Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this Holy Advent season. We will meet for our mid-week gathering for fellowship, Bible Study and choir practice this evening starting at 6 PM. We spent the yesterday in New York City. It was a glorious day. Indeed, it's Christmas time in the city. People from all around the world come to New York City during Christmas. I met a man from Germany in front of Rockefeller Center. You can see people from everywhere all dressed up, looking jubilant. The Salvation Army bands were playing everywhere, dancing and making a joyful noise.
Harry Emerson Fosdick was born in Buffalo, New York. During his lifetime he became pastor of the world famous Riverside Church. in New York city. Years ago, someone came up to Dr. Fosdick to inform him that he didn't know how anyone could live in a place like New York, with all those temptations around! All those things that can pull a person down! All those enticements that could lure a young person into depravity and sin! Fosdick agreed. New York City was full of temptations. It was filled with things that tugged at a person's heart, but Dr. Fosdick also said that he was glad to live there, since, just as there were many temptations of evil, so there were multitudes of temptations to glory. There was the Metropolitan Opera, where a person could be held in the sway of great music. There were the art galleries where you could lose yourself in wonder. There were colleges and universities where temptations to learning soared. There were libraries where the wisdom of the world beckoned.
This road at the edge of eternity, this highway parallel to heaven, is a scary road to travel. It would be easier to try live a "safer" existence, to go back inland where you are not tempted to jump over the cliff. Yet then you would miss the other temptations as will -- the temptation to know life in the fullness that God intended for it; the temptation to soar on wings of love and of mercy, of grace, of beauty, and of song. The Scriptures speak of heaven in this way because the best of what we experience now is only the beginning of what life will be like when Jesus returns.
Charles Williams, one of the Inklings with C. S. Lewis at Oxford, wrote a small volume called Outline of Romantic Theology. He said that for too long Christians have tried to summarize their faith in dogmas of theory and creeds of intellect and in rational statements of mental construct. Unfortunately, he said, that is not what Christianity is all about. The Christian religion is a romance. It is a love affair as deep and as true and as powerful as God Himself is.
Why did God make this world? It was because He wanted to express His love. Why did God allow us to sin? It was to give us the freedom to choose to love Him or not. Why did Jesus come? He came to woo us back to love, and to court us into the best of life. What is heaven? Heaven is love made complete. This is the "outline of romantic theology" in a nutshell.
When Paul talked about Jesus coming again, He was really calling us to live life here to the full, to run the road at the edge of eternity, keeping the panorama of heaven before us, and allowing it to beckon us on toward the place where the road turns again.
It is not in craziness or some kind of delusion that we celebrate advent. Advent affirms that the best of life here is what Jesus brought with Him that day when He stepped over the cliff at Bethlehem, and better that things are coming still, as we travel the road next to eternity. We stand and walk on the brink of eternity, where the road runs parallel with heaven. It is where Jesus steps into our lives and suddenly we wake to the glories of His love.
In Christ of Christmas,
Brown
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Christmas banquet
Home Made cooking, "best in the Country". donation $7.00
Serving at 12 noon
At Wesley United Methodist Church.
1000 Day Hollow Road, Endicott, NY 13760
Come... Share... Rejoice
For Information: 607-748-6329
Saturday , December 10 12, 2011
Praise and Worship Service
First United Methodist Church , Endicott
Sponsored by Union Center UMC
6 PM Gathering - Coffee - Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship
Music: Jane Hettinger
Speaker: Dave Hettinger
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