First Presbyterian Church of East Aurora

Please join us for worship at 10:00 am at First Presbyterian Church in East Aurora either in person or on Facebook Live. Today we’re focused on the hope we have that God really can change our lives. I hope you will join us!

Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy Session #23: Thanksgiving (A.C.T.S. Pattern of Prayer)

All Saints Sunday Worship on 11/01/20 (Service begins at the 9:40 mark)

This past Sunday was Reformation Sunday and I preached the following sermon on the need for some protesting Christians again today to re-form the church and the... world (the word "Protestant" came from the word for "Protest") for the sake of the love of God. I hope you will join the ranks as a Reformer for our time and change the world for the better. Preached at First Presbyterian Church, East Aurora, NY, October 25, 2020, by Langdon Buddy Hubbard Your Faith Has Saved You I Thessalonians 1:9-2:12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 Luke 18:31-43 There lives in the heart of most human beings, I believe, a desire to make this world a better place, and to believe that because we lived on this earth we’ve made some kind of difference in the world. I like to affirm that belief in my typical birthday greetings on Facebook and in other places, when I say, Happy birthday! I am so glad you were born. Your life makes a difference. God bless you! If you have not received such a greeting from me, it is only because I didn’t know it was your birthday. So be sure to let me know and you can count on my giving you this blessing. Because, as I said, I believe most people want to know their life has made a difference for some good in the world. And I believe yours does. Now, I know it isn’t true of everyone. There are some who live purely for themselves and their own gain. Everything is transactional for them. They just want to know what’s in it for them. Fortunately, such folks are in the minority. Most people want to make the world a better place for everyone. I believe we saw that happen in West Seneca yesterday, when a 98 year old WWII veteran, who walked with great difficulty, made his way to the back of the line to vote. He was in for a long wait. And then it happened. The person in front of him let him go ahead of them. And the next person did the same. And on and on it went until this dear older man, an American hero, walked right in and voted. For one who had offered his life as a sacrifice for our country, the good folks of West Seneca honored him with a small sacrifice of their own. You see what I mean? I believe at heart most people want to make this world a better place. I believe that’s what many people believe they are doing by participating in our democracy and voting. And a lot of people are already doing it. In fact, we are on pace to see the most votes ever cast in an election. I think it’s great. It’s exciting. I too hold out hope that we together will make this world a better place. There have been times throughout history when the same spirit lived. Today we celebrate the Great Reformation that took off in 1517, 503 years ago, in which Martin Luther posted his 95 theses of how the church needed to change, on the Cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany, and launched a revolution. He believed the church had abused its power and he was intent on changing things. For one thing, the Pope had garnered untold power to control the church, and the church had turned its practices of faith into money makers to line the coffers of the priests and the church at the expense of the people and their needs. They had devolved into a belief of works-righteousness, in which people were considered saved depending on how much money they gave to the church and their good deeds. Martin Luther said that wasn’t the gospel at all. Instead the gospel of Jesus Christ was all about faith in God, depending on God’s grace, and laying down one’s life in love for Christ’s sake and the sake of the world. The story of the blind man in Luke 18 offers a great illustration of this gospel reclaimed by the Reformers. The blind man hears a commotion in town and wants to know what’s going on. His friends tell him it is Jesus and he is passing by. The man had heard about Jesus and his compassionate healing love and so he calls out to him, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! There it is again, as we’ve seen over and over again in Luke: the Jesus’ Prayer. Everyone told the man to be quiet but he shouted all the louder, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus called the man to him and asked what he wanted. The man said, Lord, let me see again. And Jesus heard that request as a sign of faith in God and trust in him, and he healed the man and gave him his sight, and then said, Your faith has saved you. And the man regained his sight on the spot and began following Jesus and praising him, until everyone else joined in the praise, many of them following Jesus, too. This story has all the marks of salvation by grace through faith, the heart of the Reformation message. God’s grace is there for us, God loving us and showing mercy and kindness to us. We trust in Jesus by faith, reaching out to him, seeking his blessing. Jesus calls us to himself, and we have a choice: will we trust in him or not? All the hallmarks of the Reformation are present in this story. The Reformation is known for the Five Solas, that is five statements or commitments or beliefs that are prefaced with the word, sola, which means alone. First, Scripture Alone. We have this story passed on through Holy Scripture, we accept as the gospel truth. Second, Grace Alone. Jesus offers the man mercy, which is grace and healing love. Third, Faith Alone. The man responds with faith in Jesus Christ. Fourth, Christ Alone. Jesus offers the man salvation through faith in Christ alone. And fifth, Giving Glory to God Alone. The man responds by giving God the glory for the blessing he has received. The man had nothing to do with it, his healing. He simply turned to God and put his faith in Christ alone to heal him, believing that Jesus cared about him enough to heal him. He was saved by grace through faith. This is the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. And it sent shock waves through the church in the times of Martin Luther again. Luther obviously hit a nerve because others resonated with his message of the Sovereignty of God, not the Pope or the church, and in Jesus who alone saves us, not we ourselves, and joined his revolution of reformation, or re-formation. The people caught his hope to remake the church back into the image of the church of Jesus and the apostles as found in the New Testament. As he and his followers hit the streets and called for reformation and renewal, the church fought back and called these troublemakers, protestants. Do you know what that word meant back then? Protestors. Yes, they protested the way the church had fallen away from the faith, and called the church back to greater faithfulness to Jesus and his gospel of grace and faith. Unfortunately, there was much violence in the streets. In the end, you might say they were not successful because Martin Luther and others simply were kicked out of the church they were trying to reform. But they didn’t let that stop them. They went on to create churches they believed to be more faithful. Our Presbyterian Church was one of those who came to birth during the Great Reformation. We were protestors then and we are protestors still today whenever we see injustice and faithlessness in the church and in our world today. We must speak up and tell the truth. That is who we are. Protestants. Protestors. We live in a time when we need some protesting Protestants again today, people who see what is wrong, unjust, untrue, and dare to speak the truth of the gospel of Jesus to the powers that be and call for change. That is what Jesus did. He walked right into the pain and suffering of humanity and offered his life as a sacrifice to bring about change for the sake of the love of God. Listen to what he said: See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again. Jesus offers his own life of nonviolent love as the only thing that can end the spiral of violence and evil in the world. He steps into the brokenness of our world and all its pain and dares to offer the world a better way, a way of God’s amazing grace and transforming love. And he calls us to dare to believe the gospel, and offer our lives for the sake of the world for which Christ died. The gospel story speaks to us on two levels. First, will we step out in faith and trust in Jesus Christ for our life and salvation? And second, will we then be a witness to the love of Christ in this violent world? I like what New Testament scholar, Alan Culpepper says: The church meets to worship the Christ, to bind up wounds, to encourage one another to keep the faith, and to go back into places where otherwise hostility would destroy human life unchallenged. The experience of the church is that the experience of Christ is our experience alsoAll who seek to follow Jesus will find that they are called to absorb hostility in his name. They will be betrayed, insulted, beaten, and at times even killed. But the violence will not triumph. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s affirmation that violence will not have the last word. In the end, God’s redemptive love will prevail. That is the gospel. (The Gospel of Luke, in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IX, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, pp. 352-353) And so, what will we do with what we have heard? Will you come and follow Jesus by faith? And will you then step out in faith to serve Jesus in this world? Will you be willing to speak the truth of the gospel to the powers that be? Will you call out leaders who lead in ways that are contrary to the ways and purposes of God’s justice, truth, and love? Will you stand with those who are suffering and oppressed, like the children at our border who may never find their parents again because of our government’s separation of them when they came for asylum with their parents to our country? Will we stand with our African American brothers and sisters who are still after all these years treated as second class citizens? Will we speak out and act up for justice to be done for them? Will we send the message as a church on our church sign that Black Lives Matters, like our Unitarian Universalist neighbors did, to make it clear that Black people are welcome here, not only in our church but in our community? Will we stand with our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, whose rights are being threatened in our nation by our very own government? Would we dare to fly a rainbow flag to send the message they will find a welcome here? Will we stand with women and their rights to their own health care and sovereignty over their own bodies without government interference? Will we say no to the corruption of elected officials and to their lies and their threats to everything just and loving and good in our country? You see, these are not political issues, but faith issues, following Jesus, who willingly gave his life to bring salvation and hope to broken people, and to a broken world. Jesus stands with those who are oppressed, and our faith will lead us, if we truly follow Jesus, to do the same. This is where faith leads us, to find not only our own salvation, but to be agents of God’s healing and salvation for the world. If we do, one thing we can count on is this, like Jesus and the Reformers before us: we will encounter hostility. We will face judgment. We will be rejected. We will be hated. Just like Jesus, whose love brings out the best and the worst in people, with the hope that love, God’s love, in the end will win the day. That is what faith looks like, the faith of the Reformers, following in the footsteps of Jesus, a faith that trusts so deeply in Jesus and his saving love that we join him in laying down our lives for the sake of the world. Will we be so bold? Will we be saved by faith for the sake of our own lives and for the sake of the world? This is the call of the Reformation for us today.

Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy Session #22: Confession (A.C.T.S. Pattern of Prayer)

Please join me at noon today for Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy on FB Live at First Presbyterian Church of East Aurora. Our topic today: Confession (t...he second part of the prayer pattern of A.C.T.S., or Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Seeking). These are short session of 5-12 minutes, and can also be accessed anytime afterward. I hope they help you in your life of prayer, and in your quest to find your peace. See more

Sunday Morning Worship on 10/25/20 (Service begins at the 10:30 mark)

Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy Session #21: Adoration (A.C.T.S. Pattern of Prayer)

Please join me for a time of Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy at 12:00 noon today on FB Live at First Presbyterian Church of East Aurora. Our topic today: Prayers of Adoration, focusing on who God is.

Here is an index of Sessions 1-20 of Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy, that you will find on this page. Just scroll down to find these 5-15 minute sessions: Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy Sessions 1. Getting Started in Meditation (May 14, 2020) 2. A Sacred Word (May 21, 2020)... 3. The Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (May 28, 2020) 4. Palms Up/Palms Down (June 4, 2020) 5. Centering Prayer (June 11, 2020) 6. Flash Prayers (June 18, 2020) 7. Praying on the Run (June 25, 2020) 8. Let the Boats Go (Releasing our stresses and distractions to the river of God’s love) (July 2, 2020) 9. Praying Yourself to Sleep (July 16, 2020) 10. The Mud Zone (where we find our peace) (July 23, 2020) 11. Lifting others into the light of Christ (July 30, 2020) 12. Have a Little Talk with Jesus: Exploring Ways to Connect with God Each Day (August 6, 2020) 13. Forgiveness is Letting Go (August 13, 2020) 14. Conquering our fears through self-talk (August 27, 2020) 15. Just Show Up and Sit! (September 3, 2020) 16. How to remember to keep our promises to pray (September 10, 2020) 17. Making Room for God through Spiritual Practices (September 17, 2020) 18. Back to Basics: Relaxing, Breathing, and the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (September 24, 2020) 19. Praying with the Prayer Pattern, A.C.T.S.: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication (October 1, 2020) 20. Finding Our Quiet Place (October 15. 2020) See more

Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy Session #20: Finding Our Quiet Place

Please join me for a time of Prayer and Meditation with Pastor Buddy at 12:00 noon today on Facebook Live at First Presbyterian Church, East Aurora. Our topic today: "Finding Our Quiet Place."