Thursday Worship
Call to Worship (1)
As we gather, may Your Spirit work within us.
As we gather, may we glorify Your name.
Knowing well that as our hearts begin to worship,
We’ll be blessed because we came,
We’ll be blessed because we came.
Opening Prayer
Scripture—Isaiah 11:1-10
Isaiah 11:1-3a
Song—Cares Chorus (493)
Message—Stumps
I decipher that the purpose of the “Camp Directors Conference” is to solve some problems. I noticed that Thomas Jones is here to help us see how the marketplace has changed when the problem is that we haven’t yet. Or that we have Brett Schrock here to talk about “branding” when most of our potential customers see us as generic. And of course, we always have the need for staff training, but we have Michael Brandwein here not just for any staff training but for “super” staff training. When we are stumped in our problems, we come together to learn from informed resource persons and from one another. That’s good.
In the world of big corporations, they have problems too. There is now InnoCentive which is a huge online think tank where corporations can post intricate questions and problems for the world to ponder and offer substantial cash prizes to the person or persons who can solve the problem. Some companies have paid anywhere between $4000 and $100,000 for answers that their own in-house R & D teams can’t answer.
There was a patent attorney who studied organic chemistry in graduate school before going to law school, found a question on InnoCentive.com, and using a simple pen and pad of paper method, produced a solution and submitted it. A few weeks later, he received an email saying his solution was the best one submitted. Since it was the best solution received, they sent him a $4000 check that conveniently paid for his wife’s new terra cotta kitchen floor.
Too bad all problems can’t be solved so easily for such relatively little money. If your camping problems can be solved so easily, you and I wouldn’t be here at Green Lake in January!
Isaiah 11
One of my favorite passages is Isaiah 11 often referred to as the Peaceful Kingdom. Around 734 BC, the king of Judah, Ahaz refused to join an alliance with King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria to fight against the invading Assyrians. The Prophet Isaiah advised Ahaz to ignore this Assyrian threat because he felt that the power of Pekah and Rezin was certainly no match for the power of Yahweh, who protected Judah.
Ahaz, however, was intimidated enough by Pekah and Rezin that he appealed directly to the Assyrian King Tiglath-pileser III for protection from Israel and Syria. So Tiglath-pileser obliged and killed Rezin and attacked Israel.
The end result of this strategy was that Judah became Assyria’s pawn and the north, Israel was incrementally destroyed until it fell to Assyria in 722BC. If you think we have problems, imagine how it was like with Judah and Israel.
Chapters 7-12 of Isaiah contain the prophecies for Ahaz, who refused to listen to them and is now rarely remembered as the original recipient of them. What we do remember about these prophecies is the promised of Davidic heir who would restore hope to the nation, who is seen as a child named, “Immanuel—God is with us.” We see that the child promised is called, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
In Chapter 11 which we will focus on this weekend, Isaiah unites two themes that the description of the Davidic heir is the promised child and the saving remnant. The promised Davidic heir in Isaiah 11 is likened to a shoot of new growth that emerges from the stump of a severed tree. New life will grow out of the ruins of the house of David, identified in the name of Jesse, David’s father and rule the nation.
The tree stump symbolizes both the deteriorated house of David and the people of Israel who will be decimated because of their lack of faithfulness to Yahweh. After the majority of the people have been destroyed for their unfaithfulness, Isaiah promises that there will be a saving remnant of the people that will be led by a righteous Davidic survivor who will redeem those who remain.
Tree Stumps
Our American Baptist camp for our church in San Francisco is Redwood Glen. Redwood trees are producers of a much valued and prized commodity. Redwood on a house has been known to have lasted over a hundred years! Our house in California has redwood siding that has been painted recently. But when they were preparing to paint, the painters remarked on how strong and durable the siding still is after over 50 years. The wood looks like new. In fact before we decided to paint, I thought about vinyl siding since I used to live in Pennsylvania. My contractor was shocked that I would want to do that—it would actually depreciate the house. I now have redwood decks and redwood railings.
After they have harvested the redwood for lumber, there is a stump. At Redwood Glen, there are some very large redwood trees as well as stumps from previous harvests. Some of the stumps are used for sitting and praying. One of the amazing things about redwoods is that at the base of the tree, there are shoots—little redwood trees growing up. Redwood trees are a good object lesson for campers to understand that “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
Today’s Problems
I know that all of our camps and conference centers are concern about their futures. We have problems not unlike other corporations and that of King Ahaz’s. Some of these problems may take a lot more than $100,000 to answer. Some of our problems are in the proportion of invading armies and destruction.
The good news is that there is a solution for our problems as well as the problems of the world. We can see it in Isaiah 11.
Isaiah saw that the earth was suffering terribly—as it was then, so it is now. The poor were judged unfairly. The wicked and powerful had the upper hand. Growling killers were hunting the weak; hungry marauders were prowling at the doors of the oppressed; greedy predators were taking whatever they wanted. The lambs, the kids, the fatlings and the little children of the world were vulnerable, always in danger, always threatened, and always at risk. Doesn’t that sound like our American Baptist camps?
God answered Isaiah. The answer is the Messiah whom we celebrated his birth twelve days ago. God’s solution is simple. It’s inexpensive and it’s readily available. We don’t need Innocentive.com when we have the incarnation. God sent a Messiah.
Bedtime Story—The Giving Tree
Song—It Came upon the Midnight Clear (191)
Benediction
2005 ABI Conference
Friday Worship
Call to Worship (96)
Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus,
To reach out and touch him, and say that we love Him.
Open our ears, Lord and help us to listen,
Open our eyes Lord, we want to see Jesus.
Opening Prayer
Scripture—Isaiah 11:3b-5
Song—Go Tell It on the Mountain (218)
Message— Cranes
How many of you have a long-range plan to see the future for your camp? Sometimes the fog in SF is so thick that even if you had vision, you can’t see. Did you know that according to the Bureau of Standards in Washington that fog covering seven city blocks to a depth of 100 feet is composed of less than one glass of water? Divide that amount of water into about 60 billion tiny droplets and you get fog. Distribute those minute particles over the city or the countryside, and they can almost blot out everything from your sight. The lesson here is: Too many of us let a cupful of problems turn our lives into an absolute fog.
We have a “Long-range Planning Committee” at my church. Its report is due at the Church Annual Meeting on Feb. 6th. I know that there will be at least two major recommendations to come to the congregation: Develop a greater emphasis in missions by establishing a Missions Committee with elected members and budget and; Decide to purchase an additional building in Chinatown to expand our ministries by setting aside $200,000 to be used as a down-payment when that time comes. We are envisioning where we would like to see our church heading: more mission minded and active and reaching more people for Christ through more ministries. We all know that without a long-range plan, we’re not sure why we are doing what we are doing today! We set our vision in order to realize the vision coming true.
Isaiah’s vision is that “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” I don’t think Isaiah who was prophesying around 700 BC was around when Jesus, the Messiah was born. But he envisioned it and helped all those around him do what they can do to realize the vision coming true. Isaiah’s vision is a vision of messianic time located in the eschaton. It is a “someday” text; not a “today” text.
Listen to Isaiah 11:2-5 again.
“The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.”
A quick glance at the newspapers today dispel any notion that such a world is now in place, or that it is even close to materializing. If this is God’s vision of the future, then that is the vision which we are called to work for today. When we believe in Jesus Christ, the shoot that has come from the stump of Jesse, we are to work today to bring about a realized eschatology, even if it is accomplished only in part. We pray the Lord’s Prayer and agree that we will struggle to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Justice at Camp
I believe that camps are religious communities. Our church perceives Redwood Glen as an extension of our church building in Chinatown. Unfortunately, we don’t have tall redwoods outside of our church. (But we have very good Chinese food though.) What we can’t do as well in our church in the city, we can do at Redwood Glen. We can’t have a campfire on our sidewalk but we can at camp. We don’t see deer in Chinatown but we see them grazing outside the Siden Center. We don’t necessarily feel safe walking around town at night but when we are at Redwood Glen, we walk under star-studded sky until its “Lights Out.” Camps are religious communities.
As religious communities, camps would also need to envision the messianic time located in the eschaton. It’s not enough to say that the bottom line is all that counts. It’s not enough to say that we are only a neutral facility. It’s not enough to say that anything goes as long as we can stay solvent. Isaiah’s prophecy calls us to work today to bring about the vision of a new tomorrow.
Listen to Isaiah one more time.
“The spirit of the Lord shall rest on us, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Our delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
We shall not judge by what our eyes see, or decide by what our ears hear; but with righteousness we shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; we shall strike the earth with the rod of our mouths, and with the breath of our lips we shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around our waists, and faithfulness the belt around our loins.”
As people of faith who know the Christ Child and who are on this side of the resurrection, we have a responsibility to bring about righteousness not only through our individual lives but through our ministries too.
Sadako
Remember it was a little child in the manger who fulfills all the hopes and dreams of all the years. Children have the power to bring into focus what’s important and what’s not. Not a year goes by without having a child come onto the grounds of your camps.
(Show a picture of Evi.)
Sadako Sasaki was such a child. She lived in Japan from 1943-1955. She was in Hiroshima when the atom bomb was dropped.
When she was 11, she developed leukemia and died. During her months in the hospital, she remembered an ancient story which says that the crane is supposed to live for a thousand years. If a sick person folds a thousand paper cranes, the gods will grant his or her wish and make her healthy again.
Sadako’s dream was peace in our world. She held fast to this hope, making as many cranes as her energy would allow her, day after day. The paper origami cranes became her strength and her courage.
When she had made her 654th crane, Sadako died. Sadako’s classmates folded 356, so that 1000 cranes were buried with her.
After her funeral, Sadako’s class collected her letters and published them in a book that was sent around Japan. Soon, everyone knew about Sadako and the thousand paper cranes.
Her friends began to dream of building a monument to her and all children who died the way she did. Young people throughout the country helped collect money for the project. In 1958, a statute of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. Since that time, people from all around the world have spoken the words which are engraved there. They have kept Sadako’s dream alive: “This is our cry; this is our prayer—peace in our world.”
The message of Christmas points to a future kingdom of peace and justice. It’s a future that Jesus the Christ has brought to our souls, and calls us to bring to pass now for the health and well-being of all of God’s children.
Activity—Fold paper cranes
Song—Let There Be Peace on Earth (614)
Benediction
2005 ABI Conference
Saturday Worship
Call to Worship (42)
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
And all these things shall be added unto you, Alleluia, alleluia!
Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find,
Knock and the door shall be opened unto you, Alleluia, alleluia!
Song—We Three Kings (233)
Scripture—Isaiah 11:6-9
Message—Gifts
I learned that when you serve God, God can cause you to change. A few years ago while leading our Tuesday night Bible study, we studied Isaiah 11. And only a few weeks earlier, we studied the creation as recorded in Genesis. When I compared these passages together, I realized that God created us to eat from what grows out of the field and that in the eschaton,
“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like an ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
About two years ago, I became a vegetarian. I am not here to convince you to become one yourself. But merely to testify how the word of God was revealed to me and that it has now changed my life. Isaiah’s vision of the Peaceful Kingdom is in the eschaton—it will happen tomorrow but not today. My diet is a commitment to live out that vision as much as I could to model the Peaceful Kingdom to become a reality someday.
Dog-Eat-Dog
For today, suicide bombers explode on almost a daily basis in Iraq. We were patted down at the security gates coming here. And our food supply is vulnerable to terrorism.
Isaiah speaks of a day when there will be complete and total peace in the world that even all the animals will finally be able to live side by side without having to be afraid—a day when lions and lambs will become best buddies.
We hear what Isaiah says, but we have to wonder: what was he thinking? It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there! We learned this when we were kids. We saw that Wylie E. Coyote’s mission in life is to catch and eat the Roadrunner. All that Sylvester the Cat wants to do is to make a snack of Tweety Bird. They don’t want to be friends.
We know that on our camps, animals don’t live at peace with each other too. We walk outside to pick up our morning paper, and we see a robin sucking down an earthworm. When we get our mail from the mailbox, we see a spider on a cobweb devouring an unsuspecting fly. We see an alley cat with bird feathers stuck to his whiskers.
Not only don’t animals get along with each other, but they don’t even live in peace with us. Every summer sharks attack swimmers. We worry about mosquitoes buzzing around us maybe carrying the West Nile virus. Or if we take a hike on one of the camp trails, is some tick going to give is Lyme disease?
But here is what Isaiah is saying. “Peace, peace is on the way! The day is coming when all people and all animals are going to live in peace!” We hear what Isaiah has to say. But as we look world around us, we know that if we’re going to believe that peace is on the way, we need more evidence than Isaiah’s words.
As Christians, we believe that shoot from the stump of Jesse is the evidence. It’s Jesus. It’s true that when Jesus walked on this earth, he didn’t bring about that perfect peace that Isaiah spoke of. But he did announce that peace is on the way. Through his cross and resurrection, Jesus showed us that despite what we might think at times, hatred and violence do not have the final word. Rather, the final word, the only word that will be left standing at the end of time, is peace.
White Elephants
In Myanmar, the country that used to be known as Burma, something happened that the people interpreted as a sign that peace was at hand. In the northeastern jungles of that country, hunters found a white elephant. According to tradition, a white elephant is a sign that peace and better times are on the way. That’s a message that the Burmese people desperately wanted to hear, considering that they had suffered through years and years of poverty, starvation, and civil war.
I’m not sure where the phrase, “white elephant gifts” comes from. But I like to see that “white elephant gifts” can be signs of peace and better times are on the way.
Since we have been at this conference, Epiphany happened on January 6th—the day traditionally celebrated as the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem to present gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Child in the manger. At our Tuesday Night Bible Study group, we have been celebrating Epiphany by having a pot-luck dinner and I baking a home-made cake and placing usually a raisin in it so that the one who has the raisin would be the king or queen for the year. After dinner, we would have a “white elephant gift exchange.” We rewrap things we got for Christmas that would find a better home some place else.
What I would like you to do today is to think about something at your camp that you may not have much use for but might still have use at another camp. It’s a white elephant. Write this down on this card and identify your camp by name. Put the card in the envelope and seal it.
Activity—Sharing Gifts
Peaceful Camping
I know that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there for camping too. You want to market your camps sometimes to the same people. You want to solicit funds for support from the same churches and major donors. You want to “brand” your camp so that only your camp comes up in the minds of parents when they are looking for a camp to send their children. You want to be on the top of the list of successful camps.
But there will come a time when God’s kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. And it won’t be a dog-eat-dog world out there anymore. By you sharing something that you may not need anymore with someone else who still might have this need, you are beginning to practice what the eschaton will be. We will all have our needs met and God’s peace will come into our world.
Song—God of the Sparrow (29)
Benediction
2005 ABI Conference
Sunday Worship
Call to Worship (65)
In this very room there’s quite enough love for one like me,
And in this very room there’s quite enough joy for one like me;
And there’s quite enough hope and quite enough pow’r to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus, is in this very room.
In this very room there’s quite enough love for all of us,
And in this very room there’s quite enough joy for all of us;
And there’s quite enough hope and quite enough pow’r to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus, is in this very room.
In this very room there’s quite enough love for all the world,
And in this very room there’s quite enough love for all the world;
And there’s quite enough hope and quite enough pow’r to chase away any gloom,
For Jesus, Lord Jesus, is in this very room.
Opening Prayer
Scripture—Isaiah 11:9
Song—For the Beauty of the Earth (40)
Message—Cable Cars
In the Bay Area, we have BART—Bay Area Rapid Transit. The stations are sleek, modern and fully automated. You put your money into this stainless steel machine and out come a BART ticket indicating how much money you have on it. Put your ticket in this console, the gate opens and your ticket pops back up. Not long before a train glides quietly into the station and stops.
You walk in and sit down. You can’t see anyone running the train. No one comes through the train barking, “Tickets, Tickets.” The only other people you see are other passengers riding the train with you but no one spoke. “What if something went wrong, we’d be helpless.”
Soon the train rolls into a station and the doors automatically open. The whole train ride was smooth, efficient, swift, totally without human contact.
There’s another transportation system in the Bay Area. It’s the cable cars in San Francisco. These symbols of “rice a roni” are open, noisy with people ready to jump on and off at every corner. The grip man shouts out the name of each stop—“Powell Street!” The conductor jokes as he collects actual money from each passenger. Everyone is talking to everyone else.
When you ride the cable car into Chinatown, there are school kids coming home from school, senior citizens with pink plastic grocery bags, mixed in with tourists from Wisconsin.
Sometimes, the grip man loses the cable. So everyone has to climb out and help push the car around the corner. Then the grip man gets hold of the noisy cable underneath the street and away they go again.
Riding BART and the cable cars can teach us something about the church. Some churches are like BART—smooth-running, efficient, asking nothing of us but to pay our way. When there’s a problem, there’s nothing we can do but to wait for an expert to come in to fix it.
The church at its best isn’t like BART. It’s like a cable car—open, inviting, full of life and noise, and always more room for the children. When it loses power and needs to be pushed around the corner, we all have to get behind it and push until we get it back on track. The church is meant to be human in scale—everyone is talking with each other regardless of where you’re from.
But there’s another important way the church is like a cable car. A cable car has no power of its own. The grip man has to operate the lever to grip the cable that is moving, hidden under the street.
The church has no power of its own unless it has Christ as its head. It’s the power of God that moves it. As with the cable care, it’s not what you see that makes it go, it’s what you don’t see. All of us as Christians are like cable cars too. We latch onto the power of God and we move where the Holy Spirit takes us.
God’s Holy Mountain
In Isaiah, the eschaton—the vision of what is to come will be on God’s holy mountain where there will be no more hurting and destroying. The world will have full knowledge of who God is to the point that it would be as widespread as the waters that cover the sea. All of the people will know God and God’s Peaceful Kingdom will come true.
Living in God’s creation calls us to not hurt or destroy each other. It’s always more efficient to eradicate, bulldoze over, slash and burn, harvest the timber, and strip mine. It’s fast and efficient. But God is calling us to be patient with each other; to take more time to listen and talk with each other, to realize that we are all members of the same backyard of God’s holy mountain.
There was an article in the “Home & Garden” section of the SF Chronicle recently that made an interesting point of how our individual gardens are not separate from each other. We might think that we have the last say on what happens in our individual gardens.
From an aerial picture, the writer made the point that our individual gardens all make up the mosaic of a large countryside garden stretching miles and miles around. If we put in non-indigenous plants, it may cause our neighbor’s plants to sicken. If we pour down pesticide, it will leak into our neighbor’s garden as well as into the Bay. If we reduce fawn and floral diversity, we would also destroy life sustainable habitats for insects, birds, and animals.
Now that we have received the Good News of Jesus Christ and have received the vision of God’s Peaceful Kingdom to come, we are all members of God’s holy mountain garden. To care for God’s creation and to be a faithful part of God’s creation, we must always first consider that efficiency and expediency are not necessarily the right answers to our problems. Just because it may have worked in a corporation does not mean that it would work in the church.
The church is more like a cable car than BART. It will take time for the wolf to learn how to live with the lamb or the leopard to lie down with the kid. It will take time for the cow and the bear to graze together or for the lion to learn how to eat straw like an ox. It will take time for a little child to learn to trust his hand over the asp’s hole or the adder’s den.
It will require for us to believe that a little child, a shoot that comes out from the stump of Jesse that is blessed with the Spirit of the Lord and filled with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord is Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords to grant us everlasting peace.
The Lord’s Supper
Song—Blest Be the Tie that Binds (393)
Benediction
The will of God will never take you,
Where the grace of God cannot keep you,
Where the arms of God cannot support you,
Where the riches of God cannot supply your needs,
Where the power of God cannot endow you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the spirit of God cannot work through you,
Where the wisdom of God cannot teach you,
Where the army of God cannot protect you,
Where the hands of God cannot mold you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the love of God cannot enfold you,
Where the mercies of God cannot sustain you,
Where the peace of God cannot calm your fears,
Where the authority of God cannot overrule for you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the comfort of God cannot dry your tears,
Where the Word of God cannot feed you,
Where the miracles of God cannot be done for you,
Where the omnipresence of God cannot find you. –Author unknown