Sermons in
Glass: 8. Disciples
The Church of the Wayfarer
Norm Mowery, Pastor
October 27, 2013
Mark 14:22-26; Jeremiah 18:1-10; Daniel 6:16-23
Over ten years ago I got a call from the
Bishop’s office asking if I would be willing to move to Nevada and serve as the
pastor of a church near Reno.
I thought about it for a little while
and remembered how much I loved the Sierra Nevada Mountains so I said, “Sure.”
When Linda came home I told her about
my decision and she was not so sure because moving out of state as a teacher
she would have to start all over and get a much lower salary.
So, I called the Bishop back and said,
“Linda is not so sure about Nevada!”
The Bishop responded, “I’ll think
about it.”
A week later the Bishop’s office
called and asked, “What about going to the Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel?”
I said, “I better ask Linda!”
So I asked Linda, “How would you like
for me to serve a church in Carmel?”
Linda said, “Yes!!!”
I called the Bishop back and said,
“Linda said, ‘Yes.’”
It was at that point that God, the
Bishop, and Linda all said, “Praise the Lord!”
A few months later we came to meet
with the Staff Parish Relations Committee. Barbara Hammond was outside waiting
for us as we pulled up. We got out of the car and introduced ourselves as the
Mowery’s.
Barbara looked at both of us and
asked, “So, which one of you is going to be my new pastor?”
Linda said, “Not me!”
That
was the beginning of our journey with this church.
Our time here will be coming to an end
on July 1st of next year and I can’t wait to see what God is going
to do in us and this church during the next months.
I want the next eight months to be
special as we grow together.
This morning I continue the sermon
series titled ‘Sermons in Glass.’ In this series I am telling the stories that
are found in our stained glass windows.
This morning we have four dramatic
pictures.
1.
Jesus and His Disciples join together for the Last Supper in Bethany.
2.
The Prophet Daniel, a
captive Israelite of high rank in the Persian court, is the victim of a plot by
jealous courtiers and is cast into the den of lions by King Darius and
miraculously survives through God’s protection.
Local deer adorn the upper corners of
the window.
3.
The Prophet Jeremiah
goes to the potter’s house and draws a parable of Israel represented by the
clay, being worked by the potter, God.
Jeremiah is the prophet of personal
religion.
4.
Florence Nightingale revolutionized
nursing practices in England, established a major nursing school,
and was widely acclaimed
throughout the world.
She is pictured, lamp in hand, working
at the Hospital in Crimea in 1854.
Humming birds decorate the upper
corners of the window.
Let’s go back up to the top window.
Jesus
and His Disciples (Mark 14:22-26)
The Institution of the Lord’s Supper
While they were eating, he took a loaf of
bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take;
this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he
gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.
He said to them, “This is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many.
Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of
the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of
God.”
Peter’s Denial Foretold
When they had sung the hymn, they went
out to the Mount of Olives.
Covenant
is the key word here.
The new covenant was a relationship
between people and God which was not dependent on law but on love. In other
words Jesus says, “I am doing what I am
doing to show you how much God loves you.”
Because of what Jesus did they were
forever within the love of God. That is the essence of what the Sacrament says
to us.
To me this picture is the church in
action. Picture the setting in your mind.
Think
about the various personalities who were present.
There was volatile Peter with his
temper.
There is peaceful elderly James.
There is Judas. Need I say more?
This is like the church today.
We are all at the table.
We are all different.
We all have good qualities
and less than perfect ones.
This was the Passover meal.
There were four cups of wine.
There was bread.
There was the reading from
the Psalms,
hand washing,
prayers and plenty of food.
The
Prophet Daniel
(Daniel 6:16-23)
Then
the king gave the command, and Daniel was brought and thrown into the den of
lions. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you faithfully serve,
deliver you!”
A stone was brought and laid on the
mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the
signet of his lords, so that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel.
Then the king went to his palace and
spent the night fasting; no food was brought to him, and sleep fled from him.
Daniel Saved from the Lions
Then, at break of day, the king got up
and hurried to the den of lions.
When he came near the den where Daniel
was, he cried out anxiously to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God,
has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the
lions?”
Daniel then said to the king, “O king,
live forever!
My God sent his angel and shut the
lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless
before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.”
Then the king was exceedingly glad and
commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den.
So Daniel was taken up out of the den,
and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.
Let’s back up.
Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylonia.
He attacked Jerusalem and took the finest young men as slaves. Among them were:
Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego.
Nebuchadnezzar ordered them to bow
down and worship and image of gold ninety feet high and nine feet wide.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
refused.
So he threw them in a fiery furnace.
An angel joined them.
They were not hurt.
A while later when Darius was King,
Daniel, who was also a slave, was called in to interpret a dream. In the dream
a hand was writing on the wall. The king did not like Daniel’s
interpretation.
Darius (at the instigation of his
other officials) had made a decree that no one was to offer prayer to any god
or man except him for a period of thirty days. Daniel
continued to pray
to the living God as was his habit, knowing that praying would have him killed.
For this action, Darius had him
arrested and thrown into a lions' den. However,
he was unharmed, and after he was released the following morning, the people
who had cajoled the king into making the decree (for the sole purpose of
getting at Daniel) were thrown into the lions' den themselves.
The
Prophet Jeremiah
(Jeremiah
18:1-10)
The Potter and the Clay
The word that came to Jeremiah from
the LORD:
“Come, go down to the potter’s house,
and there I will let you hear my words.”
So I went down to the potter’s house,
and there he was working at his wheel. The
vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked
it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do with you, O house of
Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the
potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
At one moment I may declare concerning
a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
but if that nation, concerning which I
have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that
I intended to bring on it.
And
at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will
build and plant it,
but if it does evil in my sight, not
listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had
intended to do to it.
Jeremiah was also called the
"Weeping prophet.” He was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
Jeremiah is traditionally credited
with authoring the Book of Jeremiah, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and the Book of Lamentations, with the
assistance of his scribe and disciple.
Judaism considers the Book of Jeremiah part of its canon, and regards
Jeremiah as the second of the Major Prophets.
Jeremiah speaks his mind—a most
disturbed and distressed mind. He complains to God about the job allotted to
him.
It has been interpreted that Jeremiah
“spiritualized and individualized religion and insisted upon the primacy of the individual’s
relationship with God.” His message is about a God of love.
About a year after King Josiah of Judah had
turned the nation toward repentance from the widespread idolatrous practices of
his father and grandfather, Jeremiah’s sole purpose was to reveal the sins of
the people and explain the reason for the impending disaster (destruction by
the Babylonian army and captivity).
“And when your people say, 'Why has
the Lord our God done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, 'As you
have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve
foreigners in a land that is not yours.'"
God’s personal message to Jeremiah, “Attack you they will, overcome you they
can’t” was fulfilled many times in the Biblical narrative. Jeremiah was
attacked by his own brothers,
beaten
and put into the stocks by a priest and false prophet,
imprisoned
by the king,
threatened
with death,
and
opposed by a false prophet.
When Nebuchadnezzar seized
Jerusalem in 586 BC, he ordered that Jeremiah be freed from prison and
treated well.
Florence
Nightingale
Florence Nightingale lived from 1820
to 1910.
She came to prominence while serving
as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she
tended to wounded soldiers.
She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds
at night.
Commentators have asserted
Nightingale's achievements in the Crimean War had been exaggerated by the media
at the time, to satisfy the public's need for a hero, but her later
achievements remain widely accepted.
In 1860, Nightingale laid the
foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London. It
was the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College
London.
The Nightingale Pledge taken by new
nurses was named in her honor, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her
birthday. Her social reforms include
improving healthcare for all sections of British society
helping to abolish laws regulating
prostitution that were overly harsh to women,
and expanding the acceptable forms of female
participation in the workforce.
Nightingale was a prodigious and
versatile writer.
Much of her writing, including her
extensive work on religion and mysticism, has only been published posthumously.
This morning we have four windows—and
four stories.
We, the disciples of Jesus and
Jeremiah and Daniel are like Florence Nightengale—the Lady with the Lamp.
May we make rounds at night to bring
light to the world around us?
Prayer
As we come to you in prayer, O God,
help us to focus our hearts and our minds on you.
Time marches on and we have to wonder:
do we?
Or are we content to revel in past
accomplishments and surrender to complacency?
Do past resentments drain us of our energy
and deprive us of the joys of the present?
In these moments of prayer, listening
God, instill in us a deep appreciation of time: a most precious natural
resource.
Each time we set our clocks and
replace batteries in our watches, let us be reminded of the gift of time that
is ours ... and help us to use it wisely.
Let us use our time to share our
riches with others: the money we earn and the wealth of family and friends.
Help us to breathe in all that is ours: the
beauty that surrounds us and the words of love given to us when we least expect
them.
We offer our prayers of thanksgiving
for all we have been given, offered in the name of the one whose time on earth
was lived so that we might know what a life of love looks like.
We pray in the name of the one who
came that we might have life eternal, Jesus the Christ whose prayer we pray
together saying…...
