Sermon for April 15th, 2018

Luke 24:50-53

50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

2 Kings 23:1-3

1 Then the king directed that all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem should be gathered to him. 2 The king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him went all the people of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests, the prophets, and all the people, both small and great; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. 3 The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant.

FPC Worship is Reformed (and always reforming)

Today is April 15th, or as it is sometimes referred to in the church calendar, the Feast Day of St. IRS. You've heard of St. IRS, right?

I'm reminded of the story of a little boy who wanted $100 so badly, that he prayed for two weeks but nothing happened. Then he decided to write a letter to God requesting the $100. When the postal authorities received the letter addressed to God, USA, they weren't sure who to send it to, so they routed it to the White House. When the President received the letter, he was so impressed, touched, and amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5.00 bill, as this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy. A week later, the little boy received the $5.00 in the mail, and was so delighted, he sat down to write a thank-you note to God. It said: Dear God, Thank you very much for sending me the money. However, I noticed that for some reason you had to send it through Washington, DC and as usual, those jerks deducted $95.

May your contributions to St. IRS be relatively painless on this high and holy day. But our sermon today is not about taxes or the IRS. We are in the midst of a seven-part sermon series on WORSHIP. We've learned that worship at First Presbyterian Church is Welcoming, Orderly, Reformed, Sacred, Honest, Intelligent, and Public. Today we're going to focus on the letter "R" which is for "Reformed."

What does that mean, Reformed?

First of all, it's a label, an identifier of where we are on the family tree of Christianity, kind of like Catholic or Orthodox. Here in El Paso, when people say Catholic, what they usually mean is Roman Catholic, but there's also the Byzantine Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, the Marionite Catholic church and many others. Likewise, in the Orthodox tradition, there's Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, etc. All Presbyterian churches are Reformed Churches, along with the United Church of Christ, the RCA (Reformed Church in America), Dutch Reformed Church, Cumberland Church and many (but not all) Baptist and Congregational churches.

Why the label "reformed," though? Is it because we used to be bad, but then we went to Reform School? (as in, I'm a reformed criminal) Kind of, but not quite. We use the label "reformed" to indicate that our church was born out of the 16th century movement known as the Reformation, and more specifically from the followers of the Reformer John Calvin. Reformed churches, then, are Calvinist churches.

What does this have to do with worship?