Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23 Psalm 49:1-12 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21
Explanation
These are a number of thoughts collected about the lessons for this Sunday. Not really the sermon at all yet. But the challenges faced in finding a sermon when the lessons reflect heresies rejected by the Church, false wisdom, and admonitions of what not to be, but very little Gospel, Grace or … even Faith, Hope or Love.
Trees
When skiing in the mountains on a slope with trees on it Fear focuses one on the trees. But that is most likely going to get one right into a tree. One needs to focus on the good spaces between the trees where one wants to ski.
The trees are hard, aim between them.
Do Not
The Word for today: all of what we ought not to do? OT: the Wisdom, of a Fool, Disconnected from relationships NT: the Lists, hardly the freedom of Christ, and then Passion excluded, Passion which is God’s gift of fully engaging in life! Gospel: Greed, the thing that destroys life. Possessions, the things that overtake life.
The hints of Grace:
OT: nothing NT: seek things above clothed yourself with the new self, being renewed in the image of its creator in the renewal distinctions are gone, all are the same, Greek and Jew Gospel: Be rich (not in possessions) but towards God
What is Left?
Talk about the folly of each: the what we are not to be Bring to it our own assurance of God’s Grace: and how it applies to these foolishness, bad advice, and condemnation of being possessed by possessions. Bring to it our own sense of relationships as essential to human life, to the nature of God, i.e. Trinity, of accountability and responsibility to future generations
Seek Things above:
The Movie: The Journey to Palamor
The story of astronomical exploration through telescopes and our understanding of the universe: rate of expansion, quasars, galaxies, black matter, black holes, and on it goes. At one time Hale said the Wilson telescope would allow us to see the nature of the creator of the universe. Criticized: not to see the face of God Applauded: God’s handiwork is more marvelous than ever imagined. From the Earth being circled by lights (stars) and the sun and (planets) to the universe expanding out from one great explosion and the end of the universe coming when that explosion collapses on itself in b/trillions of years.
Astronomy today:
Thoughts about Each Lesson
OT: The self deluded fool
Vanities all that is is vanities
It is too common that we focus only on the stuff under our feet, and we miss the Light.
This supposedly wise man thinks he has it all well and good.
He says: Our toils produce and others enjoy it, who may be wise or foolish. He has no family, no friends, no community. This is a man who is a rock unto himself, He has laboured, and known great results, great wealth, great power, King of the people, enough that he identifies his being with the results of his labours and in his misguided wisdom he declares that God has created, man has worked, and nothing is worth anything more than the vapour of self-importance based on absolutely nothing at all.
The life with this fool’s perspective
What does this kind of life look like? It is a life where one makes oneself important. It is a life where God’s truth disappears into the vapours like the mists of the fog disappearing with the rising sun. And then anything that one wants can become the truth, or rather the lies that one believes are true. People are sacrificed. People do not count as people. They become stepping stones to make one succeed at whatever one counts that decade, that year, that month, that day as worth achieving. It is a life where despair takes on all sorts of guises, where one does not sacrifice to give other’s life. It is a life where instead of being thankful for what one has, one demands more and more of things that cannot fill the empty void that should be one’s heart and soul and full mind. It is a life that is at war with life itself. Where conflict and chaos allow one to hide from accountability or hope or love or … Jesus. It is a life that accepts that violence and vengeance are acceptable.
Story We Ain’t Poor
Florence Ferrier In the story We Ain’t Poor! a social worker in poverty-stricken Appalachia tells of her work with the Sheldons, a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. The help they received was not adequate, yet they managed their meager income with ingenuity — and without complaint. One fall day the social worker “visited the Sheldons in the ramshackle rented house they lived in at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear, which strayed into their yard once too often. The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for. There would be meat even during the worst of winter when their fuel costs were high. “Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat. I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance firmly. ‘Now you just have to take this. We want you to have it. We don’t have much, that’s a fact; but we ain’t poor!’“[The social work asked, ‘How can you say that?’] His answer proved unforgettable. “’When you can give something away, even when you don’t have much, then you ain’t poor. When you don’t feel easy giving something away even if you got more’n you need, then you’re poor, whether you know it or not.’” [Can we say] ‘We ain’t poor!’?
(Gospel Notes 2001, Brian Stoffregen, reworked TL)
NT: The Different Life: In Christ
In contrast to the wise king’s hopeless lack of vision in God’s creation, because he only knows himself, and does not let anyone into his own life, the writer of Colossians reminds us that Christ raises us differently into life free from what destroys us.
There is something wonder-filled in all the universe that points to a mystery: a Creator that Loves and Creates with Words, First Light!
Passion embraced
We can wonder that passion is somehow among the writer’s list of things that are to be left behind. Though if we remember that their expectations were that Jesus would return and the world would end, so leaving passion behind seemed a wise thing.
Living Now with Passion, Beauty
We know centuries later that the end may come at any time but we none the less must live so that the world is also filled with hope for our children and grandchildren, and generations after them. At creation God’s gifts includes passion. God’s gifts always include passion as a gift that binds us to one another. This is what the king had no room for. He had no passion to share the beauty of life with another person. He had no passion to know that God’s love and passion for creatures moved God to speak a word “Let there be Light.” From God’s simple words the whole of what is came into being. But chaos of the life that the king has found where everything is futile and vapours and vanity, that is what God took and with a word created non-chaos, creation. We live in that blessed creation of order and beauty.
Grace Required
It is not perfect, for God loved us enough to give us freewill. We choose, too often, not to love all creation with the passion that God put into those words: “Let there be Light!”. Each of us requires God’s great sacrifice of Jesus, God’s son, to redeem us, to make us good in God’s eyes. But then … then the whole of creation in all it’s order and beauty and passions and hope and loves transforms all that we see and know. Not just for ourselves, but for the next generation, and all the generations to come.
Story The Next Generations Ain’t Heavy
A family, in a country of a repressive government, were placed under house arrest. Under pressure from other nations, the parents were told they could leave the country, but that they could only take two hundred pounds with them. So the family began to argue about and sort through what to take: computers, cooking utensils, books, toys, clothing; what was most important? Finally they had decided. An official came to the door. “Are you ready?” “Yes, we’re ready. We’ve packed two hundred pounds.” The official asked, “Did you weigh the children?” Suddenly, computers, pots & pans, books, toys, clothing seemed absolutely worthless.
(Sharla Hulsey, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Sac City, Iowa reworked TL2001 reworked kas 2016)
Luke: Greed
Greed, It is a false passion that takes all the joys and hopes and dreams and real visions of the goodness of creation, denies them all, and tries to replace them with a thing, a quantity, a power, a gathering of wealth.
Definition Greed
Greed is related to gluttony; it kills us as we try to possess too much. “A glutton is (a person) who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”
(Wishful Thinking, F Buechner)
But the world is not good because one has money, or power, or anything else.
Ante-Greed, Sacrificial Labour and Love
The world God created is made of sacrificial love. Life sharing love. Labours for others, for the next generations. Time so precious for we only have so many days on this wonder-filled world. We have only so many minutes to share God’s own beauty with others. The world God created us to live in brings us a life of challenges, hopes, and dreams, some too often dashed, promises realized, or not. Always God calls us to see so far beyond all our possessions. We all get caught by them and they possess us. But Jesus lived, died and rose back to life, just so that we can see beyond what would capture and suffocate our hearts. We can see those things above. And seeing the things above we can know how precious God names all those things that are this earth, this world, this wonder.
What life? Choose!
What life do you want to live? A life of vanities, all is vapours, all is for nothing, for generations of fools will follow us. Or A life of dreams, passionate beauty, simple joys, shared so that they multiply and bring us all to hope, to hope that our labours will give the goodness of life to others, for generations to come.
Choose to live in the Light, Looking to the Reality of God’s Grace Giving, Sustaining and Guiding all Life.
Scratch Notes on Each Lesson
Scratch OT Thoughts
Vanity, also vapour. All is vanity: this is a BAD take on God’s good creation
Not Wisdom, Folly
This is not wisdom, this is stupidity, faithlessness, depression, self-based delusion of world-denying-God thoughts. This is in the Canon: one can only point out how wrong it is! The Teacher, when King, (probably NOT a king then a teacher!)
Pretentious
I saw all the deeds: This guy is pretentious. No human can see all the deeds done. From such a skewed take on his own reality and place in creation, he comes to the conclusion that ‘all is chasing after the wind.’ Tapes our fears This has a ring to it that seems true. We’ve all had the feeling that life is useless and labour the most useless part of it. It is tempting to think that it is right. It is tempting, but it is not right or healthy or wise or blessed, or anything worth much except to create fear in people instead of calm that feeds good labours that bring the fullness of life to oneself, one’s family, community, and to others, i.e. strangers, guests, sojourners, enemies.
Choice of Hate:
hated: well that is a choice of how to respond to the world, a bad choice, an against-God, faith, life choice. No wonder the ‘Teacher’ ends up thinking as he does!
To hate work
hated his toils: That is a choice, a choice of privilege and luxury. Hatred of the essential work to stay alive is a sure way to come to an abrupt and early end. Even despicable labour, if required for life, has a redeeming value. Tedious work today has the reward of a pay-cheque, which enables one to eat, have shelter, provide for one’s family. To love (boring) work Making work that is tedious nonetheless interesting is valuable skill of living well. It is a choice to learn it, it is a choice to refuse to learn it. Nearly everyone gets lots of opportunity to learn it. Only the decadent wealthy can skip that one!
Devolved Despair, ante-faith
The texts devolves into foolishness: despair and complaint that one’s labours can be such to provide for the next generation(s), though one cannot control whether they be wise or foolish who inherit the benefit of one’s labours. Where is this guy’s sense of community, of continuity, or existing through the results of his labours in a small way contributing to the future generations. All of this is not only missing, it is flat out bemoaned as possible! That is the essence of EVIL. To take what is blessing and make it cursed! He turns his heart to despair: this is the antithesis of faith! A choice.
Benefits of Labour
What do mortals get from their labours: they get meaning and life well lived and a legacy … and joy and hope, and the pleasure of seeing things accomplished that would not otherwise be if one did not labour! YES: our days are full of pain and vexation. Our nights full of minds that do not rest. For we worry when and how we do not need to, which produces no good results … BECAUSE we do not trust that God is at work in our labours as well! BECAUSE we turn from the blessing of God’s presence, and try to live on our own. And that kind of living, trying to live separate from God our creator, redeemer and inspirer/guide, is what leads to all sorts of EVIL starting with abandoning one’s heart to despair/Evil/hatred/vengeance/blindness: conflict, sexual misconduct, abuse, lies, wars, and destruction of creation and people. So the Teacher is right: abandon God (as if one could) and then all is just vanity, vapour, ethereal, false, empty, futile, meaningless … and all that is the basis of stupidity, not wisdom. So the guy is all screwed up, like us all.
Psalm Thoughts
Know our place: we are creatures and all of us will die, wise or foolish. Our riches can never make life good. Only God can do that for us. God has done that for us.
Scratch NT Thoughts
This psuedo pauline thought is treacherously deceptive: but there is a core that is healthy and helpful: Christ moves us beyond our Past There are things in our past, which Christ moves us beyond. Look above, to the heavens. See God’s truth, There are things that make for life, and redeemed by Christ, raised up with Christ we can live better (not good enough for God, for that we require Christ’s redemption first, foremost and throughout to the last).
Hidden to be revealed
The anticipation of Christ’s return: of us being hidden with Christ and revealed in Glory with Christ is wonderful and deceptive. Life as faithful that is secret is not full life. But at times that has been the only option forward for the faithful as forces would destroy them if they revealed themselves as Christ’s – see the Missionaries to Japan, the movie where they denounce Christ, even write tracts against Christianity, but in secret they continue to witness to their faith and those who in secret know what to look for, see their witness and their sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice: giving up one’s faith to be faithful witnesses They sacrifice the ability to practice, profess and teach the faith. They spit on God, and on Jesus, they tread on the Bible. But they remain faithful! For outward practices are NOT faith.
Lists of ‘faith practices’
Christ is the ALL in ALL. All our whimpy attempts to reduce faith to a certain set of practices is vanity, all vanity, and a temptation to deny true faith in our hearts, minds, souls, families, churches, communities, nations, world, and in all of God’s creation. So the writer’s lists of what is left behind is … deceptive. There are things in the list that are destructive, and we can leave them behind if we wish a better, fuller life. Lists denounce Passion, But Passion is a gift from God Passion though! That is all wrong. Though passion can be embraced outside of faithful living and run amok. See Sodom and Gomorrah and, and and …. But passion as the full-hearted embracing of being a body in God’s creation, is truly one of the most precious gifts God made as part of creation. We like Luther, can embrace the mundane as sacred: beer is God’s gift, sexuality is dangerous to deny and a great joy to embrace in a marriage. The problem with making lists of acceptable behaviours and unacceptable behaviours is it is wrong headed: the destruction is in these, but the foolishness of thinking one can entirely free oneself from sin, or that telling others to is at all helpful, really … the foolishness is profoundly wrong headed and endangers not only oneself, but those to whom one would teach/demand these lists.
Be … Blessed
Be passionate, about God’s beautiful creation and all that is in it, that God has blessed us with short days to enjoy! Be free in Christ to move beyond selfishness, greed and … that is a list … so that one can live more fully. But always remember that one lives fully only because of Christ’s redemption, not because of one’s efforts to be good. Be free, be bold, be beautiful, and let God forgive your sin, and all the sin around you. Breathe the Spirit in. The vapours/vanity/supposed wisdom is actually blessed God present calling us forward out of our despair into the Light of creation.
Scratch Gospel Thoughts:
Using Christ
Using Christ to get ahead, get more, ahh we have more than perfected the use of God/Christ/Spirit/Religion to pound others down and try to get ahead.
More than abundance
Clear from Christ: life is much more/other than the abundance of possessions. For possessions are not a blessing; they possess one. They are as much an impediment to the fullness of life as any misappropriation of God’s good creation. The foolish man, like the ‘wise Teacher who despairs’, thinks only of himself. Good crops, bigger barns, security for the future of the community … all that is good! The cursed thought: Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.
One’s own treasure, or God’s Gifts
That is the error of death: to think that one’s treasures are ‘for [one’s self]’ Fools who are already walking dead think their treasure is for themselves! Rather be rich towards God, well that takes no possessions, and even with many possessions it is possible, though the more one is possessed by possessions (the more one possesses one is possessed by them!) the greater the temptation is to find security in one’s own wealth, instead of in God’s mercy and grace!
Our hoarding gives others inability to live, at all.
Then one hoards and is greedy and one denies the ample production of creation which others need! Just to survive, yet alone live abundantly!
The Creation reflects the wonders of the Creator Let there be Light!
Being Somebody
Dorothea Sölle gave the usual list of the 5 basic requirements for life:
clean air
clean water
nourishing food
appropriate clothing (not fashion, but function: safe from the environment.)
shelter to these she added two more:
meaningful labour
love – being loved and being able to love others. And to that I will add that one needs
culture: art like music and photography. Tonight, after a day of church and work continuing to set up a campsite for the remainder of the allowed 14 days before breaking it all down and moving off for 72 hours, we decided to go for a walk. It was after supper, so with a few tools, we headed out on a trail rarely used, and apparently not at all for the last year or so. As we went we cleared it so that coming back would be easier, and others could use it. There is a great deal of good fire wood to collect, that will otherwise rot. The temperatures out are a comfortable 20⁰C dropping to 17⁰ before we got back just as the sun set orange out over the lake.
So I have much to give thanks for:
Air the air is clean
Water there is plenty of clean water to drink and to clean with.
Food there is for this day nourishing food.
Clothing I have good clothing for living in the woods and for this walk enough deet spray to cover my shoes, socks, jeans, and a special hat that has flaps down over the ears and the back of one’s neck. Sprayed with deet that hat keeps the bugs off the entire head. And gloves, oh so crucial, leather gloves to protect the hands from all the brush and mosquitoes!
Shelter
There is a very cozy camper to return to, in which no bugs survive for long, it is temperature controlled, with a place to write, sleep and wash up.
Meaningful Labour This work of clearing off the path took just the right amount of work, soaked my shirt with sweat completely, and did not over tax any of my aging muscles. And the benefit of our labours will be enjoyed by countless people.
Love, given and received! This I all got to enjoy with the love of my life, who loves me unconditionally, who I can safely love unconditionally. No, we are not perfect nor are our lives, but we are both kind, and kind to each other. And we dance delightfully together, with our own kind of stepping marvellously in tune to the other, with the ability to start and stop and change the step to a great variety, so as to allow the aging bones and muscles a variety of movements to not freeze up from repetition, yet alone to leave one’s mind frozen in one count or hitch.
Culture That is always a bit of culture, that remains a joy for both of us, and most all who witness us at graceful play. So on return I got to enjoy: a great option to clean up with hot water! A great hot cup of spice tea, with just the right amount of milk added, which somehow reminds me of growing up with 5 brothers and 5 sisters, and taking an afternoon break with my dad, who always had a cup of tea, and easily allowed us one as well if we added milk. Along with the tea just right I had some lemon yogurt, just the right mix of sour and sweet, the pucker power reminds me of my youngest son who loved lemons, just so. As we puckered up and said it was great vitamin C!
Music The greatest part of the evening is to return with enough solar power collected to allow an hour of so of music, from my playlist. Notably (which means these pieces evoke some of the deepest most thorough joy I have known): Good Lovelies, especially and starting off with Lie Down Beside Me, to be reminded of the goodness of love and of it’s loss. Rufus Wainwright singing Cohen’s Alleluia, a haunting reminder of God’s presence in the darkest times of my life. Over the Rainbow by Israel k. Just goodness of life! The Proclaimers’ I’m On My Way [to Happiness] which always gets the base turned up, the volume up too high and smiles, reminders of many a dance step of grace, enjoyed by us and the band that noticed us. A great number from ABBA Take a Chance on Me, Fernando, of course Mama-Mia, and Cohen, not least of Take this Waltz, Anthem, and Closing Time. I toss in a bit of Mozart French Horn, the beauty of brass, even though I played the Euphonium, I always envied the French Horn players. And to top off the end of the music before too many volts are consumed: The Proclaimers’ 500 miles, a simple and thorough statement of being a man who will live ‘in love’, which we know is a choice of health!
The Photo
Simple Sun Set … … Haunting Sun Set
But the photography that is always there is the desktop I’ve chosen recently of a photo I took this year on 19th July at 21:34.
It haunts me every time I see it, even though I am the photographer whose taught for years. This photo keeps me from getting right down to work each time, but the time is not wasted.
Right there the essence of culture meets my mind no matter the colour or gray of the day: There is light at play from all sides collecting on the birch logs and waves, but pulling attention to the clouds on the horizon spanning from tree to tree with the blue of the water countered with the orange of the setting sun!
The photo haunts even me the photographer.
Why is it so haunting? Clue a panorama so that the light and wave patterns are just normal enough and yet out of place to be intriguing, if you do not discount it as a panorama.
There is nothing quite like it: spice with milk, lemon with sweet, the fresh air, clean hot water, the mosquitoes kept at bay, the cozy camper a home not quite a home, a path nearly cleared, all this shared with a kind person who loves me without guile or selfish demands, and spiced milk, sweet lemon, and the best music selection short but good enough to change one’s heart from set and hard to lively and inspired. Life is great!
It is a miracle to be somebody, somebody who knows how to enjoy life fully, with so little, but with everything that makes for a full life.
How’s your days measuring up? Are the daisy’s still down? Can you still dance with grace through all the challenges that come your way each day? Do you know God’s love is so assured that it need not even be mentioned as part of the essentials of life? Do you have music that inspires you to love all of life completely, to a 4/4 two step, or a 3/4 waltz? What are you missing? Ask and you shall receive, for God gives us all that we need, just not everything we ask for!
Be Somebody: share the essentials of good life everyday with someone new. Everyone needs them! And smile, God created you, and us all, to be able to enjoy the deep based line of nature’s best music.
The owl may hoot every night, but I am not the one tagged for death, I am the one tagged for extraordinarily important things to happen around and because of: It is enough to see one’s love dancing to the Proclaimers’ “I am going to be the man who will grow old with you. I will walk 500 miles and I would walk another 500 miles just to be the man who walked one thousand miles to fall down at your door.”
Get a life. That’s what people had told the farmer-woman, when she
discovered her ex-husband had molested their children. Get a life. She’d
already left him behind after the cops only took him for coffee when they came
and found him playing Russian Roulette with her life. Get a life?
She told her story when a new acquaintance, an older
man, mentioned to her how the cops tried to arrest him after is ex, with whom
he can have no contact, chased him down country roads trying to force contact.
He was afraid for his life and called 911 when other vehicles were caught as
she blocked the roads in front of him. As the cops left, threatening to arrest
him if this ever happened again, they told him to get a life.
Look and Find the Light, Find a Life?
Get a Life! What is Life? Who are we to get it? We think we know and
then the Good News of Jesus Christ (also in today’s lessons) turns our
understanding of life right-side-up.
OT: we
expect God to demand; not.
As we read the OT Lesson we may expect Moses to demand that the people
obey God’s commandments, which are hard to understand, require research to
discover, and great effort to obey. But maybe if the people persevere
and obey the commandments then they will get to enter into the Promised
Land. Not at all so.
Twain: Do Good, gratify,
astound
Mark Twain once wrote “Always do right. This will gratify some people
and astonish the rest.”
Twain’s humour catches us because we too often think that always
doing the right thing is an option too far from reality to be
considered.
Gospel:
Parable of surprises
Today’s Gospel is delightful, full of corrections that keep surprising
us, even though we are so familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus Answers Different
Questions
The lawyer’s questions are
often our own. They seem right and most important for life. Yet they are all
wrong. In fact, Jesus answers as if the lawyer had asked different questions.
The lawyer asks: what must I
do to inherit eternal life.
Jesus answers: how can we have life now.
The lawyer asks: who is my neighbour whom I shall love.
Jesus answers: who is a real neighbour, to those in need regardless of
who they are.
It would be so much easier if Jesus just answered the question of who
our neighbour is. We could limit who we must love to just those people! That
would be a little more possible to do, and we could always fudge who was our
neighbour so that we did not need to help the billions who are in great need.
Good
Samaritans Loose teeth
When we see people in need, it’s too easy to come up with all sorts of
reasons to walk by on the other side of the road. The robbers could be lying in
wait for anyone who comes to the aide of the half dead man.
An old Winthrop cartoon (1982) shows two small boys staring off into the
distance. One of the boys, Winthrop, starts to recognize what he is seeing.
“What’s going on over there? Looks like a fight! … It’s Nasty McNarf … He’s
beating up on some kid! … Come on… Let’s go and make Nasty leave that kid
alone!”
The second boy speaks up, “Wait a minute…I don’t think we’d better do
that.”
“What do you mean?” asks Winthrop, “Don’t you want to be a Good
Samaritan?”
“Frankly, no.” replies the second boy. “Good Samaritans always wind up
with loose baby teeth.”
But remember: we are going to lose baby teeth and our lives eventually.
Adult teeth and life eternal will replace them.
We try to get eternal life
on our own terms
Exactly, so we are right there with the lawyer asking what can we do to
inherit eternal life. Instead of answering that question, Jesus asks back what
the lawyer knows well: what does the law say he should do. The lawyer answers: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as
yourself.
Jesus replies: You know it! Now do it!
What does
love look like? (in the Gospel)
What does it look like to love God, our neighbour, and ourselves, with
all our heart, soul, strength and mind?
It looks like crossing the road in order that we can
help, aide, assist, and care for those who are left half dead by the roadways through
the world, and thereby allow ourselves to be marked as foolish, unclean,
not-blessed by God, and not welcome at work or in worship.
It looks like giving a full day of our life to an unexpected need of
another person, again and again.
It looks like giving a great portion of our purse or wealth so that
another less fortunate person’s wounds will be bound up and given a chance to
heal, so that person will regain life.
It looks like promising carte blanche that we will cover the costs of
providing life to another person in need.
All this to our enemy
It looks like doing all this for our mortal, religious, economic, and/or
personal enemy who is left half dead on the side of life’s road, left there by
all those things and people and circumstances that can so easily beat us up,
rob us of everything we have, and leave us half dead. It is knowing always that
but for the Grace of God, we would never survive even a day of the Devil’s
guile and destruction.
The Homeless
Guy who gives
Tony Campolo, a minister and sociologist from Philadelphia tells this
story:
“… walking down the street in Philadelphia … a [dirty looking homeless man] came towards
me. I mean a … filthy guy .. from head to toe. …He had this huge beard
[with]
rotted food stuck in [it]. As he approached me, he held out a cup of
McDonald’s coffee and said, ‘Hey mister, want some of my coffee?’
“[I thought to myself, not on your life, but] I said, ‘Thanks, but
that’s okay,’ and I walked by him. The minute I passed him, I knew I was doing
the wrong thing, so I turned around and said, ‘Excuse me. I would like
some of your coffee.’
“I … sipped … and gave it back to him. … ‘You’re being generous.
How come…?’
“… this [guy] looked at me and replied, ‘… the coffee was especially
delicious today and I think that when God gives you something good, you ought
to share it with people.’
“I didn’t know how to handle that, so I said, ‘Can I give you anything?’
I thought that he would hit me [up] for five dollars.
…‘No.’ [he turned to go, and then turned back], ‘Yeah, yeah. … there
is something you can give me. You can give me a hug’
“[I held my breath, wishing he’d asked for] five dollars! He put his
arms around me and I put my arms around him…. as I, in my establishment
dress, and he, in his filthy garb, hugged each other on the street, I had the
strange awareness that I wasn’t hugging a bum, [no. Jesus was hugging me.]”
In Baptism: Enter the
Promised Land, then Obey for Goodlife’s Sake
Returning to the OT lesson: God does not reward obedience with entrance
to the Promised Land. All get to enter. The commandments are not far away,
difficult to find or to understand: God has put them in our mouths and in our
hearts! The commandments are not burdensome; they are life-giving. They are
God’s guide for abundant life. Obedience brings us to live well, so that God
delights in our renewed prosperity as we move out of slavery into the Promised
Land!
In our baptisms we have already receive eternal life. Now what are we
going to do with this life in the Promised Land?
Farmer’s
Parting Words
As the farmer-woman drove away, she shouted out her truck window to the
man harassed by his ex and the cops: They are jealous. Don’t let them tell you
to get a life; you have one. They’re just trying to take it from you.
Do
not be afraid, Do not be shamed.
Jesus says do not be afraid, we cannot be
shamed for we already have a life, a good life.
What now?
So what are we going to do with God’s
gift of our good, abundant lives in the Promised Land?
Giving what God Has Given
Us
Jesus’ Parable compels us to ask: What kind of life do we live if we do
not stand ready to risk losing everything that God has given us, in order that
others may live, and live abundantly?
After all, without Jesus’ redemption we would remain strangers to God,
and no matter what we would do, we would be lost, our lives worthless and
meaningless. But with Jesus’ redemption we inherit the Kingdom of God.
Answers not far, nor
impossible, for God is with us
The answers to life’s questions and mysteries
are not too far away in the chaos of pre-creation between the galaxies that we
must send someone to bring the answers to us. The answers are on our lips, and
in our hearts: We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind,
strength and soul, and our neighbours as our selves.
This love is all very possible for us:
for our strength is from God’s all-mighty
power,
for our freedom and faith are given to us as
free gifts by Jesus,
for our days are guided, inspired, and
completed by the spectacular truth and light of the Holy Spirit.
Walking Toward Us: the Blessings God Shares with So Many People.
We’ve got a life, given to us … and there’s
really good coffee coming down the street toward us. …
Are we ready for Jesus to give each of us a
huge, warm hug?
Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 66:1-9, Galatians 6:[1-6] 7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Rough Outline
Our Names are Written in Heaven
Skywriting:
A proposal by airplane. Wondrous, a dream come true for two people in love
Everything
about their lives is changed:
The
perspective of love.
The work
of love
The
forbearance of love
The
genuine empathy of love
The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela 18 July 1918 –
5 December 2013
at 80, 27 years in jail, freed, reunited with Winnie, Winnie’s other love, separated from Winnie, divorced from Winnie, leader of a nation before he was even released from prison, and now a leader not elected but negotiated with, and then elected,
and NOW the most lonely person on planet.
Loss of
love is as devastating as love is equipping and empowering to take on
all demons
Then at at 79 Nelson Mandela falls in love again with, Graça Machel, the widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel. (born 17 Oct 1945.)
He
marries her on his 80th birthday!
The
trees, the stumps of the past, the light.
Work of Love
Love is
not free: must be worked at each and every day.
If you
work at being the person who behaves ‘in love’ with your spouse,
you will love your spouse, as delightfully, marvelously, as
colorfully as the first day you fell in love.
How that
makes life different!
What does that mean for us?
Now that
the Kingdom of God has come near,
Quote from Mother Theresa
Mother
Teresa said, “Our work is constant. The problems of the poor
continue, so our work continues. Yet everyone can do something
beautiful for God by reaching out to the poor. I see only people
filled with God’s love, wanting to do works of love. This is the
future—this is God’s wish for us—to serve through love in
action, and to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to act when called.”
Mother
Teresa, The
Book of Peace: Finding the Spirit in a Busy World
(London: Rider, 2002), 74.
What does that mean for us?
What are we going to do in response?
In the meanwhile:
Some
will accept and grow from the nurture of God, like the nurture of a
prosperous city, the city of Jerusalem.
Some
will reject us and the peace and love of God that we bring. Still the
message is the same: the Kingdom of God has come near!
Other lessons:
OT: Always God is there for us:
on
return from Exile:
Promise
of nurture, comfort, delight, and peace.
If ever
an image is needed: of God: Mother nursing us, carrying us, dandling
us on her knees!
The Jerusalem of the/to day
not the
old, it’s gone, can be mourned
not the
New, it’s coming, a promise of God at the end of time
Result for us:
Prosperity
will flow like a river, full and flooding it’s banks distributing
silt and soil for all in it’s vicinity.
Our
hearts shall rejoice
our
bodies shall flourish.
God there for ALL of us, as the past is gone, the
promise of tomorrow not yet
Response:
rejoice, even us that mourn the loss of the old Jerusalem, the way it
was in the past.
Like
brimming churches with SS busy with children, many per age in
classrooms abuzz with activities, learning, and sometimes real Gospel
and real Grace of God, and real love of God.
Mourn
the loss, look to the new creation!
Nothing
more foolish, bare obvious ridiculous than a 70 male, a man of power
and corruption, divorcing himself from his wife of his youth, and
claiming again and again a yet younger woman, in an effort to remain
youthful, to deny his age.
Mourning
what is lost by denying it is GONE, DONE, PASSED. Instead buying with
wealth gained by corruption, an image of being younger than the real
OLD of his age.
Nothing
more foolish, than an woman who does the same. Equally foolish and
destructive to all sorts of people, in the deception of self.
Except
perhaps all the faithful people who look to the past of the church,
deny the change of culture around us away from church participation,
and expend great energy trying to recapture what is lost, past, or
dying; instead of working to be what God makes us able to be today.
We deny
one another’s stories, we’re too busy struggling as a
congregation with each other’s untoward behaviours, anxious
behaviours.
We miss
out on the opportunities to work in the real world, from the real
stories of each other’s lives. Like ostriches, we bury our heads in
sand, unable to see the GOODness of creation. And we suffocate there,
hiding from reality. God cannot nurture us there: no comforting, no
nursing, no dandling on God’s knees.
God,
through the prosperity of the City of God, the city of peace,
nurtures, comforts, provides for us,
us who
have returned home from exile,
us who
have deserted home for better efforts elsewhere
us who, like the older son of the prodigal father, have remained, worked diligently at home, and are envious of the returnees given free grace, we receive grace even though we have come to rely on ourselves, our works, our merits … though they may be something, they’re nothing before God,
We all
NEED God’s Grace.
God,
through the prosperity of the City of God, the city of peace,
nurtures, comforts, provides for ALL of us,
Just like a Mother provides for her infants.
This is
love: God’s for us, our delight in God: we respond with singing for
joy, with praise and adoration, with joy, even as we mourn the loss
of the past.
The truth of love
God: in
love with us, you, writes our/your name/s in heaven: the dream of all
dreams, hopes, and life itself, fulfilled, for us and for God!
God
claims, names, and commissions us, sends us
into the
harvest: plentiful, with few workers:
What does that mean for us?
What are we going to do in response?
The
work, the paddling, the water of life, the light.
Confused Paul in Galatians:
bear
each other’s burdens, all must carry their own loads.
As we
sin, each carried with gentleness by the rest of us.
As we
work, each carry our own load, to provide necessities of life.
God
comforts, nourishes, promises: But we still get to work like the
dickens to make life good for ourselves and our community, and those
in need.
God’s care does not supplant our own labours, rather God, enables our labours to be productive.
There is joy in diligent, hard, directed, purposeful labour. Labour is a necessity of life: air, water, food, clothing, shelter, purposeful labour, and love (giving and receiving).
As we work: remember God’s promise: most
important
God
promise:
our names are written in heaven.
More
than our ability in Christ’s name to heal, to feed, to care for, to
love others, to forgive, to be gentle with each other:
That God
has acted, named us, written our names in heaven!
Wondrous
miracles to see in this creation. Greater is God’s Grace which
names us as God’s
Names
written not because of a fluke, not because of our work, not because
of correct faith, not because of our hanging on to or letting go of
our histories, but
Just because God wants it so, out of love for
us.
The
power of the heavens, where our names are written
No sermon this past week. Sorry. A few photos though still brighten the horizon even as bleak as it could be.
It was a difficult week again. A judge made an order, full of …. You cannot safely say the truth about judges; though it would be nice if judges would base their work on truth.
This past week has been draining.
Gaslighting is a powerfully terrible thing to experience.
These snippets from a google search highlight just what this is, just how terrible it is, and just how terrible it is that the justice system participates in this. All apologies if any are really needed for just grabbing this information without keeping records to give credit. It’s the kind of thing that after one suffers it, again and again, at one’s spouse’s hand, and then repeatedly at one’s pastor’s, (she was ordained today, just for a sample of God’s justice waiting, and God’s Grace filling undeserving lives), other pastors who have great sins to hide in their false accusations about me, and then almost without ceasing by various RCMP officers, even VSU when I called them, a great number of people working in the justice system, and then again and again at the hand of judges …. It’s the kind of thing that when you have to deal with it again things do not always get done with the correct process. So my apologies.
Birds Fly, even if I Cannot
To Gaslight
to manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
Gaslight
Gaslighting is used to describe abusive behavior, specifically when an abuser manipulates information in such a way as to make a victim question his or her sanity. Gaslighting intentionally makes someone doubt their memories or perception of reality. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse used by narcissists in order to instill in their victim’s an extreme sense of anxiety and confusion to the point where they no longer trust their own memory, perception or judgment. … The emotional damage of Gaslighting is huge on the narcissistic victim. Gaslighting can also be part of an authoritarian personality. A person with an authoritarian personality tends to think in absolutes: Things are 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong. When a gaslighter thinks that they are not the problem and everyone else is, this is called having an ego-syntonic personality.
Signs of being Gaslit
• no longer feeling like the person you used to be. • being more anxious and less confident than you used to be. • often wondering if you’re being too sensitive. • feeling like everything you do is wrong. • always thinking it’s your fault when things go wrong. • apologizing often.
The following from, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/are-gaslighters-aware-what-they-do
… Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation tactics used by abusers, narcissists, dictators, and cult leaders to gain control over a person or people. The goal is to make the victim or victims question their own reality and depend on the gaslighter. So, do gaslighters know they’re doing it? It depends on the gaslighter.
Light and the Road. They have Chosen.
Living Well, Surviving Gaslighting
There is only one way to survive Gaslighting:
to live well, as well as one can, given the circumstances. I live well, even if the challenges are great.
In the Purple Light of an Early Morning Before the Storm That follows that Day.
My work is rough. Outdoors, building, tearing down, moving, rebuilding. It’s a dream for a young man who loves to build things with his hands. It’s tough and rough work for an older man like me, even if I like working with my hand. My hands, precious instruments of my creativity.
And the Light at Night
I live well.
The sun sets over the lake outside the window. A canoe rests near the water available to take a camera out to create beauty from what can be ordinary. People respond well to my company, my words, and simple joy of life. I receive grace given to me in abundance. I share grace with everyone I meet, and it makes a visible difference, a positive difference.
I help guide a new truck driver from being stuck to safely position her vacuum truck to be able to do her work and be able to drive out. It just took some well placed shovel work, and some good driving, well planned driving.
I cleaned up 5 garbage bags of drunken, drugged, and orgy leftovers out of this random camping area.
I’ve pulled two dead-falls down this past week, one down by a fool with an axe, the other by a strong wind. Who knows what may have happened, but no one will get hurt from them.
The fireworks after 23:00 are loud, but the view is okay. There are no complaints.
The light is wonderful, when one sees it with the truth that God created it to reflect.
Gas – Lighting
It’s the kind of lighting that only God can put right. I can forgive the family stuff, the gaslighting in the family as horrendous as it was. But the professionals: they should know better: their sins are bound. God will deal with their sins, not forgiven but bound. That, because it is my responsibility to forgive all that can be, and to bind what cannot be. I place it behind me so that I can continue to deal with these people of horrendous deeds with grace. I place it behind me and before them for the rest of their lives. God’s truth has no diminished clarity, no possibility of being lied about, nothing to be spun or hidden.
And the Birds Still Fly
God’s forgiveness, which I have given, remains as clear as God’s light of truth. Photos show reality, the clarity of God’s light shining on God’s wonderful creation.
Who
are we? Do we need to make a name for ourselves? Will we ever be
satisfied with God’s Word present among us?
Good Potential
God
created the universe.
On the seventh day God rested and declared it was all
good. God created
us with such
potential: the potential to reach for the stars, the potential to
love one another, ourselves and even our enemies. Our power of
imagination to see what is not and strive to accomplish things new
and wonderful carries us from one generation to the next. We can
share the breath of beauty, the wind of hope, and the fire of the
future with one another.
Evil Potential
God
also gave us freedom, so that we have the
potential to reject the gifts God gives us. The
goodness of life is fragile. There
are so many ways for life to go wrong. We
can choose to dive into
the depths of darkness, to hide our false pride and
our self-centered arrogance, to wallow in
the despair that
consumes
generation after generation. We can
succumb
to addictions and armed conflict, to abuse
and terror that causes PTSD in its victims, to Gaslighting, bearing
false witness, and even
murder. We have
the potential to destroy all of life
on earth, but the real destruction are all
the avenues we create for life to implode on itself.
Jane
Jane
sat at the table in her favourite restaurant, enjoying the familiar
smells that reminded her of the news she had received here. Years
ago, on this very spot she’d opened her letter of acceptance into
university, the first one in her family, ever. That shaped everything
about her life, now a Doctor of History, a professor emeritus, a
famous author. Later that same day years ago she’d received the
other news that formed her life and was bringing it to an indecent
early end. She had MS. She had lived with it for so long, many years
in a wheelchair, but now her systems were slowly giving out. Her name
given to her at her baptism is Jane.
The White Purity of Birch, The Bleach of Life is not so pleasant a white.
Babel Blessing
In
the lesson from Genesis we read how the people came together to build
a marvelous city and a tower that would reach the heavens, in order
to make a name for themselves. They also distrusted God’s rainbow,
and wanted security from any future flood. God comes to bless the
people with confused speech, with different languages, so that their
prideful project will halt. Divided the people disperse far and wide
to inhabit the earth. Ever since, we create divisions and conflict
more easily than we build healthy communities. We have built more
than a tower of Babel as our fossil fuel consumption produces more
pollution than the earth can tolerate, resulting in violent climate
change. Our civilization is built on time bombs that destroy people.
George and Emily
George
and Emily walked the beach, they’d grieved the addiction of their
daughter for an eternity, grieving the birth of grandchildren, each
lost to foster care. Now they’d received the phone call they’d
feared. Jenny had overdosed on drugs yet again. This time she had not
recovered. Their names are George and Emily and they gave Jenny her
name at her baptism.
Languages A Gift
Today
we recognize the power of languages. They keep us apart and distinct.
Yet when we live in a second language, we experience not just
different grammar and words. We experience more of the world that God
created good. Different languages carry different pieces of the
marvels of this creation which we can barely fathom in a full
lifetime.
First Pentecost
That
first Pentecost the disciples proclaimed in their own language the
wonders of God’s work for everyone. God inspired the listeners to
hear the disciples in each listener’s own language. As at Babel God
confused the language of the people to save them from their pride, so
at the first Pentecost God overcame the language barrier in order
that people could hear and understand each other and the Good
News of what God had done in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus.
Language
is powerful.
Greta
Greta
was born in Jena, in East Germany. A Christian, at great cost she had
dedicated her life to serving Christ. Working with youth she
excelled, until jealous gossip was started about her. Under intense
pressure and unearned shame Greta slowly lost her confidence, then
her sense of self, and finally her sense of reality. She succumbed to
a half living state of senseless babble that sometimes erupted into
excruciatingly painful clarity about what had been done to her, and
how helpless she was. Her name, given to her at her baptism, is
Greta. She remained Greta even as she lost her mind to the horrendous
cruelty of gossip that pretends to know reality beyond God’s
goodness.
Clarity in Miracles
Like
the disciples we always want God to be more clear. The words are
plain enough. Yet God rarely leaves it to just the words. The signs,
the miracles, that accompany the Good News are remarkable. We may not
recognize what God is doing, but we always hope that in the end all
will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well,
for God created the universe and said it was good.
That
first Pentecost so that people could not miss the miracle of the Holy
Spirit given to God’s children, God marked the disciples with
tongues of fire.
Small Miracles, double sun, leaves growing.
Fire
One
of the distinct gifts God gave humans is Fire. It is powerful, both
for good and for evil. God spoke to Moses from a burning bush, guided
the people through the wilderness with a pillar of flame, and will
cleanse us at our judgment with God’s purifying fire.
As
we have breathed these past weeks, the result of climate change
brings more wildfires, and more smoke that covers vast areas,
inhibiting life in so many ways. Humans are not the only ones
affected by wildfires. The smoke reduced the available solar power, a
nuisance at least for those whose electricity is produced by solar
power. The greater loss was to the plants whose basis of life depends
on photosynthesis.
In
the face of life so challenged, God finds ways to bless us, with
hope.
Sam and Allicia
Sam
and Allicia both lost their childhoods to wars of terror and
genocide. In their teens they each survived the squalor and hunger of
refugee camps, their families having all been killed. Sponsored as
immigrants in their late teens by a Lutheran congregation in
Edmonton, they met, shared the struggles of finding their way, fell
in love, were married and are expecting their first child this
summer. With different mother tongues they communicate in Canadian
English. Their names given to them at their baptisms are Sam and
Allicia. They have chosen names for their first child at its baptism,
in memory of their families lost.
Our Name
Though
we reach for the stars, to make a name for ourselves, to succeed at
what we attempt, even to make life more than it is, there is no name
that we can make for ourselves greater than what God has already
given us. With tongues of fire God has marked us, anointed us, and
called us.
Three Confirmed, we stand with them
As
these three, Tristan, Connor, and Aysiah, were marked with
the cross in their baptisms, and now they
stand as young people, maturing, beginning to accept responsibility
for their own being, so
we each were marked. At
the right time we also stood
on our own to respond to the gifts that God gives us, promising to
receive, abide in, act out of, and grow into the people God calls us
to be. Today we
still stand, not on our own as if our faith
were merely personal or private. Rather
we stand as one
faith community united
by the fire of the Holy Spirit. As
we stand with one another in love, so we
stand with these
three young people. Their names, given to them in their baptisms, are
Tristan, Connor, and Aysiah.
Our name: potential as love
Again
today we share with them the name God has given us all. There is no
greater name. It is not a name we could make for ourselves.
It is the name that God gave us in our baptisms and shares with us
each day. God names us God’s children.
The
language of our name is not limited to one of the diverse languages
that God gave us to propel us across the earth, to inhabit it and do
well by it. The language of our name is love, in all its rainbow
colours.
In
our love for one another we best reflect the One who abides with and
in us, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. It is in our love for our
enemies that we dance with the miraculous power of life which
the Spirit pours down on us in the form of flames of fire.
As
we do what it takes to love one another, though the world roils with
conflict, abuse, and destruction, we rest in the abiding presence of
the Holy Spirit. We have no cause to be troubled. Nor do we suffer
the greatest enemy: the denial of evil’s potential. Nor do we need
to fear flood nor fire nor anything, for God is at work to keep evil
in its place and God in God’s place … and to keep
us on earth with and for each other.
Our
name given to us in our baptisms is children of God. We are
the inheritors of the miracle that brings life to be with a word,
with a breath, with a breeze, with a fire.
One language, one gathering, making a name making a name for themselves:
God helps
God helps them avoid disaster: nothing will stop them! Not even them destroying the planet or at least life on it. God saves us by ending it, prayer answered: NO! God comes to see the city, the tower, and God is alarmed? Displeased? Not said: just God ends it: confuses languages and scatters them.
Divisions vs community
Divisions over conflict is EASY, building community despite differences is the challenge, the miracle that shows God is at work with us!
Confuses Gramma [r]s
God confuses their language, into different words, sounds, gramma(r)s, they leave off the tower building.
God Blesses us, even in our conflicts, with the healing power of the earth
Acts 2:1-21
Thoughts
Language
HS with ability to hear and understand, unites people from every language into the church, All hear in their own language: not glossolalia! But clear speech beyond language barriers!
Fire:
All that it is: God’s presence, God’s guide in wilderness, mark of humans, gathered at campfire safe from animals who fear fire, fire that purifies by consuming dross, as judgment purifies us of sin, by consuming it with fire. Fires burn, destroys: revenge of the earth to climate change by burning fossil fuels beyond our share. We’ve built more than than the tower of babel. We’ve setup the earth to turn on all the life on it, us included. Fires: prevented fought down, now the fuel available is generation’s worth, burns all at once and the sun is blotted out. Solar power: winter 1.2 to 3 maybe 4 amps. Now in mid day 15 easy. But with fire’s smoke, down to 3 or 1 or less. Solar power, the basis of photosynthesis; the growth of plants, upon which the chain of food is built, from smallest life forms, to plants, to small bugs, to small animals to larger animals to largest to the most dangerous: humans.
Prophesy of Joel:
All will prophesy, sons and daughters, slaves men and women; old men will dream dreams (usually stop because there is no hope that the dreams can be fulfilled or seen through, a surrender of the world to the younger generation) but here: old men dream and set to being the fulfillment of dreams, God’s dreams.
Portents:
blood, fire, smoky mist, moon to blood, Lord’s Day before the Lord’s glorious day!
Be saved
Call upon him and all will be saved!
John 14:8-17 [25-27]
Thoughts
Satisfied
We will never be satisfied, but we continually hope. Even when what we ask for is right in front of us, we ask for more.
Miracles
DO help us believe that Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit is Jesus … is working in our midst Ask, I will give. But so much asked for and not ever yet given. Be careful what you ask for, sometimes Jesus gives us what we ask for: we ask for foolish things, impossible things, things that will hurt others, and Jesus answers NO. Other times Jesus gives us what we ask for and we do not recognize it.
Love and Obey
Love is to obey Jesus’ commands: to love your neighbour as yourself and your enemy!
Lawyer in court – Advocate – Of New
God gives advocate (lawyer in God’s Court for us), who will be with us forever, though Jesus goes away. We see HS, the advocate, the Spirit of Truth! Able because God is in us, HS in us World cannot receive him, does not see him, New, always present Jesus tells us, so we will know, but the Advocate will be with us, reveal new things, make us see new things, remind us of Jesus!
No worries Mate
Do not be troubled, do not be afraid (Fear is the greatest enemy), anxiety gets people to behave in bad ways.
1. Thoughts Towards an Outline
Fire:
the season, the ban, the power, the saving power – distinctively human the destroying power, wildfires, smoke, solar blocked, photosynthesis, stopped, dross, judgment where sins are burned away like dross, leaving us pure, ready for the New Jerusalem. Spirit Ruah, breath, spirit into inert forms →life, inspiration, spirit means vivified, and for God’s good purposes.
Language
Language, the basis of communication, but more, the basis of thought! New language, new thoughts, new history new manners: 2nd language: a world opens up when one lives in it. Computer languages: a whole new world opens up, but it is not filled with people, but imaginations made statically moving, reading conjures up the creative imaginative mind. TV rests the mind and slowly atrophies thoughts and creativity; computer interactions with games, deepens the narrowing of the thought, away from others, to chips. Everyone knows chips are not healthy, not potato chips, not chocolate chips, though tastey; neither computer chips alone. But as a tool, as an avenue to other people, to expand imagination in writing and conceiving uses, ways to be used, ways to be helpful to others: first text to talk: allow blind woman to continue significant work in the community (PR),
Reaching to the Heavens
All that we dream of is seen in our dream of reaching the stars
Reaching to the Heavens, the dream of humans since we peered at the stars outside the safety of the cave. Space travel.
Conflict and Differences
Conflict and Differences : Blessed by God, caused by God to save us from our own selves. Limits on name for ourselves: God’s blessing
Working out the bugs
Misquotes in even the smoky photos: upper left, that’s no helicopter.
There are some bugs to work out, of course, these are just rough thoughts scratched together.
I have a wise old friend who told me her story, so similar to another I know as well, too similar for both not to be listened to, believed, and heeded. It is a story how the darkness overcame her and landed her in the darkness from which there was no escape, no matter what she tried. It nearly ended her.
little light in the darkness
The small light in the darkness saves many. The darkness is made by lies that engulf, sink, and consume the will for joy. Who indeed cares for the truth? Is it little, too little perhaps, to ask that the truth be spoken, heard and listened to? A young girl saw her mother cry silently without words not knowing what was happening. … the guest did as he wished with no fear for if anyone objected then or later complained death would come quickly. And so many times, a different guest, a repeat guest, a different guest. The young girl was ordered to ready the house for the guests so that they would be pleased, moving so quickly to run from the terror. She left behind any thought that she was a person, other than one that made everything ready for the guests. Until this daughter was taken in turn, too young, and taught the small pleasures that are possible, of sorts. In that moment the lies began, and they overtook reality, the horrible reality, that nothing could make right. The darkness is made by lies that engulf, sink, and consume the will for joy. But the darkness, somehow for this little girl, is still lighter than the void that took her soul. Who cares for the truth? It is no joy to know, but the truth does make a few things understandable, even the lies.
Why
So why ask or hope for truth? Through all of time girls and boys have hoped that there would be a place for them in the world, not just a pit of worthlessness, but a path through the sun, through the rain, through the cold, through the heat, through the storms, and in the calm evening breeze on the lake. Why ask if truth is a factor? Cannot one just live with the lies? Cannot one live with the fiction that demeans some in order to eliminate them, and leave more space on the path for others? We have been doing it forever as humans, why not just let it continue? God. God loves. God loves all. So all will be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well. And we will be the ones to make it well, for all. That is why the truth is important! The truth, bright, blazing truth of Christ, takes all that is not well, makes it brilliantly clear what it is, horrendous and terrorizing, and makes it also well.
The Beaver
Beauty Waiting
The other night, as the evening darkness began to colour the world in blues and oranges, a small beaver swam by going south out from its home in the creek,
Going to safety.
and alerted to my presence on shore slapped an alarm and dove to safety leaving the rings of golden shimmer against the night between the trees.
Still going.
And came back to the surface further on its journey, out in the deep.
Calm
The beauty of the night deepened and shone as a few stumps left by the earlier beaver stood watch as the horizon climbed over the shore into the little light that remained.
Home for the night..
While just a tinge of light still touched the shore, the beaver came back, heading home for the night, leaving a wake behind that danced in the blues and in the orange-silver-golds of the set sun. Ahh, the night was set right and I headed back home as well …
Onward
but no, the beaver was still out for more yet this evening, going back away from, not towards home.
I did then head home, to sleep well, no guests.
Under the care of the Spirit that makes all things well.
Light Truth Joy
It is at sunset as the light begins to close the day, that we see how the light, the goodness of the light persists always to bring us to face, see, hear, and heed the truth, for then the watchful Spirit inspires us to be able to know profound joy.
The sun that daily sets … and rises new again each morning.
The sun that daily sets … and rises new again each morning. This friend came to see her darkness, to embrace it, and to set it aside with truth telling and truth listening and truth sharing. Which inspired a number of people to embrace their past, of darkness and ill, and to allow God to redeem it with love for themselves.
A Path
There is a path for everyone, or rather a path for each of us, not that it exists until we walk forward, but it unfolds under our movements forward in life toward the end, which is not death, but the ability to love, truly love, with all the sacrifice that entails.
June 2, 2019 Be One: Love your enemies Easter 7 The story setup
Nice Ice Left Over Hostiles In the movie, the Hostiles, set in 1892 starting from New Mexico a small band of soldiers and their charges, their enemies, ride across the wilds of the west north to Montana. In 1876, just 14 years earlier General Custer made his last stand in the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Before and after that battle both the army and the Indians, (or indigenous warriors we might better refer to them now) engaged in warfare as despicable as ever. Soldiers, non-combatants, women and children were captured, raped, tortured, and killed without reason. The captain in charge of this little band moving north had lost his wife and children to the Indians, learned their languages, joined the fighting against the Indians, killed, slaughtered and revenged death upon death. He lived out his hate under the auspices of the army and he did it better than most. Arriving at a fort in New Mexico with captured Indians, he receives new orders. Orders he cannot stomach. The captain is ordered to escort and protect his enemy, a chief, along with his family, who’ve been held captive 7 years in New Mexico, back to the chief’s home ground in Montana. There the captain is ordered to release his enemy, to give the chief back his freedom. This chief is responsible for the death of the captain’s family. He has engaged in slaughtering settlers, among them women and children, as well as scalping and torturing his victims. He has revenged the killing of his people as effectively as the captain. The captain can hardly believe his orders. He rebels and refuses, threatening to resign his commission. Then it’s pointed out that he will not be allowed to resign. Instead he will be courtmarshalled and stripped of his pension. At that, against every angry bone in his body, the captain begrudgingly accepts his orders. He obeys. As they ride across the wilds of the west north to Montana the captain puts his male prisoners, the chief and his son, in chains. The chief is old and riddled with cancer. He will soon die, which is the reason his request to be allowed to return home is granted.
The view south as we move north Similar stories nonfiction setup There are so many stories like this one. The movie is fiction. But is a fictional story filled with truth. There are so many non-fiction stories like this one. M&B Mizen In May 2008 16 year old Jimmy Mizen from South London was brutally attacked and killed by another boy. His parents could hardly believe it. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Gee Walker In 2005 by two racist thugs torturously murder Anthony Walker, 18, with an axe. His parents could not believe it. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
It may seem ordinary but … Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas In 1944 one evening in German occupied France, Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas preached a fiery sermon against the persecution of Jews and deportation of French men as forced labourers. The following night he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was sent to a detention camp at Compiègne from where most prisoners were transported to concentration camps in Germany. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf The normal course: There is no life lived without being hurt by others. Our normal and natural response, built into us by millennia of survival instinct, is to allow hurt to grow into anger, and terrible hurt to grow past anger into rage. Over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, we instinctually allow anger and rage to grow into determined revenge. Revenge may become polite comeback. But, fuelled by hatred, our anger becomes vicious payback, just reckoning, and even, in the extreme, murder or even mass murder. We find polite comebacks and even vicious payback short of killing to be somehow expected and acceptable.
Stand Tall in the Dark God’s Doch To that acceptance God says a strong DOCH! But let me put that in a context that will perhaps help us understand exactly what God does with our natural urge towards revenge, polite or vicious, or even outrageous. Intro to Doch As we celebrate the last Sunday in Easter we remember that on Easter, God changed everything. On Easter God undid the laws of causality and set all of us free: God took death and turned it to life; God took despair and turned it into hope; God took the emptiness of consuming and turned us to value each tiny piece of creation. God took everything that breaks us, dosed it in Light and made it into a salve of holy healing which makes us stronger, more compassionate, and more loving than we were before. In the words of Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen, who presented Grace to us at the Study Conference in Canmore a few years ago, God took the world God created good, which we broke bit by bit and said “Doch!” Now if you – like me – don’t know German we need a translation or really an explanation of Doch. Doch, D O C H, has different degrees of intensity. Doch can mean simply ‘Not so’: If I say: “His shirts are wrinkled” and you respond “Doch, he ironed them.” It’s just a few degrees different. Or Doch can be a voracious protest against what is previously stated. It’s a change of many degrees. When a person suffering alone from mental illness cries out in fear of what will come, We say “Doch! We will learn to stand with them, to give people with mental illness what they need to be able to stand tall and function well and live among us!” Or taken to the extreme, Doch can mark a change in the universe. It can be God turning us or the world around 180 degrees. God created the world good, but we broke it, which could be the end of our story! But God says “Doch, Doch, Doch! My Son, Jesus redeems the world.” God constantly changes our paths, by just a degree or by 180 degrees and we end up in completely different places. God’s doch shepherds us. Most people grow up and find their way into a vocation, a career, a job or series of jobs; Doch the prophets, in other words all of us children of God, are called even before we leave the womb to the task of proclaiming God’s Good News with our choices, actions, and lives. This job is not easy or safe, DOCH, God calls us to turn as many degrees as it takes to challenge the throngs of people that have turned away and call them back to God … as many degrees as it takes. It can be dangerous work, fraught with risks. Aber (Ahh Bear) Doch, We, the people of God, will not live afraid of what can be done to us, for God is with us.
The View is wide and wild Emotions not to control, but motivate us There is too much hurt in every single life. Now we cannot stop an emotion. Try to just stuff it down and it’ll just go somewhere crazy on us. But we can choose what to do with any and every emotion that comes our way. We can let it run loose and effect our words and actions OR we can choose to align our choices and actions with our priorities and goals in life. Since our No 1 Priority is to be and do the Good News, then we soon learn, often the hard way, that letting loose with even a bit of revenge, yet alone with outrageous vengeance, and being the Gospel to other people are mutually exclusive. Most emotions own us for about 90 seconds. Our feelings should not be stopped. But we don’t have to hang on to them for even hours yet alone weeks or years. Furthermore raw action should never erupt out of our emotions. DOCH. Our actions should always be a choice of our heart and mind and body, so that we live according to the goals God calls us from the womb to strive toward. Emotions, carefully chosen, can motivate us towards God’s calling for us.
Emotions seem to loom over us, but we can choose how to respond
Themes all Easter In today’s Gospel Jesus prays, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Last week we heard an earlier part of Jesus’ prayer put it more simply. We are to love one another as Jesus loved us, so that by our love the world will know us as Jesus’ disciples. Story of Paul and Silas In the first lesson for today, Paul and Silas heal a young girl who was possessed by a demon. The owners, who were making money with the demon’s ability to tell the future, have them arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. An earth quake hits the city as they sing and pray. The doors are broken open and the chains unfastened. Instead of escaping, Paul and Silas urge all the prisoners to stay put, thus saving the life of the jailor. That jailor is so impressed with the unusual manner that his life is saved that he believes the Gospel that Paul and Silas proclaim. He and his household are baptized.
A view through a grid; Still Christ’s Light Shines Golden
God’s Doch God’s constant DOCH is ‘at all costs, love even your enemy.’
Story resolution Hostiles In the movie the Hostiles, as they ride across the wilds of the west to Montana the captain encounters God’s Doch. As they stop where the chief has returned home and will breathe his last breath in the wild mountains of Montana, the captain says that, though they have each fought against the other, and each has lost so many friends to the other, when the chief dies a piece of the captain will die with him. In obeying the orders he cannot stomach, the captain eventually gives his enemy his last breath in freedom at home, no longer as an enemy, but as a friend. The captain recognizes the gift of life, even in his enemy, as they ride across the wilds of the west to Montana.
In the wild … there is the Light
What about us? As we encounter the terrible ravages of evil that leaves us so wanting for life, can we recognize the gifts of God even in our enemies? Can we give them life at their last breaths, as friends, because God has made us, all of us, while yet sinners, children of God?
Similar stories nonfiction resolutions In the real life of so many people, this is exactly what they chose. Gee Walker After Anthony Walker’s murderers were sentenced Gee Walker, his mother, said: “I cannot hate. I have to forgive them. … Their minds must be very tortured. … Hate is what killed Anthony.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
No Matter, Let the Light Shine
M&B Mizen After her 16 year old son was killed, Jimmy Mizen’s mother Margaret said “I just want to say to the parents of this other boy, I want to say I feel so, so sorry for them. I don’t feel anger, I feel sorry for the parents. We have so many lovely memories of Jimmy and they will just have such sorrow about their son. I feel for them, I really do…. People keep asking me why I am not angry but I say …There is too much anger in the world…. it was anger that killed my son. If I was angry I would be the same as this boy.” On the first anniversary of his murder Jimmy’s father said, “today, for us, was a message of peace, a message of change that we have been gradually working towards over [a] year. … This affects everybody. If somebody is killed in your local park or in your local shop, then this affects you. We didn’t just get here overnight…. If the will … is for it [here and now], we can change.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas Bishop Théas was imprisoned for ten weeks with Protestants, Jews, non-believers, trade unionists, young resistance workers, and French officers. When some prisoners asked for a day retreat he preached about forgiveness, and suggested they should pray for their captors. This provoked outrage. Théas replied, “My friends, I cannot proclaim anything except what the Lord said: Love your enemies. No more, no less.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
The extreme story, resolution Cartier and Nixon When former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey died hundreds of people from across the world attended his funeral. All were welcome, but one – former President Richard Nixon, who had recently dragged himself and his country through the humiliation and shame of Watergate. Eyes turned away and conversations ran dry around him. He was being shunned and ostracized. Then the current president Jimmy Carter walked into the room. President Carter, not of Nixon’s party and well known for his honesty and integrity, moved toward his seat, until he noticed Richard Nixon standing all alone. Carter changed course, walked over to Richard Nixon, held out his hand, and smiling genuinely and broadly embraced Nixon and said “Welcome home, Mr President! Welcome home!” Newsweek magazine reported the incident including the words, “If there was a turning point in Nixon’s long ordeal in the wilderness, it was that moment and that gesture of love and compassion.” Source: Reported in Maxie Dunnam, The Workbook on Living as a Christian, pp.112-113 https://storiesforpreaching.com/category/sermonillustrations/love-for-enemies/
Whatever comes our way, God’s Light will shine!
MLKing Martin Luther King dared to suggest that Blacks should have the same civil rights as other Americans. For all he stood for King received death threat after death threat, he was maliciously accused of being a communist, his house had been bombed, and he was jailed over 20 times. Yet in his essay, Loving Your Enemies, he wrote: “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.’” https://storiesforpreaching.com/category/sermonillustrations/love-for-enemies/ and http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Jesus Jesus says to us, love one another as I have loved you. Love even your enemies. Us Following Jesus as his disciples is complicated, challenging and sometimes calls us to things we can hardly stomach. But still through words from each other and in so many other ways the Holy Spirit guides us to see Christ loving even our enemies, as we journey through the wilds of our lives, even when our greatest enemy is ourselves.
Whatever, However, Whenever God embraces us, even when we are our own enemies the Light still shines beautifully for us.
