Pastor Gail – Welcome
1. I always enjoy August, because it’s full of surprises, and I always am looking forward to who I’m going to get to see on Sunday morning, and of course to get to ask you if you’ve enjoyed your vacation, or if you had a vacation. August is an interesting month in Greece, and we’re always so glad that we can gather in the middle of this month and through this month to worship the Lord. Because he is worthy of it all, isn’t he? Amen. He’s the one we want to worship at all times, and in all ways, and every way that we can.
2. I’m always amazed when people can read the Bible, but they never see where we can worship with clapping our hands, or that we can raise our hands. Amen. But it is a joyful thing, in all our ways, Amen, in different methods to worship the Lord. So, we thank you, Lord, today that we can be together to honor the One who is above every other god, the name above every name. Amen. Would you stand with me? Let’s enter His gates with thanksgiving. Amen.

Pastor Gail – Reading the Word
1. And if you’ll remain standing, we’re going to read from 2 Corinthians 8 this morning. And we don’t have Bibles around the room today, but if you need a Bible, we have Bibles in the back. I’m sorry, I forgot to put the Bibles back there.
2. 2 Corinthians 8:7-9. All right. And we’ll read from verse 7. “But just as you excel in everything, (and I would love the Lord to say that about me), in faith, in speech, in knowledge, complete earnestness, and in your love for us, see that you also excel in the grace of giving. I am not commanding you, but I want you to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.” Let’s pray.
3. Father, we thank you today, Lord, that we can be generous, and you love for us to be generous. In every way in our lives, Lord, giving of our economics, of our funds, Lord of our love to one another, of our prayer for this world that’s in so much trouble, Lord, we come before you today, and we thank you, Lord, for your patience with us, Lord, as you come so near, as you’re with us, Lord, to teach us through the presence of the Holy Spirit, to be generous in every day, every way. Lord, we’re thankful today for you, that you who were so rich, Lord, you laid all that down to become a man or human just like us, to show us the generosity of heaven, the riches of heaven. So, we praise you today, we love you, and we thank you, you are good, you are good, so good, hallelujah, hallelujah, and we love you today, in the name of Jesus, amen.
4. He’s good, amen, amen, be generous with your smiles, amen. The world has a lot of problems, but we’re different, right? Amen, I think sometimes a smile can make all the difference, amen, yeah. Brian, do you have something to smile about today? Me too, yeah, Stavro, do you have something to say about today? Even if we can find nothing else, we know Jesus. He is with us. He is with us.

Pastor Gail – Martha Polirakis and Announcements
5. You may be seated for a while. We are so glad to see you here. We are getting ready to receive an offering for the Lord today. Many of you that knew Martha, this week she graduated to glory. She was an intimate part of this church. Over 40 years ago, when I landed in Greece, with my husband and a little boy, she met us at the airport, and Leto was there too, concerned that I wouldn’t know how to cook in Greece so she said, ‘I’m spending the night with all of you.’ She took us to Piraeus and introduced us to salepi (yuk, I think it’s awful). Woke up early in the morning and fixed us an English breakfast so we wouldn’t feel like strangers. Served as my personal assistant for years. I miss her. Many of you know her ministry to transsexuals, transvestites, homosexuals. And she had such a point for people on the margins.
6. She cannot be replaced, but we pray that the Lord will raise someone up with a double portion of her spirit. She was an example of the heart of this church that we want to be his life forever. We did send flowers from the local church to her celebration. So, if you would like in addition to your time and offering this morning, you could just write on it for a little offering to help with our flower experience. So, we’re going to take the offering, but as we do, I’m going to pray with Christi for her three children, that they will walk in the street for the Lord.
7. So Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be generous, to give up our finances. But Lord, we also pray to be generous in caring for these three children that remain here. We pray for Christi, Ellie and Andoni. That you will be comforted and that you will be their joy and their hope. We thank you, Father. There is no one like you. And we give you thanksgiving today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Let’s give joyfully.
8. Wednesday night, we will be on Zoom again for prayer. But don’t forget, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning at 10 a.m. the church is open for prayer. I’m so thankful for Rebecca, and I think Evie is often here in the morning. We’re so thankful for them being here. What a blessing. And guess what next Sunday is? The last Sunday of the, I kind of feel like summer, 31st August. So don’t be late in coming to worship as we begin to close out the summertime. Bring someone with you. Amen.
9. As we worship and getting ready for the word, I don’t care if you stand or sit. Just worship the Lord. You know, really life here is pretty short. Yesterday, I was 12 and 13. Just yesterday. I mean, just yesterday. But some of those bigger numbers, I’m looking at now, they’re just really close. So, let’s just enjoy him as we get ready to go through that one day, one last great door.

Pastor Brian – Main Message
10. This is one of those Sundays where we talk about things that we don’t often talk about. Of course, the passing of Martha this week, probably gave a lot of us the opportunity to think about our own mortality. I had worked on a completely different sermon, but of course it caught my attention. So, I wrote a new sermon, and I gave it a title, called it, ‘The frailty of life, but the hope of eternity.”
11. So, I don’t have Scriptures for you on the board today, and in fact, somebody could go switch this off. I’m going to use three main Scriptures. You can write them down or look them up in your Bible. Put your finger there. The first will be John 11:25,26, and then we will look at James 4:14, and then Isaiah 40:8.
12. I was going through my brain thinking of examples of life and death in the Bible. And of course, the most obvious story, at least for me, was that of Lazarus, the story we find in John 11. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. The Bible says he loved him, and his sisters, Mary and Martha. And we have this story where, of course, Lazarus dies, and as would be normal, the family is upset.
13. Lazarus’ sister, Martha, in particular becomes upset at Jesus. By the time Jesus comes into the story, Lazarus has been dead for two days and then two more days, four days in total. And his sisters are, of course, crying through this.
14. And when Jesus finally appears, Martha looks at her good friend, Jesus, and says, ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died. If you had been here like you should have been, if you were paying attention like you should have, then my brother and your friend would still be living.’
15. And then, of course, it’s at that moment that Jesus says these words that we’ve all heard for our whole lives, probably, in verses 25 and 26. “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
16. And so, with those words, Jesus does ant act to prove his authority over death. Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave and Lazarus, who was dead for four days. Now, remember, they didn’t embalm bodies in those days. Four days of decay probably smelled pretty strong by then. The perfumes that they surely had laid over his body probably not holding up by now. And still, Lazarus, once dead, walks out of the grave. He was alive. I know the purpose of this, was for Jesus to prove his authority over death.
17. That’s a theological construct. It’s a theological theme. But in the natural, I kind of wonder, what for? Why bring a guy back to life just to know he’s going to die again? I don’t know if I went through it once, but I want to try it again. And if death for me means eternal life, just leave me be.
18. I’m one of those people who has already signed my do not resuscitate rule. If I die, don’t bring me back. Just let me be. I’ll be okay. I don’t want to have to come back and try it again. So, I wonder about that sometimes. What was in it for Lazarus? I assume he came back to life and enjoyed time with his family and friends. He came back to life to watch his friend Jesus go to the cross. To me, not every part of the story seems to be a happy ending.
19. But what I do know, was that this miracle was more than just a temporary return to life. It was a sign for all of us, pointing to a much greater reality, that one day all of us who believe in Jesus Christ will rise again. Not to face death another time, but we will rise to live eternally with Jesus.
20. I think about Martha today. Heaven is a mystery to me. What happens right now before the new heaven, the new earth, and everything else, I don’t know. I know somehow the Bible indicates to me that she’s in the presence of the Lord. I guarantee you she’s not asking him to come back. As much as she loved all of us and her family and her friends and the people she served, she’s alive forever, in the presence of the Lord.
21. So, Lazarus’ resurrection reminds us that death is not the final word. The Bible tells us it’s appointed for all of us to die once. Barring being alive when he comes, we’re all going to die.
22. Several weeks ago, I was preaching and I confessed to you. I used to never think about death. Except when a family member or a friend or a pet died. My mortality and the people close to me just wasn’t much of a subject in my brain. The past months, maybe a year, that has changed a lot. As I watched my uncles and aunts begin to pass away, friends, even people I went to school with.
23. I’ve thought about it a lot more lately. Mostly I think about what life would be like without the people that you’re closest to. And this had to be the feeling of Mary and Martha, and I suspect Jesus on that day. It’s something that’s coming to us all. And that’s okay. Our Savior has power over the grave. And in the same way that He called Lazarus out, He’s going to call you and me, and we will rise in glory.
24. And sometimes it’s just good to stop and think about that. Not just because it tells us what it’s coming, but because of how it informs how we live. When we look honestly at our days on earth, which is something I want us all to do this morning, I want us to think honestly with ourselves about our time on this earth. We see how fragile it is. The writer of Psalms 90:12 said this. “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
25. Do you ever see, two days ago I was at the Auschwitz camp. It was a death camp. And I saw, I don’t know if it was from that time or if somebody had done it later, but I saw where somebody had marked bars for days on a wall. We’ve all seen that, right? One, two, three, four, five. The psalmist says, “Number your days.” Why? “That you may gain a heart of wisdom.”
26. In other words, pay attention to the time you have so that you can do something smart with your time. And a lot of us just, I’ll just say ‘me’, we live life as though the days are endless. One of my favorite cartoons used to be, it’s called, ‘The Far Side’. And I remember one in particular, it says, ‘Don’t do today what you can procrastinate about tomorrow.’ Don’t do today. Not just what you can do tomorrow, but what tomorrow you can plan to do. In other words, just keep living as though at some point in time, these things will happen. I’ll get it done. But that’s not a reality.
27. Number your days. That you may gain a heart of wisdom. Do today what you may not be able to do tomorrow. Life for all of its beauty and for all of its pain is brief. I’ll have my 80, 90, I hope not 100 years. Unless I have a really good brain and I’m still very physically strong.
28. Life is brief. I feel things today as though that’s everything. All the pain, all the good, whatever it is, it’s like that’s all there is because it’s today. And that’s just not the fact. It’s just not the truth. I have a brief, a breath of time on this earth. And then eternity. And if I can think that way, this brief breath of life, it doesn’t hurt so bad. And it doesn’t get so great.
29. But it’s good when I’m with God. We’re like the plants in my yard. I think Pastor Gail could agree with this. We live in the same building. My landlady will never hear this, so I will go ahead and say she’s a crazy woman. She will put a plant in any spot available. And if there’s not a spot available, she’ll make one to plant another plant. And some of them make no sense. She planted one that just finally died a few weeks, I mean totally died a few weeks ago.
30. I came home from a trip, and this plant was black. It just died in the heat. Funny thing was, that plant seemed to die every day. It gets watered in the morning at about five o’clock. And so, you could look outside and this green plant with big leaves just there. By two o’clock in the afternoon, every branch, every leaf had fallen to the ground, just laid down. By six o’clock at night, it looked completely dead. Somehow, she liked the plant, I don’t know.
31. But I thought, you know, our lives are a little bit like that plant. We flourish in the morning, and maybe we fade a little bit by the evening. And life becomes just like a shadow that’s passing. No matter how strong we are today, Angelo’s a good, strong-looking man for his age. You’re like, what, 75 now? No matter how strong he is today, sickness can come tomorrow. No matter how much we build up, time wears it away. We become different than we were.
32. I always tell people; I have furniture disease. This only makes sense probably in English, but my chest has dropped into my drawers. Things move. Things change. Our life, whether we like it or not, is not in our control. You might believe it is, it’s just not. It’s a gift that is given. And one day, it’s a gift that will be returned. We all keep the tags on ourselves because this gift is going back. Like when you buy clothes and you leave the tag on so you can return it.
33. James 4:14 reminds us “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.” Listen to this. “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Like light rain, mist. You just appear for a little bit of time. And then you’re gone. As the wise philosopher said, all we are is dust in the wind. But here’s the good news. Though life is frail, our hope is strong. Though our bodies are perishable, our inheritance in Christ is imperishable.
34. Remember the Words of Jesus again. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live.” Death was defeated by an empty tomb. That means the story doesn’t end here. Life, this brief thing we call life, It is only the opening chapter of eternity. You haven’t even begun to write your story yet. Jesus said that He went away to prepare a place for us. So how should we live? We should live not clinging to this passing world.
35. I remember when my grandmother died. I’ve always wondered what my attitude would be when I have to face that point. It’s easy to say, I’ll be fine. I don’t know. If I’m lying in a bed and I know my time is near, I may be scared to death. I don’t know. I don’t think any of us can really say. I only know what I can hope.
36. But I remember it was only about a week or two before my grandmother died. Actually, Pastor Gail was visiting my family with me. We went to the hospital to visit my grandma. She only wanted to do one thing. Let’s sing hymns. It’s my last memory of my grandma. We sang all her favorite songs. She sang along and she seemed just fine. Because I know she believed with all of her heart that where she was going was good. And she was ready.
37. One day the Bible says every tear will be wiped from our eyes. Every sorrow will turn to joy. And every weakness will be clothed in glory. So, here’s how we live. Love deeply. Just think about the people you love. Love them deeply. Forgive freely. This life is too short and it’s not worth holding on to the things that hurt us or that hurt other people. And this one I think I could say I definitely saw in Martha. Serve joyfully. Especially serve those who you know do not have the hope you have that is secure.
38. This is it. My final scripture Isaiah 40:8, “The grass withers, the flower fades. But the word of our God will stand forever.” Life is frail. But our hope is great.
39. Bow your heads. Lord, I thank you today. We rejoice that our hope is in you. All of our hope is in you. I thank you today that in all of our weaknesses, You remain strong, and that through all of our failures, You will carry us to the end. Lord you are the Alpha and Omega. And you are worthy to be praised. Lord, we want to remember to pray today for the family of Martha. Her children her grandchildren. Be with them. Encourage them. All of the friends who miss her today. Let them be encouraged by the knowledge that she is with you. And for each one of us Lord, help us to number our days, that we may gain a wise heart. In Jesus’ name Amen.