We are off to a great start in 2012 already. They don't let me preach too often, but it was great speaking to our congregation on the first sunday of the New Year. I can safely claim to have had the best message anyone had heard this year in our church. I was asked to do a children's sermon. I guess I am qualified to do that. I have three kids of my own and taught pre-school for many years. A kid's sermon. That really means "We want you to talk to children and entertain them and their parents. We don't really expect you to preach on anything important since you only have 10 minutes." Ok. I can do that.
I check the readings for the week. It turns out we are celebrating the feast of the circumcision of Jesus. What? That's a feast day? Since a feast means we eat, what do you suppose we should eat to celebrate that feast? I think I will do a sermon on re-gifting instead. Before I get to what I talked about, you need to know that the reason I started writing this blog was because of the ironic silly things that can happen at a church. For example, suppose it is the lesson from Luke on Jesus' circumcision that is to be read by one of our deacons. Well the deacon gets to the last part of the lesson; the part where they actually mention the circumcision...and stops early. Apparently there was a complication with the notes on how many verses were to be read that day. In most churches nobody would notice. But in our church we put the lessons on the screen for folks who don't want to bother carrying those heavy Bibles to church. So everyone saw that our Deacon stopped the lesson short. You might even say...as I did...the deacon circumcised the lesson on circumcision. Ouch.
Moving on to what I talked about. Re-gifting. It is what we do with the presents we don't want or won't use. The phrase came from the meaning to give a gift to someone that was given to us by another person. I suggested we can do that with the gift God has given us. The gift of Life. I even brought in a game of Life wrapped up for kids to open. Forget outreach and missional movement and all the trendy words we have invented for sharing our faith. Re-gifting is all we need. Hopefully God's gift is not one we want to return or won't use. But that is the good part. Even when we give it away we still have it to give again and again.
Speaking of returns, check out Philippians 4:17. It talks about returning gifts to the store without a receipt. If you have ever stood in line at Wal-Mart or Target to return something for 30 minutes only to be told you can't, try this verse out on the customer service rep. In the NIV it says "Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account." The Bible says to ask for a gift card from the store. I am pretty sure God gave us his gift of life to be re-gifted and never exchanged. He gave us his only Son as a gift and we tried to return that gift without success. The Bible promises Jesus will be the one to return and when he does, he gets to go to the front of the line and believe me, he has his receipt!
I check the readings for the week. It turns out we are celebrating the feast of the circumcision of Jesus. What? That's a feast day? Since a feast means we eat, what do you suppose we should eat to celebrate that feast? I think I will do a sermon on re-gifting instead. Before I get to what I talked about, you need to know that the reason I started writing this blog was because of the ironic silly things that can happen at a church. For example, suppose it is the lesson from Luke on Jesus' circumcision that is to be read by one of our deacons. Well the deacon gets to the last part of the lesson; the part where they actually mention the circumcision...and stops early. Apparently there was a complication with the notes on how many verses were to be read that day. In most churches nobody would notice. But in our church we put the lessons on the screen for folks who don't want to bother carrying those heavy Bibles to church. So everyone saw that our Deacon stopped the lesson short. You might even say...as I did...the deacon circumcised the lesson on circumcision. Ouch.
Moving on to what I talked about. Re-gifting. It is what we do with the presents we don't want or won't use. The phrase came from the meaning to give a gift to someone that was given to us by another person. I suggested we can do that with the gift God has given us. The gift of Life. I even brought in a game of Life wrapped up for kids to open. Forget outreach and missional movement and all the trendy words we have invented for sharing our faith. Re-gifting is all we need. Hopefully God's gift is not one we want to return or won't use. But that is the good part. Even when we give it away we still have it to give again and again.Speaking of returns, check out Philippians 4:17. It talks about returning gifts to the store without a receipt. If you have ever stood in line at Wal-Mart or Target to return something for 30 minutes only to be told you can't, try this verse out on the customer service rep. In the NIV it says "Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account." The Bible says to ask for a gift card from the store. I am pretty sure God gave us his gift of life to be re-gifted and never exchanged. He gave us his only Son as a gift and we tried to return that gift without success. The Bible promises Jesus will be the one to return and when he does, he gets to go to the front of the line and believe me, he has his receipt!
That was good David. I have to admit: maybe I came from the stone age or something but I never heard the term re-gifting until this year at New Covenant. I actually heard a few people use it this year. I guess when we got a gift we just didn't ask except for one time working with an addict's group and someone gave me an expensive gift. I had to ask, "where did you get that?" I had this feeling inside and it was part of their accountability, so why not?
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