New Every Morning

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Lets pray. Loving God, we look to the gift of your word for inspiration, direction, for hope. Thank you for the gift it represents. [00:00:10] Speaker B: And pray that you would open our. [00:00:12] Speaker A: Ears and illumine our minds as the Scriptures are read and proclaimed. May we hear your word for us. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Today and empowered by your spirit at. [00:00:24] Speaker A: Work within us, may we live it out. Hope in Christ's name we pray. Amen. [00:00:35] Speaker C: Our scripture this morning is from First Peter, chapter one, verses one through nine in your pew Bible. I believe that is on page 983. I'm reading from the new international version. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to God's elect exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood, grace and peace be yours in abundance. Praise God for a living hope. Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love Him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. For you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls, the word of the Lord. [00:03:37] Speaker B: So some of you out there I know, are quite new to the Knox community. You've been attending less than a year. Some of you have been around for. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Several years, some of you even a decade. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Some of you, like me, even almost two decades. [00:03:52] Speaker A: And some of you I'm looking at. [00:03:53] Speaker B: A few of you have been here. [00:03:55] Speaker A: More than 20 years now. One of the things about being at. [00:04:01] Speaker B: One place for a long extended time like that, there are a host of challenges with it, to be sure, but one of the blessings is that you. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Get to often see progress, at least in certain areas. [00:04:15] Speaker B: At Certain times, in certain ways, you. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Can see forward movement. [00:04:21] Speaker B: Let me give you just one example. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Take our facilities. I can still remember October 2007, starting. [00:04:31] Speaker B: In this sanctuary, my first week of work and the facility. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Elder at that time, Hugh Smith, gave me a tour of the whole Knox campus. [00:04:42] Speaker B: And I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of tasks and issues and challenges. [00:04:49] Speaker A: I didn't know where to even begin. [00:04:51] Speaker B: He brought me to the sanctuary. And marvelous as it was to have sanctuary like this, the color was old and faded and out of fashion, and there were still marks from water damage. The sound system only worked on this side of the sanctuary and didn't work especially well. There wasn't a space for any more than one musician up at the front. The rug was old and in bad shape. There was no real lighting up front the way there is today. There was no screen on. So many issues, and I'm not even. [00:05:25] Speaker A: Talking about the wood. [00:05:26] Speaker B: Then he took me outside, and outside you could see there were so many areas where children could run out from this campus into traffic. And I still think it's no small miracle that we didn't lose any children to traffic, either on Del Mar or on Hill, but no gates to protect them. There was also nothing to prevent people from moving from the lawn into the parking lot, like little children who might race right in front of a car as they pass by. The atrium had an old vinyl floor. There was no real storage, so stuff was stored in large piles right in. [00:06:00] Speaker A: The middle of the room. [00:06:02] Speaker B: There wasn't much lighting, certainly no natural light. It looked dingy and not the place you'd leave your children. And now we're not even talking about the north side house. That needed bolting, foundation work, paint. It just seemed too much. [00:06:15] Speaker A: I was like, God, I can't do this. We can't do this. The task is too great. But then, day after day, God put. [00:06:26] Speaker B: On the hearts of a host of. [00:06:29] Speaker A: People this space and bringing slow but steady improvement to it. [00:06:35] Speaker B: After Hugh Smith, There was Tom McGinnis, Nord and Cynthia Erickson, Brad and Pam King, Kevin Schjeldahl, Jeff Riddell, who built that sound table in back. Cal Baneska, who helped us bolt our found bolt the north side house to its Foundation. Jonathan McFarland, Kent Chesney, Nick Lauschkin, Claire Marie Peterson, James Curtis, Isaiah Givens, two youth who helped us do all sorts of campus improvements. Patrick Perry, Alice Valle, Max Torrey, and so many others I could name. And day by day, week by week, the new life God was bringing to. [00:07:11] Speaker A: This congregation would begin to show up on our campus. [00:07:16] Speaker B: Now, each day when I park, I feel a sense of hope and promise. We have gardens, a garden for vegetable, a native plant garden. We have solar panels. We have a clean, crisp, wonderful worship space where most of the time you can hear what's going on up front. You can see what's going up on front. Even when a couple lights are out, as they are today, you can still see it. And I give thanks to God not just for this space, but for this. [00:07:45] Speaker A: Notion that there is progress moving forward. [00:07:51] Speaker B: But then, along with you, I heard the Reverend Dr. Grace park preach last Sunday, my classmate and dear friend from. [00:07:58] Speaker A: A fuller seminary days. [00:08:01] Speaker B: And as she spoke, I thought of the whole campus of her church in. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Pacific Palisades burning up in a single day. And I think of my own former. [00:08:12] Speaker B: House in Altadena and all the improvements we had made day by day, week by week, year by year, all reduced to rubble. [00:08:21] Speaker A: A day. I love progress, I realized. I love signs of it. I love seeing it, feeling it, being able to touch it. [00:08:31] Speaker B: I want to be able to trust that things are getting better day by day with my church, with my world, with myself. And there are times when I see it, when we see it, some of you will remember watching on television back in 1993 as the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organ Organization, Yasser Arafat. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Shook hands after signing the Oslo Peace Accords. And I remember thinking, there it is, progress in Middle east peace. And then you look, today, we've got children dying of starvation in Gaza. We've got hospitals where one of the biggest issues is simply getting food to patients. We've got a hostage crisis that still continues. And I think progress, progress. [00:09:29] Speaker B: I see the challenges we're facing today in terms of environmental stewardship globally that seem to be getting worse, not better. I see numerical decline in Christian churches in North America today. I see so many challenges, and in. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Many ways, even sometimes in my own. [00:09:47] Speaker B: Life, right when I want to put my hope in progress, cling to those signs that I we are getting better, it feels like that rug is pulled. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Right out from under me. [00:09:59] Speaker B: I want to believe hard work, persistence, good deeds, they can take us there. And then I find that it just can't bear the weight I want to put on us. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Progress can delight us one day and then disappoint us the next. So where might a deeper, firmer hope lie, if not that slowly but steadily things will get better? [00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, that question, the question of where our hope might lie is confronted directly in the short epistle called First Peter. [00:10:35] Speaker A: And it's confronted right from the start. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Listen again to the grand opening that immediately follows the salutation. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By God's great mercy, God has given. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. [00:11:08] Speaker B: That hope articulated in this letter of First Peter is not the hope that things will get progressively better, though at certain times and in certain places they well may. The ultimate hope articulated here is not in human progress, but rather in the. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Resurrection. It's such a strikingly different paradigm that. [00:11:34] Speaker B: 2000 years later, we're still struggling to get our hearts and heads around it. In the framework of progress, things are on a trajectory where there may be setbacks, there may be obstacles, there may. [00:11:46] Speaker A: Be issues, challenges, even failure. But overall, things get a little better each year. [00:11:53] Speaker B: We often think of ourselves this way. We're imperfect as individuals and as communities, but with feedback, and with a growth mindset and a willingness to learn, we improve. Right? [00:12:04] Speaker A: I just met yesterday in a follow. [00:12:06] Speaker B: Up to my annual review, there's a group from Knox that meets with me every year to offer feedback, the same kind of feedback our other staff get. And it was a tremendous gift and has been every year since I've been with you. To hear a group of peers and others from Knox representing the session, offering feedback on strengths and areas to celebrate. [00:12:29] Speaker A: And then growing edges, areas for growth, that's so helpful. [00:12:34] Speaker B: And the thought with that that I. [00:12:37] Speaker A: We can be in this process of improving, of moving forward, progress, personal growth. They're great, aren't they? [00:12:45] Speaker B: I so often cling to them. [00:12:47] Speaker A: But then I remember this uncomfortable fact. Oh, darn it, yes, I'm growing in some ways, and then I'm gonna die. It's true. [00:13:00] Speaker B: Eventually you hit that wall. [00:13:02] Speaker A: We call death, decay, deterioration and loss resurrection. [00:13:11] Speaker B: It posits a radically different framework. On one hand, it acknowledges the reality of death and destruction. It doesn't pretend that buildings and lives can't come crashing to the ground. We know that they can. That's part and parcel of the resurrection narrative. That human growth and development, progress and. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Improvement, as encouraging as they are, finally meet an end. And yet resurrection posits that after destruction. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Demise, decay, new life can emerge by. [00:13:43] Speaker A: A power beyond us and yet at work within us. There's a great Greek word that shows. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Up in today's Epistle of First Peter. And it only shows up in this epistle. It doesn't show up anywhere else in the New Testament or in the Greek. [00:14:01] Speaker A: Translation of the Old Testament. [00:14:05] Speaker B: It's the word anagino, translated in today's. [00:14:10] Speaker A: Passage as given new birth. [00:14:14] Speaker B: Now, some translations render that Greek word begotten again. Now there's reference in the Gospel of John to being born from above, as in Jesus famous conversation with Nicodemus in the letter called First John, there's a reference to being born of God. And there are other references in the New Testament to being born of, of the Spirit. This language you'll find often in the New Testament. But this verb anagenao, that implies regeneration. [00:14:43] Speaker A: Being literally born again, begotten again, only shows up here. [00:14:49] Speaker B: And it's striking. [00:14:51] Speaker A: It wants to get our attention. [00:14:54] Speaker B: So as we often will, when there's a word that only shows up once, we'll look for sightings of this word in extra biblical material and other literature of the time. And one place that we do find, it doesn't show up a lot in text that we have, but it does show up in the writings of Jewish historian Josephus. He uses this word, anaga nao, to describe how out of the ashes of. [00:15:18] Speaker A: Sodom, the ashes of Sodom, new fruit was reborn. Growing up from the city's ruins. Josephus is writing about that new birth. [00:15:31] Speaker B: Being somehow born anew in the ruins of city. And he's writing, we think, somewhere right. [00:15:39] Speaker A: Around the time that First Peter was written, that image, new life being brought. [00:15:45] Speaker B: To old ruins, a verb that connotes that kind of new birth from ashes. I suspect that might have had particular poignancy for a community that just a short time earlier had seen a moment in history where for a second time, not a first time, a second time. [00:16:02] Speaker A: The great Jewish temple was destroyed. [00:16:06] Speaker B: That imagery of exile that we heard in the beginning of First Peter as we read how this letter is directed to quote exiles of the dispersion. That imagery surely called to mind the time that God's people were dispersed after. [00:16:22] Speaker A: Babylon captured Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple. [00:16:28] Speaker B: But it also likely called to mind a second time. [00:16:30] Speaker A: That temple, after having been rebuilt, was. [00:16:34] Speaker B: Razed to the ground again by a later empire, the Roman Empire, in 70 CE. First Peter, we think, was written about 20 years after that, give or take. [00:16:45] Speaker A: A decade or so after, for the second time, the Jewish community had seen. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Their central campus of worship that they'd. [00:16:53] Speaker A: Worked so hard to build up destroyed, and the people who had gathered around it as one people scattered in the. [00:17:02] Speaker B: Wake of that incredible loss, we get this notion of ashes being reborn, of anagenao, a gift given to the people. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Of God by God. [00:17:14] Speaker B: This Anaga. Now, this new birth, we read, invites us into a living hope through the. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There is a hope in slow and. [00:17:26] Speaker B: Steady progress, hope that a physical temple can be rebuilt by long and steady labor at God's inspiration and invitation. [00:17:35] Speaker A: But when that physical temple comes crashing to the ground, we read of a living hope that still stands. It still stands. It's a hope tied to the resurrection. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Of Jesus Christ, a hope that God can bring Anaga Na'. O new birth, new life, regeneration for. [00:17:55] Speaker A: God did so in Jesus Christ. [00:17:59] Speaker B: Many of you will recall how in John's gospel, Jesus said of the great Jewish temple, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Members of the Jewish community at that time said to him, this temple has been under construction 46 years. It's the result of slow and steady hard work for decades. How can you speak of raising it. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Up in three days? And then, the gospel writer notes, Jesus was speaking of his body. [00:18:30] Speaker B: Physical structures, the campuses of religious bodies like ours can be wonderful homes for God's people, places to praise God and. [00:18:39] Speaker A: Give thanks and signs that movement forward can take place. [00:18:46] Speaker B: But our hope as Christians, our ultimate hope, is that a power beyond us, a power that brought new life to us in Christ, is at work in. [00:18:55] Speaker A: Us, reconciling us to God by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that rebirthing, that regeneration that we. [00:19:04] Speaker B: Receive by faith, that's where our hope lies. Not in physical signs of growth or. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Progress, though we can celebrate them when they come out of the ashes, out of the ruins. God brought new life to the story of Jesus Christ. That dying and rising that happens in the Christian community. [00:19:27] Speaker B: And each believer, as we receive God's gift of salvation by faith, we receive that imperishable inheritance. [00:19:36] Speaker A: And we're marked by God's children now forever. We receive that imperishable inheritance marked by. [00:19:47] Speaker B: The love of Christ so great that, as Paul describes it in the book. [00:19:51] Speaker A: Of Romans, not even death, nor any power this world has to throw at it can separate us from it. Some scholars even think that this language. [00:20:04] Speaker B: We find in First Peter is connected to an ancient baptism ritual, that it may have been that precisely as water was poured over the head of a new believer, as water was poured over some new child or person brought into the family of faith, these words might have been said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:20:28] Speaker A: By his great mercy, he's given us. [00:20:30] Speaker B: A new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from. [00:20:35] Speaker A: The dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, even in. [00:20:44] Speaker B: The rubble of destruction. Whenever the Christian community saw a baptism, they could remember. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. That's right. Our hope is not in a building. Wonderful as it may be, our hope. [00:21:01] Speaker B: In Christ that we can allow us to labor on our hope is in God's word of renewal, regeneration, rebirthing, and. [00:21:10] Speaker A: Empowered by that hope, we can labor. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Whether it be making improvements to a. [00:21:15] Speaker A: Campus like this, whether it be defending the immigrant, the orphan and the widow. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Whether it be working for justice, peace and reconciliation, whether it be passing on. [00:21:28] Speaker A: The faith to future generations, whether it be loving our neighbor here or on the other part of the world, we can do that work empowered by a. [00:21:40] Speaker B: Hope beyond merely signs of progress. We can do that based on a hope rooted in the resurrection of Jesus. [00:21:47] Speaker A: Christ that is at work in us today and promises us a world where all things will be made new. Well, if you're anything like me, some. [00:22:01] Speaker B: Days you wake up in the morning. [00:22:02] Speaker A: And feel exactly like I did back when Hugh Smith gave me a tour of this campus. I know that after losing our home. [00:22:10] Speaker B: To the fire, there have been many. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Mornings like this I just felt overwhelmed. I felt like the tasks before me were too great. [00:22:20] Speaker B: I read the newspaper and thought of. [00:22:22] Speaker A: How much change was needed in the world. You know, that feeling that the ocean is so big and my boat is so small, my resources seemed done. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Felt like I was drowning in an ocean of tasks. And in 2025, you and I both know you can labor and labor for what you believe in, tangible or intangible. [00:22:46] Speaker A: And then see it come crashing to the ground. How do you start a new day? [00:22:54] Speaker B: Well, in the Presbyterian Church's daily prayer app, there's a prayer I love that shows up each Thursday morning. [00:23:00] Speaker A: I don't know what your daily discipline. [00:23:02] Speaker B: Is, but I love having a prayer time right as the sun is starting. [00:23:07] Speaker A: To rise, and the prayer goes like loving God as the rising sun chases away the night. [00:23:15] Speaker B: So you have scattered the power of. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Death in the rising of Jesus Christ, and you bring us all blessings in him. And I think of a hope as. [00:23:27] Speaker B: Simple as the sun rising in the morning. We didn't do anything to make it happen. [00:23:31] Speaker A: It just happened. A gift that we see and celebrate each day. And I think of the resurrection of. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Jesus Christ, of his rising like the. [00:23:43] Speaker A: Sun, and I think out of ash, out of failure, out of disappointment, even out of death. God can birth new life. I remember. God birthed new life in me and in you. Life as a child of God. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Life in Christ. [00:24:06] Speaker A: Life empowered by the Holy Spirit. You, each one of you are new every morning. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Each day the sun rises in the sky. Each day you greet a new dawn. [00:24:21] Speaker A: You too are being made new by. [00:24:25] Speaker B: The power of the Holy Spirit in you. [00:24:27] Speaker A: You are touched. Touched by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You're beloved by the very God who. [00:24:35] Speaker B: Is at work bringing new life to. [00:24:37] Speaker A: All creation that you can put your hope in. You are new every morning. Thanks be to God. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.