1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000
You know, there was a time when I was not the strapping burly man that you see before you today.

2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:17,000
Let me tell you. Back whenever I was a kid back in school, I was always the nerdy kid.

3
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:22,000
The one who is always like nose in the book, didn't really do a lot of sports or anything like that.

4
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,000
And there were reasons for that. But one of the things later down the line is I lived in California

5
00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,000
and for some reason those Californians just love to be outdoors.

6
00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:35,000
I don't know, it's like they have a pretty countryside or something, assuming nobody's burning it down.

7
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:41,000
But with it though is that when I was there, there was a girlfriend of mine that wanted to go walk around,

8
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:46,000
do an eight mile hike around Mount Diablo.

9
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,000
Now, Mount Diablo, the mountain of the devil, if you will. It actually was a very pleasant place.

10
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:59,000
It was right there in the east bay of San Francisco and I would see it from a distance every day.

11
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:04,000
With it though is I had never gone on an eight mile hike before.

12
00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:10,000
I was in my late 20s and I had never done an eight mile hike and I'm just thinking to myself,

13
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:20,000
what crazy person thinks to do this? I have a TV, there's a coffee shop, why am I going to be going on an eight mile hike?

14
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:27,000
But as I'm thinking about it and I think to myself, you know, self, you should probably get a little bit more exercise in,

15
00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:30,000
be a little bit ready for it, exactly.

16
00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:35,000
And so what I started doing is most days of the week I would go for a walk around the neighborhood.

17
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:42,000
Nothing too crazy, maybe two or three miles, but just enough to start getting comfortable with it and used to it.

18
00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:46,000
So it was a day to go up on the mountain and we're going to go on this hike.

19
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:54,000
And we invited a friend of ours to come along as well. And about halfway through, our friend just was done.

20
00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:00,000
There was no more hiking at that point. It's like, okay, there's another four miles to go.

21
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:05,000
I'm here, just leave me to die. And it's like, dude, you can see a Starbucks over here. You're not going to die.

22
00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:09,000
It's going to be okay. But he wanted to just go and stay there.

23
00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:15,000
Okay, well we're going to keep going. And then three quarters of the way through, my girlfriend was just done.

24
00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:19,000
She was just messing up her ankle. It was not good at all.

25
00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:25,000
And so there I am, the city kid from Houston with absolutely no mountains whatsoever.

26
00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:30,000
Finally get to the end and I'm like, okay, great, I need to get my car. I'm going to drive over. I'm going to pick them up.

27
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:37,000
And then realize that my friend had put my keys in his backpack.

28
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:41,000
Yeah, yeah. So as I'm standing there trying to figure out what I'm going to do.

29
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:47,000
So I had to hike another mile in and I think one of them was like hiking a mile back to meet me.

30
00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:54,000
So I think altogether I ended up hiking 10 miles. And oh my word, it's the last time I think that friend of ours went hiking with us ever again.

31
00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:08,000
But one of the things that was amazing about this is that in so doing, this ended up leading to a pathway that led to other work that I wasn't ready for when I was a kid.

32
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:14,000
I did Cub Scouts. And I made sure I got every one of those little pins.

33
00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:19,000
I got all the check marks, made sure that I got signed off, that I accomplished things.

34
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:27,000
But at the end of the day, I also knew deep in my heart, I'd never make it in the wilderness at all.

35
00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,000
And I realized I didn't want that to be the rest of my life.

36
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:36,000
So when I was teaching, I joined a backpacking group out of the school.

37
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:40,000
And so while the kids were learning how to backpack, I was learning how to backpack too.

38
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,000
And I ended up, because of that, I got to go to Glacier. I ended up going to Donner.

39
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:49,000
I went down to Guatemala and went up to Mount Akatenango.

40
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:54,000
Shortly thereafter, the volcano blew up. I swear it's not my fault.

41
00:03:54,000 --> 00:04:05,000
But with it though, is realizing that each of these things, they only happened because I'd been putting in the work and embodying what it meant each step of the way.

42
00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:11,000
You see, that struggle, that push towards something that matters.

43
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:16,000
This is the setting that we see from Paul in the letter today.

44
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:26,000
See, the thing about Paul is that he went to go preach the Gospel, but when he did so, this wasn't something where he just went and gave lip service to it.

45
00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:33,000
Let me just tell you about the Gospel. Okay, great. You accepted Jesus as a Savior. Okay, great. I better go.

46
00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:37,000
All right, good luck everybody. Take care.

47
00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:44,000
Paul, when he would go to a place, not only would have to deal with the Jewish community that didn't like him,

48
00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,000
but then he'd have to deal with the Greek community who thought that he was an idiot, because he would talk about the resurrection of the dead.

49
00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:57,000
And then on top of it, he'd end up having issues with the government authorities and he'd be thrown in jail,

50
00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:05,000
or other times whenever he was making sure that even though this was his full-time work, maybe nobody was giving him any food to eat,

51
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:08,000
he'd have to go do another job to try to make it work.

52
00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:13,000
This was a guy who put his life on the line.

53
00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:19,000
But we want to use a term that maybe you've heard before, incarnation.

54
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:28,000
You know, whenever we say the Creed and we say, you know, born of the Holy Spirit, incarnate, sorry, born of Virgin Mary, incarnate by the Holy Spirit,

55
00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:35,000
what it's meaning is that God took on a human body.

56
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:42,000
Anybody think how strange that that is? Why it's so important that God himself has to be human.

57
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:51,000
But you see, the thing about whenever something matters is that truly finding success doesn't come by avoiding the struggle.

58
00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:59,000
Truly finding success has to go through the struggle and the suffering.

59
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:07,000
Think of something right now. What is something in your life that is truly meaningful to you?

60
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:11,000
Something that truly matters to you.

61
00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:19,000
I want you to ask yourself, could you possibly have achieved it without struggle?

62
00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:24,000
Because the things that matter the most are only the things that not only we have to work toward because they matter,

63
00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:29,000
but frankly, they mean more to us because we have to struggle through them.

64
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:37,000
And that's the thing about what Paul ends up showing is that to demonstrate love, the kind that ultimately comes from God,

65
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:44,000
it ends up requiring more than just words. It requires our very lives.

66
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:51,000
You see, the Thessalonian church, they had been changed, truly changed, but it wasn't just by hearing the words,

67
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:56,000
they had to see it in Paul's life.

68
00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:01,000
He was showing them because of who he was and what he did.

69
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:07,000
The thing is that oftentimes we misunderstand what we think about the cross of Jesus.

70
00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:16,000
How many times have we thought before, you know, it would have been so nice if those people back there had just been accepting Jesus

71
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,000
and they hadn't tried to crucify him?

72
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:22,000
Man, it would have been so great if he didn't have to go on a cross.

73
00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:28,000
Life would have been so much easier. People would have had it made. Jesus could have lived to a nice old age.

74
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:35,000
He probably would have had a wonderful beard with gray hair in it, because, you know, that's whenever you know that you've truly matured

75
00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:40,000
and you're intelligent right there. Nobody catching that joke. Okay, whatever.

76
00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:50,000
But with it, though, is that it's only because of the cross that it ended up mattering.

77
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:58,000
Because the thing with us is that we are a people who create destruction.

78
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:08,000
So only by going through the very destruction that we cause can God actually provide the salvation that we need.

79
00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:16,000
See, it says oftentimes in our society that you can't just throw money at a situation.

80
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:22,000
Usually when somebody is saying you can't just throw money at a situation, it's usually because they don't want to actually give any money to something.

81
00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:24,000
They're trying to find an excuse.

82
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:30,000
The thing is, is that honestly, things do take money to run.

83
00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:38,000
But the flip side of it is that when all we want to do is throw money at something, then it doesn't mean anything.

84
00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:45,000
Whenever we have things going on here at the church and we try to find people to volunteer for things,

85
00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:49,000
even just to trim bushes or maybe water things or whatever,

86
00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:57,000
and there are times where someone might say, oh, well, we'll just go pay somebody to do it.

87
00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:07,000
The trouble is that when we are not involved with the things that matter to us, ourselves, our body, our blood, sweat and tears,

88
00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:14,000
our very time and energy, it doesn't mean the same.

89
00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:25,000
The generations before me, they knew what it was that they were actually putting their hands to the work of the church.

90
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:27,000
And we've lost sight of that oftentimes.

91
00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:33,000
My generation, the one after me, the one after them.

92
00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:40,000
But that's what God has done by being incarnate, by being in this life.

93
00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:45,000
Is that he's ended up showing us how much we matter.

94
00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:56,000
You see, the people who actually know the most about a situation are the ones who are actually feet on the ground in the middle of it.

95
00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:03,000
Whenever we went through all the initial stuff with COVID and stuff like that, how many people thought that they were an expert?

96
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:05,000
I mean, it's like, oh, I've got it all figured out.

97
00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:11,000
Either elected officials who thought that they were super smart and everything, never had a doctor degree whatsoever,

98
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:17,000
or the person next door to you who was like, just spray some Windex on it and you'll probably be fine.

99
00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:22,000
All of the Greek wedding fans, I got you, I got you.

100
00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:26,000
And yet, who were the ones who actually knew what to do?

101
00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:34,000
The people actually there in the emergency rooms, actually treating people, actually there with them.

102
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:40,000
And the truth even now, we hear everybody's got commentary about Israel and Palestine.

103
00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,000
Everybody knows this is why it happened.

104
00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:44,000
That's why it happened.

105
00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,000
This is the only way to fix it.

106
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:47,000
That's the only way to stop it.

107
00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:51,000
People who've never even been in the Middle East.

108
00:10:51,000 --> 00:11:03,000
But the people who have been there for years, trying to find ways to create peace, hope, love, housing, food,

109
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:09,000
are the very people who are the most likely to actually create the peace we keep wanting to find.

110
00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:15,000
And that's the thing about what we see when we see theology of the cross.

111
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:22,000
See, theology of the cross is not saying that we try to avoid what the struggle is, but rather we have to go through it.

112
00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:28,000
And when it's hard, it's usually when we realize that it's worth fighting for.

113
00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:34,000
It's said in our Gospel passage, what's the greatest commandment, and it says, you know, love the Lord your God.

114
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:40,000
Isn't it fascinating that we find that part the easy part to stop on?

115
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:44,000
But he goes to the second part of love your neighbor.

116
00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:54,000
You see, in reality, he's not saying, oh, the Lord your God is the greatest one, and then the second one is second place.

117
00:11:54,000 --> 00:12:05,000
They're together, because the only way to truly love God is because of loving the people that we're with.

118
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:12,000
I mean, believe me, I've taught middle school. I know what it is to suffer.

119
00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:14,000
Yeah, that was for you, rather.

120
00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:22,000
But also, is to realize that that's the truest revelation of who our Messiah is.

121
00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:28,000
They have this part where it says, the Lord said to my Lord, and it sounds a little confusing.

122
00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:37,000
But in your Bibles, probably what you're going to see is that the first one has all capital letters, L-O-R-D.

123
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:42,000
But the second one, capital L, lowercase O-R-D.

124
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:47,000
The reason for this is because the first one is actually Yahweh.

125
00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:53,000
This is saying God, the God that you have known, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

126
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,000
The second one is the Adonai.

127
00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:02,000
This means Lord in the sense of one who's in authority over me.

128
00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:11,000
But if they understood that this person is someone that David is saying, you are above me, you're in authority over me,

129
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:14,000
but this is David's descendant.

130
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:21,000
How many of you ever plan on saying to your kids or grandkids, my Lord?

131
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:25,000
That would make Thanksgiving really awkward.

132
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:29,000
But imagine taking that for the Messiah.

133
00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:36,000
And how is it that the descendant of David could be greater than David?

134
00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:42,000
The thing is, is that we know who this God is as being incarnate.

135
00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:47,000
But the truth is, is that we also look to David to understand why that's important.

136
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:52,000
Because David did not become important on an easy path.

137
00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:58,000
David had to go up against a giant, a Goliath.

138
00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:03,000
He was running from the king that he had to take his place.

139
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:08,000
He had to live among the Philistines, the very people whose champion he had killed.

140
00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:16,000
He then is becoming king, but even ends up having warfare with his own son,

141
00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:21,000
who has to die at his general's hands.

142
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:25,000
He can't even build the temple that he wanted to build.

143
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:31,000
You see, the thing is, is that as much as we know that King David for them was great,

144
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:38,000
the Messiah was meant to be greater, it actually means that as much as David had to struggle,

145
00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:43,000
the Messiah had to suffer even more.

146
00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:51,000
And that's the thing about giving yourself, is that God knew what it was going to take for us.

147
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:56,000
And he didn't even spare his own son.

148
00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:02,000
And that's the thing that we end up learning about the incarnation, is that to be present within it,

149
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:09,000
to be in the midst of those who need us the most, is the only true way of bringing hope,

150
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:15,000
because it's the only way that you received hope in the first place.

151
00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:19,000
Right now, God has plans for each of you.

152
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:27,000
You are in a life and a situation that only God, that God has called only you to be in.

153
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:32,000
But this isn't for you to somehow pass it off to somebody else, or hope that somebody else will fix things.

154
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,000
It's for you.

155
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:42,000
God has come and given us life for us to live.

156
00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:51,000
So as we're going forward and trying to figure out what is it that God's doing, God wants to do it through us.

157
00:15:51,000 --> 00:16:03,000
Because in reality, even as Christ was embodied to bring us life, our lives can then bring that life to others around us.

158
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:13,000
Thanks be to God.