Sermon:
January 2, 2000

Scripture:
Revelation 2:1-5a

(Jesus says:) "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands:

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false. I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love, the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first." Rev. 2:1-5a.

Let us pray: Take my lips and speak through them. Take our thoughts and think through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. Unless you speak, nothing of significance will be spoken. Bring us your word, Lord Jesus. Amen.

I have to admit I have felt no small amount of pressure these last few weeks, thinking about this morning. After all, what are the first words we need to hear from this pulpit in the new millennium? What would God have us hear this morning, Church?

First, that worship is important. Nothing that has taken place in this millennium is more important than the body of Christ coming together to worship the living God. Did you ever think that worship is the most important ministry our church offers our community? The praise, the prayer, and the preaching all lead us to encounter God first hand. In worship we take God's promises and our lives and see where they intersect. God's promises never change, and have always been. It is our lives that must adjust, upon hearing the promises of God. The problem is we get distracted, disinterested or disenfranchised with God's promises. We doubt God. We tout ourselves, even in the midst of being the church. Like the Ephesians, we are working, even toiling with patient endurance. We are discerning, bearing up for the sake of Christ, and not growing weary. But John points out that there is a problem. We are forgetting, even abandoning our first love, our deep devotion, our heart-felt worship of Christ.

Let's look today, essentially on this first Sunday of the third millennium, at one of God's most incredible promises: first, love. God, the Creator, loves us. God loves you. God loves me. Part of why I am here is because I was sitting on the subway in New York City wondering, "How many people have the confidence I have, knowing the Creator of the universe cares about me personally?" I thought, "They need to know." The scripture, God's revealed Word, is full of the promise of God's love for us:

· "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8)

· "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

· "Beloved, let us love one another: because love is from God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)

· "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38,39)

Why this love from God? Because God chooses to love you. You are important to God. And that means there is a place in God's heart that only you can fill. God loves each one of you as if you were the only person on earth to love. Had there been no other person on the earth, God would still have sent his only begotten Son to save you.

Wayne Rice tells the story of a young boy who spent many hours building a little sailboat, crafting it down to the finest detail. He then took it to a nearby river to sail it. When he put it in the water, however, it moved away very quickly. Though he chased it along the bank, he couldn't keep up with it. The strong wind and current carried the boat away. The heartbroken boy knew how hard he would have to work to build another sailboat.

Farther down the river, a man found the little boat, took it to town, and sold it to a shopkeeper. Later that day, as the boy was walking through the town, he noticed the boat in a store window.

Entering the store, he told the owner that the boat belonged to him. It had his own little marks on it, but he couldn't prove to the shopkeeper that the boat was his. The man told him the only way he could get the boat was to buy it. The boy wanted it back so badly that he did exactly that.

As he took the boat from the hand of the shopkeeper, he looked at it and said, "Little boat, you're twice mine. I made you and I bought you."

In the same way, we are twice God's. Our Father in heaven both created us and paid a great price for us. With the blood of his Son, we have been redeemed and reunited with God. Jesus Christ gave his life to get us back, yet so often we show such little gratitude for what he has done for us. We have lost our first love.

We have forgotten another of God's promises. Not only does God love us, but God will fill our lives with love. Hear some of the promises:

· "We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." (1 John 4:16)

· "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love; just as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." (John 15:10)

· "Hatred stirs old quarrels, but love overlooks insults." (Prov. 10:12)

· "As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; abide in his love." (John 15:9)

· "To love him with all your heart, and with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself - this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." (Mark 12:33)

· "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Gal. 5:22, 23)

The first result of God's Spirit in you is that God will fill your life with love: an ability to get close to people, to build relationships and to connect with others. It's an easy thing to let slip through our fingers, however, and the loss is usually subtle.

Take the classic example of how a typical husband responds when his wife comes down with a cold:

· In the first year of marriage: "Sugar dumpling, I'm really worried about my baby girl. You've got a bad sniffle, and there's no telling about these things with all the terrible viruses going around these days. I'm taking you to the hospital, Dear, where I've reserved a private room for you. I know the food's lousy, so I'll be bringing your meals in from Rozzini's. I've already made all the arrangements with the floor superintendent."

· In the second year of marriage: "Listen, Darling, I don't like the sound of that cough and I've called the doctor to rush right over. Now you go to bed like a good girl, and I'll take care of everything."

· Third year: "Maybe you'd better lie down, Honey. Nothing like a little rest when you're feeling lousy. I'll bring you something. Do we have any canned soup?"

· Fourth year: "Now look, Dear, be sensible. After you feed the kids, do the dishes, and mop the floor, you'd better get some rest."

· Fifth year: "Why don't you take a couple aspirin?

· Sixth year: "Could you quit sneezing? What do you want, to give me pneumonia?"

· Seventh year: "If you'd just gargle or something instead of sitting around barking like a seal all night..."

Love has a way of growing cold unless we work hard to keep it fresh and alive. That's true of our human relationships and also in our relationship with God. Our relationship with God takes the same kind of commitment and effort required for a good marriage. The difference is that although our love grows and shrinks with our whims, God's love for us never falters. He doesn't grow tired of us. He never starts taking us for granted. He loves us every day as though it were the first. His love knows no measure, and our love is really nothing more than our response to our knowledge and appreciation of God's love.

God loves us. God will fill our lives with love. John gives us the clue to connecting those promises to our lives in 2000: we need to remember our first love. One of the things I love about my job is that many times people share with me their response to what God is doing in their lives. I tell you, some days it's what keeps me going. That's why I have a heart for youth. They tend to share more openly. (Of course, it usually helps that I'm not their parent, either!)

God has grown our youth ministry over the last few years, and I am convinced that one of the major reasons is that at Bible study and at Saturday Night Praise worship we began asking one another the question: "How has God worked in your life in the past week?" The depth of the responses by the youth would astound and encourage you. The students and the adult volunteers began looking to encounter God amidst their daily lives. I think we adults tend to starve ourselves of this encouragement. Our founder, John Wesley, had every Class Meeting of Methodists begin with that question, "How is it with your soul?"

We need to hear the freshness of people's encounters with God. As a church, however, we disguise "profession of faith" by wrapping liturgy and "appropriate" responses around it. We lose something in the process. By not allowing people in their own words to share their understanding of God with the body of believers, we miss out on hearing how others are experiencing God in their lives.

So, unless you are in an area of ministry where folks are sharing their experiences with God regularly, you too may be in danger of losing your "first love." Don't let that happen!

Most of the Ephesian Christians that John the Revelator was writing to were second generation believers, and though they retained the purity of doctrine and life and had maintained a high level of service, they were lacking in deep devotion to Christ. Church, do we need to heed this same warning, that orthodoxy and service are not enough? Christ desires our hearts as well as our hands and heads.

Remember the vows you may have made in your confirmation, or profession of faith?

· Do you renew the solemn promise that you made, or was made in your name, at your Baptism? (That vow, just to remind you, was "living a life that becomes the Gospel, being brought up in the Christian faith, learning the scriptures, and giving attendance to worship and private time with God.")

· Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and pledge your allegiance to his kingdom? (How I would love to hear those stories of how each one here came to know Christ!)

· Do you receive and profess the Christian faith as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments? (Now there's a resolution - why not read through the Bible this year? Three chapters a day ought to about do it.)

· Do you promise according to the grace given you to live a Christian life and always remain a faithful member of Christ's holy church?

· Will you be loyal to the United Methodist Church and uphold it by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service?

Church, that's not just "good liturgy." That's a promise we made; a claim to hold fast to our first love. You can't do that without your heart.

An old youth parable called "The Life Saving Station" has helped me and youth through the years wrestle with the church's first love:

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude, little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few, devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for their own safety, went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Some of the people who were saved, and various others in the surrounding community, wanted to become associated with the lifesaving station and to give of their time and money for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members were unhappy that the building was so small and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided for those who were being saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely. It became sort of a club.

Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions so they hired professional lifeboat crews who were specially trained to save lives. The lifesaving motif still prevailed, and a ceremonial lifeboat was placed in the room in honor of all those people who had been saved in the past.

About that time, a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some of them were from a foreign country and couldn't speak their language. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee of the lifesaving station called an emergency meeting and decided to build a shower house outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up and properly instructed regarding the rules of the lifesaving station.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club's membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities because they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Other members, however, insisted that lifesaving was the primary purpose of the club. They pointed out that they were still called a "lifesaving station." But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives, then they could start their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new lifesaving station experienced the same changes that had occurred with the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit the seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore.

Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

Jesus established our church to be a lifesaving station. Our job is to go out into this new millennium, into this new world, and rescue the perishing. Our love, our programs, won't break through. Only God can do it. It's not just the job of a few professional life-savers. It's our job, too.

Church, we finished out the end of the last century doing God's work. Let's continue on, with deep devotion, putting first things first. Let us remember the incredible promise of God's love. Let us remember God promises to fill our lives with love. We need to fill one another with Christian fellowship, finding out what God is doing in each other's lives. Let us remember the pledge that many of us made right here in membership vows. Remember your first love.