tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35453552024-03-13T14:48:21.454+00:00Clever Title Herecaileag agus cat aiceTerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10838436991138846332noreply@blogger.comBlogger1938125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-20249380302807861392022-07-10T10:19:00.001+01:002022-09-16T10:21:24.822+01:00before and behind...a sermon on crossing the Red Sea<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rev Teri Peterson</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St John's</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Before to Show, Behind to Push</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Exodus 14</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">10 July 2022</span></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: underline;">Exodus 14.5-8, 10-16, 19-22 (New Revised Standard Version)</b></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, “What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?” So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him; he took six hundred elite chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the Israelites, who were <b>going out boldly. </b></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Pharaoh drew near, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><b>the Israelites looked back</b></span>, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians’? For <span style="text-decoration: underline;">it would have been better</span> for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today, for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><i>Tell the Israelites to go forward.</i></span> But you lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. </b>It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For the word of God in Scripture</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For the word of God among us</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For the word of God within us</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thanks be to God.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~~~~~~~</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><b></b></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes I think we don’t give the Israelites enough credit for setting out on this journey in the first place. It had been a wild ride, being enslaved for generations, knowing their neighbours wanted to throw their male children into the Nile, living through the plagues…and every time Moses, their leader, tried something new to improve the situation, it actually just made everything worse. Yet when the moment came, in the middle of the night no less, they just did it, leaving behind their homes and walking into the unknown.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That can be a really hard thing to do, to make that first step into something new. Especially when trying the little tweaks along the way had not helped at all, because it starts to feel like nothing will ever work, and it’s really demoralising to have more things go wrong, or to have to let go of another thing we used to enjoy because we can’t sustain it anymore and there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn this around and recapture the good days we remember. And when we’re demoralised, it's even more difficult to step out the door on something huge and unknown and scary.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But they did it. They opened those doors and walked out.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At first they were probably a bit giddy. They did it, they really did it! They could hardly believe their eyes, as the whole community surged forward in an unstoppable march to new life.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then…they looked back.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s a natural thing to do. Remember Lot’s wife, who looked back as they fled her hometown, the place she’d grown up, the family and friends she’d left behind, the streets she played in as a child…of course she would look back, it was her whole life up to that moment. But when she looked back she was turned into a pillar of salt. There are other stories in scripture, and in novels and films and other myths, about people looking back, too. It’s no surprise they looked back.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s that great meme that goes around every so often that says “don’t look back, you’re not going that way.” It can be sound advice! The Israelites looked back and saw challenges chasing them down, and they were immediately filled with fear and a desire to GO back, not just look there. Their fear made them wish for the good old days, and forget all the things that made those days not actually good at all, and soon they were shouting at Moses that he shouldn’t have brought them to this new place, they didn’t like all this change, and they’d much rather just live the way they always had even if it meant there would be no future generations of their community.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Looking back can be fun occasionally (like looking at family photos), and instructive sometimes (as we hopefully learn from history so as not to repeat it), but often it is dangerous for individuals and organisations. We get caught up in nostalgia and it weakens our resolve to step out into God’s future with hope.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Moses did what many leaders have done down through the ages when the people are anxious: he slowed right down, stopped to try to allow them to be calm and feel back to normal, told them just to hold still and wait and see. But God actually had other ideas: God said “why are you standing around? Get moving! Go forward! You did the hard part, taking the first step out, now keep putting one foot in front of the other.” And the only way to go forward is to turn your eyes forward, to stop looking back with either fear or longing, and move on.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And right in front of them, as always, was the pillar of cloud and fire, the visible presence of God, going before them to show them the way. The pillar was a signpost, a guide they could follow, a light for the path, but more than that it was God’s presence and protection.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That night as the Israelites battled their temptation to look back and their fear of going forward, the pillar of cloud and fire did something new — it moved. God moved from in front of them to behind them, blocking their view. They could no longer look back, because God was standing there like a wall they couldn’t see around. And as Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the waters were pushed back and a path appeared, I suspect that pillar inched closer and closer….and pretty soon the only option was to turn around and go forward. There was nothing to see behind them, and the pillar was pushing them right into a situation they never wanted to find themselves in and certainly would not have been able to manage on their own. But God knew they could do it, they just needed a nudge from behind.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When they finally got to the other side and this particular challenge was defeated, there was singing and dancing and a return of that giddy feeling of “we did it…now what?” It wasn’t the end, there were still challenges ahead on their way as they followed God into a new land. But the entire time, God went before them to show them the way, and behind them to push them into places they might not go alone.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There are probably dozens of resonances between this story and our lives today…the challenges and the opportunities are both immense. I could make connections to the things we need to do — and the backward-looking we need to let go of — if we are going to deal with climate change, or the pandemic and what sort of world we want to live in after covid, or the political and economic dramas that will require much of us as we try to sort out new systems that lead to a better life for everyone rather than just a few. Indeed, I hope you are making those connections and asking both yourself and God what being pushed forward might look like!</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It probably won’t surprise you, though, that one connection I want to make today is to the situation with presbytery mission planning in the church of Scotland. There’s change coming, we all know that. And I want to take a moment to recognise that here in St John’s, and in many places across the church, we have made the first steps toward change! We sometimes get so caught up in how far there is to go that don’t give ourselves enough credit either, just as we forget how hard that first step was for the Israelites. A lot has changed in our church life in the past few years, and we are making those steps, often with at least a bit of grace. There have been changes in worship, and in our study, and in our Kirk session meetings, and in creating the Fuzzy Parish and growing those partnerships as we became Connect. There have been changes in technology, enabling collaboration we couldn’t have done before, and enabling accessibility for those who previously were excluded from our fellowship for various reasons. There have been changes in our practices of inclusion and hospitality and welcome and love. We still have more of this journey to make, and there are still challenges ahead, but I just want to pause and notice together that we have started on the journey toward God’s new future, and the first steps can be the hardest!</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We don’t know where God will lead us, or push us, or both. We do know it will be different, it will feel uncharted and like we are wandering, and sometimes the challenges will seem daunting. And change is hard, and like the Israelites we will probably complain along the way, and we may lose some people who don’t like the direction God pushes us. Sometimes we might shout at the leaders and demand to be taken back to the old familiar ways, and other times the leaders might get so frustrated they throw down the tablets of the ten commandments and smash them into pieces. Sometimes we’ll remember that the old ways guaranteed the death of the community we love as they sacrificed the next generation and left people out, and sometimes we’ll be tempted to only care about how good it is for us without thought for those who come after. No one said the journey to the promised land would be easy. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But God knows we can do it! So God goes before us to show us the way, and behind us to push us into places we might not go alone….and maybe behind us to block our view when we try to look back, too. Don’t look back, we’re not going that way. God’s way is always forward. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We may find the Spirit leading us into new ways of gathering as a community, or new ways of working across old parish boundaries. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus <i>will </i>reveal himself outside our church buildings, and call us to new ways of connecting with the people who would never walk through this door. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God’s mission will be for all of us to work together to fulfil, ministers and elders and members and friends — </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">and the Holy Spirit will give each of us exactly the gifts we need to do that mission, if only we will work together. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Body of Christ is about to get a workout, and sometimes we’ll be like “we hurt in muscles we didn’t know we had” as we learn new things and try new moves and walk farther than we have before. That’s how we get stronger, and how we mature into who God created us to be: a Church that loves and serves and cares for the world we live in now <i>and</i> the world God is still bringing into being — the world God loves so much that he sent his Son to change everything, the world God loves so much that he sends us out to be his Body.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p><div><br /></div>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-2947919104756217112021-10-18T08:26:00.006+01:002021-10-18T08:26:57.472+01:00Missing Ingredient -- a sermon on the call of David<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Missing Ingredient</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1 Samuel 16:1-13</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">17 October 2021, NL4-7, Uncovered 6</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week we heard God calling to the child Samuel. Samuel grew up to be a trustworthy prophet who revealed God’s word to the people, and so the people began to recognise that they needed a more formal leader. They asked for a king. Samuel reminded them that God was their king, and a human king would inevitably go wrong, but they insisted, and God agreed, anointing Saul as the first king of Israel. Saul was head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the country, and he was handsome and charismatic. Unfortunately, he also chose political expediency over faithfulness to God’s way, and when waiting for God and Samuel to give their blessing in the midst of a military situation became too difficult, he took matters into his own hands. As a result, Samuel told him that God would choose another king to take his place. We pick up the story today in 1st Samuel chapter 16, when Saul is still on the throne but has just heard from God that his days as king are numbered. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.</span></p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bu9Ov4CdZbU/YW0hrW06K7I/AAAAAAAABdw/JpfFSKp3HwISKKbZfgqG4LQCZo03mTnGACLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/17%2BOctober%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bu9Ov4CdZbU/YW0hrW06K7I/AAAAAAAABdw/JpfFSKp3HwISKKbZfgqG4LQCZo03mTnGACLcBGAsYHQ/w385-h216/17%2BOctober%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B6.jpg" width="385" /></a></div><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This week on Bake-Off, one of the bakers made a very big mistake in the technical challenge. When reading the recipe, she didn’t notice that one line of the ingredient list went onto a second page, and so when making sticky toffee pudding, she left out……flour.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As you can imagine, this was a disaster in the oven.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">You might be thinking “how can you just forget about flour when making a cake?” Or perhaps “why didn’t she look at the second page before starting?” Good questions.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We might ask the same question of Jesse! Samuel invited Jesse and all his sons to the ritual sacrifice and feast, and Jesse brought seven sons with him. Seven was, of course, the perfect number, the number that symbolised completion. And his seven sons were tall and handsome and just great in every way. The eldest in particular seemed to have everything it takes to be just what Samuel was looking for. As the firstborn he was well positioned to inherit, and people would listen to him. Plus, of course, Saul was very tall and handsome, so clearly whoever God would choose to replace him must also be at least as good looking, right?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God’s answer to Samuel demonstrates that Samuel isn’t great at seeing with God’s eyes. Most of us aren’t, to be fair. “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It always makes me wonder just what God was looking for, in the hearts of these young men who were being paraded in front of Samuel while the whole town looked on. It was like the great Bethlehem pageant or something, with seven contestants who look great but don’t have that special something that puts them over the top.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At which point, Samuel looked at Jesse and said “are you sure this is all your sons?” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As if he could possibly forget one — of course it’s all of them…oh, turn the page, there’s one more line on this list…David is out in the fields. But he's the last, the youngest, and therefore the least important, right? No big deal to just miss out the one ingredient, just power on through even though this recipe looks all wrong…</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Can you imagine that moment? When everyone else has been through the process of being sanctified for the ritual — we don’t know exactly what that means, but it was likely a day of fasting, bathing, and praying — and then they’d been through the whole beauty pageant, only to find that one person had been forgotten? And then for Samuel to insist that the ritual and its attendant feast couldn’t go ahead until someone went out into the fields outside of town, located Jesse’s flocks, got David to round them all up and bring them in, and come to the gathering…it would take a long time. And David wouldn’t even be sanctified when he arrived, he likely came in straight from shepherding, still looking (and smelling) like a young boy who’d been sleeping on the ground and wrangling sheep.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And yet, he’s the one God is calling.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The one who came after the perfect complete family of 7. The one who was not sanctified. The one who was so forgettable and run-of-the-mill that he didn’t even count in the list of ingredients. He was the one God insisted could not be left out, the one without whom nothing could go ahead.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We don’t know what God saw in David’s un-sanctified heart that was different from what was in his brothers’ hearts. But we do know that God had chosen to call someone who fit zero of the criteria for what people thought was important, and not just that — anointed him to be the king of the nation, to lead the people through the trials and triumphs that were to come. So the Holy Spirit took hold of David that day, filling him and directing him and refusing to let go. He would become the one whose word carried weight in the community, whose choices everyone looked to, and whose fashions they imitated. They would trust him to be their guide and to do the things that needed to happen to make their nation safe and prosperous and faithful.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And he had been the extra line that went onto the second page, easily overlooked.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This month we have been watching some films together on Sunday afternoons — films made by and about people who are living with the everyday effects of climate change. We saw one about a Kenyan farmer and his community’s struggle with the changing pattern of rainy and dry seasons, leading to droughts and then floods, ruining crops, meaning they cannot afford to send children to school or take them to a doctor. And another film was about a family in Kiribati, where changing weather patterns have brought floods and hurricanes they never experienced before, so the family has had to split up and emigrate one parent at a time because they can no longer make a living as the sea rises and claims their islands. Both the Kenyan farmer and the president of Kiribati went to Paris to speak to world leaders about climate change, and both left disappointed that the deal everyone was praising fell so far short of anything that would actually tangibly help their people. This afternoon we’ll be watching a film about seven people from different communities around the world, trying to figure out how to make people care about our neighbours who live on the other side of the world. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All three of these films are about those people who are the line that goes onto the second page of the recipe…out of sight, out of mind. Most of us couldn’t place Kiribati on a map. I only learned how to pronounce it when we were watching the film last week. When we’re asked about bringing everyone to the table, they are the ones left out until someone asks specifically if there’s anyone else, and then we turn the page and say “oh yeah, that other one. But they’re small and insignificant and poor and no one will notice if they’re not here.” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God notices that they’re not here. And that we’re not only not listening, but actively ignoring them, choosing not to care about our neighbours who live on the other side of the world.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And it’s out there — beyond the boundaries of what we think of as whole and complete, on the forgotten second page of the list of people we have decided are the ones who count and whose opinions matter — out there that God has seen and provided a leader for the people.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Maybe they don’t have the experience we think they should, and maybe they don’t look the part of a world leader <i>to us</i>, and maybe they’re not sanctified like everyone else coming to the feast, but the truth is that we cannot proceed until everyone is here, because they’re the ones God is calling to lead, and we’re the ones God is calling to listen and follow.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Without flour, the sticky toffee pudding is just a burned pile of smushed dates, butter, and sugar. Without the 8th-born child shepherd David, even the powerful and rich will wait in fear and expectation because the ritual cannot go on until the future king arrives. Without the people of those nations we have overlooked, we cannot move forward on climate justice and we will miss the future God has planned. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God may well be working outside the systems we set up, and calling into leadership people whose bodies or histories or locations are outside what we think is the “norm,” and God is <i>definitely</i> calling us to take notice of those we have long thought didn’t count, didn’t need or deserve or earn a seat at the table, those we didn’t even remember they existed let alone mattered.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. Whatever God is uncovering in our own hearts, and in the hearts of others, it’s time to look and to listen and to follow faithfully.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-15582064718879600542021-10-10T14:27:00.003+01:002021-10-10T14:27:34.824+01:00Hineni -- a sermon on the call of Samuel<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St John’s / Greenock St Margaret’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Hineni (1st third “Blinded” MSG 2017)</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1 Samuel 3.1-21</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">10 October 2021, NL4-6, Uncovered 5</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week we read about the Israelites at the beginning of their wilderness journey, learning how to trust God and live in God’s kingdom ways. After forty years, they stood on the banks of the Jordan river and crossed into the land God promised them. It took some time to settle down and there were many conflicts and mistakes along the way. There was no leader or king, and each person did what they wanted or felt was right for themselves, and the situation deteriorated as over time the people forgot what they had learned about being God’s people. God raised up judges to be leaders who reminded people of God’s ways, but they had only limited success. By the time we get to today’s story, the people had built a shrine to house the ark of the covenant that they brought from their wilderness years, and there was a seer there — not exactly a judge, not exactly a prophet, but someone who could help conduct worship and interpret God’s word to the people. His name was Eli. He had become something of a foster-parent and mentor to a child, Samuel, because his mother Hannah had promised him to the service of God at this shrine.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We pick up the story in 1st Samuel chapter 3, and I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called to Samuel and he said, ‘Here I am!’ and ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call; lie down again.’ So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, ‘Samuel!’ Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call, my son; lie down again.’ Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” ’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’ Then the Lord said to Samuel, ‘See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house for ever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering for ever.’</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, ‘Samuel, my son.’ He said, ‘Here I am.’ Eli said, ‘What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.’ So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.’</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When I arrived at my first church as a brand new minister, I discovered that one of the things the church had been putting off doing until the new minister arrived was a confirmation class. They had 20 teenagers waiting, and no plan. Among my first tasks, therefore, was to recruit several teachers and at least 20 mentors who would work with these young people one-on-one. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In making what felt like a hundred phone calls, I lost count of the number of adults who told me they were afraid to talk to children.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Afraid of what, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps afraid that the teens would only know how to talk about mobile phones and video games? Worried that they didn’t know how to have a conversation without a script or curriculum? Or maybe afraid that the kids would have questions about God that they didn’t know how to answer? </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wonder how Eli felt when Hannah dropped off Samuel at the temple, saying “this is the child I prayed for that day we last spoke—here, he’s dedicated to God, so take him in and teach him.” I wonder if he was afraid he wouldn’t have anything in common with a four year old, and wouldn’t be able to relate to him. Did he worry about how to talk about the God that Hannah had promised Samuel to serve?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Scripture doesn’t tell us much about people’s feelings or inner thought processes, but in this case I think it’s possible that Eli felt ill prepared for this task. His own sons were corrupt and he didn’t know how to set them right. And here, a few years after Hannah had left Samuel in the temple, we discover that in spite of his religious duties and his presence beside the ark of the covenant day and night, Samuel does not yet know the Lord, and God’s word has not been revealed to him.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s easy to do, isn’t it? To get so caught up in the tasks of the church that we never get around to knowing the Lord. And it’s easy to pass that on, too, as we inadvertently communicate that church or faith is an <i>obligation</i> grown ups bear, rather than a body, a relationship, a way of living, or a family where all are valued. Yet it is to Samuel that God speaks. Even though he doesn’t have the right education or credentials or anywhere near enough years of sitting in the pew or serving on a committee…even though he hasn’t yet been taught, even though to him God is more like a piece of furniture than a living Word…Samuel is still known, by name. God knows where to find him, and how to call him, and God waits patiently while Samuel learns how to be in this new relationship he didn’t even know to expect.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Eli had lost his sight—which, granted, was never particularly good in the first place. When he first met Hannah at prayer, what he saw was a drunken woman, rather than a person pouring out her heart to God. When Samuel appeared at his bedside at night it took three tries before reality broke through. Perhaps he thought Samuel was too young, or too inexperienced, or too ignorant of God’s ways, or maybe just adorably naive. I suspect many of us have thought the same when a young person has spoken up. Perhaps Eli was so used to doing things on his own without God that it didn’t occur to him that the Spirit’s voice could still speak. Maybe he was just tired—after all, his own sons were grown, so why did he now have to deal with teaching another round of Sunday School? Whatever the case, he was blinded, whether by his assumptions, his fear, his arrogance, or his apathy.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once Eli began to see, though, he became the mentor Samuel needed. He passed on what he knew of prayer, and Samuel heeded his advice and ran back to his bed, probably practicing his lines as he made his way through the dark temple. When God stood at the foot of the bed, Samuel was ready—or as ready as any of us ever can be. He responded to the voice calling his name, and listened carefully for what the Lord had to say. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What God has to say at this moment is actually a message for Eli. Perhaps Eli’s blindness extended to his ability to hear for himself. Now, through the collaboration of mentor and student, elder and child, the word of the Lord was becoming known once again. Remember at the beginning of the story we heard that the Lord’s word was rare at the time…and by the end, God is appearing again and again and all the people are hearing the word. That is only possible because the elder both teaches <i>and learns from</i> the younger. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Eli’s response to the message that God gives through Samuel is fascinating. It’s a message of destruction, of punishment for not doing more to stop his corrupt sons from taking advantage of people and abusing their power as priests. It’s the sons who have done wrong, yet Eli bears the responsibility because he did not stop them. Instead he had just halfheartedly said “it is what it is” — which is exactly what he says when he hears that the consequences are coming. It is what it is. There’s nothing to be done. That’s just the way things have always been.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps it is this apathetic complacency that made it impossible for Eli to hear the word of the Lord and do his job passing it on to the people. Or perhaps this apathetic complacency has actually solidified into opposition to hearing God’s word, because it might require something of us, calling for change that we do not want. After all, saying “this is just the way it is” makes a nice cover or excuse for all sorts of mischief and wrongdoing, and at the same time lets us off the hook for things we find uncomfortable anyway.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Often when the word of the Lord shows up in a community, it’s the young people who hear and take it seriously, who then say “things need to change if we’re going to be faithful.” Young people hear with fresh ears, and they believe what we teach — that we are striving for the kingdom of God, and God’s vision is an alternative way to what this world offers and demands. And they believe it’s possible! Rather than simply accepting the way things are because it’s easier, young people, like Samuel, often insist that we take seriously the word of the Lord. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s hard, though, for older people to listen. Like Eli, our vision grows dim and we are tired and we are comfortable with how things are. We like that our religious institutions are set up to serve us. And, if we’re willing to be super honest, we don’t want to admit that the way we’ve always done things has produced the results we now have, where whole generations of young people realised we didn’t actually intend to change our lives based on what we taught so they left the church to find causes or groups that put into practice the words they spoke.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Samuel’s answer when he’s called is “here I am” — that Hebrew word Hineni that we’ve heard all autumn. It’s more than just “here,” it means I’m fully present and committed, ready to do whatever you ask. That’s what he says to Eli, over and over and over: hineni. I’m here, I’m committed, I’m all-in. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That’s what our young people are saying to us. Hineni! They trust that we, the people who have promised to bring them up to know and love Christ and his church, to pray for them and teach them, to walk alongside them on this journey of faith, are also saying Hineni to them. That we are fulfilling our promise to be fully present, committed, all in. To say “here I am” to each other across the generations is to commit ourselves to a relationship — both of teaching and learning, listening and speaking. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Young people want to know if what we say we believe, what we teach them to believe, actually matters to us and how we live. They want to know if our faith makes a difference in our choices, our business practice, how we spend our money, how we share our resources, how we vote, how we get around, who we care about. They want to know if the Christianity we teach them gets put into practice when we see things in the world that are wrong, unjust, harming people…or if, like Eli, we simply say “it is what it is” and go on in our comfortable ways that look no different than anyone else. To say Hineni to one another, not just youngster to elder but elder to younger as well, and all of us together to God, is to promise that we will believe together in the possibility God is setting out before us, and that we will walk hand in hand on this road even when it takes us away from the safe place and into unknown territory. When we say Hineni, Here I Am, we commit to following God’s lead together, even if it means that we have to stop saying “that’s just the way things are.” </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the whole story, Eli never once said Hineni. Not to Samuel, and not to God. In fact what he teaches Samuel to say to God is not “here I am” either — he teaches Samuel to say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Which is an important lesson — if we aren’t listening, we can’t commit. But Samuel shows us how to commit to <i>whatever</i> God is going to ask…and how to follow through, even when the task is difficult, like delivering bad news to his mentor and foster parent.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It often feels like the word of the Lord is rare in our days, just as it was when Samuel was a child. But perhaps if we are willing to offer our commitment, not just in words but in actions, to God and to each other, we might just uncover the promise and calling that God has been speaking all along.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-69549220483814691532021-09-22T17:36:00.000+01:002021-09-22T17:36:00.639+01:00What God Learned -- a sermon on the binding of Isaac<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">What God Learned</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Genesis 21.1-3, 22.1-14, Robert Alter</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">19 September 2021, NL4-2, Uncovered 2</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After the creation story we heard last week, the story moves quickly along through the drama of the first sibling rivalry, between Cain and Abel, to the earth’s population booming and trying to come together to become like gods and build a tower to heaven, to the flood and Noah’s family and the animals floating in the ark, to the reality that violence can never stop violence, and so God commits to another path and offers the rainbow as a sign of that promise. And then we meet Abram, whom God calls to leave his family and familiar surroundings and go out into a new-to-him land. Abraham and Sarah pack up and go, trusting God to guide them and to provide what they most want: children. It’s a long journey through foreign lands, different tribes and towns and difficulties and adventures, but through it all two things are constant: God promises to make their descendants more numerous than the stars, and also Abraham and Sarah have no children. Today we hear about that promise finally being fulfilled, when Sarah and Abraham were in their 90s! </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A couple of years after their son Isaac is born, however, jealousy flared between Sarah and the slavegirl Hagar, who had previously borne a son to Abraham, named Ishmael. Sarah and Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, throwing them out of the house to fend for themselves in the desert. When their food and water ran out, Hagar left Ishmael alone and travelled on until she couldn’t see or hear him, so she would not have to see him die. Both of them cried out, and God heard them and opened Hagar’s eyes to see a well, providing just what they needed to go on, so that Ishmael too would carry his part of God’s promise to his father Abraham, to be a great nation. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am reading today from Robert Alter’s translation as we hear the first few verses of Genesis chapter 21, and then continue in chapter 22. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord singled out Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken. And Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the set time that God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">…</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And he said to him, “Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you.” And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took his two lads with him, and Isaac his son, and he split wood for the offering, and rose and went to the place that God had said to him. On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from afar. And Abraham said to his lads, “Sit you here with the donkey and let me and the lad walk ahead and let us worship and return to you.” And Abraham took the wood for the offering and put it on Isaac his son and he took in his hand the fire and the cleaver, and the two of them went together. And Isaac said to Abraham his father, “Father!” and he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Here is the fire and the wood but where is the sheep for the offering?” And Abraham said, “God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son.” And the two of them went together. And they came to the place that God had said to him, and Abraham built there an altar and laid out the wood and bound Isaach his son and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham reached out his hand and took the cleaver to slaughter his son. And the Lord’s messenger called out to him from the heavens and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not reach out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God and you have not held back your son, your only one, from me.” And Abraham raised his eyes and saw and, look, a ram was caught in the thicket by its horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up as a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place “He sees”, as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord there is sight.”</span></i></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cpbcx5PRlZ4/YUtbVP-Ft2I/AAAAAAAABcM/2_MQ-2wmC4ksZzdtLrDxfysBzNff6EfkwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/19%2BSeptember%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cpbcx5PRlZ4/YUtbVP-Ft2I/AAAAAAAABcM/2_MQ-2wmC4ksZzdtLrDxfysBzNff6EfkwCLcBGAsYHQ/w405-h228/19%2BSeptember%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B2.jpg" width="405" /></a></div><p></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is a pretty terrible story.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Actually not just pretty terrible, it’s very terrible. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Abraham had just sent Ishmael and Hagar away, casting them out into the desert with only a couple days of supplies, and hoping that he could indeed trust God to provide for them — sacrificing one son to his wife’s jealousy. And now he’s being asked to sacrifice the other, this time with his own knife. And again he says nothing, just does it.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is a man who argued with God, negotiating to ensure that no innocents were collateral damage at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham convinced God to spare the entire city if only ten people could be found doing the right thing, and when they couldn’t, God rescued the one faithful family first. Abraham laughed in God’s face at the idea he would become a father in his old age, and he talked with God about other options for his inheritance. And yet when finally the promise comes true, the one child who would carry on his name and the covenant to be a blessing to the world, Abraham was willing to let it all go without a single question. God did ask politely, saying please — which is unusual! — but still.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Though it does say he was up very early in the morning…perhaps he was having trouble sleeping. I know I would. I would be lying in my bed thinking about that phrase “Here I am”…the Hebrew word is “hineni” and it’s not just like “I’m over here” but like “I’m all in, fully committed” — it’s the word Abraham used when he heard the voice call his name. Before he actually knew what God was going to ask, he had proclaimed his commitment. I would be lying there wishing I’d used another word…and then wondering if I’m allowed to regret answering God’s call? </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But we don’t know why Abraham was up so early. We don’t hear anything of his thought process or his feelings or his interior life. Since he doesn’t reply to God at all, doesn’t engage in his usual back-and-forth as he has in every previous conversation, we’re left to wonder what on earth was going on in his head. Or maybe whether he was so caught up in his own thoughts that he just went on auto-pilot. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Isaac was finally able to break in to his father’s silent thoughts, Abraham again answered with “hineni” — he was all in, fully committed to his son, at least while they walked together. The whole story is full of notes about how they traveled as one, united in purpose — or so Isaac thought, anyway. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At the top of the mountain, it feels to me like those movie scenes where everything goes into a weird sort of slow-motion, with the edges of the screen blurred, almost like a dream sequence. Basically without looking, Abraham builds an altar, and he stacks up the wood, and he ties up Isaac, and lifts him onto this pyre, and he reaches for the cleaver…it’s all like moving through molasses, like the air is thick, and Abraham is going through the motions without really seeing anything, just moving his hands until it's all in order. Then again, the voice calls—twice, this time, urgent, desperate to get his attention, to break through the thrall he’s caught in. And Abraham again says “hineni” — he’s all in, whatever the voice is going to ask. And finally he looks up, almost like that moment when you shake your head and see what you were doing like for the first time, and there’s a sheep standing right there. Just as God promised to provide of Ishmael in the desert and God did, though Abraham didn’t know it…just as Abraham had told Isaac that God would see to the sheep, God did, though Abraham very nearly didn’t know it, because he wasn’t looking.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The next words God says are, I think, the most disturbing in the story. God says “now I know…” — implying that God really didn’t know what Abraham would do. The story is set up as a test — not necessarily a pass-fail final exam, but a progress test that reveals how much we’ve learned and where we still need to do a bit more work. We can talk another time about the idea of God setting a test, but what I want to wonder today is just what this test revealed that God didn't already know. What did God uncover in Abraham that maybe neither of them actually knew he had in him?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Abraham was willing to sacrifice the person most precious to him — his only legitimate son, and also all that he represented, the fulfilment of the promise that God made to him all those years ago. Remember by this point Sarah would be well into her 90s and Abraham past 100 years old. This one child is the one who will carry the covenant, because God promised that through him Abraham would become the father of many nations, with more descendants than the grains of sand or stars in the sky. And beyond even all those decades of waiting and longing for him, Abraham loved him, it says. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And he was willing to put a knife to his throat, if he thought that God was asking for that.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s what I think God learned that day:</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If Abraham was willing to sacrifice even his most precious beloved, and the covenant promises God had made, without even asking a single question…how much more easily would he sacrifice someone he didn’t love so closely? Someone he didn’t like at all? Someone he didn’t know? God learned that humans, even those in close relationship with God, are far more willing to sacrifice each other than we would like to admit.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I suspect that if any of us heard a calling to sacrifice a member of our family for God, we’d at least pray about it again first before deciding to reject the voice that did not align with the call to love God <i>and love our neighbour as ourselves</i>. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But would we do the same when asked to sacrifice someone who isn’t close to us?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What about if we don’t have to personally hold the knife…but simply put an x on a ballot paper for a person or party who believe in turning refugee boats away and sending them back to sea? Or simply to demand cheap clothes and food, even knowing that people must work for pennies in order to provide that for us? Or simply to insist on the convenience of our own private cars while the sea rises and swallows people’s homes and livelihoods? What about if all we have to do is continue to believe our economy and power and standard of living must grow indefinitely because that’s what politicians say…while in other parts of the world water sources are drying up and healthcare is a distant dream and the fires and floods and famines get worse every year? What if all we have to do is look away from the person we’re walking past on the street, or turn off the television…sacrificing our literal neighbours to poverty or drugs or mental illness for our comfort or worse, our self-righteous judgment. Or what if all we need to do is hold to one narrow understanding of God’s love, leaving everyone different than us outside it?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">How easily we sacrifice each other.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That’s a reality that I think we would prefer stay hidden deep within us, but God uncovers in this terrible story — how easily we are willing to sacrifice those who are not so precious to us, despite the fact they are precious to God. Despite the fact they are made in God’s image, and carry God’s promise.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This test reveals where Abraham still has work to do…and where we still have work to do. The truth is that we can only transform what we can name — so even though it is painful and awful, bringing this story out into the open means that now we are capable of doing that work. We are capable of seeing our choices and their impact on others, and making a different choice. We are capable of seeing the pain we cause, and changing direction to be healers instead. We are capable of keeping our eyes and hearts open, of saying “hineni” and being all in and fully committed to not only those most precious to us, but those precious to God. In fact, more than being capable of this, it is our HOLY CALLING to do this. God uncovered our tendency to sacrifice each other <i>so that we could stop doing it and learn a different way.</i> If only we will open our eyes and look and see what God has provided — abundant life for all. On the mount of the Lord, there is vision.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-14620708297923144152021-09-12T16:34:00.005+01:002021-09-12T16:34:47.548+01:00Boundaries -- a sermon on Genesis 1<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Boundaries</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Genesis 1.1-2.4a (Robert Alter)</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">12 September 2021, NL4-1</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">And it was evening and it was morning, first day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God said, “Let there be a vault in the midst of the waters, and let it divide water from water.” And God made the vault and it divided the water beneath the vault from the water above the vault, and so it was. And God called the vault Heavens, </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">and it was evening and it was morning, second day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered in one place so that the dry land will appear,” and so it was. And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering of waters he called Seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth grow grass, plants yielding seed of each kind and trees bearing fruit of each kind, that has its seed within it upon the earth.” And so it was. And the earth put forth grass, plants yielding seed, and trees bearing fruit of each kind, and God saw that it was good. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">And it was evening and it was morning, third day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and they shall be signs for the fixed times and for days and years, and they shall be lights in the vault of the heavens to light up the earth.” And so it was. And God made the two great lights, the great light for dominion of day and the small light for the dominion of night, and the stars. And God placed them in the vault of the heavens to light up the earth and to have dominion over day and night and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">And it was evening and it was morning, fourth day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God said, “Let the waters swarm with the swarm of living creatures and let fowl fly over the earth across the vault of the heavens.” And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that crawls, which the water had swarmed forth of each kind, and the winged fowl of each kind, and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas and let the fowl multiply in the earth.”</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">And it was evening and it was morning, fifth day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of each kind, cattle and crawling things and wild beasts of each kind. And so it was. And God made wild beasts of each kind and cattle of every kind and all crawling things on the ground of each kind, and God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make a human in our image, by our likeness, to hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and the cattle and the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth.” </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God created the human in his image, </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">in the image of God he created him, </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">male and female he created them.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it, and hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and every beast that crawls upon the earth.” And God said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth and every tree that has fruit-bearing seed, yours they will be for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and to all the fowl of the heavens and to all that crawls on the earth, which has the breath of life within it, the green plants for food.” And so it was. And God saw all that he had done, and, look, it was very good. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their array. And God completed on the seventh day the task he had done, and he ceased on the seventh day from all the task he had done. And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, for on it he had ceased from all his task that he had created to do. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the tale of the heavens and the earth when they were created.</span></b></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bFizL36F6EE/YT4dzw-l3KI/AAAAAAAABcA/6Y5mNHzhAZAMaq2kQ6e9kHJPoTIUtTg7gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/12%2BSeptember%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bFizL36F6EE/YT4dzw-l3KI/AAAAAAAABcA/6Y5mNHzhAZAMaq2kQ6e9kHJPoTIUtTg7gCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h180/12%2BSeptember%2B2021%252C%2BUncovered%2B1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We are so used to the opening line of the Bible being “in the beginning”…but I have to admit I really love this new translation that Hebrew scholar Robert Alter worked on over the past decade. “When God began to create” — it’s a reminder that God’s creativity is not confined to this one story, but goes on throughout history even to today. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I also love the sense that there’s no beginning separate from God’s activity. It’s God’s creative energy that is, itself, the beginning. So it isn’t as if we could point to a calendar and say “this is the beginning” like we can with the school term or the new year, but rather that in the midst of chaos, God started something…and that was the beginning. When God began to create, everything was chaos and darkness, and God started something new by pulling that chaos and darkness back, revealing light and airspace and earth, which were full of potential. Particularly this year, I just find that the idea of God uncovering the potential of the earth from underneath the chaos — the welter and waste — to be really provocative and interesting.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s certainly plenty of welter and waste to go around, and I don’t know if it’s because of social media or having spent so much time home alone or what, but somehow the world feels more chaotic than ever, as we try to figure out what “new normal” looks like. There’s still a pandemic raging around the earth, of course. The climate change situation is dire and the consequences become more visible and more tragic with each passing day. We still live with the fallout of war-making decisions made decades ago. All of these things mean people are moving around the globe in huge numbers, seeking peace and safety, seeking clean water or refuge from drought, seeking higher ground, seeking healthcare. And many who aren’t yet desperate for those things are unwilling to accommodate those who are, so conflict intensifies. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think there’s something instructive, then, about how God goes about creating order from chaos. Because it turns out that God could see the abundant life of creation already, in the midst of all that welter and waste…it just needed uncovering. It needed space to flourish and grow into its potential…potential that only God could see. The breath of God hovered over the dark depths — hovered like a mother bird hovers over the nest, caring for eggs and then chicks, going back and forth, one eye always on what’s happening in the nest and one eye on what else is moving in the background. And the breath of God hovered…and then God drew in that breath and sent it out in a word that literally moved heaven and earth.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The light shone, and the waters were pulled back, and earth and air and sea had space to breathe too. Another word and they were commanded to bring forth life — and the earth and sky and sea were obedient to God’s voice asking them to join in the creation. Notice it doesn’t say in this story that God created plants, it says that God told the earth to put forth grass and plants and trees. The potential was there, and God called it out of the ground. And into that environment, which God saw could continue being endlessly sustainable in re-creating itself, God called forth animals and birds and humanity. God saw what was possible, and made enough space in the chaos and darkness that possibility could become reality. God uncovered life where it looked like there was only welter and waste.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then God asked humankind to continue the work. The word sometimes translated as “have dominion” or what Robert Alter translates as “hold sway” is a royal word, about being the royal representative…humanity is meant to be God’s image, God’s representative, amidst the creation, to take the kind of responsibility for it that God has done. And what has God done? Made space in the midst of chaos for flourishing life, uncovered potential and allowed it to do what it does best, set in motion a system that continues to create and re-create. God both creates things and enables creativity by setting boundaries — boundaries for water and sky and chaos and time — and by calling out the goodness buried beneath the depths.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">How do we do that, as the people made in God’s image? How are we making space for creation to flourish, allowing it to continue its God-given creative work, and uncovering goodness?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If we’re honest, the answer is that we don’t. Instead we fill up the space with our stuff, snuffing out the creativity of the earth and sea and sky with our rubbish. We disrupt the cycles of creation so that it will serve our greed, even though it depletes the earth. We take what it produces and keep it for ourselves, believing we are somehow outside the system rather than a part of it. Rather than acting like God’s representatives in the midst of creation, we have acted like the idols we believe ourselves to be, agents of chaos rather than creativity. Rather than uncovering the goodness at the heart of God’s creation, we have laid waste to it.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But planted more deeply than all that is wrong, God’s word of goodness is still true. God can still see the potential and possibility in the midst of the welter and waste. It’s still there, and the creation is still partnering with god in creativity and flourishing. When God began creating, God didn’t then quit. But where previously it was the dark depths and the waters that needed boundaries set in order to reveal the fertile ground, now it is human greed and idolatry that needs boundaries. If we are restrained, as the seas were, as the darkness was, then there will be space for new life. God is, even now, calling forth and empowering the creative capacity of all things…and that includes us. It will take all our creative capacity as human beings if we are to find ways to restrain ourselves in order that all life might thrive. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We could begin by taking the seventh day seriously. It’s a built in time when God allows creation to do its thing without interference, as God rests…and if we were to take time out from shaping and re-shaping and micromanaging and using and abusing the environment around us, we may find that our relationship to the creation is re-set to be more like the image of God…but at this point, we can’t stop there. That is just one small boundary restraining our insatiable desire for <i>more</i> and the truth is that because we ignored it for so long, now we need much deeper cuts if we are to be good stewards of this gift for future generations. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In about half an hour our boys brigade will be doing a litter clean up, and that’s a good start. Of course if we restrained ourselves from littering in the first place that would be better. Restraining our use of private transport, and fossil fuels, and single use plastic, and intensive agriculture, especially animal agriculture, is also all crucial. But we are beyond the point of individual actions being enough. We need them, don’t get me wrong. We must act as individuals. But we need the whole human family, all of us who are made in God’s image and called to act in God’s likeness, to come together to set some boundaries on the relationship we have with the rest of creation. We cannot abuse it and expect it to continue to nourish us, any more than we can expect that in any other relationship. We cannot simply overrun it and expect it to live up to its potential. And we cannot uncover the good news God planted within creation if we are constantly burying it under mountains of landfill. In other words, we cannot be agents of chaos and expect creation to treat us like agents of grace. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We need to restrain ourselves, individually and corporately and politically, and we need to do it now. To live into the image of God is to create space for life to flourish, and to nurture that potential and possibility together, letting the world do what God made it to do: thrive.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-83647215190877927632021-08-29T22:07:00.023+01:002021-08-31T22:15:31.096+01:00Roomy -- a sermon God's many mansions<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Roomy</span></i></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">John 14.1-10 New Revised Standard Version</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">29 August 2021, Sunday School Revisited 14</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’</span></i></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.</span></i></p>
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<span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nd8-b3mPkh4/YS6aWY6TY1I/AAAAAAAABbA/moPDXSyeHvkjq8utkrOGxXkI5NjHmTTcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/29%2BAugust%2B2021%2BSS%2BRevisited%2B14.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="254" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nd8-b3mPkh4/YS6aWY6TY1I/AAAAAAAABbA/moPDXSyeHvkjq8utkrOGxXkI5NjHmTTcgCLcBGAsYHQ/w451-h254/29%2BAugust%2B2021%2BSS%2BRevisited%2B14.jpg" width="451" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Some of you may know that two new cats came to live in the manse recently. For the past two weeks, it has been a slow process of getting them settled in. We started out with several days spent in my bedroom — anytime I was home, I was in there with them, and the rest of the time they stayed in by themselves, door firmly shut. Then they were allowed out to explore the hallway and stairs to the upper floor…but all the doors to rooms were closed, so they couldn’t get into mischief. After a week, I took them one at a time to the sitting room for an afternoon, then to the study and kitchen for an afternoon — both of those days they were so exhausted that they slept about 9 hours straight overnight! Then we had a little time exploring just the ground floor, and then just the upstairs again, and finally a day when the gate was opened and they could go anywhere in the house, as long as I followed them around. And now they are able to roam freely and unsupervised around the whole house — except the rooms that are always closed for heat-saving purposes!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ag15xDmo3-s/YS6atwOfOGI/AAAAAAAABbI/2niWGAV4Utct7uz48MUAv8nROrZxuSPqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/9277463A-A4DF-4259-9CAE-C2B84EC74206_1_201_a.heic" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ag15xDmo3-s/YS6atwOfOGI/AAAAAAAABbI/2niWGAV4Utct7uz48MUAv8nROrZxuSPqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/9277463A-A4DF-4259-9CAE-C2B84EC74206_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div></span><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It’s a big house, so there’s plenty of room for them to run, have adventures, sprawl out on the floor for an impromptu nap, or hide behind the books on the shelf. They have plenty of toys in basically every room, and yet they have stolen cherry tomatoes off the counter, balanced precariously on the bannister on the top floor landing, and hidden under the duvet. They are not kittens, but they’re still fairly small creatures, so this three story house must feel like…well…like their mama’s house has many mansions.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I promise I’m not being sacrilegious, or comparing myself to God and God’s house. Just trying to give a different perspective on a text that many of us are very familiar with — whether from Sunday school and holiday clubs or from funerals. Every day there’s some new place in the house for the cats to discover…and every day there’s something new within God’s house for us to discover. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0eEZgqs9UQQ/YS6auMlWz1I/AAAAAAAABbM/HGcLLpiH1YswLB7mLevSm7U_AvyOvm0NACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/A0C4C834-0B0E-4468-8160-9ABC55461677_1_201_a.heic" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0eEZgqs9UQQ/YS6auMlWz1I/AAAAAAAABbM/HGcLLpiH1YswLB7mLevSm7U_AvyOvm0NACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/A0C4C834-0B0E-4468-8160-9ABC55461677_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The thing that makes all that exploration of the house possible is the security of our relationships within it. Before they were out wandering the house, the cats had to get to know and trust me. Each time we went to a new room they knew it was okay because I took them there, and they could always come back to my lap. The same is true within God’s house — especially since, honestly, most of the time scripture uses the word “house” it’s actually about a relationship, a family, not a physical building! Jesus says there are many places to dwell in God…just as he and the Father dwell in each other, and just as he tells us to abide in him as he abides in us. To live in God’s house is to trust the relationship we have with God — a close relationship in which we live our lives together, meaning that we share our lives with God <i>and God shares God’s life with us. </i>When Jesus says he is the way to a relationship with God, this is why — because in Christ, God shared life with us and brought us into the family. </span><p></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The disciples didn’t really know what was going on when Jesus talked this way. Then, as now, people just can’t really fathom the idea that God’s house, God’s family, is roomy enough for everyone. We’ve usually got quite a list of people we just frankly don’t have time for, but God has all the time in the world…for each of us, and for each of them. That’s what it means to have roominess in God’s “house”, God’s family — the relationship is spacious, there’s room to walk around, to learn and grow and change, to ask questions and to explore and to know we can come back to the safety of resting in God’s had. Because God gave Godself to us, and we give ourselves to God. That’s how committed relationships work.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The disciples, though…they thought they had to understand in order to commit. They thought they had to have the right words, the right map to follow, before they’d be allowed in. They were so afraid of being left alone, so afraid of the future Jesus was trying to prepare them for, that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In reading their story from the outside, we can see very clearly what they could not when they were in the midst of those last days of Jesus’ earthly life — that fear obscures vision. When all they could think about is how to save themselves and the way of life they had come to love from certain death and destruction…when all we can think about is how to save ourselves and the way of life we have come to love…it’s like having blinders on. We see so narrowly, and so dimly, that the expansive Way of Truth and Life becomes impossible. We miss out on relationship because we’re too afraid to allow the fullness of God to meet our whole selves. So we reduce Jesus to a tool that buys our salvation but locks the gate to others so that we can feel safe.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby once said that “Fear imprisons us and stops us being fully human. Uniquely in all of human history, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one who as living love liberates holy courage.” Fear imprisons us and stops us being fully human — it locks us up and blocks us from full relationship with God and with others, rather than stopping “them” who we wanted to be kept out…and Jesus lives God’s love so fully that it sets us all free to be courageous, to live this life with God rather than simply waiting for the next.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Courage is actually exactly where Jesus began this teaching: do not let your hearts be troubled. We so often read this at troubling times that I think we have decided to live with only the shallowest meaning of “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Yes, it certainly can be a reminder that Jesus gives us peace beyond all understanding. But deeper down, it’s an instruction to take heart, to not allow the troubles of the world to narrow our vision and weaken our courage to do good and stand up for what is right.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when we are afraid.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when it looks like the shadows are overtaking the light.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when the world is threatening.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when it feels like we are drowning in grief.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when the problems are bigger than we can solve and all we can see are obstacles.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even when it’s our lives, or the life of our beloved institutions, at stake.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In fact <i>especially</i> at those times, take heart, and act like the members of Christ’s family that we are. Do not let fear obscure our vision of the roominess of God’s house or tempt us to use Jesus to lock the doors behind us so that we can live in ignorant or apathetic comfort. There’s space to spare, and God has time for refugees, and people who are homeless or hungry, and people who look and sound different, and people who need extra support, and people who work for peace and those who are trying to change their ways, and people who can’t see past the dark cloud of despair, and people suffering from climate change, and people struggling with addictions, and and and…so we, who are made in God’s image and grafted into God’s family tree, had better have time and space for them too. Because it’s when we act like Jesus that we will most likely see him. When we choose, like Philip and Thomas, to focus on ourselves and our fears of the future, we’ll miss God’s presence literally in our midst. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The house is roomy, and Christ has set us free to live life to the full within it — all of us. Take heart.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-7072521201777084102021-08-22T22:05:00.001+01:002021-08-31T22:07:33.834+01:00Opposite Blessings -- a sermon on Jacob before and after the ladder...<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Opposite Blessings</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Genesis 27-28 (NRSV)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">22 August 2021, Sunday School Revisited 13</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, ‘My son’; and he answered, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. Then prepare for me savoury food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.’ </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob; and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she handed the savoury food, and the bread that she had prepared, to her son Jacob.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So he went in to his father, and said, ‘My father’; and he said, ‘Here I am; who are you, my son?’ Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.’ But Isaac said to his son, ‘How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?’ He answered, ‘Because the Lord your God granted me success.’ Then Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.’ So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ He did not recognise him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him. He said, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ He answered, ‘I am.’ Then he said, ‘Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.’ So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank.Then his father Isaac said to him, ‘Come near and kiss me, my son.’ So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">‘Ah, the smell of my son</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May God give you of the dew of heaven,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and of the fatness of the earth,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and plenty of grain and wine. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Let peoples serve you,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and nations bow down to you.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Be lord over your brothers,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Cursed be everyone who curses you,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and blessed be everyone who blesses you!’</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’</span></p>
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<br /><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nGKAE0VMot8/YS6Z5giJmRI/AAAAAAAABa4/fr8abXk3AGY_foX5YNi17bL0zDmar13pgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/22%2BAugust%2B2021%2BSS%2BRevisited%2B13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nGKAE0VMot8/YS6Z5giJmRI/AAAAAAAABa4/fr8abXk3AGY_foX5YNi17bL0zDmar13pgCLcBGAsYHQ/w456-h256/22%2BAugust%2B2021%2BSS%2BRevisited%2B13.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I used to think that my brother and I were pretty bad as far as fighting and sibling rivalry goes. When we were younger we broke things, hurt each other, and shouted ourselves hoarse. I don’t know how our parents put up with us honestly. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then I read the Bible, and the things that siblings get up to, even just in the book of Genesis, puts our petty squabbles to shame. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jacob and Esau are a good example. They’re twins, and even in the womb they were already wrestling. While she was pregnant, their mother Rebekah suffered a lot from their constant movement, and when she prayed about it, she received a vision from God to say that she was giving birth to two nations…and that the younger would take precedence over the elder. Now of course they’re twins, so there’s not much room for younger and older, especially since Jacob was born quite literally on the heels of Esau — it says that he was holding on to Esau’s heel with his hand!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">From that moment onward, they were rivals in every way. One was their father’s favourite, and one their mother’s favourite. One was skilled in hunting, the other in husbandry. On and on the list goes of how they were polar opposites of each other. And of course there’s the story where we learned that Jacob was a typical Scot as well — he was able to cook a good hearty meal, and his lentil soup was so good that when Esau came in from hunting and was so hungry, he agreed to sell his birthright, his inheritance, to his brother for a bowl of it! A good cook and canny too! </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a twist to the story of their father was preparing for his last days, and thinking about his legacy, wanting to give his eldest son a blessing.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Remember Rebekah had been told by God that “the elder will serve the younger.” She simply did, in her mind, what she had to do to ensure that God’s word came true. So she and Jacob worked out a plan to dress Jacob in Esau’s clothes, to cover him in goat hair, and to take in Rebekah’s best cooking. After all, Isaac’s eyesight had failed, and he wasn’t mentally as sharp as he’d once been either, so the plan that Rebekah and Jacob concocted paid off. They were able to manipulate and scheme their way into Jacob getting his father’s blessing.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Esau was murderously angry, of course, which is why Jacob fled towards Haran — the homeland of his grandfather Abraham, running away with only what he could carry. No servants, no livestock, no extra baggage allowance, just what he was wearing and a bag on his back as he headed into the wilderness.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When he laid down that night, exhausted from running, having left his mother with his dying father and his angry brother, the only thing he had to hand was a stone. We always think he used it as a pillow but it’s more likely to have been a large stone that he laid down next to, his back to it, protecting his head and back and hiding him from at least one angle as long as he didn’t stick his legs out. The wilderness is a dangerous place, especially at night, that’s the best he could hope for in terms of protection. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There, in the middle of nowhere, under the stars, his back to a stone, exhausted and sad, Jacob slept. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s nothing more vulnerable than a person who is mentally and physically exhausted, exposed to the elements, asleep. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And that is when God appeared.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not when Jacob was controlling the situation and scripting the conversation, but when he was asleep, outside, far from home, alone.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There he saw the connection between earth and heaven, and how easy it is to move between them for those messengers doing God’s work. He understood that even there, in the wilderness, he was in the house of God, literally sleeping at the gates of heaven…and he had no idea. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now at this point I could go on for quite some time about the fact that we, like Jacob, so often have absolutely no idea that God is in this place. Right here and now, wherever we find ourselves, is the gate of heaven. God has not left a single square millimetre of the universe without divine presence, it’s just that we choose not to see God all around us, and we choose to treat the creation as if it is not God’s house, but our own to abuse as we wish. Rather than being vulnerable and open to receiving the truth of the interconnectedness of heaven and earth, we have chosen to stay closed in order to manipulate and overpower creation for our own purposes, as if that will have no consequences for us or others or for the kingdom of God.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And that is all true.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But what I most want to notice with you today is slightly different. Related, in a way, but different.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Take a look at the blessing that Jacob and Rebekah worked so hard to get from Isaac. It is about two main things: material prosperity first (the fatness of the earth, plenty of wine), and power second (let peoples serve you, be lord over your brothers). </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Those are things that many of us strive for. To have more than enough to satisfy our desires, and to have a higher status than other people. To work our way up the ladder, socially and economically, to be better off than our parents were — isn’t that what we’re culturally conditioned to work for our whole lives, and what our western economies require of us? </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now take a look at the blessing God gives to Jacob while he is sleeping at the gate of God’s house. God says “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” and promises that this land will be full of his descendants, people who will be a blessing to others.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God blessed him with the knowledge of God’s constant presence everywhere, not just in holy places, and with the gift of being a blessing to others, to all the families of the world.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s the opposite of the blessing he’d manipulated his father for, which was about <i>being served</i> while God’s blessing is about <i>being a blessing.</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One is what we often think of as blessing, we work for it or we say we’re “so blessed” when we have prosperity and power. And the other is what God thinks of as a blessing: to know God’s presence and share it with others, to spread the news that “surely the Lord is in this place” and to work for a world where all can experience God’s goodness here and now.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In other words, as Jesus put it, to receive a blessing is not to be served, but to serve. To love as we have been loved. To represent God’s image in the world.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This doesn’t only apply to us as individuals, though it is the opposite of the way we use the word “blessed” culturally. It also applies to the church as a whole. A blessed church is not a church that has a lot of people and a lot of money and a high profile in its town or nation or the world. A blessed church is a church that gives itself away as a blessing to others. A blessed church isn’t a church with a beautiful building, a blessed church is a church that knows the people are the church, wherever we are. A blessed church isn’t a church that’s packed to the rafters, standing room only, a blessed church is a church that is reflecting the image of God outside the sanctuary walls, loving its neighbours in every neighbourhood where the church lives. A blessed church isn’t one that controls or manipulates to get what it wants, a blessed church is one that recognises God’s presence everywhere and stands up to say “Surely the Lord is in this place” — in the high street and in the train station and in the dark alleyways and in the deprived empty town centre and in the hospital and in the funeral parlour and in the drugs den and in the beautiful park and in the school and in the eyesore of a building and in the pub and in the fancy restaurant and in the community garden and in the close no one is caring for and in the care home and in the library and in the council offices and in the chippy and in the big fancy yachts and everywhere else. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The blessing we’ve been pursuing so hard for ourselves is actually no blessing at all, and while we’re putting all our energy into that, we can’t see what’s right in front of us. Which means a blessed church has to be one that is full of people who are willing to pause, to let our guard down, to be vulnerable, to stop working so hard for our own institutional survival and the desires of those already inside the walls, and instead make space for God to speak…even if it’s to give us a blessing we aren’t sure we actually want. Because that’s what comes when one sleeps at the gates of heaven.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When we are vulnerable enough to recognise that the Lord is in this place, and that the Lord is calling us to be a blessing to others, then what will we do? How will we give ourselves away to share the good news, to spread the blessing far and wide, to participate in the work that all those messengers of God are doing when they go to and fro between heaven and earth?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When we answer that, we’ll find ourselves in God’s house, wherever we are.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-69867125195449658572021-08-08T18:43:00.003+01:002021-08-08T18:43:43.277+01:00Mirror -- a sermon on the crucifixion<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Mirror</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mark 15.16-47 New Revised Standard Version</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">8 August 2021, Sunday School Revisited 11</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’ In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is one of those stories that many of us know, and yet if we were pressed to talk about it we may find that we have only the bare basics of it, or that we resort to simply saying “Jesus died for our sins” — which Mark’s gospel doesn’t say explicitly, he simply tells the story and we have come to understand its meaning over the years. It’s one of the central moments of the Christian faith — some might say <i>the</i> moment. There is often a friendly disagreement between those who see Good Friday’s crucifixion as the most important part of the easter story, and those who see Sunday’s resurrection as the most important part. Without death, there can be no resurrection, of course — something we who worry about the loss of certain traditions or institutions should remember. But then again, without resurrection, this is just another execution in an empire that famously crucified hundreds of thousands of people. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Crucifixion was meant to be humiliating torture, the most painful way to execute those who dared to oppose the empire. It was supposed to be a spectacle, and also to be so shameful that those who were crucified would essentially be erased from daily conversation. Friends and family wouldn’t mention them, for fear someone might connect them to the person who had been caught rebelling against Rome and turn them in too. Often bodies were left to the elements and the animals, rather than buried properly. It was intentionally as terrible as anyone could dream up. And it happened nearly every day in the Roman Empire, for about 500 years.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As an aside: you would think that if it was an effective deterrent, they wouldn’t have to do it quite so much. But we know how easily we humans fall into the trap of continuing to do things that don’t work, even harmful things, simply because it’s what we’ve always done. The death penalty and other forms of physical punishment and, indeed, many punishments in general, are no different — they don’t work but we want to believe they do. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Which is why it matters that we tell this story, in all its brutality and horror. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not because we need or want to glorify gore, or torture, or pain. There’s plenty of that to go around in other places, other stories.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But because we do need to see the truth of what humanity can do, and the truth that it doesn’t work. We want to believe that inflicting pain on others will make us feel better, but it doesn’t. We want to believe that making an example of someone will deter others from working for change, but it doesn’t. We want to believe that punishment works, but it doesn’t. Jesus, on the cross, holds up a mirror to us as human beings and asks if this was really what we believed?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Think of the people who saw him there and looked square into that mirror.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The soldiers who pulled things out of the dress-up box and played out their fantasies of being more powerful than the monarch…as they were beating him and spitting on him, they inadvertently spoke truth by calling him the King of the Jews. In that moment they revealed themselves, who they really were and what really mattered to them, and it was to hold the power of violence in their hands, to put others below them and climb to the top of the heap by any means possible including even throwing dice to divvy up his last possessions. It’s not a flattering picture in their mirror. But could they see it?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Along with passers-by, the others who were crucified beside Jesus also taunted him, calling names and mocking his power to save. Even in the midst of their own agony, even as they bore the same punishment, they still needed to be better than the man next to them. They were likely there for committing acts of treason or violence against the empire, while Jesus was there for speaking in ways that undermined the empire’s power with God’s love…and yet when they looked into the mirror-image of the cross next to them, what they saw was one more chance to prove they were more manly than the next guy.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The women, looking on from a distance…they’d been with him from the beginning, following him through Galilee and Judea and to Jerusalem. They had been providing for him and his followers, making space, making food, sharing their resources, learning at his feet and going out with his good news. They were the only friends who didn’t run away and hide, and even they had to watch from a distance. But they saw every writhe and heard every cry, and at the last they saw the tomb and the stone’s heaviness shuddering into place. They saw their friend, their teacher, their brother, their son…and they saw an end. The end of everything. In that moment it may have felt like their lives were over too.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And the centurion. Mark says he stood facing Jesus, and when he saw everything, the way others treated him, the way Jesus responded, his final breath, he saw truth shining through all the pain and sorrow and horror: truly, this man was God’s Son. Truly. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We couldn’t see it in the thousands of other bodies, made in the image of God, on crosses. But this one was God’s flesh and bone on the cross, God’s blood pouring out, God’s breath that stopped, and we are forced to confront just what cruelty we have chosen. We could not deal with the truth of what God-with-us said and did, the challenge he posed to the way things have always been, and so we killed him instead. And if the world were being honest, we would do it again.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On the cross, Jesus reflected that truth back to us in a way we cannot ignore, though we have tried to look away, or pretended that when we continue on the wrong path it was okay because those people deserved it — forgetting what he said about “whenever you have done it to them, you did it to me.” The mirror shows uncomfortable truths, and will continue to show them to us every time we read the story and take it to heart, for we cannot stand at the foot of the cross and walk away unchanged. Or rather, we should not, though we often resist the transformation the crucifixion calls for.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus breathed his last, anguished cry, the curtain of the Temple was torn from top to bottom. The way that grieving people were to tear their clothes and put ashes on their heads, even the holy place grieved. And yet that tearing — from top to bottom, though it was taller than any human being could tear — also opened something. Sometimes we talk about grief as being broken-hearted, broken open, falling to pieces. Perhaps that’s what happened in the Temple that day, too. The curtain separating the holy place where God lived from the rest of the world and all its messiness was torn, from top to bottom. The word “torn” is a word Mark only uses one other time in his whole gospel — to describe the heavens opening at Jesus’ baptism and the Holy Spirit descending on him. The heavens were torn open and the Spirit flew…and the curtain was torn and holiness was free, unconstrained. God had experienced the depths of human suffering, unmedicated. Mental and emotional and spiritual anguish, betrayal and desertion by all his friends, bullying and taunting and mocking of his very identity and passion and love, physical brutality and torture, the loss of a child…there is nothing in this world that we can go through that God hasn’t already experienced. And the separation between God and us has been torn to pieces by grief and love, so we will never walk the dark valley alone — we always have an experienced guide.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">God shows us what really does work, and calls us to a new way. Not torture or punishment or cruelty, but tearing down separation barriers and coming together to walk the journey. If God wouldn’t stay separated from us even when we were literally doing the worst we could imagine, why would we insist on separating ourselves from one another?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The curtain was torn from top to bottom, from heaven to earth…and the tomb was open and empty on the third day…and nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from God’s love, revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-30331290693513357202021-05-23T23:21:00.002+01:002021-05-23T23:21:25.113+01:00Demonstrably Different -- a sermon for Pentecost<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Demonstrably Different</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Acts 2.1-13 (selected), Galatians 5.16-26 (Common English Bible)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">23 May 2021, Pentecost, NL3-46</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages. They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? …we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!” They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?” Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!” Peter stood up and said “Listen carefully to my words! These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning!”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I say be guided by the Spirit and you won’t carry out your selfish desires. A person’s selfish desires are set against the Spirit, and the Spirit is set against one’s selfish desires. They are opposed to each other, so you shouldn’t do whatever you want to do. But if you are being led by the Spirit, you aren’t under the Law. The actions that are produced by selfish motives are obvious, since they include sexual immorality, moral corruption, doing whatever feels good, idolatry, drug use and casting spells, hate, fighting, obsession, losing your temper, competitive opposition, conflict, selfishness, group rivalry, jealousy, drunkenness, partying, and other things like that. I warn you as I have already warned you, that those who do these kinds of things won’t inherit God’s kingdom.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and its desires.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit. Let’s not become arrogant, make each other angry, or be jealous of each other.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Pentecost Day arrived — 50 days after Passover, the day when Jews celebrate God giving the Torah on Mount Sinai, thus creating the Israelites as God’s covenant people — the disciples were together. Traditionally, Jewish people get together to study scripture all night long for this particular holiday, so it’s possible that’s what the disciples were doing that day, reading scripture and giving thanks for God revealing the word and bringing them together as a community.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That morning, when perhaps they had been reading scripture all night, and maybe they were a little bit giddy from sleep deprivation and holiday excitement, there was a loud and rushing wind blowing through the house — like the wind that blew over the waters of creation back in Genesis 1. And tongues of fire, like the flames that had danced in the burning bush, and like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites in the wilderness, appeared above them, leading them out of the house, into the street. And they spoke…and people heard. It was a day of new creation, with the wind of God blowing and the fire of the Spirit filling them all, so that they could share stories of God’s amazing works in ways that people would understand, bringing a new community into being.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s a community that, of course, seeks to become more like Christ every day. And, according to Paul, the way we do that is by being guided by the Spirit, rather than being guided mainly by the ancient law. Paul says that when we are guided by the Spirit, we will choose to set aside our selfish desires, and choose instead things that build up. He told the Galatians, and still tells us today, that if we are following the Spirit, our community will have a demonstrably different character than those who are not. And then he describes two different and competing visions of what life can be like: life driven by selfish desire, and life driven by the Spirit. If we are following the Spirit, Paul says, it will be obvious to even a casual observer who looks at us or our community.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Listen to the things Paul describes as coming from “selfish motives” — things like sexual immorality, hate, fighting, competitive opposition, group rivalry, jealousy, doing whatever feels good, idolatry. These are things that put myself first — above what’s good for others, above what’s good for my community, even above God. Sometimes it might seem like they serve us — to be competitive, to have rivals, to do what feels right, even to hate people who are different. But in addition to hurting others, they are harmful to ourselves as well. When we dehumanise others, we lose a bit of our own humanity. When we think only of ourselves, we cut ourselves off from support and relationships that could help us grow. When our focus is on me and my security and what I want — when we focus on serving ourselves, or saving ourselves — we paradoxically lose everything, including the chance to experience the kingdom of God.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now listen to the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Do you notice anything about those things? They are relational things. Love is always received and given, not kept for ourselves. Joy bubbles over and is shared. Peace is known between people. Patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control are how we treat each other and how we interact with the world. Generosity is about giving away. Faithfulness means being focused on Jesus and following him. The fruit of the Spirit draws our eyes away from our self-centredness and pulls us into community. Just as the Spirit blowing through the upper room on Pentecost morning drew the disciples away from studying for their own sake and pulled them out into the street to speak to people who needed to hear the good news in understandable language.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When people look at the church today, do they see a different way of life than anywhere else? Do they see a community that loves, is joyful, works for peace, has patience, is kind and generous, faithful and gentle? In other words, is the Body of Christ demonstrating the relational, outward-looking fruit of the Spirit, in a way that any casual observer could see or experience? Or do they see a community that cares mainly about itself, about keeping the people inside the church happy, arguing amongst ourselves and serving our own comforts and desires and doing what we want regardless of what else is going on around us?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The General Assembly is meeting this week. Lots of people might wonder why that matters…and it’s a good question. Does the Assembly demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit? Does it lead us all, as the church, the Body of Christ, in living a more fruitful faith in the world? Or is it just arguing about how to best keep members happy while ignoring the things affecting real people, like climate change and weapons of war and economic injustice and gender disparity and health problems and cycles of poverty and violence and trauma? Those are big issues, yes, but they are also things that are part of everyday reality for billions of people. They may not seem to immediately be about theology, but they are about how we respond to God’s work in Christ in this world, how we steward the gifts we have been given and live with the compassion, justice, and love of God for all people. And if the Body of Christ can’t do anything about those things because we’re too busy worshipping our buildings or our legislation or our traditions, then we have not followed the Spirit’s lead and we’re not bearing fruit and we are far away from the kingdom of God.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If our faith doesn’t lead us to do things that make other people feel loved, and that work for peace, and that expand generosity, that bring more beauty and goodness into the world, then we’re not being led by the Spirit, Paul says. He would say it’s time to seek the Spirit more, and then follow more closely. The Holy Spirit blew into the upper room and made a new creation — a Body that went out of its comfortable familiar building into the streets, met people, spoke their language, and invited them into God’s deeds of power. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">More than just singing happy birthday to the church, perhaps it’s past time for us to celebrate this birthday by doing what the Spirit has always been calling us to do: to go out of our comfortable familiar building into the streets, to meet people where they are rather than insisting they come to us, to speak their language rather than insisting they speak ours, and invite them into God’s deeds of power rather than lamenting that no one wants to join in our personal pet peeves or projects.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the things God’s law has always been trying to bring forth in us, the things that studying all night for Pentecost are meant to help us learn. These are the things that the Spirit is calling the Body of Christ to live. These are what the world should see and feel and experience from the church. Imagine how delicious that would be, if we could be the ones living so that everyone can taste and see that God is good.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-60064968650032180302021-04-19T11:25:00.005+01:002021-04-19T11:25:31.770+01:00Don't Want to Hear It -- a sermon on the stoning of Stephen<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Don’t Want To Hear It</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Acts 6.1 - 7.2a, 44-60 (Common English Bible)</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">18 April 2021, Easter 3, NL3-41</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples several times before being taken up into heaven — Luke records the ascension both at the very end of the gospel and the very beginning of Acts. Then the whole group of the disciples waited in Jerusalem. They continued to worship in the Temple and to gather together, around 120 of them. They chose Matthias to replace Judas, and they spent time in prayer. After several weeks, the Holy Spirit filled the house and sent them out into the streets sharing the good news, and the church began to grow, by the hundreds and thousands. Still this growing community spent their time praying, worshipping, sharing meals, teaching, and healing the sick. They took care of each other, ensuring that no one was in need among them. Some of their healing and teaching activities caught the attention of the authorities, but one member of the council persuaded the rest to leave them be. That’s where we pick up the story in the book of Acts, chapter 6, beginning at verse 1. I am reading from the Common English Bible.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">About that time, while the number of disciples continued to increase, a complaint arose. Greek-speaking disciples accused the Aramaic-speaking disciples because their widows were being overlooked in the daily food service. The Twelve called a meeting of all the disciples and said, “It isn’t right for us to set aside proclamation of God’s word in order to serve tables. Brothers and sisters, carefully choose seven well-respected men from among you. They must be well-respected and endowed by the Spirit with exceptional wisdom. We will put them in charge of this concern. As for us, we will devote ourselves to prayer and the service of proclaiming the word.” This proposal pleased the entire community. They selected Stephen, a man endowed by the Holy Spirit with exceptional faith, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. The community presented these seven to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. God’s word continued to grow. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased significantly. Even a large group of priests embraced the faith.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Stephen, who stood out among the believers for the way God’s grace was at work in his life and for his exceptional endowment with divine power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Opposition arose from some who belonged to the so-called Synagogue of Former Slaves. Members from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia entered into debate with Stephen. However, they couldn’t resist the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke. Then they secretly enticed some people to claim, “We heard him insult Moses and God.” They stirred up the people, the elders, and the legal experts. They caught Stephen, dragged him away, and brought him before the Jerusalem Council. Before the council, they presented false witnesses who testified, “This man never stops speaking against this holy place and the Law. In fact, we heard him say that this man Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and alter the customary practices Moses gave us.” Everyone seated in the council stared at Stephen, and they saw that his face was radiant, just like an angel’s.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The high priest asked, “Are these accusations true?”</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Stephen responded, “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. ….</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>44</sup></span>“The tent of testimony was with our ancestors in the wilderness. Moses built it just as he had been instructed by the one who spoke to him and according to the pattern he had seen. In time, when they had received the tent, our ancestors carried it with them when, under Joshua’s leadership, they took possession of the land from the nations whom God expelled. This tent remained in the land until the time of David. God approved of David, who asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who actually built a house for God. However, the Most High doesn’t live in houses built by human hands. As the prophet says,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Heaven is my throne,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and the earth is my footstool.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">‘What kind of house will you build for me,’ says the Lord,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> ‘or where is my resting place?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Didn’t I make all these things with my own hand?’</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“You stubborn people! In your thoughts and hearing, you are like those who have had no part in God’s covenant! You continuously set yourself against the Holy Spirit, just like your ancestors did. Was there a single prophet your ancestors didn’t harass? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one, and you’ve betrayed and murdered him! You received the Law given by angels, but you haven’t kept it.”</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once the council members heard these words, they were enraged and began to grind their teeth at Stephen. But Stephen, enabled by the Holy Spirit, stared into heaven and saw God’s majesty and Jesus standing at God’s right side. He exclaimed, “Look! I can see heaven on display and the Human One standing at God’s right side!” At this, they shrieked and covered their ears. Together, they charged at him, threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses placed their coats in the care of a young man named Saul. As they battered him with stones, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, accept my life!” Falling to his knees, he shouted, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” Then he died.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Music: Steal Away</span></b></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The spiritual Steal Away to Jesus was sung by enslaved people in the USA in the 1800s — both as a reminder that the suffering they were enduring now was not the full truth of their story, an affirmation that God cared for them…and also as a call to come to meetings for worship and organising and a message that underground railroad conductors would be waiting during upcoming stormy weather to help people escape. For nearly 200 years it has been a song of faith and of longing for freedom and hope — in this world and the next.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On Friday morning, I woke up to news headlines and social media stories about 13 year old Adam, who had been shot and killed by Chicago police. The police lied and said he had a gun when he did not, and they just released video showing that in fact had his hands in the air just as they had asked. Having seen a similar video of when they killed 17 year old Laquan four years ago — a boy in his last year of high school, also unarmed though they lied and said he had drugs — I knew not to watch this time, as it’s a sight that will never disappear from my memory.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Earlier in the week the headlines said that Minneapolis police had shot and killed 20 year old Daunte, just a few miles away from where another Minneapolis police officer is currently on trial for killing 46 year old George by kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So many of these things happen that the responses are fairly predictable. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Of course African Americans and other people of colour in the US get yet another gut punch, they seem to come every day — reminders that their very existence inspires fear in so many, and that their lives are expendable.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">While some white Americans are outraged or saddened or feel detached from the problem, many will claim that if these people would just comply with police, they would be alive. It’s hard to know where to begin with that, since the facts proclaim it to be untrue — George Floyd was handcuffed and face down on the ground, Breonna Taylor was asleep in her own bed, 13 year old Adam had his hands up…and 12 year old Tamir was killed at the playpark before the police even got out of the car to speak to him…and and and. Not to mention that being unable or unwilling to comply, especially in a split second, should not be an immediate death sentence. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On this side of the Atlantic, white people will read the headline and shake our heads in disbelief at how bad things are over there. The different roots, history, culture, and community understanding of policing make it almost impossible to understand how these things happen. So we’ll be saddened, and confused — especially those of us who live in places where police rarely carry guns. We might comment on how shocking the state of race relations is in the US. And then we’ll move on with our lives until the next incident captures a headline.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, here in our own nation, many people of colour will also be feeling grief and anger and solidarity, and will tell stories of experiencing racism even here where we don’t have so many weapons. They’ll be asking for our attention to our history and to the current realities of living with brown skin in a nation where in everyday conversation “traditional British” means white, and we have a variety of shorthand slurs and stereotypes at the ready for people of Asian descent, where people of colour are suffering more from Covid, and we defend our statues of slave traders more than we stand up for our neighbours.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then I read this line in Acts: “At this, they shrieked and covered their ears.” </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The people who picked up their stones and threw them until Stephen’s body was battered to death didn’t want to hear what he had to say. And it didn’t matter to them that what others had said about him were lies. They could not deal with the fact that he was a foreigner who had not only turned from his ancestral Judaism to follow Jesus, but he was so charismatic and so obviously full of the Spirit that his very existence frightened them. At least he got the chance to speak first, though — a chance denied to so many today.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Stephen’s powerful teaching and his grace-filled way brought attention — not because he wanted it or sought it, but simply because some people have such gifts that the rest of us are drawn to them. They shine and we gravitate to their peace, their passion, their spirit. But some didn’t approve. Perhaps they were jealous, or maybe they thought he had risen above his station, or maybe even that this immigrant-Jew-turned-Christian-leader was making their lives complicated as Greek-speaking immigrants to Jerusalem. When their lies about him landed him in court, it says that the council could see his face was shining like an angel. You may remember that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai after speaking to God, his face shone as well, and it scared people so much that he wore a veil. The leaders of the council would certainly have remembered that story. Stephen didn’t cover up though, he stood there just as he was, comfortable in his own skin, and faced their accusation that he wanted to change things from the way Moses did them thousands of years ago.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Stephen spoke about the relationship between their common ancestors and God over a hundred generations, and pointed out that things had already changed. After all, during the time of Moses, God lived in a tent and traveled with the people in the wilderness. When David got everyone settled in peace in the land, God denied him his desire to build a permanent Temple. Eventually Solomon did build that Temple, and that was already a significant change from the way Moses did things! From a traveling God who lived close to the ground among the people, to a massive gold-plated temple with different sections for different people where God would live behind many thick stone walls…and then through the changes of the destruction of that Temple, the exile and discovery that God was with them even in a foreign land, then building a new smaller Temple…and on down to where they sat, in that second Temple, now surrounded and infused by trappings of the Roman Empire, discussing whether God could have taken on flesh in Jesus, whom thousands were now following as the Messiah. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Things had already changed. Stephen was simply inviting the people of God to catch up to what God was already doing. In some ways, it was the macro version of the micro-event that started the chapter, where we heard that the fast-growing church was becoming more diverse and didn’t quite know how to manage everything. They were committed to caring for each other and ensuring that there was no one among them in need — as we talked about in Wine and the Word on YouTube and Facebook on Thursday. But also the leaders all spoke Aramaic and some members spoke only Greek, and that meant that some of the poorer members didn’t have the language or means to speak up for themselves. So new leaders were added, to ensure that everyone would be looked after — Stephen was one of those, called and ordained to minister to people who were being overlooked. And so in the first steps toward an organisational structure, the church tried to follow where God was already at work. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the council leaders did not want to hear about how God might be doing things that were different from the way they’d always done it. And they especially did not want to hear that from an immigrant who didn’t even speak their native tongue. Stephen called them “stubborn” and said that they set themselves against the Holy Spirit — they insisted that God could not do a new thing, and even if God did, they weren’t having any part of it.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And they didn’t want to hear this truth about themselves, or about God. They covered their ears and shrieked when he described the beauty of God’s kingdom to them….and they picked up their stones and threw them until he was quiet.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, a young man named Saul, who was also called Paul, held their coats and looked on, silently. Whatever he might have thought inwardly, his silence was approval enough. And he learned from them what was possible, and carried that brutality forward in the next chapter.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What is it that we don’t want to hear? Where might God be moving that we don’t want to follow, so we cling instead to our traditions and insist they can’t be changed — forgetting that they, too, were innovations once? What beautiful diversity of God’s kingdom are we missing out on because there’s no room for it in our systems and structures? And are we covering our ears because we don’t want to hear it…or silencing those stories because they disrupt our comforts…or standing by quietly while people assume we approve of their behaviour?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We don’t have to throw the stones in order to participate in the injustice. After all, someone started by lying about Stephen, and others allowed it, listened to it, shared the gossip. And even the rest of the church community seems to have pulled back, leaving Stephen out on his own — they’re nowhere to be seen in the rest of his story, he stands on his own before the council, only Jesus by his side. And no one stopped the council as they dragged Stephen out of the city. And the witnesses taught the young Saul how to handle those who challenge the old ways.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is a story that is hard to end with “thanks be to God.” Especially when we continue to enact it, day after day. But there is good news hidden here: that God has no intention of being bound by our ways. Whether we are willing to hear it or not, God is moving beyond the structures and traditions of our churches, and our white supremacy, and our culture and language. And the Spirit is calling and gifting people — us, the Body of Christ — to follow where God is already moving and working, to change those systems that kill. Even when we don’t want to give up our conveniences and privileges, even when we don’t want to hear the harm others have suffered, even when we would rather shake our heads in dismay but not rock the boat. Stephen saw the truth: that Jesus was indeed God’s word made flesh, and his resurrection changed everything, including us…so that we can change the world. We don’t only await our chance to steal away into heaven. God offers liberation from things that bind us here — from enslavement to white supremacy, to vision constrained by nostalgia, to a false peace without justice. As the spiritual says, “I haven’t got long to stay here.” Our neighbours and siblings in Christ haven’t got long…they need us to speak up and to be faithful to God’s call now, before any more lies are told, before any more stones are thrown, before silence kills again. May we be willing to break down those ways and follow Jesus into a new way, sooner rather than later.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-42372087212354552982021-04-11T11:28:00.001+01:002021-04-19T11:29:52.260+01:00Trying to Make Sense of it All<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Trying to Make Sense of It All</span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 24.13-35, NRSV</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">11 April 2021, Easter 2, NL3-40</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><b></b></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognising him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-90rjnZPMwVc/YH1bg7JwJXI/AAAAAAAABSc/CU8MyXqg2JkjrSFWJVw-5h1D43su1tAiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/11%2BApril%2BEaster%2B2%2Bcommunion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="231" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-90rjnZPMwVc/YH1bg7JwJXI/AAAAAAAABSc/CU8MyXqg2JkjrSFWJVw-5h1D43su1tAiwCLcBGAsYHQ/w410-h231/11%2BApril%2BEaster%2B2%2Bcommunion.jpg" width="410" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Have you ever had the experience of trying to figure something out, but you just can’t get everything to make sense? Like you have multiple pieces of information, but they don’t seem to fit together, and no matter how much you obsess about it — or what I call “thinking about things” — it just doesn’t come together into a complete picture. So you keep thinking it over, trying to see if you’re missing a piece, or if there’s something that you thought was right but isn’t, or maybe if you just think in a different order, it’ll all work out. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now add in grief and crushed hopes, and that’s where these disciples were, on Easter afternoon. They had a lot of information, but it didn’t make sense. And when someone joined them along their walk and invited them to talk it through out loud, they started their story with past-tense hope. They used to hope. Once they had hoped. Their hopes were dashed, left behind, and all they had was a bunch of disjointed bits that they could not for the life of them figure out.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The stranger on the road listened to them as they wrestled with their confusion — with their “besides all this” and “moreover” and “but” — and then he started the story from the beginning. He talked of God’s work through people and places and events, from the shores of the Red Sea to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and showed how all these seemingly disparate bits fit together as pieces of the larger picture. He invited them to see themselves as part of God’s story — in a way that only the living word made flesh could do. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Before they knew it, both their journey and the story were at an end — or at least, so it seemed. The two disciples were perhaps feeling a bit less scattered than they had been before. When their companion waved goodbye at their door and stepped off into the twilight, they did what any follower of Jesus would do: they invited him in for an evening meal. They had learned well the lesson of hospitality, as they traveled the countryside two by two, visiting villages with the good news. So they insisted he come in, and together they sat down at the table.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There, around their own kitchen table, with a simple evening meal, their companion picked up the bread and did what the host usually did: he took the bread and said the blessing: “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe, for you have brought forth bread from the earth.” And he broke it in pieces, and gave it to them, serving them as if it were his own table.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In that moment of broken bread, they remembered. I mean, they re - membered. They put it all back together, and they themselves became whole again as everything fell into place. Their eyes were opened and they recognised him — recognised: to understand something they had known before. They saw Jesus, right there at their own table, being the host. And though they couldn’t understand it all, that moment drew them into a deeper reality that was there all along. They remembered all the other times he had taken bread, blessed and broken it, and given it to them — with the crowd on the hillside and at home after synagogue and in the borrowed upper room. They remembered the story he had told them on the road, and with the pieces of bread in their hands, it all just…clicked. Their eyes were opened, and they recognised him. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And before they could do or say anything, he vanished from their sight. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It turned out that neither the journey nor the story had ended. Jesus was alive, but not back, if that makes sense. They wouldn’t be able to grasp onto Jesus and hold him in place and just pick up where they left off before the trauma of losing him. Just a few verses after the end of our reading today, Jesus blesses his disciples and then ascends to heaven, leaving them to do all that he taught them — to teach his word, to heal, to welcome, to challenge injustice, and to take bread, bless and break it, and share it, so that others might also see him. Jesus is alive, and leading us forward into life too — and he left us with the power of the word and the bread together, and that was enough for the disciples. They still didn’t get him back to the way things used to be, but he gave us something we can do anytime to remember and be re-membered: to hear the word and break the bread, and see. Wherever they were, at any table, they could see him. Wherever we are, at any table, we can see him.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We are inundated with more information than we can really make sense of, but the story of God’s love and providing and leading is still there for us to enter into, and it can tie together things we never thought would be part of the same big picture. There are still unexpected companions on our journeys, and there are still people who need inviting in to share a meal. And we still need to share our experiences of seeing God. Because it is in telling the story of God’s saving grace to others that the Body of Christ is able to see the fullness of God’s goodness. It took the women’s story, and Peter’s, and the two disciples who went to Emmaus, all seen together, each in light of the others for the truth to become clear: that Christ is alive, and brings us into new life with him. Not into our old lives, but new life. Jesus may have vanished from their sight, but he is still visible when we make him known. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When we break bread together, we are re-made, re-membered into the Body of Christ. We are the ones who live as his hands and feet in our community, we are the ones whose voices speak his word. We remember all that he did and said, and by pulling that past story into the present, we help others experience God today. If we will not act like Christ and share his word, where will people see him?</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The first step into new life with Christ is that we must see him — not just a jumble of facts and moments, but a whole story God has been telling from the beginning of time and continuing on today. And we see best in the breaking of bread.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Look at this table. (And when you are at home, look at your table!)</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Its familiar contours, that scratch on the leg, that one spot you shouldn’t lean too hard on.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Look at this table.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Everyone has a place here — </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">whether we sit at the same spot every time or this is our first visit.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Despite all appearances and expectations,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Christ is the host at this table.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He is the One who tells the stories, </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">the One who takes, blesses, breaks, and shares,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">the One who knows us better than we know ourselves.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Christ is the host at this table, </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">at every table,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">and in him all our broken pieces are re-membered into his Body.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So come, take your place at Christ’s table,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">listen,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">be fed,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">and your eyes will be opened to recognise him.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-74147927185522442712021-03-21T12:00:00.001+00:002021-03-21T12:00:00.590+00:00Not an Object -- a sermon on Luke 18-19 for Lent 5<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Not an Object (out on a limb 2.0)</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 18.31 - 19.10</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">21 March 2021, Lent 5, NL3-35</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem, and today’s story takes us on the road through Jericho, a city about 20 miles northeast of and 3400 feet lower elevation than Jerusalem. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the verses that come just before today’s reading, a well-off man asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life, and was instructed to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow Jesus. He was saddened by this teaching, and Jesus’ response was “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom.” When the disciples expressed their own shock, Jesus said: “What is impossible for humans is possible for God.” He continued to teach them as they traveled, which is where we pick up the story in the gospel according to Luke, chapter 18, beginning at verse 31 and continuing to chapter 19 verse 10. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.’ But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ Then he shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet; but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qGbUwzqti-w/YFUrxXlDbsI/AAAAAAAABRs/dT8M9rJBncs4xOHMWbQQhzrSFyDo_5POQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/21%2Bmarch%2Blent%2B5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="243" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qGbUwzqti-w/YFUrxXlDbsI/AAAAAAAABRs/dT8M9rJBncs4xOHMWbQQhzrSFyDo_5POQCLcBGAsYHQ/w432-h243/21%2Bmarch%2Blent%2B5.jpg" width="432" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He wanted to see Jesus…so he packed up all his dignity, power, and prestige and climbed a tree, like a small child, hanging from the branches while the rabbi stood underneath and summoned him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Zacchaeus was probably more used to summoning others than being summoned himself, more used to other people making a fool of themselves, creating a spectacle…but he wanted to see Jesus. It didn’t matter what people thought of him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And it turns out that what people thought of him may not have been correct anyway—as he dropped down out of the tree and led Jesus to his home, he could hear them grumbling that he was a traitor to his people, taking the job collecting taxes for the Romans, that he was just like the rest of them, getting rich off the suffering of his neighbours. The way taxes worked at the time, Rome allotted each sector a certain amount they had to bring in…anything they collected over and above that amount was their salary. Given that Zacchaeus was rich, that must obviously mean that he was cheating people, extorting them and living high while the rest of them struggled to get by, right? He was probably used to hearing their rumours and gossip about him, he was well known in town. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And yet, in his business suit and shiny shoes, he climbed up the tree and went out on a limb, trying to see Jesus.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And when he came down, he went out on a limb to declare that he was giving away his wealth and that he was careful not to defraud people—in the Greek, Zacchaeus speaks in an ongoing present tense, not a future tense as it’s often translated. He is describing how he is now, already, what is current habits are…and Jesus too says “Today”—just like in his first sermon, when he declared that today, right now, in his presence, in his very being, the word of God was being fulfilled, coming to life. Zacchaeus doesn’t just say that Abraham <i>is</i> his ancestor, he <i>lives</i> like a son of Abraham. Despite the fact that to everyone else he was an object of scorn, Jesus saw him for who he was, a human being trying to be faithful. Jesus recognised him, and invited others to recognise him too, as an integral member of their community…though to recognise Zacchaeus would also require seeing their own reliance on stereotypes and stigma, looking at their own hearts.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He wanted to see Jesus…but the people around him wanted him to be quiet. And yet the blind man shouted all the more. Even just the act of standing up on that crowded roadside meant laying aside propriety and expectations. His neighbours shushed and pushed, but still he went out on a limb, speaking up and refusing to be held back. He could hear, but he wanted to see Jesus.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus summoned him—a man used to being ignored, walked around, talked over—he came and stood face to face with the man he could not see, and heard the question: what do you want me to do for you?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Imagine how infrequently he had been asked this question. Most of the time, those who live on the streets or who navigate life with disabilities are told what they are getting, or what they should want. Their lives are defined by the people around them, and what we think they can and can’t do, marked by assumptions that most of us have codified as fact. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When the man shouted for Jesus, he took a risk—challenging the picture of those around him, knowing that most people would not see him for who he is (a beloved child of God, a son of Abraham) but rather as a problem to be solved. But Jesus saw him, and not only restored his sight but his dignity, his humanity, his place in the community as well. Despite the fact that to everyone else he was an object of pity, Jesus saw him for who he was, a human being with more vision than even his own disciples had. Jesus recognised him, and invited others to recognise him too, as an integral member of their community…though to recognise the blind man would also require seeing their own reliance on stereotypes and stigma, looking at their own hearts.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They wanted to see Jesus…these friends who had followed him for so long. They’d seen miracles, and performed some themselves. They’d been healed and taught, they’d walked in his footsteps, basked in his glory, shared his dinners. But when it came to the idea that he could absorb violence without returning it, they could not see. When it came to the idea that he would lead them not to power and glory but to service and weakness, it sounded like foolishness. They wanted to see Jesus, but their eyes were clouded by the values of the world, their minds closed off by their assumptions about how things ought to be. To them he was the object of their political and spiritual desire, not a whole person inviting them into a new way of wholeness too.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The disciples walked the roads with Jesus, stirring up dust and controversy every step of the way, and yet for all their seeking, they weren’t yet able to lay aside those same constraints that had caused people to shush the blind man or to grumble about Zacchaeus. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s so easy to see other people as objects…of our desire, of our pity, of our scorn. Jesus sees us, though, and calls us to recognise that people are not the one dimensional objects or representatives we so often reduce them to. An example I like to give is that I am a woman, and a minister, and an immigrant, and a curly-girl. But I don’t speak for all curly-haired people, and “minister” is not the only thing I am, and my experience of being an immigrant is different than many others. I’m not only any one of those things, nor am I the spokesperson for any of them. That’s true for every single person we meet. A person sleeping rough is a person, with interests and experiences and family background and a story. They don’t represent all people without homes any more than I represent all people who have a home. A person with an addiction is a person, not an addiction. A person whose job I would personally never do is a person, not their job. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus recognises them, and us, and invites us to recognise one another too, as integral members of our community…though to recognise each other will also require seeing their own reliance on stereotypes and stigma, looking at our own hearts.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Zacchaeus and the blind man wanted to see Jesus — they had some measure of vision already, to recognise Christ in their midst. It was the people around Zacchaeus and the people around the blind man who could not see. They couldn’t see their neighbour fully, but that was at least partially because they could not see themselves. They thought of themselves as the normal ones, arbiters of what’s right and wrong, who’s in and who’s out. They were the measuring stick for who else belonged in their community. It was only when Jesus challenged their vision that the whole community could be healed. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The disciples were a more complicated situation. They couldn’t fully see Jesus, because they were still holding back part of themselves — and being held back by their reluctance to allow that God might work outside of their own frame, their own people, their own story. They kept their feet firmly on the ground, respectable and correct, well within the boundaries they had set up for themselves and God.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But if we want to see Jesus, we’ll need to be willing to recognise him in the faces of our neighbours — even the neighbours we have seen only as an object. We’ll need to be willing to go out on a limb, to broaden our vision and open our minds and hearts beyond what feels comfortable. And we’ll need to be willing to ask for help, however much we want to project an image of having it all figured out. When we ask Jesus to give us vision, he’ll summon us recognise the kingdom of God among us — a kingdom of love and grace and justice, where no one is an object, no one is simply a screen for our projected stereotypes, and everyone has the chance to both give and receive, because each and every one is a whole person made in God’s image and beloved.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May we recognise Jesus among us, and see his vision. Amen.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-33452313226510178562021-03-14T13:28:00.002+00:002021-03-14T13:28:41.719+00:00what more do we need? a sermon on the rich man and Lazarus<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">What More Do We Need?</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 16.19-30</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">14 March 2021, Lent 4, NL3-34</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i></i><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week we heard Jesus teaching in parables about looking for the lost and restoring the wholeness of community. He proceeded straight after the story of the Lost Son to tell some very confusing parables related to how we use our resources, especially wealth, ending with the statement “you cannot serve God and wealth." Some Pharisees and other leaders heard him teaching and they mocked and criticised him, and Luke describes them as “Pharisees who were lovers of money.” Jesus then says to them, “you justify yourselves before others but God knows your heart.” That’s where we pick up the story today, in Luke chapter 16, at verse 19. I am reading from the Common English Bible.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said, “There was a certain rich man who clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and who feasted luxuriously every day. At his gate lay a certain poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores. Lazarus longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Instead, dogs would come and lick his sores.</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">“The poor man died and was carried by angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. While being tormented in the place of the dead, he looked up and saw Abraham at a distance with Lazarus at his side. He shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I’m suffering in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received good things, whereas Lazarus received terrible things. Now Lazarus is being comforted and you are in great pain. Moreover, a great crevasse has been fixed between us and you. Those who wish to cross over from here to you cannot. Neither can anyone cross from there to us.’</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">“The rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father’s house. I have five brothers. He needs to warn them so that they don’t come to this place of agony.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. They must listen to them.’ The rich man said, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change their hearts and lives.’ Abraham said, ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, then neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.’”</span></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lent is a season when we are meant to prepare for Easter by first noticing and then detaching ourselves from the things that separate us from God — things that take our attention and energy when we ought to be focused on God’s kingdom. We fast from things that distract us, so that we can be ready — or at least as ready as possible in our limited human reality — to receive the incredible grace of resurrection. Lent is about honest self-reflection, letting go, and clearing ourselves, body, mind, and spirit, so that we can repent and return to God’s way. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So perhaps it’s no surprise that readings like this come up in Lent. It isn’t exactly the cheeriest of seasons, when we confront our brokenness with honesty, sorrow, and hope. And this reading is not cheery. It’s one we’d probably rather skip over…but that discipline of truth-telling that we practice in Lent so that we can do it all year long requires us to confront the hard words Jesus has for us today.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The contrasts in this story couldn’t be more startling — between a nameless rich man who has the best clothes, and a poor man called Lazarus whose broken skin doesn’t even cover him, between the man who feasted luxuriously every day and the man who saw those feasts and wished for a crumb but starved just outside, between the one who died and was simply carried off, and the one who died and was given a proper and dignified burial. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There was clearly a chasm between these two men, and their experience of the world. They existed in the same sphere, living in the same space, looking at each other through windows, through the gate, or whenever the rich man left his house and had to step over poor Lazarus. They knew each other, but their lives were so different, they might as well have lived on different planets. One had more than he knew what to do with, and so had access to anything he could ever want or dream. The other had less than nothing, and could only look longingly and hope for mercy from those in his community — mercy that was never forthcoming. Not even a crumb.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once they had both died, the tables turned but the chasm remained. They could still see each other, and speak to one another…and the rich man did. He was used to getting what he wanted, and saw no reason this time should be any different. So he begged for the same thing that he had denied Lazarus in life — just a drop of cool water. Just a drop, just a crumb. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But in asking, he betrayed himself: he called for Lazarus by name.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s easy to imagine that having lived such incredibly different lives, that the rich man might never have even noticed the poor man — just always studiously avoided looking. It’s something many of us who have spent time in cities are practiced at, the looking away, never making eye contact with people in need sitting on the side of the street. We stay safely on our side of the chasm, imagining we have little in common with “those people.” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the rich man said “send Lazarus.”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He knew him. He recognised his face and knew his name. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He knew that man who sat at his gate, starving and wounded. Which means he <i>chose</i> to ignore his suffering. These two people lived in the same space and were in the same community and one of them simply decided that the other was not valuable enough to help. He preferred his sumptuous meals and beautiful clothes and didn’t care about anyone else, not even his closest neighbour, who lay at his very gate.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We might put it like this: he loved himself far more than his neighbour.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When the chasm he had created was brought to his attention, he was undeterred in his sense of entitlement to control Lazarus, asking for him to be sent away from the comfort he’d never had in life, back to the very place where he had suffered, for the benefit of the rich brothers. Who, for the record, appear to have never cared for Lazarus in life, so it’s not at all clear they would pay attention to him coming back from the dead either.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Abraham’s response should give us all pause. He said “they have Moses and the Prophets. They must listen to them.” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In other words: we already know what we’re supposed to do. The commandment to Love God and Love Neighbour are not news, they’ve been there this whole time. That’s supposed to be the core of who we are and what we do. What more do we need before we act on the word of God? What will it take for us to recognise the truth of God’s call, and respond to it?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Remember that Jesus told this story to “Pharisees who were lovers of money” — as Pharisees, they knew the Torah. They knew perfectly well the commandments and the words of the prophets through the ages, calling people to live God’s way. And yet their love was out of order. Rather than loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving their neighbour as themselves, they loved money first. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think Jesus told this story to show them what kind of world that out-of-order love would create. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The thing is, we know all this, and yet we choose not to know it. We know that we have created that chasm between us and them, coming up with all sorts of reasons why we can’t cross it to love our neighbour. And so we look away, and congratulate ourselves, jockeying for our return to normal while developing nations continue to die of covid with no access to vaccines. We look away as we place our stockpiling grocery orders, while people fleeing from violence or environmental disaster or abject poverty die, either trying to get here or in substandard accommodations in our cities. We look away as we justify ourselves as not knowing anyone who would do those things while women are abducted and killed for walking home after dark. We look away as we repeat rumours and jokes about others, while they hear us and wish they weren’t alive anymore. And the chasm grows, and grows, and becomes more and more fixed, and it feels impossible to cross.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The rich man knew Lazarus’s name. He recognised his face. But he did not recognise the image of God in his neighbour. Or, to be more honest about it, he chose not to see the image of God in his neighbour, because he loved himself more.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lent is a time for honesty, for the kind of self-reflection that brings us closer to the truth that sets us free. Choosing to live in ways that create that chasm, while the kingdom of God beckons from the other side, may feel like freedom but actually we end up trapped too, unable to get out of a system we can’t even see, and it can be terrifying to admit it. But perfect love casts out fear, and the Way of Jesus leads to life — not just surviving, but abundant life, eternal life that starts now. Jesus says, in this story and in plenty of others: you know the way. I am the way. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May we recognise our part in creating the chasms of this world, and choose to live by Christ’s command to love. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-35717638907715467012021-03-07T13:28:00.001+00:002021-03-14T13:30:08.571+00:00The One Matters -- a sermon on Luke 15's lost things<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">The One Matters</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 15.1-32 (CEB)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">7 March 2021, Lent 3, NL3-33</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Or what woman, if she owns ten silver coins and loses one of them, won’t light a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, joy breaks out in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said, “A certain man had two sons. The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them. Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“When he had used up his resources, a severe food shortage arose in that country and he began to be in need. He hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He longed to eat his fill from what the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, but I’m starving to death! I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.” ’ So he got up and went to his father.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him, and kissed him. Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Now his older son was in the field. Coming in from the field, he approached the house and heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. The servant replied, ‘Your brother has arrived, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he received his son back safe and sound.’ Then the older son was furious and didn’t want to enter in, but his father came out and begged him. He answered his father, ‘Look, I’ve served you all these years, and I never disobeyed your instruction. Yet you’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours returned, after gobbling up your estate on prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ Then his father said, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.’”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These stories may already be familiar to many of us — whether we’ve heard them from the Bible or not, they’ve entered into the public consciousness, like the story of being a neighbour from a couple of weeks ago. We use phrases like “prodigal son” or “lost sheep” even if we don’t know the specifics of the full story that Jesus told. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some of you know what I’m about to say next, I suspect! — that the popularity of those phrases and the things we think they refer to might be obscuring what Jesus was actually talking about. Remember that a parable is a story that is intentionally open-ended — like a parabola in maths is an open-ended shape — so that we can continue to learn about the kingdom of God from many angles within the story. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One of the things that has happened over the centuries is that we have conflated these stories Jesus tells in Luke’s gospel with one of his sayings from John’s gospel, where he says, “I am the good shepherd”…and so we assume that this story is the same as the one John is telling. But that means we have to ignore the set-up of today’s parables, which suggest something quite different!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus is speaking to the people who are grumbling about his choice of companionship — in this case, some leaders in the community. To those leaders, he said, “Suppose someone among you had 100 sheep, and lost one…”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now, we have been conditioned by the conflation of this story with the one about Jesus being the good shepherd to assume that this is a story about God seeking out the lost. But listen carefully to the start of the story. To the Pharisees and scripture experts, Jesus said, “Suppose someone among you had 100 sheep and lost one.” From the very first sentence, Jesus is letting the listener know that they are supposed to see themselves as the shepherd! Except the things he then says are things that no shepherd would do. First of all, what shepherd can just glance at a hundred sheep on a hillside and notice that there are only 99? Second, what shepherd would leave the whole flock on that hillside and go searching for one…especially since that probably means when he came back, he’d have a flock of just one?!? One lost sheep out of a hundred would not be a terribly big deal, though it does suggest some carelessness on the part of the shepherd, a bit of a failure at his job.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second story ups the stakes a little bit, with the coin being lost — that coin is a whole day’s wages. To lose an entire day’s wages would be a pretty significant problem! </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The shepherd and the woman then search, thoroughly and tirelessly, until they find what they have lost. Then they rejoice, calling together their community to celebrate with them — maybe even spending more than they had originally lost and found on the party!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The third story increases the stakes even more. Many of us have used phrases like “family is most important”…well, here’s a story about a family that doesn’t quite go according to plan. The younger son demanded his inheritance while his father was still alive, and he ran off and spent it. When he came home, the father welcomed him with open arms and again there’s a big party, what was lost has been found! But when we read all three of these stories together the way they were intended, we see something unusual:</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">No one went looking for the younger son who wandered off. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And when he returned, no one went looking for the older son to tell him the news and invite him to come in from work early and join the party.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The shepherd recognised that he had lost a sheep, and went looking. The woman recognised that she had lost a coin, and went looking. The father doesn’t seem to have recognised what he was losing, and he did not go looking. Yes, he welcomed the younger son, and pleaded with the older one, but only when they turned back up of their own accord.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps by now you can see the problem with the way we have often understood these parables. The shepherd is responsible for his sheep <i>and loses one</i>. The woman is responsible for her coins <i>and loses one.</i> The father is responsible for his sons <i>and loses…one and then the other.</i> But of course we know that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">God does not lose us.</span> God never loses track of a sheep. There is nowhere we can go that would be out of God’s sight. God does not simply forget about us, toiling away in the fields. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And when we hear the interpretation Jesus gives, that there is rejoicing when someone changes their heart and life, when they repent — we see further how bizarre that interpretation really is, though we have been used to it for a long time. A sheep doesn’t need to repent for doing what sheep do — wandering around looking for better grass. And a coin can’t repent because it’s an inanimate object. Sheep and coins don’t lose themselves, they are lost by their owners. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Which means it must actually be the owner that is changing their heart and life in this story! It’s the shepherd who recognises his error, and works to put it right, to bring the flock back to wholeness, even at great risk to his livelihood. It’s the woman who recognises her error, and works to put it right, bringing her savings back to wholeness, even if it means staying up all night tearing the house apart and putting it back together. But the father — who is tasked with caring for something far more valuable than sheep or coins — doesn’t seem to recognise his error until it’s too late and the family is coming apart at the seams, wholeness out of reach.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And Jesus has addressed the religious leaders as if they are the shepherd…the woman…the father. Telling them what they are supposed to be like: not to complain about another leader who goes looking for the lost, but rather to recognise their faults and failings and change their ways. That means seeing who’s missing and taking some risks to restore the wholeness of the community, because that is what causes rejoicing in heaven: restoring wholeness.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All of which leads me to wonder: have we noticed who is missing from our community? And what effort are we willing to put in, what risks are we willing to take, for the one? So often we are focused on what the majority wants or needs…what about the one who doesn’t feel they fit in, or who hasn’t been able to access, or has been left out and feels unloved or taken for granted? Are we willing to make changes to the way we do things so that the one, or the few, can be included at the same level as the 99? Or do we either assume they’re fine out in the field without an invitation to the party, or that they’ll be perfectly fine just out on the edges of the community where there’s no trouble to us?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps the most obvious connection is disabled access — how do people feel entering our church buildings and other buildings in our community? — like a valued regular part of the family, or different and causing trouble to get in and navigate around the space and participate fully in activities? We might ask the same questions about socio-economic status, or educational experience, or family configuration, or ethnic background, or health needs, or gender identity, or knowledge of our traditions, or traumatic pasts, or facility with technology, or any number of other things that might be keeping people separate. Without them, our community is not whole. So what effort are we willing to put in not just to make the one welcome, but to look for them and rejoice in their presence? It’s so tempting to count the cost of making changes, not to mention the risk to the 99 and their feelings of being left on the hillside for a bit. But what about the cost to the one who has never fit in, or always been made to feel second-class or marginal or have to come through the back door? And what about the cost to the whole community when we are fractured and missing pieces?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Pharisees and legal experts grumbled about Jesus spending time with the people they thought weren’t worth the effort. Jesus responded with stories of God rejoicing when we recognise the sinfulness of that thought and change our hearts and lives by going to seek the lost…and the consequences to the family if we don’t recognise and don’t try. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May we recognise the missing members of our family, and seek the wholeness God desires for the kingdom of God coming on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-39979280474357598102021-03-01T21:46:00.004+00:002021-03-01T21:46:32.122+00:00Lives worth talking about -- a sermon on Luke 13<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Lives Worth Talking About</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 13.1-9, 31-35 (CEB)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">28 February 2021, NL3-32, Lent 2</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Since the story we heard last week about Jesus telling the parable of the good neighbour, and then encountering Martha, Jesus has been teaching his disciples and the crowds who follow them throughout the countryside and towns. He has taught them directly about prayer, and he has spoken in parables about many things. He told them to let their light shine, and to look carefully at the circumstances and times they are living in for evidence of God’s work. We pick up the story in the gospel according to Luke, chapter 13. I am reading from the Common English Bible.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. What about those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think that they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertiliser. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>At that time, some Pharisees approached Jesus and said, “Go! Get away from here, because Herod wants to kill you.”</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Jesus said to them, “Go, tell that fox, ‘Look, I’m throwing out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will complete my work. However, it’s necessary for me to travel today, tomorrow, and the next day because it’s impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that. Look, your house is abandoned. I tell you, you won’t see me until the time comes when you say, Blessings on the one who comes in the Lord’s name.”</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked “why do bad things happen to good people?” Or its cousin, “why has this bad thing happened to me?” Sometimes when we are reading the Bible we remind one another that in ancient times, before people knew about bacteria or viruses or meteorology or plate tectonics or other sciences we take for granted, people often believed that illness or calamity was a result of sin. It’s fascinating to me that we speak about that as if it’s an ancient idea that we no longer hold, and yet even now, both people of faith and people who’ve never set foot in a church can ask “am I being punished for something?” when they get a diagnosis or experience a tragedy in their family or home. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So it should not surprise us that people around Jesus wanted to bring up the Galileans — people from the same region as Jesus and his disciples — who did everything right, made their pilgrimage, were worshipping at the Temple, and yet were slaughtered by the Roman governor’s militia, literally in the middle of their worship service. What did they do wrong, that this terrible thing would happen to them? And, if it wasn’t their sinfulness, then should they be worried that Galileans are being targeted? Should Jesus and his disciples maybe stay away from Jerusalem, for safety?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus is pretty clear that sinfulness has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, bad things happen. And it isn’t just Galileans — he reminds them of the Jerusalemites who happened to be walking in the wrong place at the wrong time when the tower of Siloam collapsed. They weren’t any more sinful than everyone else — as Paul would later write, “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Which makes our question about why bad things happen <i>to good people</i> interesting. Jesus, and later Paul, seem to be reminding us that actually, there are no good people. When we say “why do bad things happen to good people” we are implying that there are bad people who deserve bad things happening to them — though we usually don’t say that part out loud, it’s still there. But the truth is that all have sinned…and all receive grace. There’s no hierarchy where some people deserve tragedy or illness — no one deserves it. But they still happen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The statement Jesus makes is confusing, then. He says, “unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.” At first glance it sounds like he’s saying that we can avoid tragedy by repenting. But since he just said it wasn’t sinfulness that caused those deaths, that can’t be right. And we know that we can’t avoid death forever, as it’s a natural part of life. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But we can, Jesus says, live in such a way that when we die, it’s our <i>lives</i> people talk about. Will we be remembered for the fruit we bore for the kingdom of God, or simply for the way we were cut down? </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think that’s why he tells this particular fig tree parable to the people who ask this question. The fig tree in the vineyard looked like it had grown to maturity. It was no longer the sapling it once was…but despite its appearance, it had yet to live up to its purpose. Yet the gardener believed in the tree and its potential — he just needed time and intentional effort to change its story.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I think that’s what Jesus is getting at when he calls us to change our hearts and lives — to put intentional effort in. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That means we need to dig down around the roots, even though sometimes that’s hard work and exposes things we would rather not see. What is around our roots, tangling us up and choking off our connection to our Source?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It means we need to nourish ourselves with the things we need to grow in grace, even if it’s not what we would really prefer. Remember that fertiliser really meant manure and compost! It’s smelly and unpleasant, but it’s also the best thing to nurture the tree. What would feed our lives and help us become the people God created us to be in this world?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It means we need to prune some branches, even if it hurts. Unpruned trees waste energy that could be used for bearing fruit, instead just growing long branches with leaves that don’t produce anything. What branches in our lives or communities need pruning so that our energy can go into doing what we’re made to do, and what Jesus is looking for us to do?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The time and effort put into bringing the tree not just to look good but to do good is, I think, what Jesus is talking about when he calls us to change our hearts and lives…so that the fruit we bear is worth talking about.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hearing this, some Pharisees come and offer Jesus a second warning — as if the story about the Galileans being killed by Pilate wasn’t enough, they want him to know that Herod is out to get him too. But Jesus is too busy going about God’s kingdom business to make time for Herod’s nonsense, and his mission to bring life in all its fullness will not be deterred by the death-dealing powers of his day.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Though the political and religious leaders hold people fast, he continues to try to gather them like a mother hen. They may not recognise him yet, while they are still in thrall to the powers around them, to the status quo and their desire to get ahead and focus on themselves and their own happiness, but the day is coming when they will recognise that the house they have built themselves is empty, while Jesus offers abundant life. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I have to confess to you that at this point, I have about five examples of our current social, political, economic, and cultural life I want to give to make an explicit connection between this biblical text and our contemporary moment. But I also don’t want to constrain your thinking — part of digging around the roots and fertilising our lives is loosening the soil enough to see the connections the Spirit is presenting to us, so that we can bear better fruit in the midst of those situations we find ourselves in every day. So I invite you to think about the world in which we live, and the systems at play in our lives — from what we value as a nation or a community, to how we express those values in our economy and politics, to the choices we make in caring for our neighbours both locally and globally. Where do you recognise Jesus gathering us like a mother hen, and where do you see us resisting his call and choosing our own ways, or the way it's always been, instead?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then what digging and fertilising and pruning needs to be done, in order to see Jesus more clearly and bear fruit for his kingdom — in our own lives, in the church, in our community, in our nation, in the world? How can we live in such a way that it’s our lives that are memorable, no matter how they end?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May we recognise the things that make for abundant life, and act on them. Amen.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-28362367011348539022021-02-21T20:55:00.004+00:002021-02-21T20:55:00.521+00:00Love in Balance -- a sermon on Martha, Mary, and the Parable of the Good Neighbour<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Love in Balance</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 10.25-42 (CEB)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">21 February 2021, NL3-31, Lent 1</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After the transfiguration, Jesus continued his ministry of healing and teaching, with a new emphasis on talking with the disciples about his upcoming suffering, death, and resurrection. Just as he had sent the twelve out to teach and heal, he then sent out seventy apostles, to go in pairs into every village and town, sharing the good news and healing the sick. He told them not to take any extra supplies or money, but to rely on the people they met. They returned with many stories of the Spirit’s work, and Jesus rejoiced with them, even as he reminded them that it is God’s will to be revealed, not their own worthiness or work. Today’s reading begins at the end of that conversation, in Luke chapter 10, beginning at verse 25. I am reading from the Common English Bible.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right, so he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus replied, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves, who stripped him naked, beat him up, and left him near death. Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. When he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man, and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. A Samaritan, who was on a journey, came to where the man was. But when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, ‘Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.’ What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbour to the man who encountered thieves?”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his message. By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal. So Martha came to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself? Tell her to help me.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord answered, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. It won’t be taken away from her.”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One of the things I like about the Narrative Lectionary is that it sets out readings in longer sections so we see the context in which Jesus says things, rather than only the short snippets we might be used to. In this case, it’s always surprising to me that the parable about the Samaritan who was a good neighbour and the story of Martha and Mary are next to each other. It seems so strange, to have Jesus tell a parable like that, about doing something to help another, and then immediately turn around and say that Mary has chosen the better part. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That strangeness led me to do two things over the past couple of weeks. First, to check what else is going on — if the reading were even longer, what would we see? Well, backing up a little bit we find Jesus sending out 70 of his followers to do his work, his ministry, throughout the area, and then they come back and report on all that happened. It’s in the midst of that reporting that the legal expert asks his question. Perhaps he had been on the edges of the crowd, listening to all these things that Jesus’ followers had done, and that led him to ask his testy questions! </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then after the story of Martha and Jesus talking about Mary, Jesus teaches his followers how to pray. Which is something that any rabbi of the day would instruct his disciples about, of course — and all the more poignant after witnessing Martha’s distress.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second thing was to dig more deeply into the original language and what some of these words mean. Because we know that all translation is interpretation, but sometimes if we look at words that are shared across the several stories yet translated differently into English, we can get a sense of the point that Jesus is trying to make through these different angles.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the moment when I ran into something I had never noticed before. The story of Martha and Jesus and Mary is nowhere near as neat and tidy as we’ve been taught Martha’s housekeeping was. Translators have done quite a bit of interpreting along the way. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For instance, in the oldest Greek manuscripts it says “Martha welcomed him” but doesn’t say anything about her house. That same phrase is the one used for those who receive Jesus’ message … and those who don’t, like the Samaritan village in chapter 9 where it says they “would not welcome him because his face was set toward Jerusalem” — they did not receive the message because they did not approve of his intentions. Martha welcomed him…but with no evidence anywhere of dinner being prepared!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then it says that Martha <i>also</i> had a sister named Mary who <i>also</i> sat at the Lord’s feet…and all of those “also”s are left out of English translations. But it’s pretty important to know that Mary “also” sat at the Lord’s feet because it means that’s what Martha was doing, and Mary was also. And then to learn that every other time the phrase “sit at his feet” is used, it means to be a disciple — to travel with a teacher, to learn from him and to do what he does. It isn’t literally at that moment sitting on the floor while Jesus is on a chair, but following him with the other disciples, perhaps even being one of those seventy who had been sent out earlier in the chapter! </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The thing that was most startling to me, though, was the realisation that the word for “my sister has left me”…is a word that in about 80% of other times it is used means “went away” — like physically left, for good.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the point that I realised for the first time in 25 years of seriously reading the Bible that Mary never speaks in this story. She has no response to this conversation between Martha and Jesus. All the times I have wondered why Martha didn’t simply speak to Mary rather than triangulating Jesus suddenly made sense. There’s no evidence that Mary was actually there. In fact, it seems more likely that Mary was out in the community of disciples — perhaps even one of the seventy who travelled, two by two, through the countryside. We know there were at least a few women among that company, though it was outside the gender norms of the day. It’s very possible one of them was Mary, out ministering to people and proclaiming the good news.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ministry is the word used to describe what Martha is doing — though our English translations use words like “getting ready for the meal” or “preparing the table” it’s actually the same word, <i>diakonia</i>, that was used for the angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness, for Peter’s mother in law, and it’s the same word that will be used in the book of Acts to describe the ministry done by the apostles serving the community’s needs. So Martha sat at the Lord’s feet by doing practical ministry, serving people in need, possibly out of her home. And Mary also sat at the Lord’s feet, somewhere away from home, healing and teaching. And the story tells us that Martha was stressed by this — the words used actually mean she was “pulled in many directions” and “deeply distressed.” She’s carrying a huge emotional burden — as anyone is when someone they love is far away and doing things that could be dangerous. Yet she also needed to focus on the ministry right in front of her. She was feeling pulled apart, mind and heart in two places at once, torn between caring for people in her community and worrying about her sister. No wonder she asked Jesus to send her sister home!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Jesus then noticed and named Martha’s worry, and told her only one thing is necessary, perhaps he was speaking to that sense of feeling torn, and inviting Martha into her own sense of wholeness, without worrying about whether someone else was doing it right or not. Perhaps he was even calling back to his own teaching about how family ties are changed in his community of followers, and so how Mary followed her call to discipleship was not Martha’s to control, just as how Martha was faithful was not in Mary’s control! And in fact, it says Mary has chosen a good way — not the best way or even a better way, but a good way. There’s no implication that Martha’s way is not good, but rather a sense that both are good and valid forms of serving God and neighbour. Deep down, Martha already knew that…but she still wanted to prove herself right, with Jesus or with her sister, and those competing desires, between sisterly love and faithful discipleship, were tearing her apart.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the moment when I saw a connection to the good neighbour parable that I’d never noticed before. I hope you all will tell me what you think of this connection, and whether it makes sense to you or not!</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The legal expert — someone who knew perfectly well what the scripture says — asked Jesus what one thing he could tick off his to-do list that would guarantee him eternal life. When Jesus turned the question back on him, he revealed that he already knew the answer: to love God with all your being, and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus said that is exactly how you live…a whole way of life rather than one thing to tick off the to-do list, not exactly about eternal life but rather about abundant life, but the legal expert seemed to understand…and so he looked for another loophole. Who exactly is the neighbour he ought to love the way he loved himself? And therefore who was he free to not love?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus then told a story in which two characters love God more than they love their neighbour. The third character, shockingly, was an enemy, disliked, sometimes feared, and generally thought to be wrong in their religious beliefs… and he behaved with compassion. He set aside his business, his travel plans, and his resources to help someone he did not know and could not have recognised…yet he did recognise him, as a fellow child of God. His love of God and his love of neighbour were balanced, and it showed in his actions. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Jesus was welcomed by Martha, who was feeling pulled in every direction in service to others, so much that she was beginning to lose her own sense of self, and she thought having her sister there would help. Her love was out of balance too — she was showing more love to her neighbour than to herself or to God — and she was feeling the pressure of that imbalance. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps these stories are really one big story about what loving God and neighbour looks like. When we’re too caught up in our godliness, we may feel we can’t risk that for anything, even an emergency. And when we’re too caught up in our service, we may feel pulled apart and like we need someone else to come fill us up. When the balance is right, we’re able to see past the to-do list, past the rules, and truly love each child of God we come across.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Jesus said to the legal expert, and to Martha, and to us: You already know this. None of this is headline news or a groundbreaking discovery — God wrote the covenant on our hearts and called us to love. Do this and you will live. Not just after death, but a whole life worth living, to the full, in God’s kingdom now.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As we begin this season of Lent, may we recognise God’s call to love. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">**among other sources, this paper presented to the Society of Biblical Literature in 2014 (and the basis of a later book) was most helpful in curating a list of footnotes and language notes to supplement my mediocre greek knowledge when I started to realise that something was fishy with the Martha and Mary translations: https://www.marystromerhanson.com/uploads/1/1/2/6/112678431/paper_for_sbl_3.29.14_du.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1-Y6TVMa7q56LKtRz2iHxWAeVRIZ2I8EDwZx3m1EKIHUUTOtRlnZys-Zw</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-14780222772700342382021-02-07T11:25:00.002+00:002021-02-07T11:25:13.957+00:00Truth Raises Up -- a sermon on Mark 1.29-39, Peter's mother in law and other healings<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s // for moderator’s national online service</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Truth Raises Up</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mark 1.29-39 NRSV</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">7 February 2021, Ordinary 5B</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The video of the whole service is here, or the manuscript of just the sermon is below.</span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tWT-oojZq7Q" width="320" youtube-src-id="tWT-oojZq7Q"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today’s reading is from the gospel according to Mark, chapter 1, verses 29 - 39. It was the Sabbath and Jesus had been teaching in the synagogue, and while he was there he healed a man who had an unclean spirit. We pick up the story at the end of the sabbath day service. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hello friends, I’m Teri Peterson, minister of St. John’s in Gourock, and I am so grateful to the moderator for the invitation to be here, and to you for joining me as we encounter God’s living word together today. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I’d like to ask you to imagine a scene — one that may feel strange just now, as it’s something we haven’t been able to do in nearly a year, but try to picture it: people spilling out of a building — a church, a theatre, a comedy club, a concert — into the street, milling around talking to each other about what they saw and heard inside. The group disperses as they head to different places to continue their conversations, at the pub, on the bus, walking home. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That sabbath day the people spilled out of the synagogue into the streets of Capernaum with more than enough to talk about for the rest of the day. They had seen something amazing! Simon and Andrew headed home, with their business partners James and John, like they always did, going for their traditional Saturday lunch, and they were lucky enough to be first to invite the guest preacher round for the roast. Imagine them talking about all they had seen and heard that morning, chatting away as they walked home, and everyone else in town doing the same, though looking enviously after them and wishing they had been able to invite Jesus themselves.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once in the house, things took a bit of a turn though. It’s hard to have a roast ready when the matriarch of the family is ill. This moment in the gospel is the only time we get a glimpse of the disciples’ private family lives — Simon Peter must have been married, in order to have a mother-in-law, though we never hear anything about his wife or any children. His mother-in-law may have been a widow, as she was living with Peter and Andrew and there’s no father-in-law mentioned. Many of us have experienced what it’s like to be unwell and need to stay separate from the rest of the family, and we know that one of the major difficulties with illness is how isolated we feel. When Peter took Jesus in to see her, Jesus did the very thing she longed for, and that we are constantly being told not to do just now — he reached out and touched her hand! What it actually says is that he raised her up — and she began to serve them. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He raised her up — words we have heard before. The psalmist says “you raised me up from the miry pit.” Isaiah says “you raise me up on wings like eagles.” And, of course, at the end of the gospel the angels tell the women at the empty tomb, “Jesus is not here, he has been raised.” He raised her up, and she began to serve.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now I used to think “great, she was just desperately ill a few minutes ago, and now she has to make the dinner? Can’t these young men do anything for themselves?” But actually, it doesn’t say she got up and cooked for them, it says she <i>ministered</i> to them. It’s the same word that describes how the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness during his forty days of fasting, and the word for how women provided for and enabled Jesus’ ministry, and the word for Jesus’ famous teaching “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.” And that word is <i>deacon. </i>So Jesus raised her up, and she began to deacon — to minister through service. Peter’s mother-in-law is the first human in the gospel to respond in this way — to recognise that her raising was for a purpose larger than herself. She was restored to health, and to her rightful place as matriarch, but also to her God-given calling to be one who acts like Jesus, who came to serve. Having encountered his powerful grace, she turned around and shared it with others — something her son-in-law and his eleven fellows never quite figured out, as they continually misunderstood and argued about who was best and tried to get Jesus to fit their mould of a Messiah, rather than being themselves moulded in his image. This is not to say only those with the title “deacon” are called to minister in this way, but rather that like Peter’s mother-in-law, deacons model for all of us what a faithful response to Jesus looks like in tangible, practical service. The mother-in-law acts like angels, and like Jesus, when she is raised up to serve.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not a moment too soon, either, because the instant the sun set, marking the end of the Sabbath, all those people who wished they could have had Jesus round for tea flocked to the front door — people who were curious, people who had sick loved ones, people who were being harassed by demonic voices, people who were ill. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now I want to talk for a minute about one of the most difficult things we read in the gospels, about people possessed by demons. Sometimes we know that was a pre-scientific explanation for certain illnesses. But it’s clear that people in biblical times did not believe all illness to be caused by demons, and they also didn’t believe that all demon possession resulted in illness. Sometimes they use a word that could be translated “demonised” — in a similar sense of terrorised, like being harassed by demons. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And that is something I think we still know about today. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes those voices that harass are meant to make people feel like outsiders, like they are “other”, a “them” against our “us.” Those voices swirl about in our public discourse and our private conversations, sometimes purposefully and sometimes unintentionally making people feel they are less-than, unwanted, not good enough, different in a bad way. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And sometimes those voices worm their way in to our minds and hearts, and we start to believe them. And that starts to change us and how we talk about ourselves and about others, to change how we behave, to change how we feel. And pretty soon we don’t need anyone else to tell us how unloveable or dangerous or what a failure we are, because we’re telling ourselves…and then turning those same words on anyone else who is even more different, that we can make out to be below us.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When we are possessed by these demons, it can be hard to see that anything is wrong, it’s just the way things are, and we don’t understand why people want to be “politically correct,” or inclusive, or work for justice that would level the playing field for all. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yet the gospel says that when Jesus encountered these demons, he would not allow them to speak, because they recognised him. They still recognised Truth, with a capital T, and it scared them. These demons do not want to be confronted with truth, because they know it will be their end. So they do everything they can to avoid it and to discredit the truth…but Jesus didn’t listen or make room for both sides, he cast them out and forced them into silence.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wonder if being freed from those voices felt like being raised up. Like a weight had been lifted, a curtain opened, a breath of fresh air sweeping in. And what it might feel like now, for those demons to be confronted and silenced by the Truth that God is love, and all people are made in God’s image and beloved and called. Would it feel like such a raising up that we would immediately turn that lightness toward service? Toward ministering to others, and helping them encounter the Truth, and so spreading the good news?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus says that he needs to go proclaim the message in other towns, because that is what he came out to do…and proclaiming the message is always accompanied by casting out demons. Speaking the truth of God’s love always results in the silencing of those lying voices that tell us some people are less. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Imagine, if you will, another scene. Imagine the Body of Christ, speaking the truth of grace, love, and justice…embodying the truth of God’s desire for wholeness that leads to service…insisting on truth that silences falsehoods of othering and marginalisation and me-first…imagine proclaiming the message of God’s abundant life for all, and what power that truth might have in this world.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Walt Disney said, “if you can dream it, you can do it.” As the Spirit opens our eyes to see this vision, Christ takes us by the hand and raises us up…and we are to respond in gratitude, by ministering to the world that God so loves, with truth.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-15470975113735757392021-02-01T12:13:00.004+00:002021-02-01T12:13:48.622+00:00Present Tense -- a sermon on Luke 6<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Luke 6.1-16 (New Revised Standard Version)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">31 January 2021, NL3-24</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Last week we heard about Jesus teaching from Simon Peter’s boat, and then miraculously guiding him and his business partners through the largest catch of fish anyone on the Sea of Galilee had ever seen. Once they got the fish to shore, Jesus called them to follow him. Jesus and his new disciples then went throughout the towns of Galilee, and Jesus healed people in ways that began to make other people, including religious leaders, suspicious — including by touching a man with leprosy, and by forgiving sins before telling a paralysed man to get up and walk. Then Jesus called another disciple, Levi, who was a tax collector, and went to his house for dinner, causing yet more scandal among the other teachers and leaders — and causing consternation when he tried to teach them that new wine and old wineskins don’t mix well.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We pick up the story today in the gospel according to Luke, chapter 6, verses 1-16. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">One sabbath while Jesus was going through the cornfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’ Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?’ Then he said to them, ‘The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’</span></i></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come and stand here.’ He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?’ After looking around at all of them, he said to him, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.</span></i></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.</span></i></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">These are the kinds of stories that many people stereotypically associate with Jesus — conflict with the Pharisees over their understanding of God’s law. Too often, our interpretation of these stories leans toward anti-semitism, as we forget that Jesus was Jewish and that in many ways these disputes were a family argument about tradition. When we read about the arguments, we need to remember that everyone back then was doing the same thing we all are doing now: trying to determine how to put God’s word into practice in everyday life, and they didn’t always agree about the best way to do that. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">What they did agree on was that it was important, and that the community needed to hold everyone accountable to living up to God’s call. There was a sense that each person’s choices had an impact on the whole community, or even the whole nation. They were bound together and what one did affected them all. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">So when it looked as if Jesus and his disciples were flouting the sabbath rules by harvesting and processing grain on a day when you weren’t supposed to do any work, some of the Pharisees had to speak up. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It seems as if the owner of the field had followed the law, in that he left he edges of the field unharvested so that those in need would be able to harvest some and so not go hungry. But for a person who was not in immediate danger of starvation to do that harvesting on the Sabbath was a no-no. Naturally some Pharisees were concerned about the slippery slope — if you can harvest and shuck a quick snack on the sabbath, then what else can you do? But they were also concerned about divine consequences. They prided themselves on knowing their story as God’s chosen people, and that story included consequences that still felt like yesterday, though it was hundreds of years ago. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s that same concern they have in mind when they’re at synagogue another week. There’s a member with a disability — notice the text doesn’t tell us anything about him and doesn’t say it was unusual for him to be there. He’s one among them, a part of the congregation. Yet his disability was the first thing some of the scribes and pharisees thought about when they saw Jesus make his way down the aisle. It betrays the probably subconscious truth that they didn’t think of him as “George who sits halfway back, next to Sue, he works at the shop.” They thought of him as “the man who has something wrong with him.” So even though he hadn’t come specifically looking for Jesus, and he didn’t ask for anything — he was just in his usual pew like any other Saturday morning — when his fellow members saw Jesus, their first thought was to keep an eye out and see if Jesus was going to do something about it so they could get a good argument.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Luke tells us that Jesus knew what they were thinking, I always wonder if he simply means that Jesus could tell they were looking for a fight, or if he means that Jesus could tell that they thought of their neighbour as a condition to be cured rather than as a person. The way Jesus asked them “is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath” and then asked the man to hold up his hand — notice that Jesus didn’t touch him, didn’t say anything to him, didn’t do anything you might expect for a healing. It’s almost as if it happened while he was talking to those people who could see nothing but the hand, instead of the living, breathing, beloved person made in God’s image. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">No wonder they were furious. Jesus had shown them up and brought their secret thoughts into the open, while doing something they were fairly certain he should not do… but in a way that meant they couldn’t pin down exactly what was wrong. Of course you can do good on the Sabbath, right? It’s always been a clear Jewish teaching, from the earliest days of Torah interpretation. But where is the line between doing “good” and doing “work”? It didn’t fit into their telling of God’s story.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back in the fields, Jesus had referenced a pretty obscure moment in the life of David. He talked about a time, after David had been anointed by Samuel but while Saul was still king. David and his friends were fleeing from Saul’s rage, and they came to a holy place where they allowed the priests to believe they were on official king’s business. They convinced the priests that they had kept all the holiness rules and so should be allowed to eat the bread, since there was nothing else available. In that moment, from God’s perspective David was king and so he was, technically, anointed and on the king’s business. The priests didn’t know that, though. Their understanding of the story had not yet caught up to the changed reality of the world around them. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Isn’t that often what happens to us? The ways we tell God’s story sometimes don’t keep up with the reality of what God is up to, and we get caught in old ways that no longer meet the needs around us. Some of the Pharisees were having trouble seeing that Jesus was a game-changer, that he brought God’s story into the present tense rather than always being something from the past that they needed to figure out. Because discerning how to live God’s word in our own lives, here and now, is important. But we can’t do it if we think the story is all in the past. God is still writing the story all around us and within us and through us, if only we will pay attention to the true reality of God’s kingdom rather than simply the assumptions we have made about “the way things are.”</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">How do we, as a community, figure out what faithfulness means in our modern lives? What does God’s word have to do with real situations, not just long-ago far-away ones? And how does our responsibility to each other look now that we may not be arguing about what counts as work on the Sabbath, but instead about what is right to do or not do in the midst of a pandemic? </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The question about what one could do on the Sabbath wasn’t about what was good or even felt important for the person who was doing it. It was about what was good for the whole community, and the impact that one person’s actions would have on the whole. Isn’t that the same question we are asking right now? Not just “can I do what I want” but “what affect will my choice have on others?” It’s the question for things that want to be open, but the impact on the whole community needs to outweigh their desire. It's the question for the gatherings we wish we could have, and the holidays we wish we could book, and so much more. And we have seen the devastation that comes to the whole when we act as if our one area or sector or day is different, so it makes sense that we, as a community, would need these same kinds of conversations the Pharisees were having with Jesus, holding each other accountable to the common good. And hopefully we will come down where Jesus does, as he challenges the old interpretations of the story in light of new reality…can we challenge the old story we have told about economics, politics, social life, and what is essential? And then join Jesus on the side of doing good even if it isn’t what we would prefer, recognising and caring for the full humanity and value of others even if it’s not convenient for us, and putting our feelings of compassion for others into actions of mercy that offer abundant life for all.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p><div><br /></div>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-43726789796550698652021-01-24T12:00:00.001+00:002021-01-24T12:00:05.077+00:00open -- a sermon on Luke 5, fishing for the first disciples<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Open</span></i></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 5.1-11 (Common English Bible)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">24 January 2021, NL3-23</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week we heard Jesus give his first sermon, in his hometown of Nazareth. It started well but by the end people were quite upset. He went on from there to Capernaum, where he was again teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath when a demon who was possessing a man shouted out his identity for all to hear. Jesus cast out the demon and healed the man, and people began to talk about him even more than before. After synagogue, Jesus went to Simon’s house, where he healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and then once the sun went down and the Sabbath was over, the whole town came to the door to ask for healing. That night, Jesus went out and prayed, and decided it was time to go preach in new places, even as word about him was spreading. We pick up the story today in Luke chapter 5, beginning at verse 1. I am reading from the Common English Bible.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One day Jesus was standing beside Lake Gennesaret when the crowd pressed in around him to hear God’s word. Jesus saw two boats sitting by the lake. The fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. Jesus boarded one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon, then asked him to row out a little distance from the shore. Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he finished speaking to the crowds, he said to Simon, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.”</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Simon replied, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets.”</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So they dropped the nets and their catch was so huge that their nets were splitting. They signalled for their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They filled both boats so full that they were about to sink. When Simon Peter saw the catch, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner!” Peter and those with him were overcome with amazement because of the number of fish they caught. James and John, Zebedee’s sons, were Simon’s partners and they were amazed too.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on, you will be fishing for people.” As soon as they brought the boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.</span></p>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2T8JCFVYMN4/YAv1F6416LI/AAAAAAAABPM/_h2nH-YE8BQ0cojDeYzCQEa9gGUG3n44QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/24%2BJanuary%2B2021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="218" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2T8JCFVYMN4/YAv1F6416LI/AAAAAAAABPM/_h2nH-YE8BQ0cojDeYzCQEa9gGUG3n44QCLcBGAsYHQ/w387-h218/24%2BJanuary%2B2021.jpg" width="387" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One day…just an ordinary work day like any other. Morning chores were in process, merchants were setting up their stalls, day labourers were congregating and waiting for work, children were running underfoot on their way to get water from the town well, fishwives were gathering up the night’s meagre catch to sell — not from Simon’s boats, though, since they had caught nothing — and fishermen were cleaning nets to prepare for the next night instead. Everyone else’s workday was gearing up, but theirs was winding down.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus had been visiting synagogues in all the villages, but this was a work day, not a Sabbath day, so he was out doing what normal people did on an average weekday morning. Perhaps he was out waiting to buy fish beside the shore, or talking to day labourers, or waiting for the baker to get fresh loaves from the ovens. People recognised him though, and started to gather round, hoping to hear him say something profound. When the crowd got to be a bit too claustrophobic, he hopped into Simon Peter’s boat. Jesus clearly could not handle the boat himself, he asked Peter to push away from the shore — a task that actually would have required the crew of 4 or 5 men to stop their net-cleaning and get back into the boat. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once Jesus finished everything he had to say that morning, he ask them to go out into the deep water and go fishing.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The deep water…where anything can happen. It’s away from the crowds, and it’s the most dangerous part of the lake, where you can’t see what’s down there and where squalls could rise quickly and without much warning. It was also the place where, at that time of day, there might be more fish than closer to the shore. Life and danger together summed up in one phrase: the deep water.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These men were tired, they’d worked all night…perhaps they didn’t even have the energy to resist their new friend who was brought up inland. Even though a tired crew out on the deep water was likely an extra layer of concern, they humoured him — “if you say so, I’ll drop the nets.” The nets they had just cleaned, for the record, as their last work task before finishing their shift. It’s like when the tables are wiped and the machine is cleaned and the floor is mopped and with one minute before closing time someone comes in and orders a cappuccino. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But they did it — they dropped the nets. And the result was so far beyond their imagining they didn’t even have time to think. Pretty soon they had so many fish that two boats were sinking — and each boat at the time could have safely held nearly half a ton of fish! With a literal ton of fish, they struggled — an exhausted crew working overtime on the biggest catch they’d ever experienced, they probably were barely even able to hum a sea shanty as they rowed their sinking boat to shore. Once they were safely on land, though, the truth hit: this was the best day in their small business owner lives! Nothing like this had ever happened before. Even after taxes, this was a huge windfall for them and their families.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Peter’s first reaction, though, was to worship. In awe, he sank to his knees and recognised that he was in the presence of something, someone, so great he could never deserve it. This man had power over the deeps, and though he wasn’t a fisherman he knew the fish better than anyone. They had experienced his teaching and healing but now they saw something else, something cosmic that could control creation.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All of them were overcome with amazement. Imagine realising that such power and holiness had left the sanctuary and the synagogue and come down to the shore in the midst of all the people and work and commerce, and plopped itself down in your business. That’s not how the world works! God is supposed to be safely in the holy places, not in the middle of the workweek, visiting our shops and offices and turning everything upside down!</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s no wonder Jesus has to say “don’t be afraid.” Think of the other times human beings have encountered the presence of God — Isaiah in the temple seeing the hem of God’s robes and the seraphim singing Holy Holy Holy…the people at the foot of Mount Sinai, with the pillar of cloud and fire quaking with God’s voice…Samuel in the temple, uncertain where that voice is coming from…Elijah on the mountain hearing God in the silence…even when the people of God faced the moment with courage, they were nervous. Because meeting God is dangerous, for two reasons — first because human beings can’t handle or comprehend the fullness of God’s holiness, we’re made to be “a little lower” as the psalmist says. And second because all of these encounters end with God sending the people out to do something that they would likely not have chosen to do on their own. Isaiah and Samuel and Elijah all had to go proclaim a message that the kingdom would not want to hear. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What would come next, for these fishermen who understood they were experiencing something beyond them?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said: come with me to fish for people. And they left everything and followed him. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">They left everything. Their boats. Their nets, which now needed to be re-washed and mended. A literal ton of fish, the catch of a lifetime. Their families and friends. The life they knew and were comfortable in, even though it was hard work. They left it all and followed Jesus. His invitation, to be close to that level of holiness and power and grace all the time, was more compelling than their social network, than their massive income boost, than their exhaustion at the end of the work day — more compelling than anything else.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So they left <i>everything</i> and followed him.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Whatever they expected that day, it wasn’t that. The crowd that pushed and pressed and begged to hear the word…the tired fishermen that humoured this itinerant preacher when he tried to tell them how to do their jobs…then found themselves overcome with wonder and amazement, falling on their knees and then getting up to follow. That was not how they thought their day was going to go when they got up that morning. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But when it happened, they were open to it. When their expectations were shattered and confounded, they adapted to the new situation. When God showed up, they recognised and responded.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s easy to get caught up in all the tasks of a day, and in what we think is and is not possible in our situation, and our own sense of our expertise compared to others. Simon Peter and his business partners and their crew could have said “it’s the end of our shift, we’re done for the day” and just laid their nets out to dry and clocked off. They could have said “we’re professional fishermen telling you that there are no fish to catch today” and rowed back to shore. But they had enough space in their spirits to recognise when something divine happened, even unexpectedly in the middle of their everyday life. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wherever we find ourselves — at home whiling away hours, or working more than ever before without the usual boundaries between work and home; managing home learning, or never getting even a moment’s break from our family members; walking the dog half a dozen times a day for an excuse to go out, or relishing the time to get a break from the hectic pace — what would happen if God turned up? Can we make space within our minds and hearts for God to do something…and then to leave what we know and follow him?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-45817725247728956172021-01-17T12:00:00.001+00:002021-01-23T10:12:53.480+00:00Beyond and Beneath -- a sermon on Jesus at Nazareth<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Beyond and Beneath</span></i></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 4.14-30</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">17 January 2021, NL3-22</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week we heard about John the Baptist preaching at the Jordan River, and baptising people, including Jesus, who then heard God’s voice proclaiming him God’s beloved Son. After his baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days, where he experienced several temptations — to turn a stone into bread, to worship Satan in exchange for the glory of the kingdoms of the world, and to demonstrate his specialness by throwing himself from the top of the Temple. Having resisted all these, he then returned home, where we pick up the story today in the gospel according to Luke, chapter 4, beginning at verse 14. I am reading from the New Revised Standard Version.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">~~~~~~</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> because he has anointed me</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> to bring good news to the poor.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and recovery of sight to the blind,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> to let the oppressed go free,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.”’ And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Can you imagine the scene that day in the synagogue? This hometown boy has been away for a few months, listening to John the Baptist and then going on that wilderness prayer retreat, and he’s been making his way home — they’re hearing glowing reports from every village along the way and can’t wait to welcome him back, to hear all about his experiences and what he’s learned about God and the scriptures, and to celebrate that one of their own is rising to prominence as a preacher.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New archaeological evidence suggests that Nazareth was a bigger town than previously thought, maybe having a thousand or so people. The scholars think that there may have been a number of priestly families living there, and that on the whole the town was more stringently devout than some other places — archaeologists have found evidence that they followed tighter rules and restrictions than some neighbouring towns did. If that’s the case, how much more proud would they be that this native son was becoming a teacher and healer, following in the footsteps of John the Baptist, encouraging people to repent and turn to God’s way? The buzz about Jesus was growing, people were talking about him at home, in the streets and marketplace, and in the synagogue.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">His first weekend home, of course he was invited to the front to speak. It happens to everyone training for the ministry! Just come up and say a few words, we’re so proud and excited to hear from these young people who have grown up in our Sunday School classes, we just know they’re going to do great things and be a credit to us and all the time we invested in them.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus stood and was handed the scroll for the week’s lectionary reading — Isaiah. Isaiah is a long scroll, 66 chapters, so unrolling it would take some time, carefully finding the spot for chapter 61, near the end, before reading out a passage we heard just a few weeks ago during Advent. All eyes were on him as he rolled and rolled, then found the right place, and finally read out: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Then when he finished reading, he rolled and rolled until the scroll was carefully put away. Only then did he start a sermon.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Already after the first sentence, people were thrilled. He spoke so well, especially for a workman’s son. They murmured to each other and swelled with pride for being the place that this great man came from, the neighbours who looked after him and changed his nappies, the friends who studied with him, the people who taught him and who bought their furnishings from his father — they knew him before he was famous, in fact it was probably their help in his upbringing that made him this way! They would definitely get a mention in his award speech.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then Jesus kept talking. He didn’t stop where they were happy and leave them wanting more. He didn’t quit while he was ahead. He had read what was to become the mission statement of his own ministry, and now he was going to tell them what that meant in practice.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The truth is, he said, the good news is for the people who are beyond you — outside your circle of holiness, like the gentile widow that Elijah fed during the drought. And the good news is for people who are beneath you — like the enemy general that Elisha healed of leprosy. God’s grace is good news to the poor, the captive, the blind, the outcast, and the oppressed. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And the people of Nazareth, who were careful and observant about correctness and holiness and purity, who were priests and small business owners and tradesmen, were furious. They are not the poor, the captive, the blind, the outcast, or the oppressed. Or at least, they don’t see themselves that way, aside from the situation with the Romans. So what does that mean for them, and their expectations for how their hometown celebrity Jesus will treat them?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In essence, Jesus said to them: not everything is about you. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you and care about everyone. It just means that God’s world does not necessarily revolve around me.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And Jesus’ mission was for those who never had their moment in the sun: those that the people of Nazareth assumed were beneath them or beyond their bounds. Too often, we expect that everything God says and does is for us — by which I mean the “us” that is in our comfortable circle. Us in our nation, or our language, or our skin colour, or our religion, or our socio-economic status. But if the way we interpret something is not good news to the poor, the captive, the blind, the outcast, and the oppressed, then it is not actually Jesus’ good news. It’s just our expectations, reinforced by some pretty words. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">No wonder the people of Nazareth were furious enough to try to throw Jesus off a cliff. He pointed out their privileged position, and said his mission was to people who needed him more — and then gave examples that suggested that his work would challenge their position, hold them accountable to a vision of God’s kingdom that was more just than the world in which they lived. Their response suggests that they would prefer the status quo rather than the work of God as described by the prophets, or even by Jesus’ mother in her magnificat.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The thing is, if it isn’t good news for the poor, it isn’t good news for anyone. And, despite what the people of Nazareth and down through the ages think, if it is good news for the poor, it will also be good news for the rest of us, no matter how uncomfortable it feels at first. As Emma Lazarus wrote, and later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, “until we are all free, we are none of us free.” Our welfare is bound up with each other, and — like the word I mentioned last week, <i>kuleana — </i> we have a responsibility to one another. So as long as we think some people are beyond us, outside the bounds, or as long as we think some people are beneath us, then none of us have truly received the good news.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So what would be good news to the children who received such paltry food parcels for their lunches this week?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If it isn’t good news to hungry children, it isn’t good news for anyone, no matter how happy we might be to hear it.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What would be good news to the person fleeing their home because they can no longer live in the midst of war or famine or abuse or lack of opportunity? </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If it isn’t good news to the person standing on the beach at midnight trying to decide whether to get into the overloaded raft, it isn’t good news for anyone, no matter how good it makes us feel about God or ourselves.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What would be good news to the immigrants who serve as carers, working for private companies or councils rather than the NHS, wondering about their immigration status and their place in the immunisation priorities, and paying for their own PPE from their minimum wage?</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If it isn’t good news for the invisible members of society, it isn’t good news for anyone.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus reads this passage from Isaiah, a passage about God’s kingdom being a kingdom of jubilee, of justice that creates equity, and then says it is fulfilled in him, this is his mission. In his person, in his very being, by his presence among us, these words become true in our present reality. Throughout Luke’s gospel we will see him bringing this about — he is anointed for this purpose, to make God’s kingdom visible here and now, and that will be good news for the poor, the captive, the blind, the outcast, and the oppressed. We may well join the people of Nazareth when we realise the good news is not targeted just to us — indeed, that it is actually targeted to “them.” But only when it’s good news for the least can it be true good news for the greatest. Anything else is just shallow empty words…or even idolatry, a god made in our own image. And the good news of Jesus Christ is so much more than that, so much deeper, so much wider. He challenges us to follow him beyond our comfort zone, so that all people, even “them,” can hear good news and experience God’s kingdom, here and now. </span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-30814303984933570812021-01-10T12:00:00.001+00:002021-01-23T10:11:01.502+00:00kuleana -- a sermon for Baptism of the Lord<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Gourock St John’s</span></div>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Kuleana</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 3.1-22 (New Revised Standard Version)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">10 January 2021, NL3-21, Baptism of the Lord</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today’s reading may be a familiar story to some of us, but this is one of those times when our familiarity makes it easy to gloss over some of the details in the way Luke tells the story. But those details are important, because they tell us things about how God is working, who Jesus is, and what the Holy Spirit is doing in and through us as God’s people. So today, rather than reading all 22 verses at once and then talking about them, we’re going to read and discuss bit by bit. The reading today is from the gospel according to Luke, chapter 3, verses 1-22, and I’m reading from the New Revised Standard Version. We’ll begin with just verses 1-6. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">“Prepare the way of the Lord,</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> make his paths straight.</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Every valley shall be filled,</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> and every mountain and hill shall be made low,</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">and the crooked shall be made straight,</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"> and the rough ways made smooth;</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”’</span></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We are familiar with this quote from Isaiah — usually we hear it during Advent, and it calls up memories of Handel’s Messiah. Isaiah wrote to people who were in exile, waiting for God to come and take them home. To hear God’s promise accompanied by the call to prepare the road on which God would travel to rescue the people meant that they should be hopeful because it would happen soon, they should get ready! Luke uses that same passage to describe what John the Baptist was doing — preparing the way of the Lord, because he was coming soon, so people should both be hopeful and get ready. Now, what John thought that would mean is unclear, we don’t know what he expected the Messiah to do or how he would act, we just know that he was preparing the way.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Usually that’s all we read for this section, but actually we really need to back up to the beginning! All those names and places seem so easy to skip over, but they are there for a reason. Luke tells us that all these things took place during a particular time and in a particular location. They didn’t have a calendar like ours where you could just say the month and year…but that isn’t he only reason he describes that time and location by referencing the important people of the day: the emperor, the governor, and the client kings, and then the high priests of the Jerusalem Temple. These are the people who defined the age, the ones who controlled the politics, economy, culture, and religion. While ordinary people would not interact with any of these leaders, the fact is that even if they didn’t think about it all the time, their lives and options were affected by those leaders’ choices and actions. Their images were on coins and buildings, their movements could ease or disrupt business, their rulings changed how people ate and worked and worshiped, and they were generally just the backdrop to life.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Against that backdrop, we have John, son of a priest, out in the wilderness — unsupervised, in other words — preaching and baptising outside the institutional and liturgical structures of the time. So after naming all the people who have power in the empire in one way or another, who define our lives, suddenly Luke changes focus, drawing our attention away from all those things that have consumed our energy and around which we have oriented our worldview. The word of God is in the wilderness. Out on the margins, away from the centre of earthly kingdom power, the kingdom of God is breaking in, and it will change the way we see. It will change the way we mark time. It will change what we think is important, and what will define our lives and actions and options. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All those imperial powers are still there, but they are no longer the star of the story or the defining characteristic of the age. Instead, we tear our eyes away from their antics and we are drawn toward something happening out at the edges, where we have the space to re-orient our worldview around God’s kingdom instead of the empire.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Unlike some other gospel writers, Luke does not tell us about John’s clothes, he only tells us about his words. He was pointed in his preaching, as we hear in verses 7-14:</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">John said to the crowds that came out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax-collectors came to be baptised, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’</span></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It doesn’t seem that John is interested in winning people over with charm — it’s hard to imagine many people would love being called a brood of vipers! He wants people to realise that the fact that their name is on the roll of the chosen people is good and all, but that’s the beginning, not the end. They can’t rely only on their past to carry them into the future — how we live as God’s people matters. After all, the psalms tell us that all creation sings the glory of God in its own way — including the stones. So if all God wanted was names on the roll, the rocks would suffice. But we are meant to bear good fruit for the kingdom of God — this kingdom that is breaking through the world’s ways and drawing us out.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What then should we do? The people stand at the waters edge, dripping wet, receiving God’s grace and wondering how to live in response. How will their everyday lives reflect the change they have undergone in the river?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn’t have any. That way everyone in the community has a coat.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you have two servings of your meal, give one to someone who doesn’t have any. That way everyone in the community has enough to eat.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you have a position of power, don’t use it to enrich yourself, but rather to serve others.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now tax collectors, who were Jewish but also collaborated with the Roman Empire, augmented their wage by inflating the amount people owed. That way they could keep the extra and so live more comfortably themselves. And soldiers were Romans, an occupying force meant to keep the peace, but they did so by terrorising people into submission. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All of these people — those with an extra coat, those collecting taxes, even the soldiers — are normal everyday people, the middlemen of the empire. They’re not the leaders, but they’re also not the poorest of the poor. They’re people with more than enough. People like most of us. And John tells them that what they ought to do if they want to live according to the grace they have received is to take responsibility for one another. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Having two coats and giving one away might make us feel vulnerable. What if I need that coat tomorrow? But in this kind of community, that moment would be met by someone else giving their extra one to me. It’s a way of life that is both generous and dependent at the same time. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Last week I learned a new word from a friend who lives in Hawaii. The Hawaiian language has a word, <i>kuleana, </i>that’s hard to translate, but basically it means reciprocal responsibility. So for example, Hawaiians say they have a <i>kuleana</i> to the land, to care for it and respect it, and in return the land has a <i>kuleana</i> to us, to feed and provide. I think this word perfectly encapsulates this sense of responsibility to one another that John is preaching: I have a responsibility, as someone with more than enough, to give away that excess to those who do not have enough. And when I am in a vulnerable position, those with more than enough have a responsibility to give their excess to me. And so as a community, we depend on one another, in a constant give and take. No one is hedging against future vulnerability by storing up for themselves, like you would do in the imperial worldview, but rather by being part of a community of reciprocal responsibility. We have a <i>kuleana</i> to each other in the kingdom of God.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This was such a radical idea — remember that the word radical means “root”, and John said that the axe was lying at the root of the trees, changing things by going back to the very foundations, and his preaching was really bringing people back to the very beginning of how God’s creation was meant to work, in <i>kuleana</i> to each other from the ground to the animals to the humans made in God’s image! It drew people in and re-focused them, and they wondered…as we hear in verses 15-22.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptise you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.</span></i></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Now when all the people were baptised, and when Jesus also had been baptised and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’</span></i></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For those who have never been to a threshing floor — chaff is the outer husk of wheat, and when the grains of wheat are agitated to loosen the chaff and then tossed into the air, the chaff separates and blows away. But it is very dangerous — even the tiniest spark of electricity can ignite that cloud of chaff and the fire can burn the whole field. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Each of us will have chaff that needs separating…and every community does too. Those practices that are dangerous and can easily ignite a fire of bad behaviour that destroys the community need to be separated and blown away. It may not be pleasant, but it is important. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes I think we forget that John said this right after giving those instructions about the <i>kuleana</i> of life in the kingdom of God, so we tend toward reading it as if there are bad people who are going to be burned away. And that may be one possible reading, but when we read the whole story together, it sounds to me more like the chaff is those ways of living that John was asking us to leave behind, to repent of — repentance literally means to turn around 180 degrees, to change the way of living and thinking. Chaff is a protective husk — and John has just asked us to shed our protections and entrust our welfare to the whole community of reciprocal responsibility. And chaff floating randomly in the air can be dangerous — we have to fully let it go, because grasping at those unhealthy old ways can destroy that community of care.</span></p>
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Perhaps that is one reason that baptism is the symbol of entering into this community — because the water washes that chaff away and we live differently in response. Isn’t it fascinating that Luke tells us that Jesus was just baptised with everybody else — he’s part of this community. Yet he’s also, of course, different: he sees the heaven opened and hears God’s voice proclaiming Love. He is one who does not need the chaff washed away himself, but he will still be in this community of <i>kuleana,</i> and so he shows us from the very beginning how to live in ways that bring God pleasure and delight. It will be a different way of life than the one defined by those important guys at the beginning of the chapter — we will need to turn 180 degrees and put that behind us if we are to instead focus on God’s kingdom living, here and now. This is what it means to be baptised: to live differently because we have experienced God’s grace and now can’t help but act on it.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p><div><br /></div>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-29264029277675328682021-01-09T23:11:00.004+00:002021-01-09T23:11:50.488+00:00"healing" America -- a guest post by Laurene Lafontaine<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>A couple of weeks after the US election, a number of US citizens working in the Church of Scotland were asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called <a href="https://www.lifeandwork.org" target="_blank">Life and Work</a>. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but we were told we could publish full original essays here if we wished. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, it seems like time. </i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This guest post is by the Rev. Laurene Lafontaine, a minister in Aberdeen.</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">~~~~</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Growing up in a family which was neither religious nor political, I was a bit of an outlier with my overwhelming interest in both religion and politics. There are memorable moments in my journey of faith, and I can clearly remember various political moments as if they were yesterday. For example, at a 1984 rally, I met Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman Vice-President nominee of an American major party; shaking hands with both Bill and Hillary Clinton after getting up at 4:45 am on election day 3 November 1992 for their 6:00 am last campaign stop in Denver; the resounding roar of 80,000 people when Illinois Senator Barack Obama accepted the nomination for <span style="letter-spacing: -0.1px;">Democratic nomination for President</span> in Denver, Colorado 2008; meeting Vice President Joe Biden in 2012; and the haunting election night of 8 November 2016. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In 2016, as voting results were reported along the political prognosticators’ acknowledgement they had got it wrong, a growing angst and dread overtook the anticipation and excitement many Americans felt earlier in the day. Around 1:30 am(CST)/6:30 am GMT, after it was clear a win was unattainable, I went to bed. I was feeling utterly devastated along with at least 63 million other Americans and countless across the globe. Hillary Clinton would not be the 45<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span> President of the United States, and our worst nightmare had begun. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This nightmare has included children being taken from their parents at the Mexican border, a Muslim travel ban executive order, impeachment, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, and an America First agenda. Unimaginable damage to American democratic fabric has occurred. Trump has been the catalyst which not only brought the pervasive structural racism and white supremacy in American society to the forefront, but also legitimised outright brutality and violence perpetrated upon people who were African Americans, immigrants, children, Muslims, LGBTQ, Asians, reporters, to name a few. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The unmitigated racism, on which America was founded and built, has flourished under this administration. The horror of watching African Americans literally being murdered, lynched, before our very eyes by those called to protect or armed young men … there are no polite words for this utter depravity. Instead of bringing people together, he has spent four years golfing, tweeting, and sowing hate and discord in a divided country. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">His intentional dismantling of the American governmental social and educational programs and structures is deeply concerning as the impact will be felt for generations. As a child born into poverty, such programs provided early education opportunities, essential food support, medical care and financial assistance to families like mine. In 1965, I was a member of the first Head Start class held in my hometown. Head Start provided a safe environment where a curious 5-year-old could begin to thrive intellectually. Education is the golden ticket, in conjunction with social support, they are crucial to the development of a just and peaceful society. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">America is at a critical stage of societal development. America is like an unruly 244-year-old adolescent, relatively speaking, nation struggling to develop a healthy identity, post-Cold War. Addressing the brutal history of genocide and slavery will be crucial in efforts to shift from a racially bias culture to a bias free society. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">After four years of divisive political leadership, President Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris are faced with a monumental task particularly as the catastrophic Covid crisis rages out of control. <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Their challenge is to develop a new inclusive leadership approach beyond typical party politics. It is encouraging that a core value of their</span> transition team is a <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">diversity of ideology.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I am cautiously optimistic. Joe Biden is the right person for this challenge. He is centre-left with considerable experience and a rich history of bringing diverse perspectives together. He is a team player who surrounds himself with bright people who are often much smarter than he is. His selection of Kamala Harris was wise and bold. Joe Biden is a good man guided by a strong faith, an openness to learning, and an inclusive understanding of justice. Two of my friends worked on his staff whilst he was Vice President, so their experiences have also informed my perspective. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Returning to religion and politics, often a hesitancy exists regarding a religious voice in the public forum because it’s perceived as political. Had several religious leaders spoke out when Trump belittled or said awful things about a person, ethnic groups etc, would it have made a difference? I hope so. At least, those people might have felt like they mattered. What are the social justice issues in the UK? As Christian leaders, we can share the Gospel message by addressing social justice issues in the public forum and advocating for those affected by those issues. If we don’t, who will? </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Times; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-10708799229065551552021-01-09T21:33:00.002+00:002021-01-09T21:33:15.431+00:00"healing America" -- a guest post by Julia Cato<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i> A couple of weeks after the US election, a number of US citizens working in the Church of Scotland were asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called <a href="https://www.lifeandwork.org" target="_blank">Life and Work</a>. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but we were told we could publish full original essays here if we wished. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, it seems like time. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>This guest post is by Julia Cato, who is a graduate probationer, seeking a call to ordained ministry in the CofS.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>~~~~</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“How do you think it will go?” a friend asked a week before the 2020 U.S. General Elections. “I have no idea” was my honest reply. I sighed with what I realised was almost defeat. I already had the sense that no matter how the elections would go, no one would come away a winner. There was too much divisiveness and too much harm done. Now, a few weeks on, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s win feels more like a reprieve than a victory. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I attended a DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependents Schools) primary school on a U.S. Air Force Base in Germany. I remember every morning we would stand to sing either “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” or “America the Beautiful”. Then, with our hands on our hearts, we would recite in unison, “The Pledge of Allegiance” to the U.S. flag hanging in the corner of the classroom. Every single day of every school year. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I remember my German mother’s quiet discomfort with this morning ritual of school children pledging their allegiance to a flag. It would be years before I would learn how a flag can mean different things to different people. And even more time would pass before I would begin to understand how national histories haunt us until we make reparations for our sins. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I can still recite “The Pledge of Allegiance” by heart. Not only did we pledge allegiance to the flag, but also “to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, <i>with liberty and justice for all</i> (emphasis mine).” The Very Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas writes, “On the one hand is the democratic vision that America is founded upon, with freedom and justice for all. On the other is the actual foundation of America, with its embedded ideology and practice of white supremacy. These two sides are at war with one another.”</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The 2020 US General Elections are about more than just Biden versus Trump, they are about who we are as Americans and who we want to be. Come 20 January 2021, the 46th President of the United States will have to lead a country greatly divided. While many will be celebrating the new administration with its first woman of colour vice-president, millions will not. If there is to be true and lasting change, the new President and his administration will have to push forward in new ways, not falling back on institutionalised patterns. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Liberty and justice for all” must embrace <i>God’s</i> justice moving us toward a freedom and wholeness in which we all can see one another as equals. As Christians, we must articulate and model God’s justice from our pulpits, from within our prayer groups and bible studies, from within our homes, and from within ourselves. There cannot be unity among the people of the United States of America where there is not justice for all.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">A deeper understanding of reconciliation and healing is necessary, and this will require a reckoning with the injustices committed, not just over the last four years, but throughout our nation’s entire history. My hope for the next four years is that we Americans will take advantage of this reprieve and begin a healing which can only unfold by effectively rooting out white supremacy embedded in our systems and structures, and perhaps most significantly for white Americans, within ourselves. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Graduate Probationer, Julia A. Cato</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-3273516066631792292021-01-09T19:10:00.000+00:002021-01-09T19:10:02.937+00:00"healing" post-election USA<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i> A couple of weeks after the US election, I was asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called <a href="https://www.lifeandwork.org" target="_blank">Life and Work</a>. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election, and they were asking a number of American citizens living and working in the Church of Scotland to reflect. I said that I was feeling a bit cynical about calls for "healing" and that these were likely the most dangerous two months in post-Civil-War US history, but I would try.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but I was told I could publish my full original essay here. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, I thought it was time.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">~~~~</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It feels difficult to write about healing a post-election USA when the election is, in many ways, still ongoing. It may or may not be too strong to say that I’m writing while we are witnessing an attempted coup, but however it turns out, I think it’s safe to say that the divisions in the United States are deep and present-tense, and will not be easily plastered over.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Indeed, it actually feels a little bit trite to talk about “healing” when that carries some implications of restoration to a previous health that I’m not sure has ever truly existed. From the inception of the nation, it has carried an illness (white supremacy and a sense of exceptionalism) that has inexorably led to this brokenness. Should that brokenness be healed if it means simply returning to the way things used to be? If that’s the road taken, then we will surely find ourselves at this same place again, and again, and again.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I want to be hopeful that the moment we are witnessing now is indeed a moment of transformation. Once upon a time, the racism in the country was institutionalised as a system of enslavement and of colonial expansion. Then it was institutionalised as a system of segregation. Then there was a period when racists hid behind hoods and under cover of darkness. Today it’s again out in the open, and that feels, paradoxically, like a move toward health. After all, we cannot transform what we do not name. Pretending the problem of white supremacy and nationalism does not exist will only allow it to grow (as has happened for the past 50 years when many thought we had made great strides). Now that we can see plainly that much of that progress was an illusion, there is hope for real change. Much like South Africa needed Truth in order to have Reconciliation, the same is true in the USA. And there has not been very much truth-telling there.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">For centuries it has been the American way to present an image, to paper over differences (or to melt them together, we might say), and to act as if everything is fine — as long as you’re white, you’re one of us. But underneath, the sense that people of colour might not be “real” Americans, that they were inferior in some way, has persisted, both subconsciously in people (and consciously in plenty of people) and systemically in the way society and economy and culture are structured. Honesty about that could pave the way forward.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Perhaps the fact that so much division is now visible to the white gaze, where it used to be hidden (but still present, and has always been visible to non-white people!), is actually a good thing. It allows us to honestly see how much work we have to do, and to do it for real this time rather than just with a few words that are nothing more than a cheap plaster that does nothing for true healing. This will be heartbreaking work, but also heart-healing work — if we are willing to engage with it at every level, not just as individuals but also in the way the economy works and doesn’t work, in the ways cultural institutions (music, dance, theatre, art, literature) are valued, in government, in systems of power in communities, and within churches. It will mean wrestling with theological language that equates “dark” with “bad,” it will mean changing the way resources are used, it will mean adjustments in who is at the table when decisions are taken, it will mean listening and believing the stories people tell, it will mean stepping aside to allow new leadership, and — perhaps most difficult of all for a nation built on rugged individualism — it will mean actually caring about <i>and for</i> our neighbours in tangible ways and in policy ways.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The current situation feels so destabilising, but maybe that’s exactly what the USA needs if it is to truly achieve a society of “liberty and justice for all” and not just some. So I hope President Biden won’t rush to “healing” but will first encourage some soul-searching and truth-telling, so that the healing that eventually comes will be on a cellular level and not just skin-deep.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3545355.post-33446184640797651592020-12-20T12:00:00.001+00:002020-12-20T12:00:00.565+00:00Mary Sings -- a sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rev. Teri Peterson</span></span></div>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Gourock St. John’s</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Mary Sings</span></i></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Luke 1.46-56 NRSV</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">20 December 2020, NL3-16b, Advent 4 (blessings of an <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">im</span>possible Christmas)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today we pick up right where we left off last week, with Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth. They're both pregnant and Elizabeth has blessed Mary for her trust in God's word to her. I'm reading from the gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, beginning at verse 46, from the New Revised Standard Version.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And Mary said,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">‘My soul magnifies the Lord, </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">for the Mighty One has done great things for me,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> and holy is his name. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">His mercy is for those who fear him</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> from generation to generation. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He has shown strength with his arm;</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> and lifted up the lowly; </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">he has filled the hungry with good things,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> and sent the rich away empty. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">He has helped his servant Israel,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> in remembrance of his mercy, </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">according to the promise he made to our ancestors,</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7oO4tJ8XBB0/X9vzBOIBJbI/AAAAAAAABNY/fIuGlACEv-wZ2he5XcaAr5A_i8LkmkoQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/Advent%2B4%252C%2B2020.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="207" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7oO4tJ8XBB0/X9vzBOIBJbI/AAAAAAAABNY/fIuGlACEv-wZ2he5XcaAr5A_i8LkmkoQQCLcBGAsYHQ/w368-h207/Advent%2B4%252C%2B2020.jpg" width="368" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This week I read a startling news article. Did you know that 2020 is the year that human-made things literally outweighed nature? This is the year that all the stuff we have created — our built environment of concrete and metal and glass, machinery, waste, everything we own — all of that now weighs more than all the entire biomass of the earth. Plastic alone weighs more than all the animals on land and sea! And the vast majority of that mass has been created since the second World War.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Reading about this definitely gave me pause when I was shopping for Christmas gifts. How can we celebrate the Christ who turns everything upside down and at the same time not add to this heavy footprint on God’s beloved creation?</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I also had Mary’s song at the front of my mind as I was reading about the study titled “poverty linked to higher risk of Covid death” showing that those living in poorer health board areas of Scotland were more likely to have severe cases of Covid requiring intensive care, and because fewer critical care beds were available in those areas, people in economically deprived areas are more likely to die. We’ve seen the effects of that in Inverclyde through this pandemic, and the statistics nationwide bear out that more poor and disadvantaged people are dying—both from Covid and from other things going untreated as the health service tries to cope.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And again, the news this week is full of the epidemic of drug misuse in Scotland, and here in Inverclyde a rising rate of drug use and deaths. Of course we know that drugs and deprivation go hand in hand, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Into the middle of this reality, where hope seems impossible, Mary sings.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like all of us, she begins from her own personal experience. Though she was not a person of power or status or wealth, just a poor teenager in an out-of-the-way town in an occupied land, God noticed her. God loved her. God called her. And she sang of her gratitude, her awe and wonder, her praise. This thing that God had done — called her to be a prophet and the mother of the Messiah — would not be easy, yet she said that God had done great things for her! She may have been scared, as anyone in her position would be, but her confidence in God’s goodness was enough to raise her voice.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And then, halfway through, Mary recognises that her own personal experience, her own little life that has been unremarkable, is also part of something bigger. Something that God has been doing for a long time, and will continue to do through her and her son, and on into the future: upend the systems of this world and make them look more like the kingdom of God.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">From generation to generation, God works with power and mercy, through the lowliest and the marginalised, to fulfil the promise that changes everything: scatters the proud, brings down the powerful, and sends the rich away empty, while lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is the Word that becomes flesh in Jesus. This is the promise that Mary is bearing in her body, the fruit of her faithfulness. This is who God is and what God does — from the earliest days of scripture to the very end of the book and beyond.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wonder how many of us would join Mary in praising God for these things … given that we are far more likely to be the proud, powerful, and rich in this scenario? We are, globally speaking, at the top of this system that God is turning upside down. We are the ones whose lifestyles have created a situation where our stuff weighs down God’s creation. We are the ones who stand at arms length from the realities of deprivation and wring our hands and make a donation here and there and pray for something to change.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We should be careful what we pray for, because the song Mary sings is definitely about change. It’s about an upending of a system that is, frankly, immoral and against the values of God’s kingdom. Which is not to say that those of us who benefit from the system are bad, but rather that the entire system is. We can't even claim that it’s broken, because the reality is that it’s working exactly as it’s been designed — to privilege the few at the expense of the many, to lift up some on the backs of others. And that system is exactly what God in the flesh will challenge, insisting on valuing every person as a beloved child of God, deserving of enough to eat and inclusion in the community and compassionate care…and that challenge is what will get him killed by the powers that do not want to be scattered or sent away empty. But the Mighty One who looks with favour on Mary will not be thwarted. Not this time, not ever. This is a promise that cannot be broken, and God will find a way to fulfil it, even if it means breaking the power of death to do it.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">If this is what God is doing in Christ, then we who are called the Body of Christ had better be ready to be a part of it. If we celebrate Christmas and then nothing is different afterwards, we haven’t celebrated the Messiah that Mary is singing about today. Her words echo through the generations calling us to the kind of impossible Christmas that changes the world. What does the Word of God Incarnate have to say to those who live in such dire poverty that drugs seem the only comfort? Or to those who get richer while the poor get poorer? What does the community of those who love Mary’s son have to say to those who care more about their ability to shelter money in tax havens than about the lack of critical care beds in our hospital? How does the magnificat sound to the earth that groans under the weight of our economy’s need for constant consumption?</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing Christmas was just about celebrating a birth and then getting back to normal life, just like any other birthday party. But what God is doing in Christ is saving the earth and all that is in it, even if that means saving us from ourselves. This is an act of love so monumental that it turns everything upside down. Who are we to wish that God would…what, love us a little less so we could go on as before? It’s impossible for God to do anything but love, and to fulfil promises, and this is the promise that makes Mary rejoice and that hopefully brings us the same kind of joyful commitment to God’s call that we, too, will be willing to bear God’s word in our bodies—and into the world that is desperate for the good news to be more than just pretty words or songs or cards or presents.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #010000; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">May it be so. Amen.</span></p>Terihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09882637933182969375noreply@blogger.com0