Brown's Daily Word 3-27-13

Praise the Lord for this Holy Week in the church calendar. I woke up early morning and gazed at the moon. It was brilliant and bright, dispelling the clouds of gloom and despair. I Kept gazing at the brilliant sky and thanked the Lord for another day in His Kingdom. I looked at clock and reflected that it was a long pause before the dawn. I spent some time reflecting on this week in the life of our Lord.

 

In Psalm 23 we see ourselves walking through darkness with the Shepherd as our guide. In C.S. Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, as Aslan makes his way to the stone table he comes to a point where he does not allow Lucy and Susan to go any further. They are not permitted to make that last leg of the journey with him. It is a path which he must walk alone, into the heart of death and darkness. It is a time of silence for Aslan, as well as for the children.

At times we experience loneliness, especially in those long hours before dawn. We so often live in silence. It was so for Jesus' disciples, as there was a dead space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We might say, "I know the rest of the story", but Peter, John and Mary did not.

On the road to calvary Jesus was resolute and focused. He was unafraid and brave. Peter insisted that he would not fail. Here Jesus informed him of his triple failure. Three times he would deny the Lord. He would strike out. Yet Jesus interceded, saying, "Peter, Satan has asked that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. And when you have returned to me strengthen your brothers" (Luke 22:31-32).

Let us fear not. Christ has prayed for us. It is amazing and heart warming that our Lord intercedes for us. He has passed through the valley of the shadow of death for us so that we need not fear any evil. Our salvation is not maintained by our fragile faith, but we are kept by the power of God. Our forgiveness is in His shed blood.

The chief shepherd has passed through the valley of the shadow of death. There is no valley so deep that the Son of God can not fathom it, no mountain so high that the Son of Man can't climb it. no darkness so grim that the Prince of the dawn can not illuminate it, no sin God can't forgive, no person so lost that Christ can not find them, no bondage so great that the Deliverer can not burst it asunder. The valley is the Lord's. The way is safe. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Amen.

We will gather for a very special meal prepared with much love at 6 PM. We will spend some time in fellowship in working in the Church sanctuary. The choir will practice at 7:30 PM. It is a great day to be alive and to know "(But) God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

Yes,while we were yet in our sin, Christ died for us.

Blessed be His Name.

Brown

http://youtu.be/jY-NV7eyA38

Brown's Daily Word 3-26-13

Praise the Lord for the way He gave His people festivals to celebrate His greatness, His goodness, His mercies, His faithfulness, His providence, and His redemption. Passover the festival of the festivals of His people will start today, Tuesday, the March 26, and will continue for 7 days until Monday, April 1. In the USA, Passover ends one day later, so in 2013, Passover will end on Tuesday, April 2.
The Celebration of Passover is the retelling of the great story of how God redeemed the Jewish nation from enslavement in Egypt. The celebration itself was given to the Jews while they were still in Egypt. The original celebration centered around the Passover lamb, which was sacrificed and its blood put over the doorposts as a sign of faith, so that the Lord passed over the houses of the Jews during the last plague poured out on the Egyptians - the killing of every firstborn. The New Testament says that Jesus is our sacrificial Lamb. The Passover lamb was to be a "male without defect," which is the same description given to Jesus. Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem five days before the lamb was killed in the temple as the Passover sacrifice for the sins of the people of Israel. Five days before the lamb was to be sacrificed, it was chosen. Therefore, Jesus entered Jerusalem on lamb selection day as the lamb of God. The people did not understand the significance of this, since they greeted Him with palm branches and hailed Him as King, shouting "Hosanna," which means "save us." Palm branches were a symbol of freedom and defiance, since Simon Maccabeus had entered Jerusalem with that symbolism.

The day Jesus was crucified was the day of the Passover celebration and the day that the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed. For the previous years, the priest would blow the shophar (ram's horn) at 3:00 p.m. - the moment the lamb was sacrificed, and all the people would pause to contemplate the sacrifice for sins on behalf of the people of Israel. At 3:00, when Jesus was being crucified, He said, "It is finished" at the moment that the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the shophar was blown from the Temple. The sacrifice of the lamb of God was fulfilled at the hour that the symbolic animal sacrifice usually took place. At the same time, the veil of the Temple tore from top to bottom - representing a removal of the separation between God and man. The festival of unleavened bread began Friday evening (at sunset). As part of the festival, the Jews would take some of the grain - the "first fruits" of their harvest - to the Temple to offer as a sacrifice. In so doing, they were offering God all they had and trusting Him to provide the rest of the harvest. It was at this point that Jesus was buried - planted in the ground - as He said right before His death. Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of those raised from the dead in 1 Corinthians.

It was during a Passover seder that Jesus proclaimed that the meal represented Himself and that He was instituting the New Covenant, which was foretold by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The celebration of this covenant has become the ordinance of communion in the Christian Church. At the end of the meal, Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said that it represented His body. Then He took the cup of wine, which would have been the third cup of the Seder - the cup of redemption. He said that it was the new covenant in His blood "poured out for you." It is through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are declared clean before God, allowing those of us who choose to accept the pardon, to commune with Him - both now and forevermore through the eternal life He offers.

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/nemuZ9N9ntA

Brown.

Holy Week Events in the Life of our Lord as they are recorded in the Gospel according Mark:

Sunday Mark 11:1-11 Palm Sunday

Monday Cleansing of the Temple Mark 11: 12-19

Tuesday Discourses Mark 11: 20--13:37

Wednesday Anointing in Bethany Mark 14: 1-11

Thursday Passover, Last Supper, Arrest. Trial Mark 14:12-72

Good Friday Trial before Pilate, Crucifixion, Burial Mark 15: 1-47

Saturday Jesus our Lord in the Tomb Mark 15: 42-47

Glorious Easter Sunday Resurrection Mark 16: 1-8

 

Ministry Events during this Holy Week:

Wednesday

6 PM Dinner

6:30 PM Bible Study

7:30 Prayer Meeting

7:30 A special Choir Practice

Thursday 5:30 PM Seder Service to be held at First Presbyterian Church, Endicott

Good Friday 6:30 PM Combined Good Friday Service at the Union Center Christian Church, Boswell Hill Road

7 PM Good Friday Television outreach, Time Warner Cable Television Channel 4

Easter Sunday

6:30 AM Sunrise Service under the Pavilion at Union Center Christian Church. Pastor Marshall Sorber will be Preaching.

7:30 AM Family Breakfast at the Union Center United Methodist Church.

Resurrection Sunday Celebration and worship

8:30 AM and 11:00 AM at Union Center UMC, 128 Maple Drive, with Pastor Brown preaching. The Choir will be singing during both services.

9:30 AM Easter Celebration at the Wesley United Methodist Church, 1000 Day Hollow Road. Pastor Brown will be preaching.

Brown's Daily Word 3-25-13

The Lord blessed us with an abundant weekend of celebration, jubilation, worship, and witness. He blessed us with a "Full House" on Saturday evening of children's ministry, worship, witness, and prayer, along with a great Easter Banquet at the First United Methodist Church, Endicott. It was also a great Palm Sunday Worship at both Union Center and Wesley United Methodist Churches. Alice preached at Wesley and I preached at Union Center. We had special time of celebration with children at Union Center following the morning worship services. It was great day of celebration, of prayer, praise, joy, and jubilation.

It must have been quite a scene as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. First of all, He was not riding a warrior’s horse, but instead He is riding on the colt of a donkey. And all around Him was a motley crowd. Former prostitutes, shouting children, people who had been lepers but who were now cleansed, people who were once blind who now could see, people who at one time had running sores and untouchable diseases, tax collectors, foreigners — all of these who had been touched by Jesus came. The Bible says, “The whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen” (Luke 19:37).

I see Palm Sunday as one grand act of invitation. Jesus rode into Jerusalem inviting, not forcing, them to receive Him as King — only not the kind of king they wanted. He came with His arms open wide. Jesus’ invitation was for everyone to come and recognize the King of this new kingdom. This was an invitation to the religious and non-religious, for saint and sinner alike. It was an invitation to leave their directionless and self-absorbed lives of confusion and ambiguity. It was more than an invitation to be saved from personal sin; it was an invitation to leave a life of futility and stupidity and enter into the God-life He was offering. It was an invitation to leave dysfunctional lives and have instead lives that worked, because it was life lived God’s way. It was an invitation to leave a religion mixed with politics and national interests to enter the kingdom of God for its own sake.

I like the way Brian McLaren put it in his book "The Story We Find Ourselves In". He says, “For prostitutes, the call of Jesus was to leave their story of men who pay money for love, and to enter the story of God, who in love pays for us with his own life. For Pharisees, it was to leave their story of religiosity and superiority and rigidity and judgmentalism, their story that was exclusively focused on their own narrow little sect, and instead to enter God’s broader and deeper and better story of grace and compassion and mercy and love for all people. For Zealots like Simon, it was to leave the political story of violence, to stop slitting Romans throats, as if that would bring the story to its desired end, and instead to enter God’s spiritual story of peace for all people, to risk persecution for justice and to prefer suffering over causing others to suffer. For tax collectors like Zacchaeus or Matthew, it was to stop collaborating with the Roman Empire, and profiting in the process, and instead to collaborate with the kingdom of God, and sacrifice in the process. For the rich — like that young ruler Jesus met — it was to abandon the hollow story of acquisition, and instead to enter God’s better story of generosity. For farmers and shepherds, it was to realize that there’s more to life than just planting seeds of wheat or tending flocks of sheep; instead, Jesus invited them to enter into the bigger story of planing seeds of truth and seeking lost men and women, every one of whom is loved and counted and missed by God. For fishermen like Peter and Andrew and James and John, it was to trade in the story of catching fish for a bigger story of fishing for men and women, inviting them into God’s story of ongoing creation and redemption. For the middle class, who want nothing more than to create a little social aquarium for their family. . . . it’s a call to care about the families of their neighbors too, especially the poor, to see them as family too, as children of Adam and children of God.”

Jesus also invites atheists to leave their story of a gray world where God does not exist, and enter a beautiful, new, colorful world where God is the cause of everything that exists. He invites the humanist, whose story is all about depending on himself to discover meaning and ultimate reality in the material world, to enter the story of God where God’s greater purpose is bigger than any one person or group of people — a meaning and purpose which God has built into the universe. He invites us to move beyond a list of rules and right doctrine to a life of ongoing relationship with himself. He invites us to live as the salt of the earth and as the light of the world. He invites us to be His channels of grace and love in the dark places. He desires for us that we might declare His greatness and proclaim His Kingship and Majesty in the public Arena, in highways and the byways. He desires to shine in us and through us where people still walk in darkness. May we live our lives under His Kingship and May serve Him as our Lord and King in such way that others may see His glory and taste His grace in our witness and worship.

In Christ,

Brown.

http://youtu.be/M5AScLyy3IM

Holy Week Events in the Life of our Lord as they are recorded in the Gospel according Mark.

Sunday Mark 11:1-11 Palm Sunday

Monday Cleansing of the Temple Mark 11: 12-19

Tuesday Discourses Mark 11: 20--13:37

Wednesday Anointing in Bethany Mark 14: 1-11

Thursday Passover, Last Supper, Arrest. Trial Mark 14:12-72

Good Friday Trial before Pilate, Crucifixion, Burial Mark 15: 1-47

Saturday Jesus our Lord in the Tomb Mark 15: 42-47

Glorious Easter Sunday Resurrection Mark 16: 1-8

Ministry Events during this Holy Week:

Wednesday

6 PM Dinner

6:30 PM Bible Study

7:30 Prayer Meeting

7:30 A special Choir Practice

Thursday 5:30 PM Seder Service to be held at First Presbyterian Church, Endicott

Good Friday 6:30 PM Combined Good Friday Service at the Union Center Christian Church, Boswell Hill Road

7 PM Good Friday Television outreach, Time Warner Cable Television Channel 4

Easter Sunday

6:30 AM Sunrise Service under the Pavilion at Union Center Christian Church. Pastor Marshall Sorber will be Preaching.

7:30 AM Family Breakfast at the Union Center United Methodist Church.

Resurrection Sunday Celebration and worship

8:30 AM and 11:00 AM at Union Center UMC, 128 Maple Drive, with Pastor Brown preaching. The Choir will be singing during both services.

9:30 AM Easter Celebration at the Wesley United Methodist Church, 1000 Day Hollow Road. Pastor Brown will be preaching.