To Stand in the Presence of God
Good morning
Let
us pray, God may the meditations of my heart and the words of my mouth be
pleasing in your sight, no, may they be your words, to share with the world.
Amen.
In addition to the Psalter, and the passage
from John and the reading from Acts, here now is a reading from the book of
Revelation, chapter 21, verses 10, and 22 to 27 continuing to Revelations Chapter
22, verses 1 to 6, and I will be reading from the Common English Bible this
morning.
Listen for the good news from God to you and
me, the people of God. . .
Oh to
have been on that hillside, having walked with the Lord. To have been with him,
risen, knowing we are restored. To believe because we had seen, to have walked with
Jesus.
Knowing
the cross, but also knowing Easter. To stand in the presence of God, to feel Christ
with us. To go into the wilderness, even as he ascended. To hear his final words,
his commission, his victory. To watch as he ascended, to go into the world.
If we
cannot imagine the Ascension, if we cannot believe Easter, if we do not live Pentecost,
all the days of our lives, if we don’t follow the Great Commission, if we don’t
say with Joshua, “as for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord”, what is the point, why do we claim Jesus, if we do
not love, if we do not love as he did, how can we say we are his disciples.
We are
commissioned, we are commanded by our risen Lord, through the power of resurrection; we are called to
share the message, to be light in this world.
To stand
in the presence of God, to walk yoked to Jesus, we are called to feel his sweat,
to feel the Spirit in us.
We are
not to ask what would Jesus do, but to sense his Spirit guiding, leading us in this
life, listening for his message, for the call on our lives.
Today
is Ascension Sunday, the sixth Sunday of Easter, the day when our Risen Lord finally
got to complete his journey on earth and go home, to rise to heaven to be reunited
with God in a more personal way than when he walked the earth. Finally, it was truly
finished, as he had said on the cross.
All that
he had accomplished, for us meaningless unless we center ourselves, our very lives,
on the cross of Jesus, on the Resurrection, the Great Commission, the Ascension,
and the power of Pentecost.
Where
do we ground ourselves? Do we live because of the power of the cross of Jesus?
As Pastor
Ruth has been challenging us during Eastertide, especially as she challenged us last week, when she asked us “How will we choose
to live our lives?”
It is
a question for each of our lives and it is a question for our family as this church,
part of the body of Christ here and around the world.
The scriptures
today and this week tell us
In Psalm 67, we here the prayer of the
people. It begins with the prayer fulfilled in rest of the scripture for today.
To see God face to face, to feel His glow
upon us.
That
the whole world would fear, or honor God, that we would all become the select,
that we would all be as Moses, whose face shone when he had come into the
presence of God. To be illumined by the light within. Walking with the Creator,
the living God.
In John 14 we hear Christ’s promise, to
send us the Spirit of God, to fall down upon us, just as we will celebrate in
two weeks on Pentecost, when Pastor Ruth is back preaching.
Christ
calls us to show ourselves as his children, to truly love God, to obey Christ’s
teachings, to keep his word; to listen to the Advocate, the Companion, the Friend,
the Holy Spirit; who will come down.
This
is the promise, the answer of the Messiah, that we long for the hope of the
people, that was raised in the prayer in the Psalm.
In
the Acts 16 scripture we see the
faithful missionary Paul, taking the word to the ends of the earth, to the far
off country, to the Gentiles, to the riverside in Phillipi, to share the
message with the people there, with Lydia, who hears the message and longs to
be baptized, she and her whole family.
Then,
reborn, she offers comfort to Paul and to Luke, to the missionaries, letting
them stay with her family, in her home. This is how the message was spread, by
faith and an openness to the calling of God, to the Spirit’s leading, out into
the world. God dwelling with us, in the Spirit within
Revelations 21, as it did in
the reading last week, sets the stage, that glorious future, when the old is
cast away and the New Jerusalem descends, and we can live with God forever. The
glorious image of the new heaven, where God will walk with us.
But,
more than that, finally in Revelations
22 we are brought to conclusion, brings it all home, completing the circle
of the prayer of Psalm 67, when the new heaven comes and we enter into God’s
glory.
Revelations
22:4-5 reads:
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
5 Night will be no more. They won’t need the light of a lamp or the light of the
sun, for the Lord God will shine on them, and they will rule forever and
always.
The prayer is fulfilled and there is no need for the Temple, just
as in Acts, there is no synagogue.
We will dwell with God, our lives will shine in God’s presence. We
will shine like Moses, bathed truly in the light of God! The whole city will be
aglow in the light of the Creator and the light of the Lamb, restoring our
union, broken since the Fall.
The Spirit is the bridge, the perfector of our faith since the Ascension,
the rising, Christ returning to God. The Spirit is the Advocate, the Companion,
the Friend, teaching us, leading, until Christ’s return.
Imagine - Shining with God’s glory
no sun, no moon, no sea
God will illumine the nations
the light of God alive
we are like Moses
Shining with your Glory
our hope in that day
when God comes from heaven
and we walk in the way
What a
glorious future, what a promise that is that we can hold onto?
Do you
believe it? Do you trust the word of God? Do you shine that light that you have
been given? Does the Spirit burn within you? Does your face shine like Moses?
Tap into
that well, into the power of the cross of Jesus, the power of resurrection, the
power of Pentecost, the promise of tomorrow; look he is coming, to bring us new
life, to dwell with us, to prepare us for that day, when Jerusalem will descend
and we live in the light of God!
Amen.
May 1,
2013
Worship
Theme: “Ascension Sunday:
The Great
Things God’s Love Does”
John 14:23-29
Acts 16:9-15
Revelations
21:10, 22:1-5
Call to
Worship
Unison
Prayer (Psalter Psalm 67, UMH 791)
Prayer
of Dedication
Message
for Children
and sermon
“To Stand in the Presence of God”
by Raymond
A. Foss
substituting
for Pastor Ruth Foss
A Handmaiden of the Lord
Suncook United Methodist Church
Suncook, NH
May 5, 2013
Ascension
Sunday
All of my poems are copyrighted by Raymond A. Foss,
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2013. All rights reserved. Contact me at Ray Foss for usage.
See all 24,060+ of my poems at www.raymondafoss.blogspot.com Poetry Where You
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