June 30, 2010 3rd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 9:51-62 (The Message)
51-54 When it came close to the time for his Ascension, he gathered up his courage and steeled himself for the journey to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead. They came to a Samaritan village to make arrangements for his hospitality. But when the Samaritans learned that his destination was Jerusalem, they refused hospitality. When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, “Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?”
55-56 Jesus turned on them: “Of course not!” And they traveled on to another village.
57 On the road someone asked if he could go along. “I’ll go with you, wherever,” he said.
58 Jesus was curt: “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.”
Jesus said to another, “Follow me.”
59 He said, “Certainly, but first excuse me for a couple of days, please. I have to make arrangements for my father’s funeral.”
60 Jesus refused. “First things first. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent: Announce God’s kingdom!”
61 Then another said, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.”
62 Jesus said, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”

Whatever else it means, to follow Jesus, it is a radical departure from what has been to what is yet to be.

It is an all consuming adventure which is full of uncertainty, vulnerability and openness to God’s surprises as they come upon us at the most unexpected moments, in unconventional ways and ask us to be ready to  “proclaim the Kingdom of God” in the very essence of our being.

It means being a servant, a steward, a slave.  We cannot do it our way - we have to do it His way.  We cannot consume one another, we are to serve one another in love.

“True religiousness, in whatever faith, functions not to enslave but to free, not to injure but to heal, not to destabilize but to stabilize.”
True religion lives by grace which sets people free.  Free to be who we are.  Free to struggle with our purpose in life.  Free to choose without fear of reprisal, yet with responsibility for our choices.  Free to live knowing that I will always be loved, and also knowing that I have to choose how I am going to use my freedom - as an excuse to indulge in self-gratification at the expense of others; as a license to destroy myself and others;   or as an opportunity to love my neighbor as myself, to love as I have been loved!   Hans  Kung


“True religiousness,
in whatever faith,
functions not to enslave
but to free,
not to injure but to heal,
not to destabilize but to stabilize.”
Hans  Kung






Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help my “religiousness” to be life giving, proclaiming your Kingdom of grace and love for all.






 

June 16, 2019 Holy Trinity Sunday

John 16:12-15  (The Message)

12-15 “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed,
out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ‘He takes from me and delivers to you.’”

If I go fishing in Canada,  I want a guide with me but I do not want the guide fishing for me.
 Even if I lose the big one.

Life is like fishing - we often need a guide but the guide cannot live for us.

For life is something we discover in the process of living.
We learn as we live.
We have to experience what we know before we can know it.
We often have to be vulnerable to discover what we don’t know.

Faith is like this too.  The Friend (Holy Spirit) guides us into the truth of that which we could never discover by ourselves.  As we live by faith,  we discover something of what it all means - yet the mystery is far beyond our wildest imagination.  It is always ‘yonder’.




 “She was a believer and knew -
so much of what she believed
was yonder - always yonder.”
Carl Sandberg on Lincoln’s mother








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, guide me into that which is beyond my wildest dreams, so I can discover something which is ‘always yonder’.”

June 9., 2019 Day of Pentecost

John 14:23-27 (The Message)

25-27 “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace.

We humans have the great capacity to remember, which both enriches and empowers our lives. “Remember when…” begins a journey into the past which carries with it either great pain or great joy.  Even when it is pain,
it enriches our lives.

The last words my brother spoke to me, as we were saying goodby -
he was going back into the Army, recalled for Korea;  I was going back to college - were, “You should think about being a Pastor.”  There was no reason for him to say it.  We had not been talking about it.  He just said it
as we parted.  And I quickly forgot about it.

Following his death due to wounds in combat in Korea, I remembered his words.  I could not get them out of my memory.  They empowered me, painful though they were, to begin the journey which has led me where I never dreamed I would go.  I remembered and lived out the memory.

This is what Pentecost is all about.  Remembering what has been so we can be more alive in what is yet to be.  We are not to live in the past; we are to remember it and be empowered to live in the present, doing what we are called to do in our day, living creatively, daring to try new things, even change old things.
Indeed, God’s spirit works in and through our capacity to remember.  God calls to our remembrance that which we have known in the past so we can be better equipped to live in the present.



“This is what Pentecost
is all about.
Remembering what has been
so we can be more alive in
what is yet to be.”









Prayer for the week:  “Lord, help me to remember what has been so I can be who I am called to be.”

June 2, 2019 7th Sunday of Easter

John 17:20-23  (The Message)

I’m (Jesus) praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me.

These words of Jesus last recorded prayer end with a challenge which
gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian.  It isn’t sameness.
It isn’t agreeing on every thing.  It is to love as we have been loved.

What ever else this means, it does mean we cannot give up on love as we seek to make a difference in a world so full of hate.

Bertrand Russell, a very vocal opponent of Christianity said it well:

“There are certain things that our age needs...The root of the matter is a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words.  The thing I mean - please forgive me for mentioning it - is love, Christian love, or compassion.  If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, and imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”






"Someday, after we have mastered the winds,
the waves, the tides, and gravity,
we will harness for God the energies of love:
and then for the second time in the history
of the world man will have discovered fire!"
                                    Teilhard de Chardin







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, ‘Love, love, love, that’s what it’s all about.”
Help me to not only sing these words, but live them each day.”

May 26, 2019 6th Sunday of Easter

John 14:23-29   (The Message)

23-24 “Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood! Not loving me means not keeping my words. The message you are hearing isn’t mine. It’s the message of the Father who sent me.
25-27 “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
28 “You’ve heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m on my way to the Father because the Father is the goal and purpose of my life. 29 “I’ve told you this ahead of time, before it happens, so that when it does happen, the confirmation will deepen your belief in me.

Saying goodbye is often difficult.  This is the setting or our text - Jesus saying goodbye.
The disciples don’t get it; so he tells them again.   They hear the words but still do not really understand, for it has not happened yet.  Only when it happens will they know.
So Jesus leaves them with a word they can hang on to - love.

Love is the most important word in the Bible and in our lives.
It is enough to say, “God is love.”
And to repeat over and over and over again, as the Psalmist does,
that “his steadfast love endures forever.”  It is enough to know that I am loved.
Then I can make it through even the roughest of days!

We are to obey Jesus words because we love doing it.  We love doing it because we have first been loved into doing it.  To obey out of love is to love obeying!





We are to be amateurs about love.
That is, be “those who do something
because they love doing it.”








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me obey one commandment ahead of all others -  to love as I have been loved by You!”