Brown's Daily Word 12-23-11

Merry Christmas,

    Here we are on the eve of Christmas Eve.  We are all a-scurry amid the last minute preparations for our celebration of the great day.  We are greatly anticipating the arrival of Sunita and Andy tonight, as they make the trek from Washington, DC to join us in the fun, frolic, and festivities.  Jess and Tom are planning to be here by Christmas morning;Janice, Jeremy, and the children plan to arrive on Monday.  What a delightful time of year!  As traveling for Christmas is on Micah's mind right now, she has been making her telephone calls, keeping us abreast of every happening in their family.

    May the Lord provoke us and anoint us to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus with great joy and unparalleled gladness.  Joy to the world the Lord is come.  Those who live in the area join us for our weekly television out reach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable  channel 4.

   One of the programs we watch on TV is "Extreme Makeover- Home Edition". We have been undergoing our own extreme makeover of the parsonage basement over the past few weeks.  The transformation is wonderful, and so very much appreciated.

    The Bible is primarily the story of God's extreme makeover.  He created you and me in His own image.  We were not made to be robots.  He gave us the capacity to choose whether to live the way He created us to live or to do our own thing.  The Bible says the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, chose to disobey God.  In the process, they became alienated from Him.  Ever since the days of Adam, we all have chosen to do the same thing.  Our disobedience and rebellion have established a chasm between us and God.  The Bible says in the book of Romans, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."  The Bible continues to say, "The wages of sin is death."  That's the bad news, but the Good News is that God has done something about it.  God has taken the initiative.  The Creator God has come from the outside, breaking into human history in the form of "the second Adam," His Son, Jesus Christ.  That baby at Bethlehem grew up experiencing everything you and I experience, yet without sin.  The Bible says that He himself bore your and my sins on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. 

  This is the Extreme Make over of NEW CREATION.  The Apostle Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).  This is the extreme makeover of SPIRITUAL REBIRTH.  The coming of Jesus Christ into the world makes possible this extreme makeover!

    Frederick Buechner, in his book titled,  "Listening to Your Life", wrote:

"When the child was born, the whole course of human history was changed.  That is a truth that is as unassailable as any truth.  Art, music, literature, western culture itself, with all its institutions and western man's whole understanding of himself and his world.  It is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened, whenever, wherever, however it did.  And there is a truth beyond that for millions of people who have believed since.  The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life, but a new way of living it.  The truth of this incarnation should never cease to amaze us.  The mystery of the eternal, cradled in a manger, elicits awesome wonder and grateful praise."

    God, since the very time of Adam and Eve, has reached out to all humankind. The Old Testament gives record to it as the prophets foretold the coming of the Savior of the world.  All through human history, up until that night in Bethlehem, men, women and children have, in anticipation of that coming, experienced this extreme makeover.  And it has been happening ever since that night since Jesus came.

  In Christ,

   Brown

http://youtu.be/533U6unfYOw

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        4:30 PM at First United Methodist, 53 McKinley,  Endicott

         Sponsored by :  Union Center UMC

        Music:  Aric Phinney and Yancey Moore

        Preacher:  Rev Brown Naik

 

    Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        A Service of Carols, Candles, and Communion

        7:30 PM at Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple Drive

        Music:  Laureen Naik, Betty Phinney, Sarah and Emily Sabin

        Preacher:  Rev. Brown Naik

  Christmas Day Worship Services:

        Wesley UMC 9:30AM

        Union Center UMC 10:00AM.

Brown's Daily Word 12-21-11

 

Good morning,

    Praise the Lord for this last day of Autumn.  The winter season begins tomorrow.  We will gather for our Mid-Week fellowship and study this evening at 6 PM.  We are getting ready for the Christmas Eve services and for Christmas day Worship.  

    Praise the Lord for this season of giving gifts and receiving gifts.  My wife loves to give gifts to our children, grandchildren, and family members.  She plans and shops for gifts.  She is one of the early birds that flies around all the shopping place on Black Friday. 

    Our Lord Jesus, who is the inexpressible Gift from heaven, asks in Matthew 7:7-29,  "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a snake?"  Psalm  84:11 says, in the Living Bible Translation, "No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right."  God's nature is to give us good gifts.

    The Apostle Paul used for the word "gift", "charisma."  "Charisma" was a totally free and unearned gift which a soldier sometimes received.  On special occasions, for instance an emporer, on his birthday or on his accession to the throne, or the anniversary of it, handed out a free gift of money to his army.  It had not been earned; it was a present; it was simply a gift of the emperor's kindness and grace.

    In the same way, Paul said, "Our sin has earned us death.  If we got the pay we had earned it would be death.  It is death that is due to us as a right."  Then Paul went on to say, "But what we have received (from God) is a free gift, a "charisma"; we did not earn it; We did not deserve it.  What we have earned is eternal death, but out of his grace God has given us the gift of eternal life, a really indescribable gift."

    If you undertook this Christmas to give your dearest one the gift most needed, what would you select?  When thoughtfully given, a Christmas gift provides some kind of answer to two questions. On the one hand it attempts to meet the needs and the tastes of the person for whom it is intended. On the other, it reflects to some degree the appreciation and the insight of the person who gives it.  We search the stores and catalogs for the gift that is characteristic of ourselves as well as being appropriate for our friends.  An appropriate gift does two things: it reveals the affections of the person giving it and it suits the needs of the person to whom the gift is given.

    Danish theologian, Soren  Kierkegaard, told the parable of a prince who fell in love with a young maiden in his kingdom but wanted her to love him for who he was, not what he was, a prince.  At first he thought he would order her to the palace and there propose marriage, but even a prince would like to feel that the girl he marries wants to marry him for who he is.  Or perhaps, he thought, he could arrive at her door in full splendor, and with a bow, ask for her hand in marriage.  But even the prince wanted to be wanted.  Again, he thought he could masquerade as a poor peasant and try in that way to gain her interest.  After he proposed, he could pull off his "mask".  But, he thought, such a masquerade would be a phony, a fake.

    Finally he decided to give up his princely robes and move completely into her neighborhood and to be himself.  There he would take up daily work as, say a carpenter.  During his work in the day and during his time off in the evening, he would take time to get acquainted with the people around her, begin to share their interests and concerns, begin to talk their language.  He would really become one of them.  And in due time, should fortune be with him, he would make her acquaintance in a natural way and hopefully she would come to love him as he already had come to love her.  He would then ask for her hand.  This he did, and when she did come to love him, he told her who he really was.

`    This is Kierkegaard 's way of summarizing God's Christmas gift-giving decision. God wished to join our lives with His in a loving relationship and he could have done it anyway he wanted.  But he rejected a fake way and came as a real gift revealing his loving nature and at the same time meeting our deepest need.         

    Praise the Lord for  the "indescribable gift" which  is real.  "The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6: 23b).

   In Christ,

    Brown

http://youtu.be/M5AScLyy3IM

  Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        4:30 PM at First United Methodist, 53 McKinley,  Endicott

         Sponsored by :  Union Center UMC

        Music:  Aric Phinney and Yancey Moore

        Preacher:  Rev Brown Naik

 

    Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        A Service of Carols, Candles, and Communion

        7:30 PM at Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple Drive

        Music:  Laureen Naik, Betty Phinney, Sarah and Emily Sabin

        Preacher:  Rev. Brown Naik

  Christmas Day Worship Services:

        Wesley UMC 9:30AM

        Union Center UMC 10:00AM.

Brown's Daily Word 12-20-11

     Praise the Lord for the Wonder of Christmas.  In our finite minds we fail to grasp and cpmprehend the mysteries and the depths of Christmas.  We come to the event o Christmas as little children and wait on the Lord with a  sense of wonder and awe .  The Lord blessed us with a extravagant weekend. Some of us as a team attended the presentation of Handel's  Messiah.  .  It is always a treat. One of the ministry teams prepared and servesd A christmas meal in down town Endicitt at the Firs United Methodist church, Saturday noon and our church presented a living Nativity with a full cast Saturday afternoon in the city center of Endicott. followed by our Saturday Evening worship.  It was all blessing every way.  We met for worship yesterday at Wesley and Union Center followed by Christmas dinner gtherings at both churches.  Praise the Lord we have ample reassons and occasions to celebrate the grace and he gift of Jesus our Lord.  The Choirs sang at both churhes including the Chilren Choir.  We praise Jesus the heart of Christmas.

      One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Luke 1 . The Magnificat. The When we hear the words read as part of the Christmas gospel, we are captured by the poetic loveliness of the cadence. I would like to share some quotations from famous scholars about the Magnificat. E. Stanley Jones, a famous preacher amd missionary to India said that the Magnificat is “the most revolutionary document in the world.” Martin Luther,  said  that the Magnificat “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.”The Magnificate is God’s revolution. The Magnificate is the charter, the document, the constitution of God’s revolution. Magna Carta is the fundamental document on which freedom is based in English society. So also, the Magnificate is God’s charter; it is God’s Magna Carta. That document lays down the fundamental principles of the Christian revolution.

     In the Magnificate, God totally changes the order of things. God takes that which is on the bottom; and God turn everything upside down, and puts the bottom on top and the top on the bottom.  God revolutionizes the way we think, the way we act, and the way we live. Before God’s revolution, we human beings were impressed with money, power, status and education. We were impressed with beauty, bucks and brains. But God revolutionizes all of that; God totally changes all of that; God turns it upside down.  The poor are put on the top; the rich are put on the bottom. It is a revolution; God’s revolution. The Magnificate clearly tells us of God’s compassion for the economically poor; and when God’s Spirit gets inside of Christians, we too have a renewed compassion and action for the poor.  Our hearts are turned upside down.

      God tells us in the content of the Magnifiact that  He  regards or respects the poor, exalts the poor, feeds the poor, helps the poor, remembers the poor. In that same chapter in Luke, we hear the story that God chose a peasant  girl, Mary, to be the mother of Jesus.  In Christian language, before the revolution, we were impressed with the rich. After God’s revolution, we are impressed with the poor. Before God’s revolution, we are impressed with bucks and beauty.  After God’s revolution, we are impressed with paupers and poor people. Let the revolution begin in your life, and mine. This is God’s revolution in our hearts. God’s value is to respect the poor, exalt the poor, feed the poor...within our hearts and actions.

     The Magnificat is a prelude to the whole gospel, and the theme of the whole gospel is that God respects the poor, exalts the poor, cares for the poor, feeds the poor, remembers the poor, helps the poor.

    In Christ,

    Brown

http://youtu.be/MS3vpAWW2Zc

    Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        4:30 PM at First United Methodist, 53 McKinley,  Endicott

         Sponsored by :  Union Center UMC

        Music:  Aric Phinney and Yancey Moore

        Preacher:  Rev Brown Naik

 

    Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

        A Service of Carols, Candles, and Communion

        7:30 PM at Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple Drive

        Music:  Laureen Naik, Betty Phinney, Sarah and Emily Sabin

        Preacher:  Rev. Brown Naik