tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37240470930939788292024-02-18T20:48:12.436-08:00Pastor David's Sermon RepositoriumBeloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.comBlogger310125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-73843510184466049672018-05-25T06:22:00.003-07:002018-05-25T06:22:45.512-07:00The Rules of the House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXP9M0MScuxM-knLll8Y7-XVBQIrAOStBsDTaiI88kP-MkxTfEtSsfsw0KYUsKfUjvksa460TpM7Rj5xOkbDFuZRn_iw0NUAhhgLjydGPD6tx1mPyCJNBbrRDI585mz3soA9UiJnQOnT2/s1600/Screenshot+2018-05-25+at+9.18.13+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="822" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXP9M0MScuxM-knLll8Y7-XVBQIrAOStBsDTaiI88kP-MkxTfEtSsfsw0KYUsKfUjvksa460TpM7Rj5xOkbDFuZRn_iw0NUAhhgLjydGPD6tx1mPyCJNBbrRDI585mz3soA9UiJnQOnT2/s400/Screenshot+2018-05-25+at+9.18.13+AM.png" width="400" /></b></a></div>
<b>Sixth Sunday in Easter</b><br />
<b>Scripture Lesson: John 15: 9-17</b><br />
<br />
In every home, there are different expectations, different ways that we manage our lives together.<br />
<br />
That's also true in communities, and in nations, and in God's Kingdom. And as Jesus describes it, there is only one rule in God's house.<br />
<br />
Listen to Sermon Audio Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-may-6-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-may-6-message/</a>Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-42965401798809074682018-04-25T14:05:00.001-07:002018-04-25T14:05:19.874-07:00Thoughts and Prayers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2I7ttBDgAu4BshMYAh6TRhKChe50c0PaHDDTTdqXGYsb4Cqb6sa8H_uGSvYFSmoP0i2jMhdmZaaD5RwchYxXLlctdBB8mX8OepBIjTr9ipOKZ13sSNDCgQzrtxR__7-pdrQfNaSsS83X/s1600/Screenshot+2018-04-25+at+5.04.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2I7ttBDgAu4BshMYAh6TRhKChe50c0PaHDDTTdqXGYsb4Cqb6sa8H_uGSvYFSmoP0i2jMhdmZaaD5RwchYxXLlctdBB8mX8OepBIjTr9ipOKZ13sSNDCgQzrtxR__7-pdrQfNaSsS83X/s320/Screenshot+2018-04-25+at+5.04.31+PM.png" width="234" /></a></div>
Third Sunday of Easter 2018<br />
Scripture Lesson: 1 John 3:1-7<br />
<br />
Whenever tragedy strikes, we offer up our "thoughts and prayers." Lately, there's a pushback against that instinct. "Do something," people say. "We don't just want thoughts and prayers, we want action."<br />
<br />
And while there's a truth to that response, it doesn't mean that we should be thoughtless. Or, frankly, that we shouldn't pray when things feel like they are getting beyond us.<br />
<br />
Sermon Audio/Podcast Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-15-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-15-message/</a>Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-46678115436553662902018-04-25T13:43:00.001-07:002018-04-25T13:43:13.450-07:00Broken Windows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKqdGdI2LmboGGqgEr3W5vYjnumGApcrARsr9Z7jq6nf012s7AaHOX80SiDNW5I1_2WOXv-80rU2Yuyuni0OowHh3slq9LKXWTknXELzN0lIEu-1BvjZRA0vfm8y7BR0cBNkQ1Nju9UAD/s1600/Screenshot+2018-04-25+at+4.41.53+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKqdGdI2LmboGGqgEr3W5vYjnumGApcrARsr9Z7jq6nf012s7AaHOX80SiDNW5I1_2WOXv-80rU2Yuyuni0OowHh3slq9LKXWTknXELzN0lIEu-1BvjZRA0vfm8y7BR0cBNkQ1Nju9UAD/s1600/Screenshot+2018-04-25+at+4.41.53+PM.png" /></a></div>
Second Sunday in Easter<br />
Scripture Lesson: 1 John 1:1 - 2:2<br />
<br />
Life is busy, and we know we're not perfect. So what possible harm can it do us to let that little resentment fester, or allow ourselves that one little bias? Surely that can't do our souls any harm. Right?<br />
<br />
From the first letter of John, a reflection on how those little broken things in our lives can pile up, allowing us to tolerate more and more mess...until we look around, and realize that it's all fallen apart.<br />
<br />
Listen to sermon Audio/Podcast here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-8-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-8-message/</a><br />
<br />
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-89842869131830441572018-04-11T14:09:00.001-07:002018-04-11T14:09:43.973-07:00Easter Foolishness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPhyphenhyphenlt7ljGvDYa5do4ljoWY38Cn8wkx-5O62OiRUNDmkPDzRZFWTpxliFYdoLZayfn_CZC7VbgADa5hSGeLGAghn7Fvuaf0FxYxlD6YKsDy49sleXskz39FaQAkb0V0DqJ5M3E34Prsnww/s1600/Screenshot+2018-04-01+at+8.36.11+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPhyphenhyphenlt7ljGvDYa5do4ljoWY38Cn8wkx-5O62OiRUNDmkPDzRZFWTpxliFYdoLZayfn_CZC7VbgADa5hSGeLGAghn7Fvuaf0FxYxlD6YKsDy49sleXskz39FaQAkb0V0DqJ5M3E34Prsnww/s320/Screenshot+2018-04-01+at+8.36.11+AM.png" width="239" /></a></div>
<b>Easter Sunday 2018</b><br />
<b>Scripture Lesson: John 20:19-31</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With Easter falling on April Fool's Day, this year's Easter message explores what it means to be a fool. Not a gosh-isn't-that-person-silly fool. But a full on fool in the Biblical sense, the kind of person whose actions both tear apart community and sabotage their own growth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The resurrection message of Easter shatters the foolishness of our world, and replaces it with something very, very different.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Listen to the Audio/Podcast here:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-1-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-april-1-message/</a></div>
Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-77991900939782760942018-03-28T13:13:00.003-07:002018-03-28T13:13:32.183-07:00Leadership ExpectationsAudio/Listen to Podcast Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-25-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-25-message/</a>Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-14154281497164626432018-03-21T13:47:00.001-07:002018-03-21T13:47:14.471-07:00The Heart of the MatterAudio/Podcast Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-18-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-18-message/</a>Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-64363208362363124832018-03-17T06:21:00.002-07:002018-03-17T06:21:48.150-07:00Detecting Our ErrorsAudio/Podcast Available Here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-4-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-march-4-message/</a>Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-18483377013288458112018-03-10T06:06:00.007-08:002018-03-10T06:06:53.092-08:00The Most Terrible CurseAudio/Podcast Available here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-february-25-message/">http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2018-february-25-message/</a><br />
<br />
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-58581713596563275952017-09-27T18:00:00.004-07:002017-09-27T18:00:17.427-07:00The Joys of Smugness<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 9.17.2017</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-455916c9-c5fe-dc2e-363e-9713b9f4fbbb" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Romans 14:1-8</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apparently, I can be even more smug now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The permission came via news of a recent study by Oxford University. Not just any study. An Oxford study, meaning it has it’s provenance in a University that will soon be celebrating its one thousandth anniversary. This of itself seems grounds for smugness. Oh, your town just turned one hundred and fifty? How lovely! I remember my alma maters one hundred and fiftieth. It was eight hundred and fifty years ago. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hah. Hah. Hah.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know my diet better for the environment, because that is precisely what the study at Oxford says. A vegetarian diet uses less than half of the land, and produces half of the carbon emissions of a meat based diet. If we were all vegetarian, it would save the planet, or so the headlines ran. Seriously, how much more smugness potential could exist in a dietary form?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The study itself added significantly to my dietary smugness potential, for as a vegetarian, it is so very easy to feel the teensiest bit superior. It’s been so long since I stopped eating meat that I’ve kind of forgotten when it was I stopped eating meat. It was some time after I got married. That, I remember. So when anyone asks, I’ll say, well, I think it’s 18 years. Sometimes I say 15 years. Other times I say twenty. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know a diet of vegetables is healthier, because of course it is. There is nothing healthier than being a vegetarian. Now, one might say, oh, it’s too hard to be vegetarian. What can you possibly eat? Hah. Hah, I say. It’s easy to enjoy this healthful diet. Take for example, pizza. Pizza is vegetarian. Pepperoni, not so much. But pizza? It’s fine. Beer is also vegetarian. As a pro tip, I will note that New York Super Fudge Chunk Chip ice cream is also vegetarian. This remains true whether you eat but a spoonful or manage to down the whole pint. Whichever way, it’s vegetarian. See how easy it is?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it’s so easy, so very easy these days to be vegetarian. There are countless more things to eat, up to and including a nifty new veggie burger that supposedly tastes completely and exactly like meat. More importantly, said veggie burger also smells like meat when you grill it, because the smell of meat on a grill on a perfect summer evening is just about the best smell on the planet. Even after 18, 15, or twenty years of being vegetarian, I still salivate and mutter to myself “dear lord in Heaven, that smells good.” What is this burger made of? Well, a bunch of things, most notably a genetically modified yeast that has been tweaked by science to...for lack of a better way to describe it...bleed. Actual blood. Which is a little gross, but it apparently smells delicious when you eat it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know it’s kinder. We get our meat from hideous factory farms, and even if we don’t, well, poor Bambi is still crying alone on the forest. “What’s wrong,” says Thumper. “Someone wasn’t a vegetarian,” says Bambi, at which point even more smugness occurs.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For all of this, it’s not that I’m lacking conviction that not eating meat is better.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps it’s because I have those three strikes against me that I find the Apostle Paul’s discussion of a form of early Christian vegetarianism so appropriate. Here, though, what’s both strange and worth noting is that the smug folks weren’t the vegetarians. They were the carnivores. Paul, an omnivore himself, describes vegetable eaters as “weak,” which seems actually surprisingly smug and totally unfair, because, gosh darn it, I’m supposed to be the smug one.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The issue for early Christians who chose not to eat meat was not that they were concerned about lipids or carcinogens. They weren’t worried about climate change. Instead, the issue was consuming meat that had been sacrificed to idols. This generally isn’t a concern when we stop by McDonalds or Red Robin or White Castle, but back in the first century, it was a thing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meat in the highly dynamic, pluralistic culture of the Greco-Roman world was often...well... “used meat.” That meant that before it went for sale in the marketplace, the animal involved had been sacrificed at the altar of one of the almost countless gods of the ancient world. While a small amount of the sacrifice would have been burned, most of the rest of an animal would have been either 1) consumed by the priests/priestesses of whatever god it was sacrificed to or 2) sold to the market as income for that particular temple. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some early Christians, this was a major issue. They’d just converted to the movement that worshipped Yeshua Ben Yahweh, and they knew that they were supposed to only worship one God. Having rejected all other gods, they were terrified that they might somehow be violating their relationship with Christ and their Creator if they had some BBQ ribs that had first been sacrificed to Ba’al.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rome, standing as it did at the very heart of empire, was filled with temples and altars. It was chock-full of ancient religions and mystery cults. For some of the fledgling Christians in the town, there was very real fear that they might accidentally lose their Jesus connection if they ate pagan meat.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those who were wiser and more well read, the whole idea was just absurd. And it was to those others...and sharing their perspective...that Paul directed this section of his letter. Paul, though a stranger to the Roman church, knew it by reputation. It was comprised, or so we can assume from his writings to them, by the erudite...by philosophers, the wise, the aware, and those who were steeped in knowledge of how things really were.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paul is not rejecting them. In fact, Paul is showing that he believes exactly the same things. For those whose grasp of the faith was strong, and who understand that from that strength they are free to eat and act and live in ways that stand beyond the grasp of others, Paul is clear: don’t be judgmental.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember, he softly chides, that there are things all of us disagree about. Should we celebrate some of the sacred days of the Jewish tradition, or not? Some think yes, and some think no, but what matters most is that we do what we do in a way that honors and respects those who do not share our position.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What he does not share is their willingness to condemn or mock those fledgling Christians who lack the depth of understanding that he shares. He acknowledges that they are “weak,” sure. But what he will not do is act and live in ways that subvert what faith the weak do have. If you love others, you don’t live that way. Possessing knowledge is not enough. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The task of every Christian, even in disagreement, even when you know you’re right, even when your absolute correctness is utterly and empirically provable to any halfway sentient being, your task is to love and to build up.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-13721221339327426842017-03-18T05:53:00.004-07:002017-03-18T05:53:12.590-07:00The Unsettling New<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Poolesville Presbyterian Church</b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>03.12.2017; Rev. Dr. David Williams</b></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-67ef0461-e174-e1f2-33d5-746f0a664a96"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Scripture Lesson: John 3:1-17</b></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Y’all know I like new things. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I like the latest and shiniest, the cutting edge, the most sparkling and exciting, the objects that most radiate that new car smell. Particularly if they are actually a new car. Every new technological gadget, packed with doodads and gizmos and gimcrackery? They’re like catnip to the seven year old boy who still dwells within this much, much older body.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so, as a lifelong player of video games, who earned his spurs playing Space Invaders and Pitfall on a well-used Atari 2600, I’d prepared myself to throw in with the latest innovation in gaming: Virtual Reality. I’d sampled the headsets, and marveled at how radically this new tech changed the experience of gaming. No longer were you staring at a screen. Instead, you were in the game, as a perfectly rendered three-dimensional virtual world took shape around you. You could be actually in the cockpit of a starfighter, at the helm of a futuristic battle-tank, or in the driver’s seat of a Group B Rally car. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can say, I am Batman, and looking around at what appears to be Arkham Asylum, it will seem to be true.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I tried it, and it was amazing, and I was bedazzled and certain: this is the next wave. This is unlike any other experience I’ve had before. I blogged about it, and wrote an excited article about it for a radical Mennonite magazine in Manitoba. Because what’s more new and cutting edge than writing an article about <a href="http://geezmagazine.org/magazine/article/the-year-we-forget-creation-virtual-reality-and-the-future-of-media/">VR gaming for a radical Mennonite magazine in Manitoba</a>? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For Christmakkah in my household, I was surely going to get myself a set of VR goggles and controllers for my Playstation, settling into my basement, ready to encounter a new era of gaming.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Only, well, when they came out, they were the new and the latest and the greatest, and were snapped up immediately. I'd missed my chance, and I didn’t feel like paying twice the price to an opportunistic gaming scalper. So I waited. This was a good thing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because reviews started coming in, and something peculiar began to surface, something I’d noticed when I played. The sense of immersion is so real that your visual cortex and your inner ear are telling your brain two entirely different things. You’re sitting on a comfy sofa, says your inner ear. You’re performing a reverse Immelman in a P-38 Lightning, say your eyes. These two things do not line up, and this does not end well. This new reality makes you nauseous. Meaning, actually nauseous. In a recent review of DIRT, one of my favorite driving games, at the International Gamers Network site, six out of seven reviewers felt sick after playing for fifteen minutes. If I want to feel carsick, I don’t need to spend five hundred dollars for the privilege. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New things, really new things, can often feel just as unsettling. They don’t jibe with what we know, and rattle our sense of self, and leave us feeling dizzy and off balance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like poor, struggling Nicodemus.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We read his story, and there’s a tendency to go clucking and shaking our heads at him. You get to meet Jesus, we might say, and yet you still don’t get it? How do you not get it? He must be thickheaded. He must be easily confused, as he fumbles and stumbles about trying to grasp the message of this strange man from Nazareth. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We listen to him as he struggles to find his footing, bobbing about like he’s lost his equilibrium. C’mon, Nick. Get it together.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But standing at our point of imagined comfort with the message of Jesus, we may not grasp how deeply unsettling this encounter is, this encounter with the new.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Nicodemus is experiencing is existential nausea, the yawning chasm between what he knew to be true and a reality that jarred and twisted against what he was certain was real.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What he would have known was the fundamental goodness of his tradition, of an ancient covenant with God that went back </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like him, we so easily get confused around change. What are the changes that matter? What do they even look like? How do we find our balance, that place where we still know who we are relative to a different way of being?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nicodemus struggles with this, as the strange man he’d heard of demanded his attention. He wants to talk with him, but can’t do so in public without destroying his reputation. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There, in the night, the discussion they have is a remarkably rich conversation, as the baffled Pharisee asks question after question of Jesus, and Jesus responds. None of it makes sense to him, and yet it does, and yet it doesn’t.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can you be born if you’ve already been born? How is that even possible? What does it mean that we should be born "from above," or born "from heaven." And if we are to be "born of water and the Spirit,” what does that mean? The words are familiar from the ritual and tradition of Judaism, but they seem to point to something else. Jesus talks, and the more he talks, the more his furtive night visitor becomes even dizzier. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These words conveyed in John’s Gospel have a specific theological meaning, one that resonates with all of Christ's other teachings about the change he is bringing us. The birth that Christ describes has to do with what is "above," which in the context of John's Gospel indicates a connection with something of God. It is a reality that has not yet happened, a state of being that is not yet a part of the world we inhabit. Yet it is a reality that has happened, that is happening, right now in the moment.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This should be existentially unsettling, if we’re listening to it carefully. It is meant to sound simple, to be composed of simple words that seem to make sense but then also don’t.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That, I think, is the key to Nicodemus's struggle. He is desperately trying to imagine the story as being a repetition, a reiteration of the things that he already knows. Jesus, on the other hand, is trying to kick him loose from that understanding. God’s spirit shakes us loose from those old patterns of being, it is...when we encounter it...genuinely unsettling. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being born from above means being born into a reality...a sense of your own self...that you have not yet inhabited. You don’t yet know what that is. You’ve not ever experienced it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The challenge we face is that we expect...with Nicodemus...that we will be able to just truck along as we have before as we stand in encounter with the Gospel. We do not bring with us the same set of expectations. But we have our own traditions...our love of wealth, our infatuation with power, our idolizing of self-interest. We have our own traditions...the deep old lie of race, the strange violence of nation...which are unsettled by Jesus just as surely as those of any Pharisee.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we hear the message of Jesus, a grace that is deep and simple and confounding, it should have that effect...not physically, but on the whole of our self-understanding. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Until that moment, we have not yet really begun to be born from above, from that reality that represents the Reign of God that Jesus calls us towards.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-60161662961948005912017-03-18T05:45:00.004-07:002017-03-18T05:45:53.857-07:00The Unit of Analysis<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 03.05.2017</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-12208ffd-e173-5272-bc13-dca3642d49f6" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Romans 5:12-19</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing makes life easier than categorical thinking. It’s one of the things that human beings do well, and we do it almost without thinking.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These assumptions are based on a set of general sociocultural categories, which I use to interpret and make sense of the world around me. We used to use them to quickly assess our world. We understood that plants that looked a certain way were likely in an edible category. This was useful. Or, when encountering a strange animal for the first time, we could assess it relative to a prior knowledge base. Large? Check. Forward facing eyes? Clearly a hunter. Large, sharp teeth and claws? Definitely a hunter. Moving slowly towards me in a coiled crouch like it’s ready to spring? Perhaps it’s time to aaaaargh.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Categorical thinking can be helpful, because it lets you make quick survival decisions.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it can also be problematic. Because as we group other human beings into neatly definable categories, we stop seeing them as persons. They become a proxy for another encounter, perhaps, a stand in for someone else we have known rather than someone completely unique. Or they become representatives of a set, defined more by the features of that set than they are by their own characteristics as a person. We encounter them, and what we see is not that person, but a set of characteristics that we believe tell us...already...everything we need to know. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is convenient, it is easy, but it is the heart of human bias. Just because a person reminds us of someone else, or seems to bear the features of a particular subset of human being, that doesn’t mean that we are right in applying those labels to our view of that person.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take, for example, an article in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, which highlighted the work of a group of researchers considering how to eliminate subliminal racial bias among AirBnB hosts. AirBnb is a recent business, in which individuals who own a home open it up to paying guests. What’s been found is that there’s significant evidence of racial bias in whether or not a host chooses to accept a guest, as hosts use pictures and even the names of their guests to come to quick...and often racially biased...decisions about who to host. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Researchers from Indiana University and Michigan University conducted a study in which those hosts were presented with a series of names, each of potential guests. Some of those names were what the researchers considered “white,” and others “black.” What they found was that bias was clear and present, with a twenty percent increase in the denial rate for “black” names, when the name was the only real indicator. They also found that if there was more information...either a generic good review of a guest or a bad review of a guest...the bias disappeared. Once a host saw that guest as more of an individual, as a person and not representative of a category, they acted on relevant rather than irrelevant data. The study was both grim...in that it showed bigotry to still be a potent force in our culture...and hopeful, in that it showed that it can be wiped away once we view each person for who they actually are.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The unit of analysis, as we consider the moral integrity...the goodness...of the human beings we encounter, should be no more and no less than the reality of that person. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We should not judge all people together, or based on assumptions that derive from a prior experience. This, I think, we can all agree upon.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So from that shared assumption, what in the Sam Hill are we supposed to do with this little section in Romans?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paul’s letter to the church at Rome is the high water mark of Paul’s theology. It’s written to a church that he did not personally know, and so he...well...he’s showing off a little bit. Bringing his A game, to demonstrate to a group of strangers that, yes, in fact, he did know what he was talking about.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the scriptural equivalent of a job interview for that position that would totally be a step up, or that first date with a girl you’ve been crushing on for the last six months. No pressure. None.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Paul produced in his letter to Rome has helped shape Christian theology for the last several thousand years, and much of that...like the idea that what matters is God’s grace, that we have no right to look down on others no matter how much it might make us feel righteous, or that the very heart of the Christian ethical path is love...is pretty easy to grok to. But here, well, here in this passage I tend to wrestle a little bit, because Paul is at the point of presenting his assumption about the nature of human brokenness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why are human beings all unworthy? Because of Adam. Meaning, every single person, everywhere, is culpable for that one time when this one guy snuck some food God had asked him not to eat. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be honest, I’ve always wrestled with this as a point of theology, particularly if we understand sin…”Original sin”...as deriving from the single action of a single individual. Meaning, as we read through this densely worded, circuitous bit of Greco-Roman rhetoric, that there is the assumption that every human person can be viewed through the lenses of a single act of disobedience.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does that work, exactly? It has always felt, if read a certain way, that there’s an unfairness to the assumption that every soul should be held accountable for the actions of a single other. It feels, frankly, unfair.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My actions should have no impact on how you are judged. Your actions, being your own, should not reflect on me, if I can have no influence over them. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet here we have what...on one reading...seems like a desperately unfair bias against individual persons, and it is persons...not categories, not groupings...that are the fundamental moral unit of analysis. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we read through the prophets, we hear that it is persons who are judged for what they do. Speaking with the voice and authority of God, Ezekiel and Jeremiah essentially say, no, that way of thinking has nothing to do with the way God works.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we hear the stories of the life of Jesus, we hear that he refused to let bias against persons take precedence over their response to his message. It didn’t matter if you were a leper or a prostitute, a tax-collector or a Syrophonecian or an officer in the foreign army that was occupying Judah. He treated everyone as a person, to be judged on their own merits. The individual was the unit of analysis.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This seems in rather significant tension with Romans 5. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How to resolve this? Can it be resolved? I tend to find my peace with the idea of the Fall by understanding Adam as signifying all of humankind. Because the name </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">adam</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in Hebrew...which the Jewish Paul with his rabbinic training would have known...means “creature of earth.” He is life, drawn from the dust and dirt and soil. I view the story of the Fall as an archetypal expression of our universal human resistance to God's grace and our calling to care for one another, a reminder that we are both mortal and imperfect. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This last Wednesday, we started our Lenten journey by reminding ourselves that we are all creatures of dust and ashes, that every human being is made of the stuff of earth, and to it we shall return.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That knowledge is meant to humble us, and to remind us to stand against the biases and bigotries that we use to divide ourselves from others. That is the point of this season of discipline, the point of the path of Jesus. Every soul we encounter stands on equal ground, and that...that is the reason we treat every person with honor and respect. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-57309879847670615042017-03-01T05:51:00.002-08:002017-03-01T05:51:05.505-08:00The Mountaintop<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 02.26.17</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-bf5f9d84-8a23-12cb-41a4-53bb5de9e492" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Exodus 24:12-18</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Years ago, in the rolling green hill country of Wales, I went for a hike. I was in seventh grade, out on a multi-day middle school field trip, and the country impossibly lush, and we were on a day hike. Meaning, all day, from morning till the first dimming of dusk. The goal...a craggy, rocky outcropping overlooking a valley, a valley that was striated with streams and fields, ponds and lakes. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It took nearly four hours to reach the summit, as the little group of twelve and thirteen year olds splashed along muddy trails and clambered over rocks, following paths where we could find them. We’d scraggle across fields, clambering over cattle gates and wandering through fields where the cows would eye the chattering, jabbering gaggle of loud young primates with faint suspicion. It was probably our accents. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was exciting, and even though the 4G signal was terrible out there in the wilds, no one complained about it, it being 1981 and all. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We did what you used to do, back when the netmind wasn’t constantly present. We talked. We laughed. And we took it in, the day a misty cool mix of clouds, interspersed with occasional bursts of sun. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we came within five minutes of the summit, a thousand feet above the valley floor, there was a long way around and a short way. The long way, a technical path. The short way, a rocky cliff face covered in dense gorse and bracken. I and a few others went the short way, clambering hand over hand, clinging to the growth on side of the face for the last twenty meters like fetal kangaroos wriggling upward towards their mother’s pouch.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t fall,” said one of our teachers, before looking away and continuing up the path. It was 1981. Things were different.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the top of the crag, we could look out over the valley. The sky had cleared, and the day was beautiful. There, set out before us, our whole day’s hike, every path, every stream, every field and tree laid out like like a meticulously designed diorama. It was the memory of the hike we had just taken, and a reminder of just how far we had to go, our whole day, laid out in a single vision.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s hard not to be drawn to high places, to those points where you can look out over the world and see it as it is.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the appeal of the mountaintop, the grand vista, the vantage point where the muddle all around you fades away and the scope and scale of things becomes clear. You’re on the top of the world, and below you, you can see the interconnection of things.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those moments can change us. Shift our vision. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here on this Transfiguration Sunday, we find ourselves on the mountaintop. It’s the story of Exodus, and we are</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> deep into the tale of the flight of the people of Israel from Egypt. They’re out of slavery, and Pharaoh’s armies have done drownded in pursuit. Into the wilderness they’ve gone, eating manna and quail, fighting off attackers. It’s been a difficult journey. So, of course, they’ve been complaining constantly, bickering and kvetching right up to the foot of Mount Sinai. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we get to that mountain, the whole flow of the story changes. It’s no longer just a journey through the wilderness. it’s about the receiving of God’s instructions on how to live, both in the land of the promise and wherever the Jewish people might find themselves. Moses heads up onto Mount Sinai, alone, where he encounters his Maker in a cloud of mystery. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ten Commandments are received, and the covenant with Israel is sealed, a covenant that begins with the calling of Moses and that has its fruition up on the mountain top, right there on the cusp of earth and heaven.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a straightforward set of principles that Moses brings back down with him, a set of instructions that tell us how to stand in relationship to our Creator, and how to stand in relationship with one another. Or, as Jesus summarized them: Love God with all your heart and mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> They’re not some lofty, distant abstraction, one that has nothing to do with the reality of existence. Those commandments, affirmed in their intent by Jesus, give us that mountaintop view of our lives. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We need those high places, those spaces in our existence where we can look out across the span of our lives and get some sense of where we stand relative to the purpose God has for all of us. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the primary challenge we face as we move from day to day to day in our lives, as we check one expectation against the next, just happily bopping along until one day we bop right out of this mortal coil.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s so easy to be shortsighted, to look to this moment and not see where you have been and what tomorrow might bring. It’s so easy to play small ball, to be so consumed by the demands of our anxious immediacy that we are constantly in a state of reaction to whatever it is we are encountering.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That has always been a challenge for humankind. The challenges of day to day survival make it difficult to stop and take stock of where we stand. If you’re struggling to make bricks for Pharaoh, it’s a little hard to take time off for a brickmaker’s sabbatical.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The demands of our net-age culture reinforce this.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we never stop, never look out to see where we are and where we’re headed, never allowing ourselves to catch our breath and really grasp the why of what we’re doing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That, in large part, is the reason for the season that begins this upcoming Wednesday. We start the season of Lent, a time set aside as different, a mountaintop time when we can consider the paths of our lives against the paths of discipleship.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can look down at that diorama, considering where we have been, and ask ourselves: is this the journey of faith? Are we living by the standards of compassion and justice that Jesus places before us?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From that, our questioning needs to to stir us to action, action that we can reinforce in this season of discipleship.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-74049397871093268402016-10-05T16:33:00.001-07:002016-10-05T16:33:28.820-07:00Never Enough Time<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 09.18.2017</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-a2d29c6c-972b-1a16-947d-6b6e449fd97b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: John 3: 13-17</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-september-18-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems like there’s never enough time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m reminded of that every time I get yet another recommendation for a book to read. “Hey, this one’s awesome,” a friend will say, and I make a mental note of yet another book I’m not going to ever quite find the time to get to, a literary holding pattern that starts looking more and more like the Library of Congress as the year go by.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s never enough time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m reminded of that every time Facebook is geeking out about a new superhero movie that’s about to come out, which seems about seventeen times a year, and I realize that I just can’t even begin to keep up. I’m reminded of that every time someone recommends that I binge watch some new show that is supposed to be the most amazing thing ever.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m reminded of that whenever I look at my growing hutch of of book bunnies. You know, book bunnies, those ideas you have about a manuscript that you’d love to write. Oh, what a great idea, you think, and you jot it down. I currently have nine nonfiction book bunnies, twelve novel bunnies, and a dozen short story bunnies just waiting for me to sit down and get them done. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s reached the point that when my muse whispers another story idea into my head, I roll my eyes. Oh, c’mon. Why don’t you try writing one of those yourself for a change?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m reminded of it when I consider just how quickly my own youth swept away, how quickly the grey slipped into my beard, how just a blink of an eye ago two little boys were curled up on the sofa with my wife for storytime at night. Was that enough time? It seems like it wasn’t enough time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wouldn’t it be great if there was? If life just went on, forever and ever and ever, and you could do everything you’ve ever wanted?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, today, in a strikingly familiar passage of the Gospel of John, Jesus gets into talking about the life eternal. Twice in this short passage, we hear it: the end result, hope and goal of Jesus is ...in the Greek in which John’s Gospel was written: the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">zoen aionion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Zoe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, meaning life. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Aionion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, from the same word that gives us aeon. A life of all the ages.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear that, in our busyness, and It’s easy for us to grasp on to that as something that might come in handy. Eternal life! I could finally get everything done! Surely the house would finally get painted if I were given ten to the five hundredth power years to get it done. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, the grasping part of my soul tends to welcome the idea of the life eternal as an endless quantity, a simple layering on year upon year until they stack all the way to infinity. But then I reflect upon it, and I’m not quite sure that wouldn’t be simply horrific.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because an endless infinite span of years is meaningless if that time is not used well. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, the human capacity to misuse time, to take what moments have been given us and to pour them into meaninglessness goes deep. It’s not that we don’t have enough life, not that the quantity of time given to us is inadequate. It’s that we take so much of what we’ve been given and make it nothing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We fritter time away on nothingness, dithering away hour upon hour on things that do not deepen us or give us joy.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy to blame this tendency on the endless cavalcade of distractions served up by this net era. Give me ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, and how much of that am I going to spend on Facebook watching music fail videos or playing Battlefield? How much will be spent Snapchatting out conversations that are consigned to instant oblivion? Surely, surely we modern humans have become so easily diverted from anything of meaning that we’d squander all of infinity if given half the chance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was thinking about this when for some reason I providentially encountered something on Facebook this week. It was put out by one of those algorithms that tries to hook you into clicking through something on Facebook. Here, a kitten video! Watch kitten videos! More videos!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was, out of nowhere, a link about Seneca. Not the creek or the road or the watershed that makes up much of this county. Not the Native American people from upstate New York. They didn’t call themselves the Seneca, anyway. They were the Onondaga, whose largest town was Osininka.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Facebook pitched me this week was an essay by Seneca the Younger, a Roman stoic philosopher who taught and wrote from Rome at the time of Jesus. Seneca was known as one of the wisest men of his era, who mingled insight with his skill as a writer and public thinker. His one mistake: because of his success, he was roped into being the teacher and tutor for the young emperor. The new boy god-king, Nero, had been born into power. Nero was strangely charismatic, wildly popular with the masses for his antics, more an entertainer than anything else, an embarrassment to the elites in power in Rome. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nero was utterly charming and just as equally unreliable. Seneca was brought in to tame him, and for a while, he did. Seneca was Nero’s favorite teacher, right up until Nero became convinced Seneca had been part of a conspiracy against him. Nero, like all powerful men of appetite and impulsiveness, wasn’t the safest person to be around. Things did not end well for Seneca.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The essay Seneca wrote was entitled “On the Shortness of Life,” which something you probably think about a great deal when you’re in close proximity to a man who can have you killed any time he wants.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The heart of Seneca’s essay is simple. Human beings, for the most part, are given enough time to live life well. We have the opportunity to find our purpose. We have the opportunity to do what it is we were made to do. There will be time enough.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He’s making this argument, remember, in a culture where the average human lifespan was 35. That might seem a whole bunch when you’re sixteen. But it feels like almost nothing now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reason we feel so lost, Seneca suggests, isn’t that we don’t have enough time. It is that we waste our time. We worry about things. We chase after unattainable wealth or prestige. We run in circles. We chew over the past. We allow ourselves to be battered by the whims and desires of others, caught in a cycle of anxious expectation that consumes us. As he puts it:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The part of life we actually live is very small. All the rest of our existence is not life, but merely time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in that bit of ancient insight, I think, there is a key to the life that Jesus is promising. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How much can one do with a life? If we look to Jesus, Jesus who didn’t even make it to that oh so short thirty five years? There is something of an answer. Eternal life is life lived to God’s purpose, where attention is given to our places of giftedness, where compassion and encouragement are allowed not simply to be something we’ll get around to, but part of our now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eternal life isn’t a question of quantity of life. It’s a question of quality of life, a quality of life that encompasses not just some endless time in the future, but this time as well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Used wisely and compassionately and well, there is time enough for that life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">May that be so, for you and for me,</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AMEN</span></div>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-68951087426219811302016-10-05T16:23:00.001-07:002016-10-05T16:23:13.584-07:00The One That Is Lost<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">09.11.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-8cf63277-9727-bcc9-4fea-c62cec10ea32" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Luke 15:1-10</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-september-11-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I seem to have misplaced one of my children. The evidence is strong.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These last couple of weeks, I’ll wander through the house, and passing that bedroom find it still neatly kempt. The downstairs sofa, unoccupied. The upstairs bathroom sink, devoid of beard trimmings.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a missing kid. Haven’t seen him in weeks.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know he’s somewhere in Harrisonburg, Virginia. But I’m not particularly stressed about it, although that was once not the case.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember that feeling, when they vanish. You wander into IKEA with Child A and Child B. Child A noodles about as you wander through the maze of oddly named cheap objects, the Huurvissmurkl leather sofas and the Leifmoosen hatracks and multicolored Nurp sock storage boxes. You are, as best you can tell, heading the the right direction, as you fiddle with the pencils and checklists and storemaps. It’s a good thing you’ve decided to go with the man-to-man approach to child coverage, because Child A is noodling about aimlessly, struggling to track along with you as you drift through the pseudoScandinavian plywood.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then your spouse surfaces, and Child B is not with them. “I thought you had them.” “No, you had them.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a moment of panic so intense it borders on sublime, a great wallop of adrenaline and full on stress hormone production. Your senses are heightened and sharpened, and the flow of time itself seems to slow. You look around, wildly, but all you see is Huurvissmurlk leather sofas and Leifmoosen hatracks and multicolored Nurp sock storage boxes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every part of your being is turned towards that goal: find the missing one. And sure, you’ve got a replacement child, who appears completely unphased by the sudden disappearance of their sibling. But you don’t care.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You chase after them until they are found.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our culture doesn’t value the lost. We are, after all, a society that values winning and winners, and people that are lost don’t fit into that category. It’s easy to assume that this is because things have gotten worse over human history, that we’re at a place of degradation, that a century of crass industrial consumerism has left our souls empty and uncaring. If we lose a set of earbuds, we just order another pair on Amazon.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We feel, it seems, increasingly the same way about other souls. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then again, as we listen to Jesus this morning, maybe things aren’t so different from how they were back in the day. Human beings have always struggled to know that matters, what is truly important. Jesus, of course, knew that there were people like that in his own time. That’s particularly true when it comes to understanding the importance of our relationships with others.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As he taught a crowd that had gathered around him, he could hear people in groups around the edge of the crowd muttering and complaining about him under their breath. And not just him. More significantly, they were annoyed that Jesus didn’t seem to understand who was important. Look at this rabble! Look at this mess...they’re the dregs of humanity! These people aren’t worth anyone’s time...I can’t believe he even bothers with them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ones who grumbled against him were the educated and the elite. The Pharisees were the literate suburbanites of first century Judea, the ones who read and studied the law. The scribes worked for the court of the king and in the households of the rich, managing their affairs and keeping track of their business. Pharisees and scribes did well. They had possessions, all that they needed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So when Jesus told his parable of the lost sheep to describe how earnestly God seeks out those who are broken and lost in this life, he knew those mutterers would be unable to hear. Shepherds, on the other hand, would understand exactly what Jesus was talking about. But shepherds were poor Galilean trash, and the mutterers didn’t do field work. Pharisees didn’t gather their flocks by night. They paid people to do that for them. Lost sheep? Who cares about one lost sheep? I’ve still got the 99...and I was planning on ordering a new one from isheep.com anyway. Why bother with that worthless thing? My time is more valuable than that. The ROI just isn’t there.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then Jesus tells another little story, a story that only appears in Luke’s Gospel. Matthew tells the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18:12-14, but doesn’t give us this next one. Why? Why the difference between Matthew and Luke? Remember, Luke’s gospel was put together to be heard by an educated and elite audience of early Christians, and so its author wanted to make absolutely sure that they heard the next thing that Jesus said...because Luke’s readers were dangerously similar to the whisperers who sat around the outskirts of the gathered crowd.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can hear him raising his voice, pitching it out out over the heads of the outcasts and tax collectors around him and towards the well-dressed little group beyond..making sure that they heard, making sure that they saw his eyes on them. Then he tells a story of a coin. Say...you had a stack of ten one hundred dollar bills. A hundred bucks is close to what a drachma would be worth today, eight hours of work from a day laborer. Enough to be real money, something you can relate to. And you knew you had $1,000, it was right there the last time you counted it, but when you counted it up again, you came up fifty bucks short. You’re going to tear the house apart looking for that bill, now, aren’t you?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Jesus wasn’t talking about sheep, and he wasn’t talking about the value of cash. He’s trying to get it through the thick skulls of human beings just how deeply God values each and every one of us, and how deeply God wants us to understand the goodness that God intends for us.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus saw that we struggle to see the value that God sees, and that the richer and more powerful we become, the harder that struggle becomes. As you gather wealth and position in society, it isn’t just that you stop caring quite so much about things. It also begins to color your relationships with other human beings. You start seeing them as means to an end, valued for what they can do for you. You give up on them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Pharisees and the scribes were sure that they were righteous, sure that they were chosen, sure that they were important. They were equally sure that those who had less, who didn’t measure up, who deserved less...the shepherds and the sinners and the tax collectors...they were just less important to God. We are the chosen! We are the saved! God just loves us more.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was the trap of self-righteousness they’d fallen into, and it’s a trap that clamps shut on any number of Christians today. Our wealth makes the wealth of those scribes look like the allowance you might give to a five year old. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The temptation is there..strongly there for all of us...to succumb to the same selfishness that consumed the Pharisees. You look out into the world and you see it everywhere, the willingness to cast people aside, to discard them, to see them as somehow of less worth than ourselves.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Jesus asks us to remember, this morning as every morning, is that we share a little bit of that anticipatory joy in heaven at the possibility that what was once lost will be found.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-43140760935359332262016-10-05T16:21:00.001-07:002016-10-05T16:21:09.965-07:00Dispossessed<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">09.03.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-5324a690-9725-d7dd-4316-1f9f251b6d29" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Luke 14: 25-33</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-september-4-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some weeks, that pattern of reading we call the lectionary serves up something easy on the soul. Jesus, telling us to love one another. Paul, talking about loving one another.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love sermons are always easier. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But easy doesn’t come most weeks. Jesus is, well, he’s not easy, most of the time. This passage from Luke this morning just hits hard, from the first gut punch about hating your family to the two hard tales about being an unprepared fool to the finishing blow about our possessions. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of them are easy to hear, but it’s that last one, that last moment from Luke’s remembrance, it’s that which hung with me this week, that echoes through my consciousness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think it’s because possessiveness is such a radical part of what our culture pours into us, such an integral part of how we are asked to value ourselves and our world. We are taught to see ourselves as an agglomeration of things, as a collection of objects, our happiness defined by the things we consume. Possessions possess us, just as surely as if we were a little girl with a bad complexion and an usually flexible neck living in a Georgetown brownstone.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so I sat in air conditioned comfort in my comfortable suburban rambler streaming internet radio over my fiber optic line, staring wordless at this very laptop, my motorcycle sitting outside of my double glazed bay window. I hear Jesus say: “You cannot be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions.” How to understand this? How can I, who have so much, understand my commitment to Jesus when he’s giving me this as a baseline?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This week as I meditated on this difficult story of the life of Jesus, I fished around in my soul for other stories that might make sense of this </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because we are creatures of narrative. Stories stick with you, clinging to your consciousness, shaping and forming who you are and your understanding of life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those stories go back a ways. I remember reading Sam and the Firefly as a little kid, that old P.D. Eastman book about the adventures of Sam the owl and Gus the firefly. That story taught me the power of words, I think, their magic as they hang in the air.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember losing an entire week one summer reading the Lord of the Rings saga, which shaped my understanding of the insidious human hunger for power. I was in fourth grade when I read it, and we were at my grandparents house in Athens, Georgia. I’m not sure I would have remembered to eat that week, if it hadn’t been for Grandmother’s tendency to stock the house before our arrival with entire cases of Coca Cola and multiple boxes of Count Chocula.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And from when I was older, I remember a book from a class at the University of Virginia that helped me understand the impact of possessions. It was called Fantasy and Social Value, and it was a legendary gut, the kind of class that’s pretty much a guaranteed A. You read classic sci fi and fantasy, and then talked about how those stories illuminated social issues. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t actually ever take that class, mostly because I think I would have been faintly embarrassed to tell my parents about it. You’re taking </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I read every one of the books that was assigned, because, well, they might have been left lying around my fraternity house. One of the stories that hung with me was a classic 1974 novel by Ursula K Le Guin. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dispossessed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it was called, a story about a man named Shevek. He was a scientist who lived on Annares, a stark utopian world. Annares was a colony of anarchists who had fled Urras, their earth-like homeworld, with the intent of creating a perfect world where everyone has given up their possessions. Nothing is owned by anyone, nothing at all. In fact, the very idea of having possessions is viewed as an affront to the philosophy of Annares.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which makes it...well...completely imperfect, because the people who live on that world still somehow manage to have all of the same flaws. They may not own anything, but they are perfectly capable of harboring resentments. They may live austere lives on their near-desert planet, but they still were capable of violence and distrust.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Their lack of possessions didn’t make them any less self-interested. We can be dispossessed, yet still possessed with the desire to force our will on others. We can live with nothing, yet still have the hunger for control that shatters human life. That desire goes deep in us, deeper than the things we own, deeper than the stuff around us.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we want to commit ourselves to the radical path of compassion taught by Jesus, that desire needs to be let go, and that’s particularly hard for us. It would also have been particularly hard for Luke’s audience to hear this message.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the style, language, and emphases of Luke’s Gospel, we can tell that it was written for an audience that would have had issues with possessions.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s written in the form of a classical Greco-Roman history, which wasn’t quite history as we tend to understand it. We often make the mistake of approaching history like a sequence of dates and facts, a collection of flash card datapoints. In the ancient world, history was first and foremost storytelling, to be mixed with poetry and adventure and song. Meaning, ancient history was less like a textbook, and more like Hamilton or Jesus Christ Superstar.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It uses sophisticated language written for an audience that was used to reading. Reading itself was a rarity in the ancient world, a luxury for the powerful and the privileged. That this was a story meant to be read made the inclusion of this passage even more pointed. Here, every soul who was a member of Luke’s community would have felt challenged as we feel challenged.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As, frankly, they would have throughout Luke’s Gospel. Because it was written by and for the privileged and the comfortable, you might think Luke would steer away from saying anything uncomfortable. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s exactly the opposite. Luke’s gospel makes a point of retaining every part of the oral and written traditions about Jesus that talked about wealth. Luke, more than all of the other Gospels, talks about the perils of wealth, power, and social position, because that was the primary challenge of the spirit facing Luke’s readers.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy, in a position of wealth, to take that wealth for granted, to take the things you own and the stuff around you as a mark of your holiness. Clearly, Jesus must love me, because I have so many nice things!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is balderdash.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Possessiveness is utterly alien to any Christian who wants to walk the path of Jesus. The desire to acquire is meaningless to those who yearn most deeply for God. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of all of my spiritual teachers, it was CS Lewises’ master George McDonald who most firmly challenged the life possessive. McDonald was a storyteller, who wrote strange and dream-like fairy tales. He was the pastor of a couple of small Congregationalist churches, and wrote novels to provide for his wife and nine children. Meaning, he wasn’t someone who had a lot of stuff. From his hard, practical Scots mysticism, he pushed hard against the impact of being captive to what we imagine we own:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 18pt; margin-left: 15pt; margin-right: 15pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The man who for consciousness of well-being depends on anything but life, the life essential, is a slave...</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 18pt; margin-left: 15pt; margin-right: 15pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and, here sounding remarkably like a Scottish Yoda:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 18pt; margin-left: 15pt; margin-right: 15pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it be</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> things</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that slay you, what matter whether things you have, or things you have not?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mystic renounces desire for power in all of its forms, be they economic or coercive. That possessiveness simply ceases to seem meaningful. The unsatisfied, ever-empty hunger of the consumer is unknown and unwanted. That doesn't mean living a joyless, stale, or austere life. It simply means a different way of standing in relation to creation, one that is far richer and more abundant. As MacDonald puts it:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 18pt; margin-left: 15pt; margin-right: 15pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He who has God, has all things, after the fashion in which He who made them has them.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next to the touch of a breeze, or the smell of the honeysuckle, or the laughter of your children, or the bright moon on a clear Spring evening, the cloying cornucopia of consumerism seems a rather empty nothing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like the Gospel itself, none of these things are our possession. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3827272727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-90304514056290925672016-10-05T16:18:00.002-07:002016-10-05T16:18:29.270-07:00The Best Seats in the House<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">08.28.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Luke 14: 7-24</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-august-28-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the last week or so, I’ve been deep back into a project I’d set aside for a year.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s my doctoral project, which I’d written and run by a long suffering group of adult ed folks here at Poolesville. I sat on my computer and edited it for about the seven hundredth time, folding in y’all’s insights along with those of my advisor. I always intended it to be a readable thing, which is why I didn’t name my project the way most doctoral level writing is named. I could have called it “Towards an Ecclesiology of Relational Intimacy: Exploring the Dynamics of Intentional Microcommunity,” which would have been a great way to have no-one read it ever. But I called it, as some of you might recall because I talked about it incessantly, The Strawberry Church.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a book about little churches and why they’re awesome.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My goal: get that project out there into the world, into the hands of other small church folks who might find it faintly interesting. There’s a mental image we have of the American church, of huge congregations with big screens and big parking lots, but that image is wrong. Most churches aren’t huge. Of the over nine thousand Presbyterian churches in our denomination, more than half are the size of this church or smaller. So now, it’s a book, one that explores the dynamics of the small church, something that hopefully I have some clue about.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I love smaller communities, I do. Big churches are all well and good. They can do a whole bunch, thanks to the miracle of old fashioned economies of scale. The worship is seamless and tightly choreographed, every Sunday as tight and energizing as catching Hamilton on Broadway. The programs are perfectly professional, not a single hair out of place. A large church with its heart turned towards mission and service can do a whole bunch of good.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I like a church that feels like a home, not a Nordstroms. Our world already has so much corporate perfection, big shiny seamless machines. It’s what our culture expects. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As much as I like teeny tiny churches, there’s something in that book that’s particularly difficult for me. It’s the role of the pastor in the small church. After reading dozens of books and engaging with the best thinkers in the world of tiny congregations, the conclusion is inescapable: in a healthy little church, the pastor shouldn’t matter all that much. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oof. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the Good Lord leads me to love little churches, to spend a substantial portion of my adult life flinging myself through the endless fiery hoops of the ordination process, to go to grad school for seven years, to get my doctorate, only to reveal that all of that not only doesn’t that matter, it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shouldn’t.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that is just how the Good Lord do. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you get into this Jesus thing expecting your ego to be inflated, you’re in for a surprise.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ego and our tendency to want to be at the center of things is exactly what Jesus gets to talking about in the passage from Luke this morning.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He’s been invited to a feast, a big sabbath shindig at the house of an important muckity muck at the synagogue. We’re not exactly sure where this took place, but it was part of his travels as he moved towards Jerusalem.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was an event that brought him into connection with the important people in the community. It was a place to see and be seen. Where you sat and how you ate and who you talked to would have said a whole bunch about where you fell in the social pecking order of that community.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was an elaborate social construction, a carefully staged dance, and Jesus knew it. And when Jesus charged through those conventions like a bull in a china shop, it made for enough storytelling moments to fill a large chunk of this chapter.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He begins by challenging their assumptions about what is and is not appropriate action on the sabbath, and then quickly moves on to the way the meal itself is organized. There were places of honor, nearer to the host or others of importance. Then there were other seats and other places. Jesus is being watched, but he is also watching those around him and observing their behavior.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He’s seen them jockeying for position and power, and then calls them on it. He calls out his fellow guests, suggesting that perhaps their entire attitude is wrong. Seeking glory for yourself may be the way of the world, but it is not the way Jesus teaches. Instead, he says, seek the humble things. When you look for a seat at the table when you arrive at an event, take the last one.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On one hand, this is actually rather crafty advice. If you try to push your way up to a place that’s beyond you, you might get knocked down a notch or two, which would be seriously embarrassing. Better to get called out and moved up by your host. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh yeah. Lookit me. I’m sittin’ in the good chair.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Subtle and passive aggressive as that might seem, that’s not the point Jesus is making.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He’s declaring the entire power dynamic of the society around him to be at odds with being a citizen of Kingdom of God. It’s not just that you shouldn’t seek that best seat at the table. It’s that...to the best of your ability...you shouldn’t even desire it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His messing with the way things are becomes even more obvious when he turns his attention to his host. Here he’s talking to a man who has invited his friends and his neighbors and business associates he wants to impress to a gathering, and he tells him: This thing that you’ve done and everyone does? Don’t. Sure, it’s the way we do business and the way we get to know one another. It always has been. It certainly is now. If we want it to count for anything, our goal is not gain, or even that back and forth that constitutes much of the way human beings interact and develop relationships with one another.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Invite those who cannot return the favor. Invite those who can’t pay you back,” says Jesus, somehow managing to undercut every dinner party and social engagement ever.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, Jesus hits ‘em with a story. You know Jesus and his stories. It’s a story about a meal, a great feast prepared. The person in question sends out invitations, and then follows them up on the day of the event, only to discover that guest after guest had come up with excuses not to follow through. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His response? To fill the party with all of those who are on the margins of society, those who were broken and struggling. And when there weren’t enough of them to fill the house, they just packed in anyone they could find.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, a most peculiar way to approach a feast, but here, Jesus was presenting his listeners and us with a pungent little tale with a very sharp point. That point is that the way we do things, the structures of economics and relationship that rule human society, those things are profoundly off.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the kind of message that I’m sure had the host of the party summoning over his majordomo and whispering, “That Jesus guy? Make sure we don’t ever invite him back.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because that, ultimately, is one of the great challenges of really engaging with the message of Jesus of Nazareth. The more time you spend with the Gospel, the harder it becomes to see the world in the same way you’ve always seen it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That, I think, is the greatest strength of the small church, of the sweet fruitfulness of simple, humble relating. You don’t get caught up in the clutter, in the mess of human distraction, in the bog of our systems and structures. You don't worry about power, about control, because really? In a little church, none of that should matter. You’re just here, with people face to face, learning to be the Kingdom together.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So here, in a place where that is possible, </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-87016622598535334812016-10-05T16:13:00.003-07:002016-10-05T16:13:37.741-07:00Aye Eff Triple Tee<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 08.21.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-355ce5db-971e-c494-c97a-684b91d6891a" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 58:9b-14</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-august-21-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve always loved gadgets. It’s just one of those American male things, I think, but few things warm the cockles of my heart more than a device that does something nifty. Toy robots? Oh, of course. Tiny flying indoor helicopters? I got one for my forty second birthday. Oooh, look, there’s a helicopter flying in my house! Cool. If there’s a problem, having a gadget to solve it just seems so neat. Like, say, the high tech mosquito trap I bought to handle our back yard bug problem just a couple of years back. It was this propane powered device that used fans and nets and carbon dioxide emissions to lure in those little devils, and I was sure it’d be great. Better living through engineering. But when I actually did the math after it managed to catch fewer mosquitos than I’d swat on any given day, I realized I was paying about $15 per mosquito. Fiddle.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That doesn’t stop me, though, and that means that another gadget has arrived in our household: an Echo. It’s this little cylindrical object that sits in the living room and listens, permanently connected to the internet. It’s like Ask it something, and it answers. Ask it to play music...almost any music...and it does. “Play the soundtrack to the Broadway version of Evil Dead, The Musical!” And lo and behold, that’s playing. Ask it what Millard Fillmore’s birthday was. Ask it who the prime minister of Bangladesh is. It knows. It knows the weather, and will tell you. It’ll put things on your to do list, or update your calendar. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It can also turn lights on and off in our entire upstairs with a simple command that works about eighty two percent of the time. It’s all very much like something out of Star Trek. It can learn new skills, like a one-minute-mindfulness app that turns it into a robotic guru...although, to be honest, that we imagine that a machine can guide us to a higher level of mindfulness in sixty seconds seems to indicate that that whole mindfulness movement has jumped the shark.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It also weirds out our dog, who I’ve watched either flee or wander over to the device and sniff curiously it after it speaks or turns off the lights. This is, on the one hand, cute. On the other, it’s started to remind me of that reaction the dogs had in the Terminator movies, which is possibly not a very good sign.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This hasn’t stopped us from exploring and expanding what this gadget to end all gadgets can do, though, and one of those things is something called IFTTT. It’s a net-based protocol for controlling devices through what they call “recipes.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If This Then That, or so the acronym goes, and what it does, according to the website, is automate your life. Want the lights in the house to come on whenever you get within a hundred yards after dark? Just write the recipe that connects your phone GPS to your lights. Want all of your dimmable lights to turn up to maximum whenever you say the words “Let there be light?” You got it. It’s a simple set of logical operators, one that lets you structure the world around you so that each of your actions triggers something else. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a strange analog of life, as the logic that defines the virtual world presses out into our actual existence.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the Book of Isaiah today we hear a message of challenge, one that includes a surprising number of if/then statements. This section of Isaiah comes from an interesting time in the history of the people of Israel. Most Bible scholars worth their salt see the Book of Isaiah divided up into three clear sections, each of which has its own particular focus. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today’s section comes from what is known as Third Isaiah, which was written and preached perhaps 510-515 years before Christ by a prophet who followed the tradition of Isaiah. Unlike First Isaiah, its visions and proclamations do not describe a Hebrew people comfortably ensconced in Jerusalem and the temple, as do the first thirty-nine chapters. Unlike Second Isaiah, they do not assume that the Jewish people are shattered in the Babylonian exile, like chapters forty through fifty-five. The context of the last ten chapters is clear: the Hebrew people are back in their land. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They’d been given the opportunity to rebuild is their whole culture, after it was almost wiped from the face of the earth in by Babylonian Empire. After Babylon was defeated by Persia, the Hebrew people were encouraged by Cyrus of Persia to return to their ancestral lands. They were filled with hope at the prospect of return. All they’d have to do is set up shop again, and all would be well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people returned thinking that things were going to be easy, and things were the farthest thing from easy. Life upon their return was a struggle from day to day. The bricks that had been smashed from the walls of Jerusalem did not leap up on their own and autonomously reassemble themselves into Zion Gardens Condos and Suites.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was hard. It seemed hopeless. And there’s a funny thing about hopelessness. It tends to bring out the worst in human beings. Rather than pulling together, and working towards a common goal of rebuilding, we can begin to prey upon one another. This, as evidenced by the prophet’s condemnation, is precisely what happened as they attempted to rebuild Judah. For some, the time of rebuilding was a time to profit. Whenever you find yourself rebuilding, when the system has been smashed and you’re trying to epoxy together a new way of life from the rubble, there are opportunities to do well. For others?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those who fell out on the margins of the society...the poor, the foreign, the different, well...things did not go so well for them. Because, being weak and vulnerable, they became perfect targets for those who were in a position to take advantage.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Isaiah’s story of the rebuilding is full of evidence of this dark form of human relating. Though the Torah and the heart of God’s covenant with the people of Israel was meant to hold people together. It was meant to prevent the kind of wild devouring imbalance that turns the heart of any culture towards the bright suffocating blight of injustice. That love of power is what had broken Judah in the first place, and here, with an opportunity to rebuild, human beings were making that same old pattern of mistakes again.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the word from God that Isaiah proclaimed defied that despair, and challenged that cycle of oppression. It was a word of intense hope, a word that comes directly from the prophet’s sense of being anointed with the Spirit of the Living God. It’s a word of intense confidence in the power of God to work through his people to bring about restoration.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is striking, though, is how that statement of hope is qualified. If you do this, then this is likely to happen. The Creator of the Universe isn’t saying through Isaiah: I will do this, guaranteed. Instead, God is saying: If you do this, I will likely do that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “recipe” for this? The “program” for this? As set out in this passage, it’s twofold: 1) care for those who are in need, and 2) take a sabbath from greed and self seeking.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are merciful, kind, gracious, and compassionate, your society will flourish. Your just and gracious actions create the likelihood that the world around you will be bent towards both justice and graciousness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not precise, not mechanical, not quite as straightforward as we might hope. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in times when things seem broken, it is the place to begin.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br /><br /><br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-4869460413740796192016-10-05T16:10:00.003-07:002016-10-05T16:10:28.005-07:00Being Divided<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">08.14.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-0492c2ce-971c-050f-7809-2980a0cb0e27" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Luke 12:49-56</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-august-14-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m a little sensitive to family stuff right now, to those strange bonds of time and flesh that weave us together with those who share our blood.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My trip to the beach over these few days only deepened that sense. Every single year for the last twenty years, it’s been a time for relaxation, a time for kicking back, though the week seems shorter every time it comes. Was that a whole week, or was that half an afternoon? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2016, it was again a chance to try new things on the beach, as hours of my time vanish in a meditation on the coalescence of order from chaos, as particulate sand and liquid water mingle into an ephemeral solidity. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or to put that in English, me make sandcastles. This year, a collapsed first attempt at a tower just happened to look like a letter, which lead to carving more letters, which lead to me discovering that writing the word “Bethany” out of the sand is a family-picture magnet.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this last week was the marker of the last summer before my son leaves the nest for school. It was at the beach, 19 summers ago, that we announced to the gathered family that his life was forming inside my wife. Now, our presence there was a sign of his imminent departure.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been watching those markers fall, one by one, as the year has passed and my son has grown closer and closer to moving on. The last swim meet. The last musical. The last performance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The final trip to Hershey Park tomorrow, last of the family road trips. Each a transitional moment, marking what had for so long seemed beyond the far horizon.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each of them once inhabited a place in the future, a far off signpost of that morning when I wake up and the house is discernably more empty, a bed incongruously made, a room peculiarly clean, the sofa downstairs unwarmed by a sleeping form.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I grumble at the big picture of a culture that takes away our babies, at a society that just expects the young to be far from us just as they’ve blossomed into their adulthood. For tens of thousands of years, they stuck around and helped us on the farm and squabbled and we wished they’d go someplace else. Now? Now we just miss ‘em, as if, as the saying goes about children, our heart now lives outside of our bodies and walks around in the world. And though that sounds cute, there are moments where it feels more like I’m that hapless extra in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, watching as my beating heart is removed from my body and cast into the fire.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I yearn, in this moment, for a reassurance, for words of sustaining comfort.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it goes deeper than that. In times when we are parted, we hope for connection, a deeply unbreakable, love-wrought union between those who have become part of us and ourselves. When we move away from friends who’ve become like blood, that’s what we hope. When we return home to that emptier house, that’s what we yearn for. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so I go to scripture this week, and I get..what? Oh Lord, it’s that passage from Luke.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I came to bring fire to the earth?” What was that? You came to what? What are you talking about? “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Division? Do we really need more division? If there’s one thing we human beings seem to be good enough at on our own, it’s factions and strife and conflict. Um, Jesus, we don’t really need your help for that, but…ahh…thanks for offering? How are we supposed to grasp this? What does this passage mean?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it just keeps getting worse. It’s not just that we can expect to encounter it in the world, Jesus says, but that he’s bringing it into our homes. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three, they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother in law.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When his message hits, Jesus seems to be saying, I’m going to make sure that it’s not one of those fun family gatherings, but instead one of those “dear-God-when-will- this-dysfunctional-vacation-from-hell-finally-end” family gatherings.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of us want this. No-one yearns for that kind of brokenness.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can we hear this passage as Good News? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That seems like the very last thing we need.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The answer lies in understanding both the context of the passage and the kind of separation that Jesus brings. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a teaching that found purchase the context of the early church, it was remembered because the commitment to follow the Way did create a form of division. There was some very real cost to following Jesus in that first generation of the church, as it required taking a significant risk, a break with either the standing practices and expectations of the Judaism of the time or the expectations of imperial Roman culture. If you chose to follow Jesus of Nazareth, you were separating yourself from all of that.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also can’t read this passage without having heard the whole context of Luke’s Gospel. This can’t be taken as a soundbite, as something that exists outside of relationship with the whole story. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zechariah proclaims in Luke 1:79 that Jesus is coming “..to guide our feet into the way of peace.” In Luke 2:14 the angels proclaim that Jesus brings peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples. Jesus commands his disciples to declare peace as a greeting in every house they enter (Luke 10:5). He’s the one who weeps over doomed Jerusalem, crying “If only you had recognized on this day the things that make for peace.” And after Jesus returns to his disciples, after the cross and the empty tomb, the first words he speaks are “Peace be with you.” Peace and the desire for peace are a vital part of who Christ is. Creating peace is the point and purpose of the Gospel.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But though peace is at the heart of the Gospel, proclaiming and living out that peace doesn’t always result in an absence of conflict. Even if you live your life according to the teachings of Christ, even if you are one of the peacemakers upon whom he declared God’s blessing, there will still be conflict. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’ve ever tried to settle a dispute between two people who really, really want to fight with each other, you know that often doesn’t work out so well. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's not that Jesus is proclaiming himself to be yet another source of dissension, yet another firebrand eager to add his message to the throngs of competing world-views that tear and snap at one another. The world, our world, already has plenty of powers and principalities that claw at each other for control. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of this, those who follow him...actually follow him, not just mouthing the words...do stand separate. Where the world cries out for us to take what is rightfully ours, those who follow him instead give. Where the world insists that we should shove our way to the head of the table, those who follow him take on the form of a servant. Where the world declares that the other is the enemy, to be hated, to be despised, to be destroyed, those who truly follow Christ understand that Christ teaches that the other...be they the stranger or our enemy or that person we hate with the fierce bitter fire that comes from closeness...is to be loved, to be respected, to be built up. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a real distinction there, a division, a rift between one way of being and another.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christ does bring that division. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So when we hear this passage, and we cry: What? What was that I just read? Was that Jesus talking? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, it was. And he was saying that we should be separated from hatred, separated from fear and bitterness and anxiety and those dark walls of the infolded soul that can strangle God’s love from our lives.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-75865038082108560712016-10-05T16:07:00.000-07:002016-10-05T16:07:07.361-07:00The Things We Prepare<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 07.31.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-20f4ec9e-9718-2910-9369-c31de7dba472" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson:Luke 12:13-21</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-july-31-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summertime, and the living is easy? Americans just can’t seem to stop working.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every few years, there’s another spasm of interest in this characteristic of the American economy. We work, and work a whole bunch. In major metropolitan areas like this one, the number of hours you put in each week is almost a badge of pride, yet another way in which you can prove yourself superior to those around you.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Downtown, little clusters of young associates regale each other with tales of epic hours worked, 50 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours in a week. Among some junior executives at area contracting firms, where racking up billable hours is next to Godliness, there’s a rumor going around that if you pound back 25 triple espressos in a row it actually rips a hole in the space-time continuum…allowing you to put in that perfect 200 hour week. Either that or your head implodes, and honestly, after 25 espressos it’s a little hard to tell the difference.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This ethic of intensity expresses itself, oddly, in the work schedules of many of my pastoral brethren and sistren. I’ll talk to ministers who’ll tell me they don’t have ten seconds to rub together, that they’re putting in two full weeks every week, that they’re exhausted and overburdened. This confuses me, because for some reason I don’t equate spiritual leadership with shimmering stress and fatigue. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans work more than most of the industrialized world. In 2015, the average worker in the United States put in 1,790 hours a year. That’s now almost two full weeks more than the average Canadian, three hundred and fifty hours a year more than the average Dutch worker, and 1,750 hours more than the average Frenchman. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For all of our seeming busyness, we’re still nowhere near matching the industrialized country that holds the record for the most hours spent working. Is it Japan? Korea, perhaps? Nope. Germany? Hah. The Germans work only 1371 hours a year. They put in the fewest hours per worker of any modern democracy, ten full work weeks less per year than we do. The people who work the most: It’s Mexico, at 2,246 hours annually. Mexicans, according to the data, are the hardest working people in the world. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, they are, Donald.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s strange about this whole phenomenon is that it’s exactly the opposite of what people used to think 2016 would look like. Back in America in the 1950s, everyone was absolutely convinced that fifty five years in the future, we’d all be working 15 hours a week. They also thought we’d be commuting via jet pack, and I don’t know which one is more disappointing. Strangely, though, studies have shown that when you take into account all the increases in technology and productivity, it should only take a modern worker 11 hours to do the work that took 40 hours to do in 1950. If we were willing to accept the same standard of living as 1950s Americans, an 11 hour workweek might even be possible.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But we don’t want to live in little 1950s houses. We want to live in huge houses. We don’t want to own just one car. We want three cars, which we’ll put in a garage that’s bigger than that little 1950s house. We don’t want just one nine inch television. We want a 108” LCD HDTV…and oh yes, they do make one…so we can see the oil glistening in the pores on Jack Bauer’s nose. We want our cable and we want our and we want our high speed internet and we want our smartphones. We NEED these things if we’re going to be happy. Because we are so much more happy now than we were half a century ago. Aren’t we? We work so hard, every day, to gather in the material blessings of our Tantalus consumer culture, sure that our joy is just that one last gadget away.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We find security in those things, in those objects, in the having and the holding, and we allow ourselves to imagine that it is they that matter.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though it’s a couple of thousand years ago, it is that ethic that Jesus is addressing in the story we hear from the Gospel of Luke today. The passage from chapter 12 of that book comes to us from one of the long teachings that Luke records. Jesus is standing before a crowd that has gathered to hear him share stories and riddles about the nature of the Kingdom of God. He’s showing them what’s important and telling them what they should value in their lives. He’s just told them to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them in what they have to say when someone from the audience pipes up.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” What the audience member was hoping was to get Jesus to act as most rabbis would have acted, which is to go into a long discussion of the laws of inheritance and to come up with a legal ruling for him...for a small percentage of the inheritance, of course. Perhaps he should have waited on the Spirit just a little longer. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus turns him down with surprising gentleness, and instead uses his question to launch into a story about a man who had so much stuff that he was having to think about building a new five car garage with a finished attic for storage. This is someone who has succeeded by every single standard of classical wisdom. He has invested wisely, he’s planted the right crops, and he is doing absolutely everything right. The wealthy man smiles to himself, sure that he’s going to have a chance to kick back and enjoy the bounty he’s gotten. I’m going to Disney World, baby!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But as Christ tells the story, that’s not what happens. It’s at that moment that God appears to the man and berates him. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” In an echo of Ecclesiastes, we hear: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the point in countless sermons where your friendly neighborhood televangelist would start talking about not storing up treasures for yourself but being rich towards God...something you should definitely keep in mind when you see the offering plate that’ll be coming ‘round later. But that totally misses the point of what Jesus is talking about.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within the story, what is being demanded of the rich man isn’t his barns or his crops or his goods. What’s being claimed is his life...all of his days, all of his actions, all of the choices he has made. The Creator of the Universe couldn’t care less about possessions. It is life that God demands. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s one of the primary challenges facing us in our modern culture of work. A deep personal commitment to excellence in all that you do in the working world was viewed by the Protestant reformers as a sign of spiritual maturity. God has given us all certain gifts, and called each of us to a particular task in life, and our willingness to embrace that task and pursue it joyously is a sign of blessing. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But we’re not called on to pursue work for the sake of profit alone. We’re called to work because what work is a joyous and honorable thing. We’re each given a vocation as a part of contributing to the broader good of God’s creation.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What work should not be, though, is all consuming. If it devours time for friendships and fellowship, and takes away those moments that should be given over to prayer and thanksgiving, then it has grown beyond its rightful bounds.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is our lives that will be demanded of us. When the time comes to settle that account, what will we have to offer?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me,</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AMEN</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-82156948109271683022016-10-05T16:04:00.001-07:002016-10-05T16:04:13.045-07:00Seek. Ask. Knock.<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 07.24.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-03fceeb0-9715-e612-cedd-7cd6b15c4c1f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Luke 11:1-12</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-july-24-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Name it and claim it. That’s all you need to do. If you want something, just set your heart on it, and it will come to pass.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This saying has become a peculiar part of American Jesus practice, front and center in our strange brand of 21st century consumer Christianity. The idea, at least, is that God gives us everything that we want if only we ask faithfully.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve read through the books by the great masters of the prosperity movement, by the Creflo A. Dollars and the Joel Osteens of the world. I’ve got several of them on my twitter feed, for some reason that still eludes me, and I get their chirrupy words of positive-thinking encouragement mixed in with the art and the literature and the randomness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some spiritual practitioners elsewhere in this odd movement call that principle the Law of Attraction, asserting that the way you get something to happen is simply to desire it. If you truly want something, it will happen.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve tried this, and I find it doesn’t really quite hold water.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not just with the stupid stuff, like the muscle cars and the yachts and the BMW R1200RTs of the world. It isn’t...as one of the prosperity preachers wrote in his bestselling book...about praying to Jesus that you’ll find a parking space at the mall, and bam! You get one. Named it! Claimed it!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s with other stuff. The important stuff.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I truly wanted a friend not to die during brain surgery. I didn’t just slightly want it. I turned all of my hopes, all of my intention, all of my prayers, all of myself towards that end. I named that future. I claimed it. I visualized it, and trusted in God. I rested my hopes in God that she’d pull through, when the surgery failed and she was induced into a coma. She died. I cannot possibly have wanted that not to happen more than I did.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I genuinely and utterly named and claimed the revitalization of my last congregation, my first call. I could see it. I could feel it. I could visualize what it would mean for that church to turn around two decades of decay, and become something new and joyous. I saw that, and I cast out that vision, and I prayed prayers full of hope. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But folks got to fighting, and things didn’t work, and as much as I prayed and sweated and hoped and prayed some more, it just didn’t happen. I left. The church died.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What strikes me, every time I encounter prosperity preaching, is that it is complete and unmitigated bovine excrement. The idea that you shape creation with your intention seems like egomaniacal bravado, preposterous bluster completely unfounded in the reality of our mortal frailty and our smallness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet here Jesus is, telling us to do just that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened to you.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s a little hard to hear, having lived enough life not to quite believe it. So what does that mean? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here in Luke chapter 11, we’ve worked our way through a sequence of Jesus teaching about prayer. It’s a familiar teaching, one that we find in a more familiar form elsewhere in the Bible. It’s in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, too, at the core of the spiritual and ethical teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, too, at the core of the spiritual and ethical teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the most basic prayer, the most </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Luke, as in Matthew, that simple teaching of a simple prayer is followed by a section on what it is we can expect from our Creator, and in both, we are told not to fear.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in Luke, Jesus lays out a little story, a mental exercise meant to stir the imaginations of his listeners. Imagine a friend, arriving with need in the middle of the night. What do you do for that friend, in their need?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You help them. You give them what they ask.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In ancient Judah, the demand for hospitality was radical, a fundamental moral principle that provided the social glue of a culture. The reason to have things was to share them, was to be generous with them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not sure that’s quite the same in our selfish, fearful, anxious society. A knock on the door in the middle of the night might get us calling the cops, or racking a shell into the chamber of the shotgun. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the principle Jesus is trying to convey is straightforward: God, like a good friend, will give us what we ask if we diligently ask for it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how does that play out, really, here in the reality we inhabit? If we ask, do we receive? If we knock, is it opened?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In many ways, no. We do not become gods by the asking. Sure, we can stand out in a cornfield directly in the path of an F5 tornado, and say, “Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you in the name of Jesus to turn this storm aside!” I mean, we can, but then our next prayer will be something along the lines of “Dear Heavenly Father, now that I’m flying through the air, could you find something soft for me to land on? No, by soft I didn’t mean a tree.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We do not become less mortal through the asking. We are not immune to the reality of being human, of being frail, of being easily broken. Christianity is not and has never been the promise that everything will always go right for us, that we will not grow old, that we will never experience illness or loss or death. That’s the lie of consumer culture, which sates us with stuff and coddles us while eternally stoking our hungers. Following Jesus is and has never been a guarantee that you’ll never experience suffering and loss. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So if that’s what you’re seeking, you’ll be disappointed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But following Jesus also changes the world. It does. As I like to think of it, the commitment to Christ’s way bends local probability towards the reality of grace.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll freely admit that saying “I’m bending local probability towards the reality of grace” is a great way to insure that no-one has a clue what you’re talking about, which is probably why Jesus never used those words.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are we to ask for? As Jesus makes clear in Luke’s gospel, we’re asking for the Holy Spirit, which means we’re asking to stand in unmediated relationship with the love of God. That changes us, and it changes our relationships, and that changes...right up close, where it matters...our world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we ask for God’s grace to work in and through us, to fill us with the light of kindness and mercy, and that is our sincere yearning, that changes things. We are more likely to be graceful. We are more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt. We are more likely to forgive, and to be resilient, and to endure times of hardship.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we search, diligently, for the Way of life that Jesus taught, that makes a difference. It shapes our deciding, transforms the choices we make, modifies the way we relate to every human being with whom we stand in encounter. That, in turn, has the potential to change how they experience their lives, and that changes them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we knock, diligently, against what can sometimes seem like the dark, closed door of the universe, we may not receive material blessings. But that Spirit of grace, which is the heart of the Way that Jesus taught, is and will always be available to us.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in that, there’s hope, in the strange inversion of naming and claiming.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-60946401312782213242016-10-05T16:01:00.005-07:002016-10-05T16:01:50.554-07:00Too Long on the Vine<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">07.17.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-aa6647d6-9714-0d58-4bd7-6fc5cc3de79a" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Amos 8:1-12</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-july-17-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I made another mistake this month, one of those classic mistakes of omission that tends to come when you’re a little scatterbrained.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s like leaving to go to the store, but forgetting your wallet. Doh! Or getting back from that trip to the store, and realizing you didn’t actually buy the milk.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I forgot, this last month, was to buy stock in Nintendo. Every time I’ve see a little cluster of kids or teens wandering around Whalen Commons in lazy concentric circles, hoping against hope that a Snorlax might appear, I’m reminded that this was one of those times when a stock purchase might have made sense, one of those “double your money” moments that’s dangled like grapes before a capitalist Tantalus.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If only, you think, and then you start daydreaming about the fabulous things you could have bought if you’d only bet the house and the entire contents of your 401(3)b on Nintendo to ride. Hmm. Do I get my Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat in Go Mango Orange, or Maximum Steel Gray?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I waited too long. It’s been an incredible run for all stocks recently, truth be told. After taking a pummeling during the collapse of the subprime market back in the last decade, the markets have roared back.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Home prices have also bounced back, with the average sale price of single family home in the Washington metropolitan area setting a new high water mark in June. The median price for a single family home hereabouts: now $555,000. This is great news if you already own a house, and perhaps not such good news if you don’t.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wealth is piled upon wealth, rising as high and bright as the advertising that blares from the screens in Times Square. For those with the means to take advantage of it, this seems like an age of plenty, a time of harvest, when the fruit from all of the labor of all of the world is gathered into the larders of capital. With the average American corporate executive now pulling down a salary 400 times that of their workers, and with the growing concentration of wealth among the very few, it sure must seem like that way...to them, at least.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout history, this pattern has repeated and repeated itself. Wealth concentrates, as riches create power that seeks to gather more riches. It’s a pattern as old as humanity itself, and that’s exactly the pattern that the prophet Amos was going on about nearly 2,800 years ago. The passage we heard this morning comes to us from around 760 years before Christ, during the reign of King Jeroboam the Second of Israel. For all of the chaos that had wracked both the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, this period had been a peaceful time in the history of the Hebrew people.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No wars. No uprisings. Nothing. Honestly, that’s pretty unusual.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For half a century, the wars between the great Empires of the Ancient Near East fell into a lull...Egyptian and Assyrian armies no longer swept back and forth across the land like a plague. In that brief time of peace, the cities of both kingdoms prospered. The educated and literate power elite that gathered around the throne of kings grew in influence and wealth, as taxation and the strengthening of the monarchy gathered in the wealth. But that prosperity wasn’t something shared by all. For those who didn’t live in the cities near the heart of power, things were not as good as they had once been.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amos came from just such a place. He was from the village of Tekoa, in the southern kingdom. He was a shepherd, whose flock would have wandered the hills just to the south of Bethlehem. A series of visions drove him to travel to the north, across the border into Israel and up into the area around Bethel, where he made himself a nuisance to the priests and authorities of the north.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vision he shared might seem a bit odd to us. Does God show him a golden throne surrounded by many-winged angels? Does he see radiant glory? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No...God shows him a basket of...summer fruit. A fruit basket? That’s his vision? What sort of vision is that? That’s not a message from God...it’s the kind of gift you give to a co-worker you barely know. No self-respecting televangelist is going to get up there and say...”Brothers and sisters, the Lord came to me in a dream last night...and in his radiant glory and power he showed me...a fruit basket. He also showed me a nice Hallmark card with a picture of a kitten.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Amos didn’t know we’d be hearing his voice nearly 3,000 years later. He was talking directly to the people of Ancient Israel, in terms that they would have understood. This is a passage that requires a little background knowledge about both Hebrew and ancient agriculture.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Amos says basket of summer fruit, the thing we miss is that he’s making a pun in Hebrew. When God shows him a basket of summer fruit, and then tells him that the “the end has come upon my people Israel,” those are two related words. “Summer fruit” is, in Hebrew, the word qayits. “The end,” in Hebrew, is the word qets. Summer fruit and the end don’t just sound alike, though. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like many Hebrew words that sound alike, they’re related.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we think of “summer fruit,” we think of sweet buttered corn and watermelon juice dripping red down our chins. But for the ancient Israelites the term “summer fruit” meant the harvest that came at the very end of the season. It was the last of the gathering in, the crop that was brought in just as the growing season was over. Summer fruit didn’t last long. You had to eat it or store it quickly, because it wasn’t going to keep. It was like that banana that starting to brown and tomorrow will be nothing but blackened mush, like that watermelon that seems fine today, but when you cut into it tomorrow, the meat has turned to watery foulness. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summer fruit is that two-foot zucchini that’s been left on the vine just a tiny bit too long, huge and mealy and barely edible.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summer fruit doesn’t last, and after it’s done, there’s nothing to follow it. The harvest is over.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the vision of Amos came a word of God’s judgement against those denizens of the ancient cities of Israel. All of the law codes of ancient Israel served to keep their society in balance. Those ancient law helped to maintain a balance in society, a balance under which no one individual or group was to gather too much power or control to itself. The point of the Torah, which is affirmed and lived out by Christ, is that power and material wealth weren’t allowed to become the goal of God’s people. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When they do, a society has lost its center. It is no longer focused on God’s love and love of neighbor, and is doomed to failure. The eloquent warnings that this shepherd from Bethlehem delivered to Israel proved to be true...as within a generation, Israel had fallen.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hearing Amos...really hearing him...is as important in our age as it was in his. As amazing and impressive as the riches of the new global economy can be, we’ve got to look hard at them through that prophet’s eyes. When wealth and power become the whole focus of our lives, we lose our sense of responsibility for others. We no longer seek their good, but instead allow ourselves to believe that profit justifies itself. When profit seeks after profit, the world is thrown out of balance. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When a few are sating themselves on a harvest of summer fruit, and literally billions are struggling just to have the very most basic staples in life, the world is thrown out of balance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such imbalances aren’t part of God’s covenant desire for us, and as the taste of that fruit rests on our lips, we have to be mindful of the warning that Amos bore.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-5153531814739172862016-10-05T16:00:00.000-07:002016-10-05T16:00:06.149-07:00A Most Dangerous Path<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">07.03.16; Rev. David Williams</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2010:1-11;%2016-20&version=31" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Passage: Luke 10:1-11; 16-20</span></a></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-61c40301-9712-3267-b552-eeb6e896ab81" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-july-3-message/"><br /></a></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-july-3-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summer time is travel time. It’s the season of the road trip, but those trips just aren’t what they used to be when I was a kid, or when I was a young man. Yeah, the roads are more or less the same. But getting ready for a trip when you’re a dad of younglings was nothing like getting ready for a trip as a kid, or as a twenty year old.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I still have old faded sepia memories of those first road vacations, back when I was a tiny little spud. A week of vacation involved one large suitcase for my parents, and one for my brother and myself. They’d get stuffed into the tiny front trunk of our well-worn white Volkswagen Beetle, and five year old me and my three year old brother would clamber into the back. Off we’d go, two suitcases, no carseats, bouncing along the modestly maintained roads of 1970s Kenya towards Lake Malindi or the beach at Mombasa, or rattling along the dirt roads of the savannah on our way to some safari lodge or another. It was a...different...time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was a younger man, my idea of packing was even more streamlined. I’d get off my shift as a dishwasher at U.VA’s academic dining facility, rush back to my room, and preparing myself for a trip to Williamsburg to visit my girlfriend. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had a very manageable checklist. Item one was to take a quick shower, because the frenetic pace of the dishroom tended to result in me heavily crusted with condiments and little chunks of broccoli. I learned pretty early on that most women don’t really appreciate the “I’m wearing my own snacks” look. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Item two was to pack everything I needed for a weekend away. That involved, in total, two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. Total packing and preparation time: ten minutes, seven and half if I was feeling particularly motivated. Then I’d start up my Honda 750 with a dozen hard stomps on the kickstarter...not that I needed to, but pressing the button on the electric start didn’t have that Marlon Brando feel...and off I’d ride, lickety split, with my mostly empty backpack flapping in the wind behind me. For some reason, my wife to be found my approach to packing strange.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But preparing for a journey...even a three-day trip...has taken a bit longer than seven and a half minutes throughout the majority of my years as a modern parent. Two days before the trip, there’s a twenty minute list preparation meeting, as we carefully go over every conceivable thing that we might need. At least one point seven five complete outfits is selected for every member of the family for each day of the trip, and several different pairs of footwear, each selected for function. Then there was the food, which is packed as if we were planning an expedition into a vast and trackless wilderness where the only other option would be to forage in the underbrush. Though the roots and berries are quite tasty in coastal Delaware, we’ve discovered that Bethany actually has stores.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To the list were added laptops and iPads and iPhones and chargers, so that we can’t be away from our electronic leashes for even one moment. Then the packing began. It was a three stage process. First, the suitcases were packed and canvas bags are filled up. Then, they were moved to a staging area near the carport, where they waited until the next morning, when the coolers full of food joined them. After the staging area was reviewed to confirm compliance with the established list, they’re moved one by one into the gaping maw of the minivan. I understand that George Mason University now offers vacation logistics coursework as part of its executive MBA program.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that level of preparation seems utterly lacking from the instructions given to the disciples by Jesus in our passage from Luke this morning. This segment of Luke comes as a follow-on to a passage that comes at the beginning of chapter nine, in which Jesus commissions the twelve disciples and sends them out after giving them a set of packing instructions. Back in that chapter, we hear Jesus sending the 12 disciples out with a similar list of what to do and what to bring. Here, we have a mirror of Christ’s demands, and they’re no less challenging when they’re issued to seventy disciples instead of twelve.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus begins his instructions to the seventy with an exhortation, calling them to go out into the world like laborers to a harvest. But then, his instructions get a little challenging. His followers are to “carry no bag, no sandals; and greet no-one on the road.” Here they are, intended to travel through the countryside of Judea, and they can’t even take a bag? What sort of preparation is that? It sounds...even by the standards of my college boy road trips...like a pretty half-baked journey.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scholarly commentaries on Luke give us several options for how to interpret this peculiar demand that followers not actually go on their journeys in a prepared way. First, because it was structured like a history of the time, and because the structure and language of the Greek used in Luke is very sophisticated, most Bible scholars feel that the Gospel of Luke was written for an audience of well-educated Greek-speaking Christians. Luke’s double emphasis on this act of sending reinforces it, and it may have been kept as part of Luke’s tradition because it was just so hard for his sophisticated audience to hear. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can you go off unprepared? No money? No way to carry things? No...shoes? Well...you can do it if you are intending to be utterly dependent on both your message and the response of those who will receive you. It’s a bizarre concept, one that reminded me of a story in one of the car mags I read from a couple of years back, in which two journalists did a road trip across the American South in a Rolls Royce with no cash at all, relying on their charms and the appearance of wealth to finagle free rooms, food, and gas. That’s...um...not what Jesus meant.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What may be being conveyed here is the ferocious urgency of that moment. Go to these towns. Don’t let yourself be distracted. Through both a seemingly nonexistent packing list and the instruction not to dawdle in conversation on the way, what may be being conveyed here are two things. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, the intense need for action in the now. The seventy followers of Christ are being told...in no uncertain terms...that they need to get out there and engage the world with Christ’s message of hope and reconciliation. There wasn’t room for fiddling around or worrying over what you brought or didn’t bring. The moment’s pressing, it’s intense, and the need to act upon it is such that you just can’t dawdle.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second, Christ seems to be telling us is that the journey of faith is not like the vacation of a modern American family, in which our immense vehicles are filled with 5 cubic yards of supplies to meet every potential eventuality. The journey of Christian faith may not be like the carefully planned business trip, in which we make sure that we schedule every last moment full of meetings so that we can justify the every penny of the journey to the folks down in accounting.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead, our journey of faith and our spreading of the Good News is like a journey into an unknown space, a place that is neither familiar nor safe. It is not an easy or comfortable thing. The message of the Gospel is one that requires you to risk the unknown, in the same way that reconciliation requires you to risk the unknown. Healing the breaches and broken places requires you to set aside what you know...with certainty...about another person or another group of people. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know how terrible they are. You know how badly you’ve been treated. You know all of these things, carrying that knowledge with you and allowing it to shape your relationship with them. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You fill the great empty hold of your minivan soul with every last bit of that baggage, and in doing so, you lose the ability to stand in that deeply risky place of reconciling and restoration. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Carry nothing with you, says Jesus. And just as that would have given the disciples pause, so too does it sound strangely off of our souls. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet that willingness to leave behind security and risk an encounter with newness is an essential part of the Gospel journey. It’s not easy, not for any of us, particularly not now.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it’s the strange, dangerous, transformational path we’re called to journey. Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-34762794622572850582016-06-29T13:22:00.005-07:002016-06-29T13:22:23.556-07:00The Feel of Freedom<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.68; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 05.26.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1ddefd7b-9dd3-50a9-2283-4ed4bf43f7cf" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lessons: </span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205:1,%2013-25;&version=31;" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Galatians 5:1, 13-25</span></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Motorcycling is freedom.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve always thought of it that way, always embraced that deep liberation that comes from being unencumbered by several tons of metal wrapped all around me as I move around doing the things I’m meant to do.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This last week was the motorcyclingest week of my life, as the Big Tan Motor Chicken and I racked up over a thousand miles of summer riding. You are free to ignore your phone, to shut down the endless churn of our compulsive interconnectedness and just be. At the brisk highway pace that’s a thousand cubic centimeter bike’s happy place, you can’t even glance at that text or that email notification. You are, instead, where you are. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m also not a herd rider. I see them rumbling by, the loners and the rebels, in their groups of three or five or fifteen, rugged individualists who’ve somehow managed to coordinate their outfits almost as closely as a JV Poms Squad. It’s cool in its own way, like the column of bikers who thundered through town to celebrate veterans yesterday, but it’s just not for me. Riding in a big group requires planning and designating leaders and creating route maps. Next thing you know there are committees involved, rules and regulations and the like, and as I suffer from Post-Presbytery Committee Anxiety Disorder, I try to do as little of that as possible. I ride to be free.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet it’s a freedom that brings with it connection, even if you’re riding alone. It connects you to the reality of what you’re doing, as you have to set your pace from the reality of being physically present in the world. It makes demands. You feel the temperature gradients that come as you move towards a glowering, dark-sky storm. It’s the freedom to be sweaty when it’s hot, to be slightly numb when it’s cold.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s helpful to remember that sometimes freedom can be complicated. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It always bears with it other dynamics, and we are never truly disconnected. When I was a kid, I can recall chafing at the limitations of childhood. I couldn’t go where I wanted, or do what I wanted. Why can’t a five year old drive? Why can’t an eight year old go hang-gliding? Why can’t a twelve year old ride a moped? I should be allowed to do these things! Aren’t I a person? Aren’t I...and here every child inserts a dramatic pause while looking nobly into the distance...an American? Didn’t God make me free? I yearned for that day when I would be a grownup, because as we all know, grownups can do whatever they want, whenever they want.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Man, did that theory not pan out. Because growing up doesn’t quite work that way. You reach adulthood as a fully fledged, honest-to-God, bonafide citizen of the United States of America. You are at liberty to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Only, for some reason, your boss expects you to get to work at 9:00, and at 7:30 on days when you’ve got a departmental meeting. And you find that you actually have to do that work, and that sometimes that work requires you to be in the office long past the point at which the five o’clock bell has rung. You might want to leave, but for some reason the argument that God made us free doesn’t work with your mortgage lender. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though we are absolutely free, life fills itself up to overflowing with commitments that seem to demand all of us...to work, to a spouse, and then to kids, who as they get older complain bitterly to you about their own lack of freedom. If you only knew, kid. If you only knew.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There lies the peculiarity of freedom. Yes, we’re all made free. But who among us is utterly free? We’re not. We’re always, invariably, and paradoxically both free and interconnected.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s perhaps that point that the Apostle Paul is trying to make in the odd little passage we read this morning from his letter to the church at Galatia. It starts out in a way that should baffle anyone who actually takes the time to think about what Paul is saying. Because remember...Paul likes to mess with our heads, in the same way that Jesus tended to say things that force you to think. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This little passage begins in verse 1 of Chapter five with a ode to freedom that should get every American heart a-fluttering. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You can just see Libertarian Jesus standing there next to Washington as he crosses the Delaware, the icy breeze making his robe flutter heroically and whipping through his perfectly conditioned shoulder-length hair. It’s enough to make you want to take out a little American flag and wave it. Go Libertarian Jesus! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After this opening statement in his discussion of freedom Paul puts one last eleven verse attack against his opponents in Galatia...which is a bit on the rude side. You can read it if you like, but I didn’t want to offend anyone. After then we pick right back up again on the subject of freedom in verse 13. Paul’s just told us to be free, stand firm, and not allow ourselves to be enslaved. So how does he follow up? Well, he says this:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We’re...we’re supposed to be slaves to one another? But...Paul...I thought you just said we’re not supposed to submit to the “yoke of slavery.” You said we’re free! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though it might seem that way, Paul wasn’t contradicting himself. Rather, he was playing with words to show us something important about what it means to follow Jesus. Paul understood the nature of the church and what Christ has called us to do. In Paul’s argument with his opponents in Galatia, he struggled against the idea that being a member of the church is about following a series of rules or a system of regulations. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not about what you eat or don’t eat, or how and when you observe the sabbath, or any of the other laws that governed the Hebrew people. It’s not about simple obedience to a particular way of being. It’s a totally different way to approach God...by allowing...through faith...God to live and work in you in the same way that God lived and worked in Christ. Paul realized that this was a revolutionary thing. It was the most important thing that differentiated this new Christian faith from all of the other faiths that moved in the Greco-Roman world. That’s one of the primary reasons that Paul was so very vocal in opposing the folks who wanted to turn back the clock.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But though Paul was declaring our independence from the oppression of the law, he wasn’t saying that we are free from one another. Elsewhere in his letters, he talks about the church and our lives in Christ as one thing, as we’re all made part of Christ. Instead of viewing our in obedience to demands that are outside of us, Paul saw that a life lived according to the love that Jesus both taught and embodied is something different. It is freedom, but it is a freedom that expresses itself through our love and care for others. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paul reminds us that we are not independent from one another. We depend on others...on our friends, on our families, on our communities. Human beings require other human beings, and though we might like to imagine that we are each our own totally self-sufficient little island, that just isn’t real. That is not how the world is, and when we pretend that the freedom to which God has called us has no boundaries, we deceive ourselves.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What freedom does not mean is destroying or tearing down the very things that build us up. As Paul lists the countless ways we harm and destroy one another, he’s aware that to yield to such things is to become enslaved by them. All those hatreds and angers and bickerings that seek to control us are to be cast aside, because they are enemies of both our unity and our liberty. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The freedom to which we are called has nothing to do with those things. It is a freedom to love and rejoice in one another, to support one another, and to live fully aware that as children of the promise we have nothing to fear.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is the freedom to which Christ has called us.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.68; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-18982881590165023192016-06-29T13:21:00.002-07:002016-06-29T13:21:42.152-07:00Categories<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 06.19.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-5cba3a60-9dd1-5dfc-4f46-e0f84dd5a358" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Galatians 3:26-29</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-june-19-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Presbyterian Church (USA) is meeting in our biannual General Assembly this week, as thousands of delegates fly across the country to Portland, Oregon, where they’ll gather and sing and make important statements about things. This year, the big push is to divest from the fossil fuel industry because of the threat emissions pose to our environment. It seems odd to me that we’d fly thousands of people in jet aircraft thousands of miles to debate this issue, which is why I’m smugly following it on #twitter.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the peculiar position inhabited by so many generally progressive but majority Anglo institutions. We think/write/meet about diversity on an almost pathological basis, wringing our hands about just how flagrantly Anglo Saxon the Presbyterian church tends to be in appearance every Sunday. The church commissions studies, and create materials, and talk about welcoming the Other.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This rarely goes well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Obsessing about demographics was one of the first things done at this year’s Assembly, as participants were asked to register their identities as racial/ethnic persons. What it found?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a denomination, we're still almost entirely only margin-of-error more diverse than the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Brotherhood" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aryan Brotherhood</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The analogy is painfully close, even more so if the Aryan Brotherhood was entirely comprised of skinhead septuagenarians, 'cause our efforts to be generationally diverse haven't exactly been radiantly successful, either. We want to reach out to the young people. We love the young people. But they don't show up at our services or come back after college, no matter how earnestly we strum our guitars and do the Facebook and try to figure out how to use Snapgram and Instachat. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why? Why are we so bad at diversity?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think, honestly, that we're over-thinking it. That's what Presbyterians are best at, after all.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wait. Can you think about over thinking? Doesn't that make it even worse, sort of a meta-analysis paralysis? Hmmm. Perhaps we should form a task force to explore it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Overthinking doesn’t work. The answer, I think, paradoxically revolves around not obsessing about diversity, and not obsessing about labelling and categorizing every human being you encounter. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is that faith that is described by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Galatia.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That letter, a portion of which we’ve heard today, was most likely written sometime in the mid-50’s CE. It was written at a point in time when the boundaries between the new Jesus movement and the synagogue were still very blurry. What did it mean to be a follower of the way that Jesus of Nazareth had proclaimed? What did you have to do? Paul, who’d established the church in Galatia, was not alone among the early Jesus followers. As the message of his life and his teachings began to spread, many of the people who embraced him as the promised messiah of Israel argued that he was exactly that: the one who had been promised as the new anointed one of Israel.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To follow Jesus, these folks argued, you had to first embrace all of the laws and customs and practices of the people of Israel. You had to keep kosher, staying away from the bacon double cheeseburgers and at least some of the sushi. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. You had to keep the laws of ritual purity. For the guys, it meant that becoming Christian required one further step after baptism. Not a big deal, really...just sit still while I sharpen these scissors. Don’t flinch...unless you really want to join the Women’s Group.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The assumption, on the part of Paul’s opponents, was that in order to be a part of the Way of Jesus, you needed to completely subsume your identity into one of the pre-set binary categories of the ancient world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This really, really made Paul angry, because it flew in the face of everything he knew about Jesus, his teachings, and the faith that define the path.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Paul, the mystic, understood that the heart of the Way tore apart those categories and distinctions. If you followed Jesus, those divisions simply no longer had any relevance. And so he took those binaries apart, one by one.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Paul said, no Judaioi or Hellenai. This is meant to have different cultural resonances than the ones we hear in it now. My wife is a Greek Jew, but that’s not what Paul meant. By Jew, he meant the Jewish people, of course. That’s still the same. But by Greek, he meant “everyone who is not a Jew.” Greek meant “Greek speaking,” and in the Roman Empire, Greek was the common language spoken among many cultures, like French in the 19th century, or English today. To the Galatians, Paul says: the dynamics of race cannot be the primary defining feature of your relationship with one another.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Christ there is no slave or free, Paul said. This was a distinction in the ancient world that had none of the demonic racial overtones of American slavery. It was an economic category, one of social status and power. Those who were owned were, in their culture, just the poorest of the poor, who either by birth or through an accident of fate found themselves in a position where they didn’t even have ownership over their own bodies. The power imbalance created by this dynamic was still horrific, leading to abuse and cruelty towards those who inhabited the place of objects in their culture. To the Galatians, Paul says: You cannot allow this socioeconomic divide to impact your obligations to one another as followers of Jesus.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Christ there is no male or female, Paul said. Here, a feature of humanity that had social implications in the ancient world, one that paralleled the status distinctions between slave and free. And yet it’s an even more fundamental distinction, one that goes beyond our decided-upon categories and into some pretty essential chemistry and plumbing. To the Galatians, Paul says: even this category, even this one. Once you have committed to the path of grace, mercy, and compassion established by Jesus, even that cannot be a primary factor.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where Paul’s three-fold injunction bears most weight is in how it impacts those who occupy the power position in any given culture. If you have an inherent advantage, for reasons of status or wealth, following Jesus requires you to set that advantage aside. You must see the Other, no matter who they are, as being just as you are in the eyes of God.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You also don’t annihilate their identity, assuming that they are just the same, or that they must conform to your way of being. You don’t expect another soul to cease being themselves, bringing the richness of their language and culture into relationship with you.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There, being aware of our distinctives can help, but there’s a shadow side to that awareness. If we are over-aware, hypersensitive to differences and distinctives, it can hinder the shared walking of the path. If what we see, first and foremost, are categories and labels, then we’ll lose that sense of gracious connection that is at the heart of the path.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is that shared identity that we need to hold in front of us, in all that we do and say as we journey together.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3724047093093978829.post-23997072009645649572016-06-29T13:18:00.002-07:002016-06-29T13:18:39.594-07:00The Prince<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poolesville Presbyterian Church</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rev. Dr. David Williams; 06.05.2016</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-7b7c88f2-9dcf-3155-9dbf-9967d650d057" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripture Lesson: Psalm 146</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.poolpres.com/wordpress/2016-june-5-message/">LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:</a></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This next year, we’re going to be thinking a great deal about what it means to lead and be led, what it means for someone to be in charge. What makes a person a leader? What makes a leader effective? Why does this endless election season make us wish Jesus would just come back already?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dynamics of leadership and power are a source of some fascination for me, and so I recently read a classic book on leadership that’d I’d been meaning to fully digest for some time. Oh, I’d read excerpts, but I’d never waded through the whole thing. So, in the interests of actually knowing something, I read it. The book: Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance classic The Prince. It’s got something of a reputation, as leadership literature goes, although for some reason my seminary chose not to include it in my Pastoral Leadership Excellence course readings.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m reading Machiavelli” is one of those things that Sessions usually don’t like to hear from a pastor.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mean, sure, Niccolo’s little book was so well received that his name has come to describe the coldest and most calculating approach to power. If you read the Prince, it’s easy to see why Machiavelli gets that reputation. The Prince instructs princes and monarchs on the use and maintenance of power. It extols the necessity of violence and deceit. It talks about merits of being feared rather than loved. It suggests that the best way to maintain power over a people you have conquered is to take their land and property and give it to your friends. In several pungent sections, it counsels the systematic extermination of other ruling families as the best way to insure that you maintain power over your domain. Don’t just kill your enemy. Kill their whole family.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is Game of Thrones writ into the bloody mess of human history, and a dog-eared, well-worn copy of the Prince probably rests in the library of House Lannister.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what’s most peculiar about The Prince, and what I did not anticipate, is that it does not read like a celebration of power. It contains none of the cold-hearted celebration of the powerful individual that one finds in Nietzsche or Ayn Rand.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Machiavelli writes it as a lament. He does not say, “this is the way things should be.” Over and over again, Niccolo argues that while princes must lead through power, that same power is morally inferior. What princes do to maintain authority is evil. Period. Given the context of the writing, this was understandable. The Prince was written in 1513, and dedicated to the a member of the Medici family, who had earlier that year imprisoned and tortured Machiavelli after they overthrew the government of Florence. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Human beings being terrible, fallen, wretched creatures,” he starts innumerable sentences, all of which end with a justification for doing something wet, unpleasant, and nasty to your political opponents. The reason that monarchs can’t just be kind and compassionate is that leadership concentrated in the hands of a single person is inherently wrong. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s equally fascinating about Machiavelli, and what I didn’t realize before reading him, is that The Prince only pertains to his thoughts on princes and monarchs. It isn’t his political philosophy, just his advice to monarchs. His preference, as revealed in much of his other, lesser known writing, was for government by republic.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rule by one person, he argued, left a country weakened, for two reasons. First, because that person was always trying to cement power for themselves and their line. Their interests were rarely the cold-eyed interests of the state they were attempting to maintain. Second, because a single individual doesn’t have the variety of gifts that are needed to respond to changing situations. What might be a strength in one crisis or moment becomes a weakness in responding to another. A war may call for a brash leader, bold and fierce. But that same leader might not have the temperament to govern in a time of peace, or in a time of famine or disease or economic crisis. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That doubt about power, about the ephemeral dynamics of any power focused on a single individual, that’s hardly a new thing. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear that basic skepticism in the 146th Psalm this morning, as a song of praise is presented that’s at least as filled with doubt about princely power as anything Machiavelli ever penned.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Psalm 146 comes at the beginning of the end of the Book of Psalms, and is the first of a Hallelujah chorus that brings this collection of ancient Hebrew music to a close. It’s literally that, as Psalms 146 through 150 all begin and end with the Hebrew phrase </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hallelu-yah</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, meaning Praise the Lord.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The song continues, unusually, with a call for one’s own soul to praise the Creator, something that only happens in two other Psalms in the 150 song collection. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is particularly fascinating, given the context of this Psalm, is how vigorously it rejects the power of the princes and kings and rulers of this world. Psalms, after all, are typically liturgical, meant to be sung in the context of the temple...which is right there in the heart of Jerusalem, at the heart of royal power. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our songwriter reminds the listener that those who have power or find themselves in a position of leadership are just as ephemeral and fleeting as any living creature. The emphasis, for the psalmist, is a contrast between orienting your life towards a particular power structure and orienting yourself towards something greater.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The assumption, written and rewritten into these verses, is that justice is fundamentally part of the divine will. The universe, all humans, all creatures, all of it falls under the sovereign power of God, and that power bears no resemblance to the self-serving power of a king or a prince.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A prince, after all, has certain things they need to do to retain power, as Machiavelli so pungently observed. But God?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What possible need does the Creator of the universe have of the machinations of power? The answer: none. What matters instead, to the God who is all knowledge and compassion? What is significant, for God who knows the suffering of the poor as deeply as the pleasures of the prince?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emphases presented by the Psalmist reinforce what matters to the divine. Justice for the oppressed. Food for the hungry, freedom for prisoners.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The people who matter aren’t those who hold wealth or influence or the reins of authority. What matters to God are those broken and bowed down by life, those who’ve lost social status, those who are strangers in a strange land.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That, or so we hear, is what matters to God.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in this year when we’re asked to turn our fealty over to one person or another, when we are all lined up as partisans for this or that, there’s stuff Christians need to hear from Machiavelli about princes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In particular, we need to be aware of the danger that lies when we place fealty to an over fealty to the well-being of a people. There is a distinct, human, and dangerous tendency to want a face on our power. We need it personified. We identify, not with the principles for which a person stands, but with an individual. They become a celebrity, a projection of ourselves. Instead of seeing the principled interests of our nation, of our people, of our tribe, we attach to a particular soul, with all of their flaws and appetites and hubris.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We fixate on them, rather than looking past them to God’s purpose for human life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the very essence of what it means to create an idol, and it is a blight that impacts almost all of the political spectrum. It is a danger wherever human beings organize themselves, up to and including this whole church thing that we do.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we move forward into this strange and difficult year in the life of our nation, it is worth holding that in mind. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.</span></div>
<br />Beloved Spearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14568697883886058321noreply@blogger.com0