another. We will need to figure out some new ways of being the body of Christ. We thank God for the virtual options that are before us. Please watch your email for regular updates, at this point we can say for sure that our Adult Sunday Class will be online via Zoom call at 9:30am on Sunday mornings, and we are looking to put some of our other gatherings on line in the same way. Please keep in touch and let us know of latest developments and needs and how we can be praying for each other.
Now receive this blessing – May the love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the peace of the Holy Spirit be with you all, today and forevermore, Amen.
Friends, we find ourselves in a very difficult time. I won’t even try to summarize what is happening with the coronavirus, both because most of you are keeping up with the news and because anything I say will be out of date by the time that you watch or read this. But suffice it to say that probably none of us expected that we would be facing a crisis of these proportions during our lifetimes. So we are in a new and very challenging season of life.
If you were at our worship service last Sunday, some of this may sound familiar to you, but it’s very important that we acknowledge and address our fear and uncertainty at this moment of time. First of all, and most obviously, we are afraid of this disease – we are afraid of getting it, we are afraid of what it will do to us, and we are afraid of dying. For some of us, this is a much bigger threat than it is for others. Some of us may not be fearing for ourselves because we are not at high-risk, but we are very worried about our loved ones. And it’s very important right now that we don’t give false hope by simply saying that everything is going to be alright, that this too shall pass. It looks like we are in for a very hard time, and it’s natural to be afraid.
A second thing that we may by fearing is how this is going to affect our jobs, our livelihoods. Already many people have had their work reduced, places of work shut down, and the future doesn’t look good for our national economy. There is some hope for government assistance, but much uncertainty remains. Some of us just don’t know how we’re going to pay the bills in the days and weeks ahead, and this could go on for a long time.
And then there are the questions of what the future will look like: how long will this go on? How long will be sheltering in place? How will life be different – will we ever get back to any semblance of what we consider to be normal? How will the larger world be affected? Lots of questions, and lots of uncertainty, which provides plenty of room for lots of anxiety.
Times like these are when our faith is truly tested. I don’t mean that the purpose of this crisis is that God is testing us. The fact is that we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, and God has never promised us that we get a free pass, that we will not have to face the challenges that the rest of the world faces. On the contrary, we are right there in the midst of it, along with everyone else. By testing, I mean that we find out if our faith is real, is adequate. Remember that when I say faith, you can understand it as Trust. Do we actually trust in God? Not only that he is going to “get us through this” – we really don’t even know what that means! No, the question for us is this: do we trust God with our very lives? And not just our physical, material lives, but with our souls, our hearts, our eternal existence?
Matthew 6:19 says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
If you were with us for our Lenten study a couple weeks ago, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the idea of treasure. Treasure is what is most valuable to you – your money, your most prized possession, your reputation, a person – it can be anything, but it is what you prize more than anything. And Jesus points out to us that any treasures that we have in this world are so easily lost: jobs can be lost, investments can lose their value, possessions can be lost, stolen, burned, and so on; the people we treasure can drift away, reject us, or they can die; even our own health is tenuous and limited, our life is unpredictable. Loss of any treasure on earth is inevitable. This does not mean that we shouldn’t have these things, but it means that our truest treasure – what is most valuable to us – should be that which is stored up in heaven.
Now by this we don’t mean physical treasures that are on a layaway plan, the proverbial pie in the sky. The point is that heaven is God’s home, the place where God’s presence is constantly. If we treasure God, if we take the commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” seriously, then God will hold the chief place in our hearts. Our hearts and our very lives will belong to God, and nothing that God holds onto will ever be lost.
The result of this sort of treasure is that we can trust that we belong to God, and that will change the way we live right now. We can live lives of freedom, because we know that our lives belong to God, and that he loves us. So we can face very difficult, even dreadful circumstances here, but we will know that God is with us and that he has promised us eternal life. So the length of our lives here will no longer be such a big issue to us, and we do not need to grasp at what we think we need to survive. We have a bigger view and we see a bigger picture.
The words of Isaiah 43 are worth repeating:
“But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
Do not fear…I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, and you are mine. You will not be overwhelmed or consumed. For I am the Lord your God. Remember that it says 365 times in the Bible not to fear… God does not want us to fear. And we can live without fear knowing that we belong to him, and that he loves us, and that he is trustworthy. Whatever happens – whatever happens! – God is faithful, even to the point of becoming a human being and dying on the cross for us so that we could be forgiven and rise with Him to eternal life. So he is not going to abandon us now. Let our hope be placed alongside the hope of all Christians who have ever faced difficult times, declaring our hope is in the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
Let us pray: Lord God, these are difficult times, and we need you. Thank you for the blessings that we have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. As we face the prospect of loss – loss of health, loss of freedom, loss of security, loss of life – we ask that you will give us strength and courage to face what is to come. Remind us of what we have and of what is most important in our lives – your love and your redemption and your promise to be with us always. We cling to you during this time, putting our trust in you – Lord, help us to put our trust in you. Amen.
Friends, as the days go on, please know that you are in my prayers, and let us all pray for one another. We will need to figure out some new ways of being the body of Christ. We thank God for the virtual options that are before us. Please watch your email for regular updates, at this point we can say for sure that our Adult Sunday Class will be online via Zoom call at 9:30am on Sunday mornings, and we are looking to put some of our other gatherings on line in the same way. Please keep in touch and let us know of latest developments and needs and how we can be praying for each other.
Now receive this blessing – May the love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the peace of the Holy Spirit be with you all, today and forevermore, Amen.