Category: Sermon Preparation Helps

Trees, Stars, and Passion for Beauty and Order

Trees: Aim Between

When skiing in the mountains on a slope with trees on it


I’ve taught more than a few people how to ski. Invariably we arrive on top of a slope where there are trees at least dotting the slope. The student looks with apprehension. I say respect the trees, but do not fear them. Do not look at them or you will head straight into one of them. Look at the snowy hillside between the trees where you want to ski.


Three Lessons full of Trees


Lost in the Fog of Delusion


OT: The self deluded Teacher Fool

We heard the Teacher in today’s first Lesson say:

Vanity of vanities! … All is vanity.

Our labour produces great results but our results are left to others, who may be wise or foolish.

Ecclesiastes


It is tempting to think he may be right: that God has created, humans have worked, and nothing is worth anything. But the Teacher’s wisdom is a big forest of trees of hopelessness.
Here God’s truth disappears like the misty fog evaporating with the rising sun. Then any lie can be presented as if true. Despair takes on all sorts of guises. Instead of being thankful, one demands more and more of things that cannot fill the empty void that should be one’s heart.
This kind of life is at war with itself and the ensuing conflict and chaos allow one to hide from accountability, hope, love and even Jesus.


NT: The Different Life of Lists

In contrast the writer of Colossians reminds us that Christ raises us differently, into life free from what destroys us.
The writer then presents us with lists of things to leave behind: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry), anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. Do not lie to one another.
These are more trees to avoid.

The one exception would be passion, though as all God’s gifts, passion can be abused and used as a destructive force in one’s own life and in others’.

Since the early Christians, including the Colossians, expected Jesus to return in their own lifetimes, their sense of urgency valued the freedom of celibacy and devalued the ties of passion. But God created passion as an important and healthy motivation for much of life including marriage, parenting, care of the earth and the building of a just society.


Gospel: Using Jesus for Greed

Today’s Gospel is a great parable within a parable: A man comes to use Jesus to get an inheritance from his brother, against the tradition of the time.
Through the ages we human beings have more than perfected the use of Jesus or Religion to pound others down and try to feed our own greed.
Greed is related to gluttony.

“A glutton is (a person) who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”

(Wishful Thinking, F Buechner)

Gluttony and Greed kill us as we try to eat or possess more than we can stand.
To teach us this, Jesus tells a parable of the pathetic wealthy man who after a great harvest, builds new barns to hold it and anticipates the remainder of his life as an easy retirement. But his possessions are the end of him. It’s all for naught!


Lots of Trees to Avoid

That gives us lots of trees to avoid. There is precious little of what we should aim for. It’s like skiing down a mountain and all we see are trees.

Look beyond the Trees


Where is Grace

So where is the Good News?


NT: Look above

The writer of Colossians points us to set our minds on things that are above. So looking up ever since we lived in caves we see the stars, the moon and the sun. Aided by the passionate drive of George Ellery Hale, and so many others, to see and learn more by building bigger and better telescopes in the last 100 years, what we see is astoundingly mind boggling. (E.g. see the documentary Journey to Palomar)
Before, we knew the earth, one of nine planets, revolved around the sun. Now, we’ve seen numerous planetoids, one being Pluto, so there are only eight planets. We know our sun has a magnetic field, with flares that cause the northern lights and disrupt satellite communications. We know about galaxies, that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, that the universe is expanding and the universe is so, so much larger than we ever imagined! We have not found alien life, but in the immense expanse of the universe it is probable, if not guaranteed.
We have seen God’s handiwork in the awesome expanse and workings of the universe and begun to understand their impact on our daily lives.
Are these ‘the things above’ that we are to aim for? Maybe not, one would quickly say. But then perhaps we ought not be too quick to decide.


Rest of Scripture

With so many trees in our lessons, we look to the rest of Scripture and the Christian Church’s history, to guide us to the joy of life ‘skiing’, as it were, without hitting the trees.


Relationships Trinity

We believe that God is Trinitarian. God is three in one. In part that means that the basic reality of God is that God is in relationship. We are created in God’s image, so we know we are created to be in relationship.


God Loves, We love

Luther taught that the core of the Gospel could be summed up in one short passage “ God so loved the world that God sent his only Son so that everyone believes in Jesus may have eternal life.” God loves – us … and the whole universe God created! In relationships we are to love one another and all of creation.
The Teacher’s wisdom is folly because he ignores other people as God’s good creatures. Work is not to be hated, rather it is to be joyful and rewarding precisely because it provides for others, just as God has provided for us!
The pathetic farmer in Jesus’ parable is consumed by his possessions because he has no sense that his bounty is a gift from God entrusted to him to be shared with others.


The wonders of Creation



God’s Grace and Work

We know God’s Grace for us. We know that God comes to us, forgives us, makes us righteous before God, by Grace (in other words, as a gift that we do not earn!)
We know that God does this first, then we can get down to living and working as God’s own children in this marvelous creation.


Riches with God

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus points us ‘to build up riches with God’. It is easy to understand that our ‘riches with God’ are what God gives us, namely God’s Grace and all that flows from it.


Our work: Response, because … therefore

We know then our work is NOT to make ourselves good enough for God. Everything we do is to be a response to God’s Grace for us.
Because God makes us Good, perfect before God,
therefore we can fully engage in creation. We can be passionate about life and the goodness of creation, so that we can share the necessities of life and the wonders of the universe with ALL other people, in the present and for all generations to come.
The Teacher in Ecclesiastes had no room for any passion for sharing the beauty of life with others. He had no passion to know that God’s love moved God to speak a word “Let there be Light,” and after 7 days to say, “it is good!”
In the resulting blessed creation of order and beauty, we can be passionately engaged in the wonders of the universe.
We can share this life with another person with the passion of a marriage. We can invest in friendships that carry us, our friends, and people around the world through the trials of life.
Sharing God’s riches brings us to be so passionate about life that we can expend all of our lives striving to see and share our place in God’s awesome universe. For some of us that may mean building bigger and better telescopes. For all of us it means respecting but leaving behind the ‘trees’ of judgment, condemnation and lists, sharing instead God’s Grace with all people. We can choose to make justice a reality for each person.

Sharing God’s riches is possible for everyone.
We could choose not to share God’s riches. But why would we?


Story: We Ain’t Poor by Florence Ferrier


In the story We Ain’t Poor! the Sheldons, a large family in the Appalachians, live in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. They receive inadequate assistance, yet they manage their meager income with ingenuity — and without complaint.
One fall day the social worker “visits 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. They canned it so that there would be meat even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high.
The social worker reported: “Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat. I hesitated to accept it, but he said kindly and firmly. ‘Now you just have to take this. We don’t have much, that’s a fact; but we ain’t poor!’“[In astonished disbelief, 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.’”

(Gospel Notes 2001, Brian Stoffregen, reworked TL)


Look at the World all around you! … God has made us Rich and given us the ability to see more and more of the universe as God’s amazing creation … Can we say ‘We ain’t poor!’?
Amen


I do not have much, but it is more than enough!

2019.08Aug04 Pentecost

Readings and Psalm

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!

Nobodies, Only Bodies, and Somebodies.

Thoughts and Draft Sermon

Rough Notes on the Lessons:

OT Thoughts

There was an outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, the veracity of which God could not establish without going there, yet men go to investigate, while God remains to allow Abraham to speak with him, bartering/negotiating/futilely bantering with God about the count of righteous people needed to have God spare the cities.

The conversation is presumptuous on Ab’s part. He acknowledges it. It’s like talking to an angry King when bad news has just been delivered, the King wants vengeance, and anyone interfering may likely get caught in the unstoppable destruction that the King is in the middle of enacting.

Except it’s not a King, its the all-knowing God, putting on a play of not knowing? And an all-powerful God who can not only destroy in this world and the next but condemn one to a torturous eternity.

Abraham’s got chutzpah, maybe foolishness, to spare.

The argument is that the good should not perish with the evil.

And God responds to that, sort of, allowing that 10 good people in all of Sodom and Gomorrah will cause God to relent.

NO GRACE, it takes goodness to get God to relent!

And God knows there is only one man, Lot, his wife (maybe) and his 2 daughters, so 3 maybe 4 good people in the cities, though the son in laws are invited to leave as well and think that Lot is jesting. So maybe 6, but really only 3.

So why did Abraham not negotiate down to 2?

Because God would have had to relent and allow the cities’ destruction of so many people in their consuming depravity to continue.

Yes: The evil is powerfully destructive, like a cancer, and God will stop it, giving the few healthy an option to walk away alive.

Destroying the cities God saves generations who would have been sucked into the cities’ evil vortex.

But it is not ‘Sin City’ where this kind of living continues through the generations until it is acceptable everywhere, as bush parties out of control, and in control continue to give witness to locally here. And parties, raves, and you name it in the cities continue worse than Sodom. Bonnyville and CL (put in your own cities) not excepted either! Depravity required people to participate for it to exist, and then evil flourishes. Evil is only tempered by the distinct efforts of a few good people to have life otherwise.

2nd Lesson Thoughts

Note: as today in Paul’s day and for generations afterwards, ‘philosophy’ did not indicate the thoughtful, logical, deep and profound thinking about life’s most pressing issues. Like today’s ‘spin’, ‘news’, self-help gurus gone amok, ‘walking back’ what actually was said into something else, and justice based on blatant lies, ‘philosophy’ meant rhetoric and sophistry completely disconnected from any ethic or moral restraint to uphold the truth, i.e. anything from a destructive cult to a full-out scam to way of approaching life which helped only the privileged few and ruined everyone else.

Well, the urge to resist tempting heresies: philosophies, self-abasement, worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human thought, ANYTHING that does not hold fast to Christ Jesus as the head! From whom we all (the church) grow and are held together.

Temptations to depravity can come in all guises, some that look remarkably respectable, acceptable, thoughtful.

Imagine that!

Gospel Thoughts

Pray, teach us to pray like John’s disciples.

God gives b/c of persistence if not for friendship.

So God is to be bartered and negotiated, and badgered until one receives what one’s friends need.

So I need countless hoards, or at least one person, to pray relentlessly to God for what I need: True Justice. Lies exposed. Shelter, food, work, security.

The smiting of the corrupt people (or at least the corruption of the people) that causes this for me and so many others.

Can I pray ceaselessly, relentlessly that the Holy Spirit will invoke the grime reaper (if not of people than of the corruption at the root of this disaster for so many men, children and even women?!)

Or do I only get the Holy Spirit to inspire me to forgive the unforgivable!?

This could be a Sunday of law and revenge. (Let’s make sure it is not.)

Of useless mercy, of relentless prayers, of making justice happen.

Of helping one, two or three people survive the destruction the corruption causes.

Christ Alone is our Rock and Salvation

Draft Sermon

Real Life turns out to be nothing like the image that I developed from my experience. In my experience we were all somebodies, to each other, and especially to God.

But the people in this world so often treat each other and themselves as if they were nobodies.

My experience: Mom and Dad who loved us all, children who lived and grew reasonably, a home, at least rented, jobs and a good or at least reasonable salary, or at least a paycheck every once in a while. Inside the homes, sometimes, a bit of craziness, but nothing that threatens life, health or happiness. And always one knew God’s blessings.

Today’s first lesson is all about that the world is full of things that are quite different than my experience. It is not that people are held captive to poverty and can barely survive. It is that they have enough, and do not know the gift life is, nor what to do with it.

Sodom and Gomorrah are not healthy, and the hedonism the people pursue does not provide happiness, just short term satisfaction bought at the price of real happiness and health. And all their messing about threatens any guest who enters their gates.

God knows no way to heal the sickness of these two so depraved cities. Abraham tries to barter with God. God allows Abraham’s foolish petulance, even as God endures every foolish petition from us, even our angry fist shaking if that’s what we need to do. God knows everything. God knows that Sodom and Gomorrah need to be erased from the face of the earth in order to stop their destruction, not of only the people caught in them now, but into the future the generations that would be caught in them, and all the sojourners and those who think they might want to give the cities a try. God wants to save all those people.

Abraham can bring everything and anything to God. So he barters, also because Lot and his family live in those cities. For that they are offered a chance to leave and be saved. Lot and his daughters make it out alive, but the cost of the cities’ depravity has cost them dearly, it sticks to them, and their future generations are only the result of incest brought on by the daughters.

The world is full of things that are quite different: these are very ugly cities leaving very ugly scars on the three people who survive them.

Just surviving such terrible things is rarely to live well. One does not live by bread, or mere survival.

A father in the Jewish Ghetto, with food severely rationed, lights a candle every evening for prayers. When he has used up all their supply of candles he takes a string, molds a bit of their meager ration of butter around it, and lights it for prayers. His son challenges him, why should their food be so consumed for a mere light. The father responds, “Without food we can live a week. Without our faith we could not live for even an hour.”

If you live a faithful life, you know you are a somebody, to others and to God. It’s when you live faithless that you treat yourself and others as nobodies, or as in Sodom and Gomorrah, as only bodies.

I have lived in many different places, in a variety of manners. I lived in a missionary family in Africa. My father was a doctor, my mother a nurse raising 5 children when we arrived and 7 when we left, my father so sick they thought he had months to live if that.

We had plenty to survive on, but our toys were sticks. There were no extras, and the flour always came with flies in it. Our faith brought us there, and the faith of the people who were born there carried us through many a challenging dark night.

I lived in a city as a child, one of 9, with enough to live on, but no extras, and we scraped for enough food and enough hand me down clothes. I lived on a farm, where we had enough, including music though the garden was an essential contribution to all 13 of us.

I lived as a student, with enough to survive on, though I ‘wasted’ precious money on a good stereo for music, because I’d seen how music could cure what could not otherwise be cured. I’ve lived out of a tent on route to a university where I could not understand the language. I’ve lived with a multimillionaire without knowing how great was his wealth.

I lived happily in each place. But it was most difficult with the millionaire, because he cheated and lied about everything, derided and slandered others at each step, and hated the people poorer than he was, especially the aboriginal peoples. They reminded him that he came from a place where he was considered a nobody. So now he doesn’t know how to treat other people other than as if they were nobodies.

Jesus’ disciples come to him and ask him to teach them to pray as John has his disciples. They want to pray as if they are somebodies. Jesus gives them what we’ve come to call the Lord’s Prayer. Then he goes on to assure us that if we seek, we will find. If we ask, we will receive.

God is the one to yell at, be angry at, blame, and thrash. People are the ones who we need to treat with respect and care. There is a well grounded reason that the ten commandments include the prohibition to bear false witness against our neighbour. Our words can hurt people. Our lies are as effective as murder. God, on the other hand, can take anything we may want to throw his or her way.

Jesus does not say that if we ask for something, we will receive that thing. Or if we seek some thing, God will give us that thing.

But God will always provide. God will always answer. God will always listen, and respond. To most of our foolish prayers God answers with a simple no. Sometimes we get a more spectacular NO. Every once in a while God gives us a real kick in the pants, or a knock so hard we wonder where it came from as we pick ourselves up off the ground. And a few times God actually says yes to our good petitions.

I live without a home and I could tell you my sad story, pitifully played out by so many people bearing false witness against me. But astounding is the story of another person living without a home, who I met weeks ago.

She lives with plenty of equipment to protect her from the environment, and to provide for her well-being beyond her safety. Neither drugs, alcohol, addictions, nor prayer brought her to live in the woods without a home.

Her ex took advantage, did not care if she was close to death. She got out, barely and still has not healed. He still pursues her and bears false witness against her and gets support from the justice system. She functions, but has little faith left, though she knows that the wilderness heals her most. He behaves as a nobody, treats her as a nobody, and invites others to treat both of them as nobodies. One day the light of Christ will shine the truth so clearly everyone will be compelled to know it, to their shame for not admitting it sooner. They will be somebodies, but some bodies, souls, and minds who God deals with justly.

There’s a lot of bull in the world; comes from the sinners, in us each and all

The world is full of things that are quite different than I have ever imagined could be called living, some of it so ugly one wonders that it can exist at all, that anyone can survive it. Yet out of the worst ghettos God brings leaders and people who inspire others to waste nothing that life offers, and to bring everything possible to as many people as possible, so that all people can live well.

It may seem easy, or obvious, that we live out our faith. At least we go through the motions. But there are challenges in every life, even the ones that look so safe and healthy, so provided for in a solid home. Even people who appear in the world’s terms to be SOMEBODIES, can behave behind closed doors as if they and those close to them are NOBODIES.

We come to realize that the words to the Colossians are not to be taken for granted:

“… continue to live your lives in [Christ], rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit”

Philosophy mentioned then is quite different than most philosophy named today. Back then philosophy was more rhetoric and sophistry. Today’s equivalents abound as self-help gurus, or spinning events for the news, news that is no longer required to present a fair view of all sides of an issue, and the spin applied to events like seen in the US. No truth survives. That’s the warning given in Colossians.

It is too easy to give up on life in disgust for what stands as truth for some people, for some causes (usually their own wealth or hedonistic pleasures), or for some churches. Works Righteousness is always a favourite, though it can be coloured with heavy condemnation of other people making it drip with destruction. A friend joked in parody of this attitude: “I have learned to accept my imperfections. It’s other people’s imperfections that I find intolerable.”

The View of God With Us

What Paul proclaimed, Jesus taught by example, and generations have managed to remind us of is that Grace alone saves us. We are somebodies only because God chooses to make us so.

We can work like mad to make the world better, but we cannot work to make ourselves better in God’s eyes. We are already made righteous by Christ. Thereafter we do the work of the righteous, often with no reward or even notice. Sometimes, as if we were nobodies, we get punished and are left to die as thanks for doing the right and good thing.

So we pray that God will turn this world around. We work like it depends on us, and we relax knowing God intends for us to enjoy this creation with God at our side. For with God at our side we are all somebodies.

Amen

What is Our One Thing?

or Whadda’ ya’ want?

What is your ‘one thing’?

What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life? Not just your dreams, but the expectations of the community you live in, and of your church. What would fulfill all that God intended you to be?

The Gift of the Magi, O Henry

In the radio adaptation of O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi a young couple has two precious belongings in their otherwise poverty captured lives: his heirloom golden pocket watch, and her flowing hair that would put the jewels of the Queen of Sheba to shame. In a shop window they see an exquisite pair of bejeweled shell combs that match her hair perfectly. But they are unimaginably expensive.

Unbeknownst to the other as Christmas Eve arrives, he buys the combs for her, and she buys for him a silver chain perfect for his watch. But the price for each of the gifts is so high.

‘One Thing’

What is the ‘one thing’ of all your dreams?

Martha’s, Mary’s and Our ‘One Things’

After Martha invites Jesus into her home one thing fully occupies her: respecting an ancient tradition as hostess she must provide for her guest.

Mary has one thing on her mind, and it has nothing to do with Martha’s busy concerns. Mary sits attentively listening to Jesus.

Isn’t it true how as listeners we do not worry about the preoccupied doers’ tasks and obligations. And as doers we are offended by the lazy, unrealistic listeners or talkers who do not help with the obligations that must be met!

Whether you are a doer or a listener, what is the one thing that you dream of that would make life good and fulfill all that God intended you to be?

Sitting by the Oaks of Mamre

In the OT lesson for today Abraham sits under one of Mamre’s oaks in the midday heat, recovering from his recent circumcision.

Mamre is one of Abraham’s three allies. Abraham and Sarah have no land. They squat in tents by Mamre’s oaks. Eventually Abraham will buy a piece of land near the oaks. There in a hewn cave Abraham buries Sarah. Isaac and Ishmael, the son of Hagar, bury Abraham there. Jacob and Esau, the estranged twins together, bury Isaac there. Jacob buries Leah there. Joseph returns from Egypt to bury Jacob there.

God Comes Strolling Up

Abraham and Sarah do not go to God to find him. God comes as three strangers, yet one, strolling up to their camp at the oaks of Mamre, where they have built an altar to worship God.

Observant, Inviting, Busy, and Attentively Listening

Abraham beseeches the Strangers to pause to receive his hospitality as required by ancient custom. They accept, which sets Abraham, Sarah and their servants all into a flurry of action preparing a feast!

Abraham stands listening attentively under the oaks as the Strangers eat.

The Stranger asks after Sarah by name and includes her in God’s restated Promise. She shall bear Abraham a son when the Stranger returns again.

Sarah and Abraham listened to God. They risked everything to leave home. They have established themselves in the new land with reputation, herds and flocks, servants, and a place they borrow to call home. Though God has promised many times God has still not blessed them with a son. For an heir is the one thing they lack to fulfill God’s purpose for them: to inhabit this new land.

What is our ‘one thing’ we dream of?

What is the one thing that we wish and dream for that will make life good? What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill our lives by completing for us all that God intends us to be as children of God?

A Canoe, a Boat (the Church)

A canoe has one purpose, to traverse the waters without sinking. It may require at least one person handy with a paddle, and the ability to launch the canoe, and to secure it from theft and storms between uses. But the canoe is not purposed to sit on land, or in a garage, or to be hidden under a tree or set out in the sun to rot. A canoe is made to traverse the water as early as the misty dawn of light that pushes back the fog, and as late as the last drop of sun light recedes below the horizon after sunset.

Our Purpose?

Do each of us have one purpose? Is there one thing that in the doing we would fulfill our purpose, the purpose for which God created each of us?

God Comes to Us: We do the Works of the Righteous

It is clear in today’s OT and Gospel lessons: We do not need to go to God to fulfill our purpose. God comes to us, names us, and calls us. God comes many times to us, as God does to Abraham and Sarah, as Jesus does to Martha and Mary. God builds a relationship with us. We do not build a relationship with God, we are not the builders; we are the clay and God is the Potter. As Abraham and Martha, so we too can only be attentive and welcome God, in whatever guise God arrives in our lives.

What can God do to give you a fulfilled life?

Maudie, the movie: How Can She Be Happy!

One would hardly think that Maud Lewis would be happy.

As the movie Maudie portrays her, she was born an invalid, able to walk but not well. She bore a child, the result of incest, who she was told was so invalid the baby died. But the baby was healthy and sold by her brother, never to know Maud as her mother. Maud’s parents die, her aunt takes her in, and treats her as if she cannot care for herself. They treat Maud as a nobody.

So Maud strikes out on her own to work as a live-in housemaid for a simple man. But Everett hits her, is at best grouchy and at worst impossible. She prevails and starts to paint flowers on the walls in the dingy one room house in rural Nova Scotia. Eventually the two fall in love and are married.

Maud goes on to sell numerous small paintings, most for pennies and some for only a few dollars.

Eventually people travel to buy her paintings. She is even commissioned by Richard Nixon among others. But she lives in poverty her whole life.

In a TV documentary on her, which makes her more famous, she smiles, and paints within the small reach of her arthritic hands, arms and body.

Her aunt on her death bed astounds Maud by asking her about her appearance on TV: How come, of all of us in the family, you, Maud, are the only one who turns out to be happy?

Curmudgeon and insecure Everett gets fed up with Maud’s success. Fearing Maud will leave him, he forces her out. When he finally visits her at her friend’s he asks clearly if she will leave him for someone better.

Maud Lewis’s Pair of Oxen with Sled of Logs. (Consignor Canadian Fine Art)
Linked From CBC website.

Maud Responds

To her aunt’s question about how she turns out to be the one who is happy Maud responds: “I am happy with whatever, as long as I have a paintbrush in my hands.”

To Everett when he asks if she will go off with someone better than him, she responds simply and completely:

“I have everything with you that I have ever wanted.”

The Gift of the Magi: the cost so high, yet Rich beyond their dreams!

On Christmas Eve James and Della discover that she has sold her hair to buy him the chain for his watch and he has sold his watch to buy her the precious combs. So they set their gifts aside and sit down to their coffee and supper of meat … with each other.

For what is more precious than her hair or his watch, more precious than his silver chain or her precious hair combs? Most precious in all the world is their love for each other, and their loving sacrifices made for the other. They are poor, but their love makes them the richest people on earth.

Jesus: One Thing

At Martha’s Jesus says only one thing is needed. He is not clear what that one thing is. It is left up to us to discover.

What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill our lives? Have we discovered it, for this time and place?

Happy are they who know God’s ‘One Thing’ for them!

As the earth moves through space and time we are not unnamed nobodies. God comes to each and all of us wherever we are and relates to us.

God Colours us More Beautiful than all the Flowers in the Woods.

How can our ‘One Thing’ be anything other than our Knowing that God knows our names, claims us, redeems us, loves us, inspires us, gives us work that has great meaning, and gives us people who we love and who love us, even if they are curmudgeons or our enemies.

The Church, the Boat

The ancient symbol of the Church is a boat, a boat to traverse the waters of life. It carries us as we give God thanks for all the challenges of travelling to a new land where we have no home, a borrowed place where we must wait for God to give us heirs to carry on into God’s future for the Church.

Our ‘One Thing’

No matter our circumstances we can say to our God, “I have everything with you that I have ever wanted.”

Amen

Pentecost 6 Sermon Draft

This is 7 pages, needs to be 4, fact checked, refined. Always hesitate to post this rough. But it’s the process.

So a very rough draft. How one may refine it differently than we would, well that’s your opportunity … and work.

It’ll take me a few hours of rewriting, focusing, and cutting.

But for now: the rough:

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good?

What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life? Not just your dreams, but the expectations of the community you live in, your church, and would fulfill all that God intended you to be?

The Gift of the Magi, O Henry:

In the radio adaptation of O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi a young couple has two precious belongings in their otherwise poverty captured lives: his heirloom golden pocket watch, and her flowing hair that would put the jewels of the Queen of Sheba to shame. In a shop window they see an exquisite pair of tortoise shell and gem combs that match her hair perfectly. They are unimaginably expensive.

Unbeknownst to the other as Christmas Eve arrives, he buys the combs for her, and she buys for him a silver chain perfect for his watch. But the price for the each of the gifts is so high.

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good?

What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life? Not just your dreams, but the expectations of the community you live in, your church, and would fulfill all that God intended you to be?

Martha’s and Mary’s One Thing

Martha

Martha invites Jesus into her home to stay as he preaches, teaches and heals people who’ve come to see and hear him.

Martha has one thing on her mind, fully occupying her: respecting an ancient tradition as hostess she must provide for her guest.

Mary

Mary has one thing on her mind, and it has nothing to do with Martha’s busy concerns. Mary sits attentively listening to Jesus.

Isn’t it true how as listeners (or Mary-s) we do not worry about the preoccupied doers’ tasks, the Martha-s’ obligations. And as doers or Martha-s we are offended by the lazy, unrealistic listeners or talkers (the Mary-s) who do not chip in to help with the many tasks and obligations that must be met!

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good?

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good and would fulfill all that God intended you to be?

OT: Abraham, Sarah, and the guests. God comes strolling up

In the OT lesson for today Abraham sits by the tree in the midday heat, recovering from his and the males in his household’s recent circumcisions.

Three strangers come walking down the road toward the tree, one of the terebinth (oaks to us) that belong to Mamre, one of three allies Ab has in this new land. Abraham and Sarah have amassed great wealth, many servants, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, great respect from their allies, and a little fear from their enemies. Yet Abraham himself has no land. He is welcome to squat in his tents here by Mamre’s oaks. Eventually Abraham will buy a piece of land near the oaks from Ephron the Hittite. On it he hews out a cave, and he buries Sarah there. Isaac and Ishmael bury Ab there. Jacob and Esau bury Isaac there. Jacob buries Leah there. Joseph buries Jacob there.

God Comes

To the tents by the Oaks of Mamre God comes to Abraham and Sarah. They do not go to God to find him. God comes as three men, yet one.

Observant and Inviting

Abraham beseeches them to take a pause, to receive his hospitality as he is required by ancient custom to provide guests. They accept, which puts Abraham, his servants, Sarah and her servants all into a busy flurry of action getting things ready. They prepare an overabundance of food: three bushels of flour, a full fated calf, with curds and milk. A full feast!

Sitting attentive to

Abraham serves the strangers and stands listening attentively under the tree with them as they eat and drink.

Promise Again

Having enjoyed their hospitality, the stranger, the Lord, restates God’s promise of a child, an heir, to Abraham. The Stranger, knowing Sarah’s name, asks after her and includes her in the Promise. She shall bear Abraham a son when the Stranger returns again.

The one thing that Abraham and Sarah lack: an heir

They have so much and more of what they needed to establish themselves in this new land: wealth, reputation, herds and flocks, servants, a place they borrow to call home. But Abraham has no son with his wife, though he has many other children by concubines. What a shame to not take care of his wife first! What a great lack of blessing from the God he trusted to follow, leaving home for the challenges and risks of a new land. For an heir is the one thing that they lack to have fulfilled the purpose God has for them, to inhabit this new land.

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good?

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good? What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life by fulfilling all that God intended you to be?

A canoe

A canoe has one purpose, to traverse the waters without sinking. It may require a person handy with a paddle, and the ability to launch the canoe on to the water, and take it off to safely secure it on land between uses. But the canoe is not purposed to sit on land, or in a garage, or be hidden under a tree, or set out in the sun to rot. A canoe is made to traverse the water as early as the misty dawn of light that pushes back the fog, and as late as the last drop of sun light recedes below the horizon after sunset.

Do each of us have one purpose? Is there one thing that in the doing we would fulfill our purpose, the purpose for which God created each of us?

God Comes

It is clear in today’s OT and Gospel lessons: We do not need to go to God to fulfill our purpose. God comes to us. As Abraham and Sarah, so we too can be attentive and welcome God, in whatever guise God arrives in our lives.

God knows our names

In both the OT and the Gospel God knows the people’s names to who God comes: God names Sarah without being told her name, and asks after her and assures Abraham that Sarah will bear him a son.

In the Gospel. When Jesus comes to Martha’s house he knows Martha’s name, he knows Mary’s name. Did someone tell him, likely so, but he remembers their names.

God knows each of our names as well!

God comes to build a relationship with us

In both the OT and the Gospel God comes to build or continue to build a relationship. God renews the promise of an heir to Abraham and Sarah. Jesus begins a relationship with Martha and Mary. Martha grows palpably, and as their brother Lazarus dies, her faith is made stronger. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.

God comes to us and builds a relationship with us.

It is important to be significant enough on the face of the earth as it moves through time to be seen, recognized, and related to by others, to be more than just unnamed nobodies. We are each someone to God, someone significant!

What is the one thing that you wish and dream for that will make life good?

What can God do to give you a fulfilled life?

Maud Lewis, Painter, the one in the family who is happy?

You would hardly think that Maud Lewis would be happy.

As the movie Maudie portrays her, she was born an invalid, able to walk but not well. She bore a child, the result of incest, who she was told was so invalid the baby died. But the baby was sold by her brother, never to know Maud as her mother. Her parents gone, her aunt takes her in and treats her as if she cannot care for herself, in any way. Her brother sells their parents’ home without consulting Maud. They treat Maud as a nobody, burden.

Maud strikes out on her own, and gets work as a live-in housemaid for a single man. But Everett hits her, is at best grouchy and at worst impossible. She prevails and starts to paint flowers in the dingy one room house in rural Nova Scotia. Eventually the two are married, though Everett always dominates Maud.

Maud goes on to sell numerous small paintings, most for pennies or at most a few dollars.

In a TV documentary on her, which makes her more famous, she smiles, and paints within the small reach of her arthritic hands, arms and body.

Eventually people travel to buy her paintings. She is even commissioned by Richard Nixon among others. But she lives in poverty her whole life.

On her death bed her aunt astounds Maud by asking her about her appearance on TV: How come, of all of us in the family, you alone are the one who turns out to be happy?

When curmudgeon and insecure Everett gets fed up with Maud’s success and the traffic around his very humble house, he fears Maud will leave him for someone better. He forces her out. And then finally he comes to visit her, and asks her if she will go with someone better than himself.

God comes: We Respond

Maud responds

To her aunt’s question about how she turns out to be the one who is happy Maud responds: I am happy with whatever, as long as I have a paintbrush in my hands.

To Everett when he asks if she will go off with someone better than him, she responds simply and completely:

I have everything with you that I have ever wanted.

Gift of the Magi Resolution: What is the one thing

So on Christmas, in the Gift of the Magi, when James and Della open their gifts and the cost of each is revealed, they set their gifts aside and sit down to their coffee and supper of meat … with each other.

For what is more precious than her hair or his watch, more precious than his silver chain or her precious hair combs? Most precious in all the world is their love for each other, and their loving sacrifice made for the other. They are poor, but their love makes them the richest people on earth.

Jesus: No Orders: but there is only one thing (not what)

Staying at Martha’s Jesus could have many things on his mind, and yet only two things are clear: 1) for Martha he will not tell Mary to help with the work. And 2), at least for Martha to hear Jesus says Mary has chosen the better portion.

What is not clear is: what is the one thing that is required that Jesus speaks about?

In Life: Happy are they who know the One Thing

What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life?

How can it be anything other than knowing that God knows our names, claims us, redeems us, loves us, inspires us, gives us work that has great meaning, and gives us people who need our love and who love us.

The Church; the boat

The ancient symbol of the Church is a boat. A boat to traverse the waters of life. It carries us as we give God thanks for knowing our names, giving us challenging and meaningful labours, and giving us people (even or especially curmudgeons and other difficult people) who love us, and whom we can love.

And neighbours, even enemies, who we can love.

No matter our circumstances we can say, “I have everything with you, Lord, that I have ever wanted.” Amen

Get A Life?

What a Coffee and Life We’ve been Given!

Get a life, right side up

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?

What a thing of beauty this life is!

Amen

2019.07Jul07

Names in the Sky

Rough Draft:

lots of repetitions and sections needing tightening, deleting, or rewording, the essence is there though.

Still looking though the woods and trees to see the light.

Our Names are Written in Heaven

Skywriting:

Jane came out to the airport as she often did to watch Matt take off for his day’s work, crop dusting. This time Matt seemed to avoid getting off the ground, working around Steve’s plane instead. Then as Steve rolled out on to the grass runway Matt came over to Jane and asked her if she’d like a cup of coffee. He then stood with her, each with a cup of coffee in hand as Steve took off and began to spell out in the sky: S … U … lots of loops and crossing back and for forth for each letter E … M … A … … R … R … As Steve began the Y … Jane turned to Matt, knocking both their cups and spilling coffee freely, and hugged him, with a loud YES, and as Steve finished the … M … and the final E with the added touch of a ?, Matt came up for air from the long kiss he had planted on Jane to see the all 18 employees of the three businesses at the airport come outside to see, first Jane and Matt, then the trailing away letters Steve had written, and then to gather around Matt and Jane clapping. As Steve landed and ran over to join the crowd Matt and Jane were still shaking the hands of the people in line, taking their congratulations and well wishes, and answering they didn’t have solid plans yet but Jane was quick to say the wedding was going to be in their church, and long before it started to snow. Matt agreed, but the honeymoon would have to wait until winter.

With one marvelous flight, after years of joy, tears, and struggles Matt and Jane each knew that this day was wondrous, a dream come true. Everything about their lives was changed that day and again as they said their vows before the altar Jane’s great grandfather had built, covered with paraments made by her great grandmother. Over the previous 4 years, since they had started dating as teenagers, their lives had changed. No longer alone, everything took on a new perspective, the perspective of love.

Through their struggles they had learned that loving each other was wondrous, but also a lot of work, took a lot of patience, required a lot of forgiveness. The coming years would test the limits of their forbearance, their commitment to love and be gracious, and their ability to empathize for each other and other people for things they did not understand.

The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013

Nelson Mandela stands tall at 80 years old, the first black president of South Africa, not a Black South Africa and not a white country gripped and choked by apartheid, but a country started on the difficult journey to reconciliation. He had spent 27 years in jail, been finally set free, and reunited with his wife Winnie. Time apart and Winnie’s other love drove them to separate and then divorce. Madiba was leader of a nation while still in prison, and then he’d been a leader not elected but negotiated with, and then the elected president tasked with bringing together a country of people separated by hatred and terrible atrocities against each other.

A man filled with love of many kinds he was 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 Nelson Mandela falls in love again with, Graça Machel, the widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel. He marries her on his 80th birthday! She is a leader in her own right already at 57.

Work of Love

Love is not free: it 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. Not being in love with the person you are married to, or being in married to someone who is unkind, or refuses to work at love is often a living hell. Being alone, for most people, is a great challenge.

When you both work at being in love with each other, Look Out! Being in love with the person to whom you are married makes life simply awesome! The hurts roll off your back. The challenges are met as best they can be. The responsibilities are met as if they were freedoms. And the joys multiply all by themselves through the years. This is how God intended us to experience life!

Extending that love to each other, and then to all the people who your lives touch: that is what the Kingdom of God is about!

What does that mean for us?

Now that the Kingdom of God has come near, what does this mean for us?

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.

The poor bring us past all pretensions and lay bare the necessities of life and the awesome source of life’s great goodness, Grace, Love and Hope. These are the reality of the Kingdom of God.

What does that mean for us? What are we going to do in response?

Now that the Kingdom of God has come near, what does this mean for us?

And what are we going to do in response?

The Gospel for today is clear: share the Good News, Prepare the Way

Our responses are our lives, every minute, every choice, every action or inaction. Today’s Gospel clearly turns us, as Jesus did the 70, to go out into all of creation, to all people, to prepare the way for our Lord, healing and sharing the Good News of God’s Grace for all people.

Responses of bringing the Good News

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, what Good News will we share?:

OT: Always God is there for us:

From our other lessons we hear what Good News we have to bring.

As the people to whom Isaiah writes, as they return from Exile, we can share God’s promise of nurture, comfort, delight, and peace. We can share the comforting image of God as a Mother nursing us, carrying us, dandling us on her knees!

The Jerusalem of the/to day

Isaiah writes to people who had lost the Jerusalem they had known. They have returned, but what they find is not the Jerusalem they knew. It is gone. They mourn it’s loss. What they find is not yet the New Jerusalem that God promises them; it is still to come, a promise of God for the end of time.

Result for us:

Yet even in the Jerusalem of the present, and for us we may say, even in the the city, country, or Land we live in now: Here and now God will make prosperity flow like a river, full and flooding it’s banks distributing silt and soil for all in it’s vicinity.

Our hearts can rejoice. Our bodies shall flourish.

God there for ALL of us, as the past is gone, the promise of tomorrow not yet

How do we respond to God’s gifts now and the promises for the future? We rejoice, even as we mourn the loss of the old Jerusalem, the way it was in the past. Even as we mourn that our churches are not like they were in the past, brimming Sunday Schoools, bustling with children, abuzz with activities for all ages, providing learning, and sometimes real Gospel and real Grace of God, and real love of God.

Even as we mourn the losses of time passing we look with hope to the new creation!

There are lots of ways to try to create false hope, a false return to the past that is gone, to deny the reality of God’s grace in the present. Sarah and Abraham repeatedly tried to force their claim on God’s promise, and what suffering has arisen from the split of the family between their son Isaac and and Abraham and Hagaar’s son, Ishmael; between Jews or Christians and Muslims.

There is little more foolish, obviously ridiculous than a 70 year old male (think Trump and others), a man of power and corruption, divorcing his wife of his youth, and claiming again and again a yet younger woman, in an effort to remain youthful. This stereotypical man vainly tries to deny his age, tries to mourn what is lost by denying it is GONE, DONE, PASSED. Instead he tries to buy, with wealth gained by corruption, an image of being younger than the actual OLD of his age.

Of course there is the woman, just as foolish who does the same. Or the woman who reaches for wealth and prestige by marrying a man old enough to be her father or grandfather. These self deceptions are equally foolish and destructive to all sorts of people.

More destructive perhaps are all the faithful but untrusting people who look to the past of the church (denying 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 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.

In spite of us, God, through the prosperity of the City of God, the City of Peace, nurtures, comforts, and provides for us.

For us who have returned home from exile,

For us who have deserted home for better efforts elsewhere

For 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 are 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 all her children.

This is love: God’s Love for us and our delight in God. Responding to God’s love we sing for joy, with praise and adoration, even as we mourn the losses of the past.

The truth of love

The truth of God’s love for us is that it is unconditional. In love with us, each of us, even you, God writes our/your name/s in heaven.

With that God fulfills our dream of all dreams and our hope of all hopes. God makes everything right for us and for God!

God claims, names, and commissions us, sends us into the plentiful harvest.

What does that mean for us? What are we going to do in response?

Confused Paul in Galatians:

In Galatians Paul, as is too often the case provides, in poor koininia Greek, confused words. He writes: bear each other’s burdens, and then all must carry their own loads. If we read carefully we can decipher that he likely meant, as we each sin, the rest of us carry that person with gentleness. Afterall we each will sin, we each will have our turn of needing to be carried by the others.

But as we work in our vocation and as we work to share the Good News with everyone we each should carry our own load, to provide necessities of life, for ourselves and for others.

God comforts, nourishes, and promises us that all will be well. 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, but rather God enables us so that our labours can be productive.

There is joy in diligent, hard, directed, purposeful labour. A necessity of life: air, water, food, clothing, shelter, purposeful labour, and love (giving and receiving). As others bring us the Good News we should provide for them so that they can share the Good News without concern for their survival.

As we work: remember God’s promise: most important

As we work we remember God’s promise that our names are written in heaven. This promise is more important 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.

Like Jane reading her own name in the sky God has acted, named us, written our names in heaven!

Wondrous miracles to see in this creation. But the greatest miracle is God’s Grace which names us as God’s, claims, names, blesses, and equips us. God nourishes us, comforts us and carries us; and most of all God Loves us as we are and for who we really are!

That our names are written in heaven is not because of a fluke, not because of our work, not because of our correct faith, not because of our hanging on to or our letting go of our histories.

Our names are written in heaven simply because God wants it so, out of love for us.

Seeing the Colours set for our Names to be revealed.

Writing in the Sky

Lessons

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

Claimed, named, blessed, equipped. Nourished, comforted, carried,

But most of all LOVED for who we really are!

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, Sorry

Gaslit Again


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.

God took seven days,

and said it was Good.


I live well in that Goodness.

Pentecost 2, How do we respond?

its still a draft, the first, but it is a formulation of what will become a sermon.

How do we Respond

Front Yard 1 Juniper hole

My front yard needed something to replace the juniper that had taken over the front of the porch, toxic as it was to some of us living in the house. So I bought a plant to replace the juniper that was cut off last fall leaving a stump.

The Question of the sermon: how do we respond?

Through all the lessons for today a theme winds its way: How do we respond? Who do we respond to?

In Isaiah, God is ready for the people to respond to God, but they tell him to stay away. The Psalmist cries to the Lord for rescue from the enemies, God saves the Psalmist, and the Psalmist with all who fear the Lord, sing God’s praise. They remember who God is and whose they are.

In his letter to Galatians Paul recounts how we are to respond to the demands of the Law. We can set it aside. And how we are to respond to the Gospel of Jesus. We can trust it fully to justify us before God, for our faith is a gift from God and it alone is what we need to be counted among God’s own children, and heirs of God’s own Kingdom!

The Gospel story recounts how a mass of demons respond to Jesus’ arrival with great fear, how the herders respond to the drowning of their pigs in the lake, and how the towns people respond to Jesus driving the demons out of the man they’ve possessed for so long. Most significant is how the healed man responds. He sits at Jesus’ feet in worship, asks to come along, and when denied that request follows Jesus’ command to tell everyone all that Jesus has done for him! He becomes the one who proclaims in this foreign land Jesus’ Good News!

Trump

This past week Trump found himself in another brinkmanship showdown this time with Iran. He stood minutes away from ordering an attack that would break out in another long and costly war. Threatening had spiraled down to making good on extreme threats, had come to ordering a military preemptive response.

Despite advice from many corners to stop such brinkmanship showdowns, and this one in particular, Trump had carried on. Then a phone call from Fox News came, alerting Trump that his planned attack would certainly lose him the next election. So Trump stood down the military attack.

Front Yard 2 Snow-shovelled ‘salted the earth’

My front yard also needed something to fix a foot wide strip of grass along the driveway where no grass will grow. Each winter snow was shoveled to the side of the driveway, the only place to shovel it, and all the salt from the vehicles from the streets has been dumped on the lawn. Generally it’s suffered, but that first foot has been thoroughly salted earth. A few brave weeds try to conquer it each summer with little success. I had tried, as many others had, to ignore that I’d salted the earth there, but enough was enough.

So I planned to put in some kind of walk way, which would absorb the salt and snow melt, and not need to have anything grow there, without just extending the ‘salted earth’ effect another foot into the lawn.

Responses that deny anything is wrong

Sometimes it is just easier to deny that things are wrong.

In Isaiah, God stands ready and eager to have the people respond, but they do not. They go so very far as to tell God that they want God to stay far away.

Tevye, in the Fiddler on the Roof, when he is asked, proposes such a blessing for the czar: He asks God to bless the czar and keep him from them very far. Of course the Czar wishes no good for Tevye and his community. Good wishes Good for us all!

Sometimes it is just easier to assume that someone else is the source of the problem that we encounter, or to pretend there is no real problem at all, even as life itself seems to melt away to viruses, antibiotic resistant bacteria, or cancer.

Woman without the Cookies

A woman waiting to catch a flight bought herself a book and a bag of cookies, settled in a chair, and began to read. Suddenly the man beside her started helping himself to her cookies. Not wanting to make a scene, she read on and ate cookies. For every cookie she took, he took one, too. She got more irritated and muttered, “If I wasn’t so nice, I’d give him a piece of my mind!” She wanted to move the cookies to her other side but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. When only one was left, with a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took it and broke it in half.

Then he offered her half, and he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, “This guy has some nerve, and he’s so rude. He didn’t even show any gratitude!” When her flight was called, with relief she headed for the gate, refusing to look at the ungrateful “thief.” She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, reached in her bag to get a book to read and to forget about the incident.

Next to her book … was her full bag of cookies.

Front Yard 3 Porch covered HOLE

My remembering had not completed the whole picture. Under my front porch, with the ground for a good 12 to 20 feet around, there is a sinkhole in the corner of the foundation that had dropped a good three feet below grade. The sump pump was right there. Good. It pumped out the water about 12 feet away along the other wall right at the rhubarb plant just three feet from the porch corner where the juniper stood, so all the water freely flowed right back down the foundation to the sump pump again. No wonder the rhubarb and juniper did so well every year, no matter how dry a summer we had!

So I planned to fill that sink hole in with extra black dirt, but then thought that I’d better fill it with clay, so the water would not just seep through the black dirt.

Cookies, Clay, Good Creatures, possesed but redeemed by Jesus

Sometimes we not only get it wrong whose bag of cookies we are eating from, we forget the big hole that we have at home, right in our own hearts, and we simply do not remember what will fill it.

Clay is fine for my hole under the porch. But what of all the holes left by all the losses we encounter through life? What do we fill them with?

According to the Norsky Sunday School song, the workers wouldn’t work and the painters wouldn’t paint, so God in creating the earth thought the quickest thing to do was to fill it up with dirt.

But when God came to us humans, God did not create with just dirt. God breathed into us, gave us spirit and life, memories and regrets, and thoughts and hopes. God gave us the ability to fear and love God, and each other. God made us Goooood. Then when we were possessed by the demons of sin and evil, God sent Jesus, God’s own Son, to demonstrate for us what we can barely comprehend, but we can remember: God so loved the world and all of us in it that God rescues us from all the demons.

In our baptisms God claims us and makes us God’s own children. There is no greater thing that God can do for us.

ML Baptized I live in the face of all demons

Martin Luther knew about demonic powers. In his early adult life, after being near-struck by lightning he completely gave himself over to fighting against demonic powers. He became a monk serving God with his whole being, disciplining himself harshly, even flogging himself, to drive the devil’s demons out, and to make penance for the many sins he committed every day.

Then one day, Martin Luther again read the letter to the Galatians. That simple word, justified by faith, not by works, turned his whole understanding of his part in God’s Kingdom right-side-up. Luther read that it was not his doing or even believing the right things that saved him. Rather God acted, through Jesus, to create faith in him, a faith that trusts the story of Jesus’ sacrifice for him. This faith saved him.

Thereafter when Luther encountered demons he fought them off with a little word: “I am baptized” (although he said it in Latin). …He did not battle Satan with, “I believe in Christ” or “I am a Christian.” His confidence was not centered on his faith or beliefs, but on an act of God — God’s claim on his life given in baptism. (Stoffregen 2010- reworked )

After baptism, after we know we have faith given to us, then the battles against demonic powers are not ours any more. We simply surrender 100% of our lives to Christ, and the war is won, though the battles still rage on.

Lutherans believe that trusting God’s actions to create faith in us is the Gospel within the Gospel. It is the central Word of God by which we discern the Word of God in the rest of Scriptures, in the rest of literature, in the rest of our lives.

We respond to God’s gifts with fear, love and diligence: We pray as if everything depended on God. But we do not rest. We work as if the salvation of the world depended on us.

There are pathways to be built, holes to fill, grass to sow and plants to plant. There are broken hearts to heal. There are broken dreams to re-form into something possible. There are the denials of sin and evil to overcome … not with more threats, but with love and the promise of healing.

Like the man free of the demons, we each have a story of God’s work in us to heal us and give us new life. Our work is to tell our stories, which are really God’s story of God loving us, and to tell it with an abundance of love for each other, even love for our enemies.

Front Yard 4 Remembering the whole project together

As I shared with Tim my plans to plant that replacement for the juniper, I remembered that the sink hole would be filled part way with the clay dug out from along the drive where the earth was salted. The whole area where I wanted to put that plant would be a construction site, and it needed to be this summer.

I also remembered that all the ground around the porch, rhubarb, and the new plant spot needed to be sloped with fresh black dirt so that water drained away from the building towards a trench in the lawn that would take it to the street.

I also remembered that flagstone was possibly the best for that path: solid but with space between the rocks to allow water and salt to seep down.

Well, I was reminded so I remembered, which was just as good.

So I went to Burnco to chose stone with Tim, and then got out of the way as he took his three days plus to pull out the juniper stump with the truck, dig out the salted black dirt and 8 inches of clay along the drive, toss that clay and more under the porch more than filling the hole. He then layered the bottom 6 inches of the resulting trench along the drive with road crush and topped that with a layer of sand. With help from Richard lifting the heavy rock to save Tim’s back he danced the irregular stones into a pattern for the walk and filled in the gaps with more sand. Then he took new black dirt, re-sloped the grass area to be, and planted seeds.

That’s when I stepped back in to help ensure the area was watered lightly many times each day. A week later the seeds have sprouted.

Remember that was all to replace the juniper with the plant I bought two weeks earlier. Meanwhile it had to be planted elsewhere, to be out of the way, and so as not to die in it’s pot.

Respond by remembering, working, fearing, praising and telling

How do we respond? Sometimes it’s all about remembering.

Remembering how God created us, made us good, and sent Jesus to save us from our sins. Then we can see the steps, hard as they may be to bring living beauty back into our lives where something toxic has grown and even the ground has been salted.

Sometimes, remembering will remind us that there is a great deal of work to be done. God needs us to be the hands of Christ to make things happen, to make the Goodness of Creation possible also today. Often that will be something completely new, un-imagined until we see the desperate need of those around us.

As we remember God’s great gifts given to us, we will be fearful, awestruck, and we will give God praise. We will go out to tell all everything that God has done for us, healing us of our every ill, naming us as heirs to God’s great promises.

Amen