Five responses to Jesus' birth

Camperdown Methodist Church, 25 December 2011, 08h00
Rev Steven Jones

Scripture readings: Luke 2: 1-20


This morning I’m not going to re-hash the elements of the Christmas story – that really cool puppet show has probably told the story far better than I could ever preach it – but I’d like us to ponder on something for a moment. Don’t you find it interesting how we as human beings like to align ourselves with certain groups? For instance, this Christmas I decided to spoil my family and have DStv installed at the manse – especially given that we are all sports-crazy in our house. But when I filled in the forms, they wanted to know whether I consider myself to be white, black, Indian, coloured, or “other”. Well, apart from the fact that we’ve been moving house in 40-degree blazing heat, turning my complexion a bright shade of red and thereby forcing me to tick the “other” block, could someone please tell me what one’s race has to do with taking out a subscription for satellite television?

But this morning, I’m not going to talk about racial classifications, but rather how different people’s responses to the Christmas story can be classified. So instead of five different race options, this morning we’ll look at five different responses, and as we note them, I think you’ll realize that each and every one of us fits into at least one of them. Maybe you’ll fit into more... [To download the full sermon, click here]

Where to find us

There are many ways to find Camperdown Methodist Church.  Here are a few:

Physical address
1 Old Main Road
Camperdown
kwaZulu-Natal

Directions
From Durban: Drive +/- 50km on the N3 towards Pietermaritzburg, take Camperdown offramp, turn right and cross the freeway and travel about 300m to Old Main Road.  Turn left, and follow Old Main Road for +/- 1.5km, and you will find the church on the right.

From Pietermaritzburg: Drive +/- 15km on the N3 towards Durban, take Camperdown offramp, turn left and travel about 250m to Old Main Road.  Turn left, and follow Old Main Road for +/- 1.5km, and you will find the church on the right.

GPS co-ordinates
-29.728067, 30.525831

Google Maps (click map to enlarge)

Other ways to get hold of us
E-mail: campmeth [at] yebo [dot] co [dot] za
Telephone (office): +27 (031) 7851228
Snail mail: PO Box 123, Camperdown 3720

Prayer in commemoration of World AIDS Day: 1 December 2011

 

The Motive for the Coming of Christ

Camperdown Methodist Church, 27 November 2011, 09h00
Rev Steven Jones
(adapted from There's A New World Coming by John van de Laar)

Scripture readings: Isaiah 64: 1-9; Mark 13: 24-27

This past week has been a particularly rough one on the South African politico-economic scene as the controversial Protection of State Information Bill was voted on in Parliament this past Tuesday; the controversy around Mac Maharaj and whether or not he received kickbacks continues to range; and then we have the incoming CEO of Sasol receiving a bonus of around R828,000 after his first month in office, sparking accusations of corporate greed. It’s a good thing that I’m basing this on publicly-available information, since if it were “classified” under the new Secrecy Bill I would probably risk being arrested after the service! As a result, more than one of my friends had commented this week on Facebook that emigration is starting to look like a viable option.

As Christians, we look at the world around us, read the headlines in the newspapers and see the images on TV news, and find ourselves slipping into a state of despair. We live in a world that is ripe for crackpot predictions about the coming of the end of the world. The last one predicted that the world would end on 21 October 2011. I don’t know what happened to the crowd that made this prediction, but their Website was still up as of yesterday! Yet we look at the signs around us, and can’t help wondering whether these are indeed the “Last Days” before Jesus comes again... [To download the full sermon, click here]