Matt Skillen's Blog
In the second installment of a four-week message series titled Chain Breaker, the message “God With Us” examines the boundaries and structures God established with the Israelites to reorient them as God’s people.
The audio file embedded below was recorded at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on February 10th during the 11:00 AM worship service.
To learn more about St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, visit our website at: http://stpauls.faith.
This week at St. Paul’s UMC in Elizabethtown we started a new sermon series called “Chain Breaker,” which over four weeks will explore the stories in Exodus and Joshua to see how the Israelites were liberated from slavery to become a light to the rest of the world. This message examines the calling Moses received from God at the burning bush.
It was family worship week at St. Pauls. I love hearing all of the background noise from the younger worshipers in the room. However, I think the Rev. Dr. Joe Skillen did a much better job at family worship with a cool sermon bingo game he and his staff devised. You can hear his sermon here:
The sound of the saw cut through the silence in the large garage. An air compressor clicked on as the punching sound of nails from a pneumatic nail gun joined two pieces of pine together in a perfect right angle. I watched this wizardry as a young boy in my grandfather’s workshop. He was a master craftsman; I believed he could build anything.
Grandpa never used plans. He just knew how things were supposed to fit together. He could cut lumber with laser-like precision, and with what appeared to be very little effort he could create a masterpiece. I remember he once turned a stack of excess decking lumber into a set of Adirondack chairs. From my eight-year-old perspective, the transformation was nothing short of miraculous. Where one person saw unneeded lumber, Grandpa saw great potential, and I always admired this about him.
Humanity is God’s greatest creation. He made us all unique in His own image. While we enjoy this unique connection with God, we fall short of God’s expectations through our sins. Romans 8 says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” However, by grace the entirety of humanity has been reconciled with God through Christ’s great sacrifice.
In the candidacy guidebook Answering the Call I read of John Wesley’s definitions of the three aspects of grace. These three aspects (prevenient grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace) are described in the book in relationship to a house. (I’d like to go into more detail of this particular metaphor in another post. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.) While the illustration of a house is useful in understanding Wesley’s aspects of grace, I think the craftsman is a more salient comparison when discussing humanity’s need for divine grace.
Prevenient grace is the grace that “surrounds us” and “precedes us.” No matter where we go in life, no matter the decisions we have made, God goes before us and meets us at every turn in our lives. Even in times of chaos or aimlessness, God sees our potential, he knows each name and he has plan for each life—much like the craftsman sees a masterpiece in the raw materials.
For a craftsman to do his work the raw materials must go through a significant transformation. Saws cut and form lumber and the pieces are joined together to make new shapes. With each cut and adjustment, the craftsman brings the masterpiece together. Similarly, justifying grace is the grace that is present in spiritual growth. In the moment a person recognizes sin in his or her life and trusts that he or she is forgiven, he or she is once more aligned, or justified, with God. These moments, as we are cut and formed, are challenging to say the least, but these formational experiences are truly life-changing. No more are we an excess pile of lumber. A new purpose may be revealed in our personal transformations with justifying grace.
True craftsmanship is revealed in the use of smaller tools. As the craftsman sands the wood to a smooth finish and adds etching or carvings to complete the new piece, character and detail emerge. Sanctifying grace, in similar ways, reveals more of God’s image in us, and God becomes more visible in us. Because we have been forgiven, we forgive more freely. Because He is generous to us, we are generous with others. When one is able to tap into God’s beautiful sanctifying grace he or she creates a cycle that allows him or her to be more Christ-like to those he or she comes into contact with, which could encourage others to be gracious to those they meet too.
The fine sawdust hung in the light pouring in through the workshop window. Two beautiful chairs stood in the middle of the room where a stack of decking wood used to be. Grandpa smiled and asked me to take a seat. As I ran my hands across one of the arm rests, I thought earnestly about the day that I would build my own chairs because I now knew it was possible.
In July 2018 I was invited to share a sermon at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. My talk on the foundational connection between obedience and trust, can be accessed below.
Thursday, May 24th was a big day in the Skillen home. Wyatt, after going fifteen months without a haircut, walked into Purify Salon in Elizabethtown, PA and had about eight inches of hair cut. The transformation was simply remarkable to watch–but it wasn’t just a visual transformation Rebekah and I witnessed. Our boy is growing up right before our eyes and it was apparent on Thursday.
As Wyatt began avoiding haircuts we thought we were entering another “phase” in Wyatt’s life. But what may have started as a phase became a mission when about nine months after his last haircut a young girl Wyatt’s age, Sophia, lost a brave and courageous battle with brain cancer.
Sophia and Wyatt first met when they were very young. Sophia’s mom and Rebekah both attended the same support group for new mothers. Her passing was very difficult for so many involved, and several people close to Sophia’s family sprang to action in the most wonderful and beautiful ways. Moms from the original support group, for instance, signed up to serve meals at the Ronald McDonald house in Hershey, PA–the organization that supports families like Sophia’s who need to remain close to loved ones in the hospital.
Rebekah and I didn’t know how Wyatt would mourn, but we knew he would likely find his own call to action, and he did through the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program.
Here is Wyatt’s story.
I have one of those basements in my home that, if one looks closely at the pockets of junk possessions stored on shelves and in the corners, stories will slowly emerge.
The other night I found the trombone I played through middle school and high school. The case is decorated with bumper stickers that I collected throughout my four years playing in the Maize High School marching band, concert band, jazz band and pep band.
As I looked at the stickers I laughed as I remembered the different stories behind each addition. And I dwelled briefly on how each sticker represents some attempt to outwardly define my personality and shifting sense of self-expression.
Take for instance these three stickers on the bottom of one side of the case. I was never really particular about my shoes in high school. I wore vans sneakers because they were wider than most than most athletic shoes and they were really durable. I wasn’t a skateboarder, but I clearly didn’t mind if others thought I was.
The Safety Orange sticker was added as if to say, “Yeah, I like local music.” Safety Orange was a band headed up by the mythic Steve “Gooding” Gooding. I “worked” for about six months with a Wichita band called Shaft. Safety Orange and Shaft played a number of shows together in that time including a CD release party for Safety O at The Big Fish–a club that was recently demoed to make room for the new Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita.
When the history of Wichita hockey is written (note to self: begin drafting a proposal to write the complete history of amateur and pro-am hockey in Wichita, KS) Triple Crown Hockey will likely be listed in the footnotes somewhere. In the mid-1990s hockey was really taking off in the Air Capital. Ray Cody, a local businessman and proponent of youth hockey, launched a roller hockey league in a spare parking lot at the Wichita Municipal Water Authority building. This was a matter that eventually came before the Wichita City Council because it was unclear if Ray even had permission to set up shop in the spare lot.
Before the city of Wichita got involved Triple Crown Hockey, a national youth sports organization hosted a weekend-long tournament that attracted teams and players from entire central plains region. What was cool about this tournament is that the local teams from Wichita had a chance to really compete with players from other parts of the country and we found that we could actually hang.
The other side of the case seems less exciting, but I’ll note the KICT 95 sticker. I know I went through several “favorite” radio stations in my youth, but T-95 still stands as one of my favorites that I listen to whenever I’m back home. I remember once calling in to the station–OK so I called in more than once–to play “name that tune.” I lost to another caller, but the thrill of hearing my voice on the radio was simply electric.
Ghosts exist. I don’t necessarily mean floating figures stuck somewhere between life and death haunt us mortals. But the ghosts of our past do amble around us, and it is interesting to take a closer look to see who we have become.
I went to Lake Worth Beach today in Florida. The weather was nearly perfect and the water was that shade of blue that hypnotizes in-lander tourists. You know what I mean. It’s that bluest blue that invites you to recline a little longer to take in the breeze, the clouds, the salt. That was how it was today. Perfect.
My children are at the right age for this kind of outing. My daughter in a sun dress, my son in shorts. I watched them laugh and play for the first time in the ocean. Well, this was the first time they played in the ocean without being carried out and dipped into the water for a photo opportunity. No, this was their first experience at the beach where they played their own games and explored the mosaic washed up pieces of shells and coral, smoothed by the rolling waters on their own.
We grabbed handfuls of shells, talked to a pelican perched on the pier, and drank Coke-a-Cola. I watched them run and laugh and throw handfuls of wet sand into the approaching waves. My son, who is always moving even when he should be sitting still, is almost cemented to the shore as the waves pass over his feet, burying him in sand a little bit more each time.
My daughter can hardly contain her excitement. She has been dreaming of this day since November. Now several months later she runs nonstop on the sand. Then, she runs to the water and lets the cold wave wash over her legs.
When the parking meter runs out of time we wash the sand off of our feet near a public pavilion and walk slowly back to our car. We know we will be back sooner than we think, but we find ourselves completely content and fulfilled in this moment.