Fifth Avenue Baptist 5/12/2024

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
In the.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Good morning. Please join me in the call to worship. Come,
children of God, sing a new song, clap your hands
and shout for joy. Jesus Christ has risen from the
dead and descended into heaven insteadfast love and faithfulness. God
has done marvelous things. Christ is alive and at work

(02:35):
among us in the world. Therefore, let us share God's
love and good news to all. We will delight in
God's love with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Almen.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Six f.

Speaker 5 (04:31):
F it's.

Speaker 6 (05:58):
So, Please join me in prayer. Good morning, Father, thank

(06:22):
you for this day, for this moment, which we were
not promised. We come trying to leave our selfish focus
behind to worship you. Father. Please be present with us.

(06:45):
We're trying to praise, to exclaim, to lift high your
holy majesty in song, in prayer, in words, in love
as your creation created, to adore you, as your beloved, created,

(07:13):
to love you as your spirit turned people. Given the
gift of Jesus, who is taught us to pray, Our Father,
who art in heaven, how would be thy name, Thy Kingdom. Come,

(07:36):
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
And give us this day our daily bread.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
And lead us not.

Speaker 6 (07:46):
As we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For
Thine is the kingdom and the Power and the glory forever.

Speaker 7 (08:01):
Amen, s.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
S.

Speaker 7 (09:45):
Six.

Speaker 8 (10:14):
If you feed your fear, your faith will fade. If
you feed your faith, your fear will fade. All gifts
come from you.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Lord.

Speaker 8 (10:24):
You are the truth, the light, and the provider. You
have provided us with your mercy. You gave us your
only begotten sung for our salvation. Our heart full of gratitude,
and we give these gifts and service to you.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Amen. Maybe pray together, Oh gracious God, as we come

(11:28):
to worship you on this day of ascension, we think
of what this meaning of this story is for us,
the theology of you leaving this earthly plane, and what
you are teaching us about letting go in the midst

(11:52):
of life. You have given us this mortal existence which
changes over time, and so we must learn to pass
things on because we are not immortal on this plaintive existence.

(12:13):
For even the King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
you were attached to time. And so on this day,
this Sunday, we remember when you passed your ministry on
to your disciples as motley a crue as they were.

(12:35):
We ask o God, you would teach us how to
live this way in our own lives. Forgive us when
we tried to hold on to things, to possess them,
to own them, and are not ready to pass them
on to the next generation. Whether those are the traditions

(13:00):
in our families, wishing to pass them to our children
and grandchildren, or whether they are part of our own
business passing that on to the next generation, or teaching
the next generation of workers in our company with the
skills that we have had in all the ways. Dear God,

(13:26):
that we pass on our faith us to figure out
how to hold it lightly in order to let it go.
We ask our Lord that in so you would help
us to leave legacies. Leaving a legacy in our church

(13:48):
from one generation to the next is also difficult for us.
Guide us in this way of ascension, passing on your
gifts of ministry to the next generation. Oh, Dear God,

(14:12):
we are mindful. This week is voting week in West Virginia,
and we think about all that we maybe have already
done or were doing. This week. We ask go God
that you would help us to not take this for granted.
We look around the world today at so many of

(14:32):
the conflicts that are taking life, and is often because
the people don't have a voice. We pray for those
who are in Ukraine trying to survive and to keep
their homes and their freedoms, attacked by a dictatorship who

(14:52):
is accountable to one, for the hostages being held by Hamas.
And for the Palestinian people who do not have a voice,
but who are under this dictatorship of Hamas without elections,
without accountability, and now they are trapped, and we pray

(15:16):
for their safety. For the children of Palestine of Gaza
do not deserve this. We ask your grace to somehow
work in all that's happening. So we do not know
exactly how to pray. We pray for your spirit for

(15:37):
situations and Sudan and meh and mar other places where
people do not have a choice and to vote and
a voice for their leaders. They are consumed by war.
So as we vote this week, remind us what gift
and responsibility this is. Help us as people of all

(16:02):
different political parties to understand you call us to work
together for the betterment of the common good. On this day,
Mother's Day. We're thankful that as we hold carnations either
pink or white, for the influence of mothers upon our lives.
And we ask that you would help us on this

(16:23):
day to be with our mothers, to call them to.

Speaker 9 (16:28):
Catch up.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
And if there's any barriers that have come between us,
help us to knock those down and to reconcile and
forgive and to love. And where we have mothers that
are deceased, Oh God, help us to make peace with
the past and to take time to be thankful for

(16:49):
the blessings of our mothers and to pass on their
legacy to the next generation. For all these workings of
family and world and society, we ask your guidance that
your love may be known in Christ Jesus. We pray Amen.

Speaker 10 (18:00):
Scha sound.

Speaker 11 (18:28):
From sound.

Speaker 10 (18:40):
Sound, So.

Speaker 9 (18:57):
It's s. S. S. S. Grady this morning.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
The scripture text comes from the story of the Ascension,
the first chapter in Acts in the first book, Theophilis
I wrote about all the Jesus did and taught. From
the beginning, Luke's first book was the Gospel of Luke

(22:07):
until the day when Jesus was taken up to heaven
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles,
whom he had chosen after his suffering. He presented himself
alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them
during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God.

(22:30):
While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem,
but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This,
he said, is what you have heard from me. For
baptized for John, baptized with water. But you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. So,

(22:54):
when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, is
this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel.
He replied, it is not for you to know the
times or periods that the Father has set by his
own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my

(23:16):
witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea, and in Samaria and
to the ends of the earth. When he had said this,
as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a
cloud took him out of their sight. And while he
was going, and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly
two men in white robes stood by them, They said,

(23:40):
men of Galilee, why do you stand up looking toward heaven.
This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven,
will come in the same way as you saw him
go into heaven. Here ends God's Holy Word. May God
bless for our hearing and understanding. Accension Sunday is Sunday

(24:08):
that the Christian Church celebrates Jesus' ascension into Heaven, the
resurrected Lord. After meeting with his disciples on several occasions
and a crowd of five hundred. According to Paul's Letter
to the Corinthians, Jesus came to the conclusion that his

(24:29):
work on earth was done and that his disciples were
ready to carry on his ministry. He gathers them at
the peak of a small mountain somewhere around Jerusalem. He
reassures them, he commissions them to do his work in

(24:50):
his absence, and then as Rachel tried to show us
with the helium balloon, he flows on up in to
the clouds and beyond he disappears. This year, Ascension Sunday

(25:11):
falls on Mother's Day. This is an interesting mix, and
it's an interesting mix because I think there is something
about a theology of the ascension that may have something
to tell us about parenting. On the ascension, Jesus is

(25:39):
thinking about his disciples, that they were all ready for
him to carry on his mission and his ministry. It's
about the human reality that life changes, time marches on,
even for the king of kings and lord of lords.

(25:59):
It's about out how one truly leaves a legacy. Of course, disciples,
they don't think they're ready, right. They want Jesus to
stay with them. They want him to stay with them.
They wanted him around longer. This is also one of

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the paradoxes of parenting and growing up. There are times
when a child, teen young adult is more than ready
to take on whatever challenge is before them, but they
don't see it and they want to cling to mom
and dad, like the disciples wanted to cling to Jesus.

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There are also times when a child teen young adult
isn't anywhere near ready for the challenge before them, and
they haven't the foggiest awareness of that and rush into
it and don't want my and dad to fear. And
somehow parents are supposed to figure out which is which

(27:07):
time and which is the other to respond appropriately. It
is nearly an impossible task.

Speaker 9 (27:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Every parent has run into that, either with the rolling
of the eyes or the outbursts of anger. Every day
parents have to make decisions whether their children are ready,
and whether the parents should step in and help their
child with a difficult situation or to allow them to

(27:40):
work things out to the best of their ability. Good
parents want to protect their children from danger, but good
parents also know that hovering over a child will stamp
out whatever creativity and innervation and risk taking the childs

(28:03):
and needs to develop as a healthy individual. The ascension
asks a question every parent considers in those moments, did
Jesus empower his disciples to carry out his mission or

(28:25):
did he just abandon them? Because sometimes parents fear they
might just be abandoning their children who were not ready.
Parenting is an odd vocation, isn't it. I mean, the

(28:47):
point of it is to put yourself out of a job, right,
to raise your children so that they will be independent
and healthy individuals on their own and not need you anymore,
hopefully want you, but not need you anymore. And that's
not something you can just do when they are seniors

(29:08):
in high school. It's a process that has to begin
when they are infants. Right, maybe you let your baby
or toddler cry a little bit before pampering them to
see if they can self soothe themselves a bit. How
long do you let that go? However? Right, you know

(29:32):
that when you're tdler starting to walk, when he falls down,
you let him get himself back up. Let your kindergartener
walk to class all by herself when you let her
out at the door, When you answer his homeworquestion with
a response that helps him think about the question but

(29:56):
doesn't give him the answer. When you answer her the
phone call from school saying no, I'm not bringing the
homework assignment you left on the kitchen table to school.
That was your responsibility each step in this journey, accompanying
with the confidence that you believe your child can do

(30:17):
it and the safety net of your unchanging love. Regardless
what happens, a parent's love for her child drop naturally
drives her to protect. A parent that doesn't work at
protecting children from the dangers of life is neglectful. But
at the same time, my parent's love for a child

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allows him to face the challenges and the consequences and
the calculated risks of life. For all the pitfalls, because
that's the only pathway towards healthy independence. A loving parent
learns to allow her child to work through unhappiness, to

(30:58):
suffer the consequences of her actions, and to try things
on his own, and saves the moments for diving in
until she's over her head and can't swim in whatever
is drowning her. We can't protect our children from every

(31:21):
danger in life, from every bump in the head or
every broken heart. The best he can do is to
unconditionally love them and to empower them to meet the
challenges that they will face life. On Ascension Sunday, Jesus

(31:44):
is essentially retiring from parenting his disciples. The disciples were
all grown up. They were ready at least when the
Holy Spirit comes when Pentecost Sunday arrives to carry on
Jesus's message and mission. They didn't think they were ready.
They wanted him to stay and take care of him,

(32:06):
but Jesus knew it was time for him to move
on so that they could be who he had called
them to be. By empowering them and letting them take
on his ministry, Jesus was leaving his legacy in their hands.

(32:31):
How do you think Jesus knew it was time for
him to go and to leave them on their own
and with the whole spirit. If you are a parent,
what are the signs that tell you to jump in
and to save your time? Set child? Or when you
know it's time to say you're doing great, keep kicking,

(32:55):
you can swim? How do you know when those times?
It is every parent, every person has to figure these
things out for themselves in constantly evaluating and being aware
of these relationships. It's not just for parents. Every person
has to figure this out for children and nieces and

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nephews and grandchildren and spouses and partners and close friends.
Let me share with you a few operating principles my
wife and I had as our children grew up and
are now young adults. Listen to these and then think
about your own list that you have. Never do for

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your child what they can do for themselves. Never do
for your children what they can doselves. Let your child
experience the concept in quenses of her actions, positive and negative.

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Believe the teacher and stand with your child. Don't shame
your child for failing. Show your child how to learn
from it, rather than giving them the answers. Help them

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to discover the answers for themselves. Encourage risk taking at
appropriate age levels, because taking risks is about believing in yourself.

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Few things are more empowering for a child than to
summon up so a courage saying I can do this,
and then to actually do it. When that moment happens,
you see it their faces, you see it in their bodies.
It is a transformative moment. Don't ask for perfection, ask

(35:24):
for effort. Then celebrate effort, not the outcome above all. Else,
make sure your child knows you unconditionally love her. Say it,

(35:45):
show it. Add your own list of your operating principles.
These that I've shared with you. These are not to
parent child relations. Gregory Jones, the former Deep the Dean
at Duke Divinity School, when addressing the trustees of Baptist

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House of which I was a part of that gathering,
said this, Holy friendships. Holy friendships are the most likely
to help motivate change. They challenge the sins we've come
to love. They affirm the gifts we are afraid to claim,

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and they dream dreams we otherwise wouldn't have dreamed. You
could essentially put all the principles that I mentioned a
moment ago into Jones's statement, challenge the sins we've come
to love, affirm the gifts we're afraid to claim, dream

(36:55):
the dreams we otherwise would not have dreamed. That's what
deep friendships are about. That's what healthy parenting is about.

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You know, teenagers are wired to grow towards independence. It's
the way God made us, which is also why Jesus
couldn't stay on earth as a resurrected lord. We are
wired towards independence. Now, most children will, eventually, regardless of
the parenting, move towards independence of their parents. But most

(37:41):
parents hope for more. In fact, I would say all
friendships hope for more. The aim of every parent should
not just be to put yourself out of a job
and help your child to become independent. The aim is
to help your child become autonomous, which is the capacity

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to both be indeparent, independent of parents, and also connected
to your parents and in all relationships. To be autonomous
means that we are independent of one another, but we
are also connected to one another. Independence without autonomy can

(38:27):
lead to isolation. Madeline Levine, in her book Teach Your
Children Well, gave two great examples of the difference between
the two. Imagine you've just told your thirteen year old
middle schooler for Rebecca, who is heading off to an

(38:51):
afternoon party with friends. You remind her to make sure
that she is home on time because we have a
big family dinner. She stops her feet, glares at you,
and says, you can't tell me when I can leave
the party. The party is important to me. I'll be
home when it's done. Now, that is a fifteen year

(39:12):
old showing her independence, and you could be assured that
that girl will one day be independent. The question will
be will she also be connected. Take the same scenario.
Imagine you've just told your seventeen year old senior in

(39:33):
high school, let's call her Amy, the same thing. As
she's heading off to a big party with friends. You
remind her of this important family dinner, and she says,
Mom and Dad, I know this is really important to you,
and I will be there, but could you text me

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just before dinner's being served so I can stay with
my friends for as long as possible. Now that's a
child asserting her independence and her connection to her family.
She's revealing her autonomy. Connected and yet independent. That's how

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parents leave legacies for their children, to encourage to empower independence,
but also to build the connections and the relationships of
love that create a bond that lasts generations. This is
how church members leave a legacy of service to their
church and pass it on to the next generation by

(40:43):
encouraging autonomy, independence that chooses to be connected. We leave
a legacy for our children by empowering and letting go,
not by holding onto and hovering over, but that means
also facing the grief of letting go and letting go

(41:07):
of them into the unknown of the next phase of parenting,
which you know, of course, happens in the course of
your children growing up. There are several phases of parenting,
right You can't parent your thirteen year old like a
three year old. You can't parent your seventeen year old
like a seven year old. There's all sorts of phases

(41:29):
in this. Through most of my children's childhood, I was
a halftime pastor and a halftime stay at home dad.
The details of that story aren't going to fit in
the sermon, but if you're interested, I can talk about
that later. When the triplets were in their senior of
high school, I was already working at grieving not only
their eventual leaving off into college, but also this job

(41:56):
that I had had that would be gone forever. I
am still and will still be their parent, but it's
not the same way of parenting. Mcgaye and I joke
with people, we are now in the cheerleading phase of parenting.
Our kids are twenty five, so they just kind of

(42:18):
tell us what they're doing with their lives and we
get the pom poms out and cheer for them. Right,
that's the stage we're in. Coaching was the earlier stage
then maybe what I would just call parenting. If Jesus
can leave the fate of the world, his mission, and
his message into the hands of his motley crew of disciples,

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and they were a motley crue right when you read
the gospel stories, they are always making mistakes, and he
left the future of the world in their hands. If
Jesus could do that, Jesus who, by being the Son
of God, the Messiah, everything that we choose to leave
about him, Jesus who had all these entheies about him,

(43:04):
nobody else could have led the church better than Jesus,
And yet he left and left it in the hands
of his disciples and every generation of disciples since then.
If Jesus can do that, surely we as parents can

(43:28):
leave our children to their own lives. Jesus left his
disciples so that every generation of followers could grow up
living the faith. He trusted his disciples, he trusts us.
Part of living into the hope of Easter. This is

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the last Sunday of Easter with the White Pyramids. Part
of the hope of living in the Easter is trusting
God that God is empowering people to be who God
is calling them. God is empowering your friends, so you
don't have to manipulate them to get them to do
just what you want. Let God work in their lives.

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God is empowering this church, so lay leaders or staff
leaders don't have to just try to figure out their
way of doing things. But we can trust that God's
spirit is working with all of us to collaborate in
guiding this church. God is empowering your children, so you
can trust God as they move from dependency upon you
to their independency and autonomy that keeps them connected to you.

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Letting go of the type grip of parenting to the
days of coaching your teenagers and empowering your children to
become autonomous, independent, and yet connected is living into the
hope of Eastern As one phase of parenting dies, a
new phase is resurrected. This is how legacies are passed

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on from one generation.

Speaker 9 (45:07):
To the next.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
A we be faithful.

Speaker 8 (45:13):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Let us pray together, Oh God, as we wrestle with
these ideas in our minds, help us to pick out
what you are guiding to us, that we may be
faithful to our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, best friends, business partners.

(45:44):
Teach us how we are to live in Christ. We pray, Amen.
It is in our tradition to end our worship service
a Baptist tradition with an invitation him, and we open
our doors a fellow, as we will stand together and
sing Phaish Lord Jesus. We invite you. Maybe you've never

(46:05):
made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and savior,
but this is the day you want to declare that
you want to follow Him as Lord and savior. Or
maybe you've been a Christian for a long time you're
looking for a church home. We hope this will be
the day you would want to join our fellowship while
we all stand together and sing. I'll be by in
front of the communion table, will be glad to welcome
you into the arms of this church fellowship. Let's stand

(46:28):
together and.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Sing school, schools.

Speaker 11 (47:31):
School.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Since since sho shots shot shots.

Speaker 11 (48:40):
Show.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
So I'm gonna ask you to be seated and we'll

(49:37):
get the microphone going in a second. Yeah, think us,
here's some I reckon that. Okay, good, So Nathan you
want to come on up?

Speaker 9 (49:43):
This morning?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Nathan Krozer comes up to our church and Von do you.

Speaker 9 (49:46):
Want to introduce me?

Speaker 7 (49:47):
Yeah, Nathan Cozar comes to us by the way of
if you remember, we had a invited friend Sunday and
him and his family have been invited and they have
stuck with and he comes down as a candidate for baptism. So,
as our tradition, Nathan is going to be graduating in

(50:07):
May May May twenty third and has enlisted into our
US military, So we will be celebrating with him next
week in his graduation. We will set time for baptism.
But if as the church, if you agree on his baptism,
let me hear you say amen, Amen. And I'm going
to invite his mother, Carrie to come down, and as

(50:29):
a church, please come and welcome him into the fellowship
and we will set his need.

Speaker 9 (50:33):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Amen, Amen, Nathan. We're glad to have you in our
church family and look forward to your baptism in a
few weeks ahead. So we'll forget today when you can
have other family be here as well. I'm curious that
anybody see the Northern Lions. We can see the Northern Lions. Yeah,
we have some folks. So yeah. So it was supposed
to go all the way to Charlotte. So my wife

(50:56):
and I went out two different times. The second time
I put the top downe of my convertible. We drove
around nothing, didn't see anything, although there were pictures around
people who did see it. We just lost out. And
last night I thought maybe it'll be here tonight, but no.
So anyways, I was over too. But I hope some
of you all got some good If you've got some
good pictures, I would love to see them, send them
to me. I'd love to see them. So yeah, anyways,

(51:18):
hope that was a great thing. Didn't have to go
to Alaska to see them, right, It was nice to
have this one moment with us. Let me say, a
couple of things. First of all, thanks for all those
who helped with worship today, for Chris and for Marla,
thank you and Nearly that was just a fantastic offer.
Tory solo, so thank you for singing with us, seeing
us in worship, and for helping Rachel and Vaughn and

(51:39):
I lead us all in worship today. Let me also
to you that next week we got a lot of
great things, so you're gonna want to make sure you're
here for worship. Next week. We'll be recognizing the grads
Nathan and some other grads as well. We'll be celebrating
a cost and we're gonna have a fun interactive reading,
so you make sure you're here for that. You do
not want to missuscript you're reading next week. Okay, it'll

(52:01):
be a pairaphrase if I can say that, all right. Also, John,
you've got some wind instruments or some strings with us,
string players with us also, so the choir's got an
extra piece. We'll have a string players with us so
also as well. And communion also next week. And the
sermon is actually going to go backwards in time between

(52:22):
me negative three minute sermons, So I'm gonna have a
deligion here figure out how to make time go backwards
and we'll still finish on time somehow, right, So you
make sure you here next week, let's stand together for addiction.
Following the benediction, please come forward so you can welcome
Nathan into the fellowship of our church.

Speaker 9 (52:43):
Family.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Friends, as we go back out into the world, rejoice,
persevere in prayer, and to overcome evil with good. And
as you go, know that God the Creator is already
ahead of you, and Jesus the Christ is walking beside

(53:07):
of you, and God's love, the love of the Holy Spirit,
is swirling around you to guide you and to protect
you from all that you will face this next week.
So friends, go in peace. Ah man.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
D s back

Speaker 4 (57:57):
Faking s