Sept. 4, 2022, 13th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 14:25-33 (The Message)

25-27 One day when large groups of people were walking along with him, Jesus turned and told them, “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple.

28-30 “Is there anyone here who, planning to build a new house, doesn’t first sit down and figure the cost so you’ll know if you can complete it? If you only get the foundation laid and then run out of money, you’re going to look pretty foolish. Everyone passing by will poke fun at you: ‘He started something he couldn’t finish.’

31-32 “Or can you imagine a king going into battle against another king without first deciding whether it is possible with his ten thousand troops to face the twenty thousand troops of the other? And if he decides he can’t, won’t he send an emissary and work out a truce?33 “Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple.

These are radical words designed to set us free from that which really destroys the joy of living - luke warm religion.  To play with religion is worse than no religion at all.  To want a little bit of God, but not enough to make us have to change our ways, is worse then having no God at all.  At least then we are honest!

Jesus is not advocating that we ‘hate’ in his name.  He is advocating that we place first things first - and that means discipleship!  Loving God with all our being.

These words were spoken at a time when Jesus was popular.  As such, they were designed to shatter the illusion that discipleship is a mass movement.  Jesus would have us go where we don’t want to go and do what we don’t want to do.  Many drop out. There are times when to be near Jesus is the most dangerous place to be. 

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, give me the courage to go where I don’t want to go, and the strength to do what I don’t want to do, as your Disciple.”

 

Aug. 28, 2022 12th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 14:7-14  (The Message) 

7-9 He (Jesus) went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.

10-11 “When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

12-14 Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”

These words are about how it is in the Kingdom of God and how God would have it be with us . With God there are no “greats”; no “ inner circles”; no “less or more important”; no “social” status.  No game playing, pretending to be humble so we can be great.

“Half of the harm that is done in this world, is due to people who want to feel important.  They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them.  Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”  T. S. Elliot   ”The Cocktail Party”

We live by grace not by our accomplishments.   Humility is our key word.

Humility is a sigh of strength.  It is a fruit of healthy ego-strength; liking myself but not hung up on myself.  It comes out of the honest struggle with my weakness; and the gracious acceptance of forgiveness.  It comes when I forget myself and remember who I am - a sinner - and who my God is - a gracious, loving, forgiving God.  Humble people like themselves and don’t need the acclaim of others to do so.  They just go about being their forgiven selves.

Humility is loosing oneself in living and not keeping score.  It is letting the love of God consume us until nothing is more important then the privilege of being a servant.

It is getting lost in doing good.  And letting God keep score, if God wants to, which God probably doesn’t. 

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, keep me humble so you can use me, and the gifts I have to share.  And let the credit be Yours!”

Aug. 21, 2022, 11th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 13:10-17  (The Message)

10-13 He (Jesus) was teaching in one of the meeting places on the Sabbath. There was a woman present, so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn’t even look up. She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. “Woman, you’re free!” He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.

14 The meeting-place president, furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the congregation, “Six days have been defined as work days. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”

15-16 But Jesus shot back, “You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?”

17 When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on.

Two haunting questions raised by this text:

First:  “Do we hide behind obscure biblical passages and ancient prejudices as a way of avoiding the call to be a healing presence in the world?”  Lisa W. Davison

The Bible was never meant to be a rule book.  To contain a list of “do’s and don’ts” which keep us safe in God’s love.  It is a book which seeks to tell us how, from the beginning of time, God has been busy loving His creation and ALL in it.  To believe  in the Bible should never lead us to hate, judge, or exclude those who are different from us.  It is meant to lead us to be “a healing presence in our world” not a divisive one.

Second: How do we keep the Sabbath today?

Since the lock down of the Covad years, this is a crucial question.

Many got out of the habit of going to Church on Sunday (and it is a good habit).  Many found it easier to listen to services on TV and not have to spend the energy to get up and go.  Today many churches are

experiencing a slow return of the flock, and some are wondering it it will ever be as it was before.

Only time will tell, but one thing we all need to think about as we walk the walk of faith and seek to be “a healing presence in our world” is that  we need each other!  Fellowship is important to a life of faith!

It opens us up to hospitality, which leads to friendship and a bonding which is greater than our differences.  We become fellow human beings who journey together in the walk of faith, in the struggle and challenge to be a “healing presence in our world.”  

“When God is up to something, 

prepare to be unbound: whether 

from confining diseases, 

or social norms about persons 

with disabilities,

or even holy pieties.”  

David Jacobsen

Prayer thought for the week:  "Lord, unbind me from that which keeps me from being a healing presence in my world."

Aug. 14 2022, 10th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 12:49-53  (The Message) 

“I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything right side up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront!”

There are things we do not want to hear.  Even in God’s Word!  The Prophet Jeremiah (and other prophets) got in trouble because they said what God wanted them to say, not what the people wanted to hear.

God’s word is not only a word of peace; it is also a word of challenge which brings unrest  It is not just to comfort the afflicted; it is also to afflict the comfortable!

It does create division among people between those who hear and those who don’t want to hear. (And sometimes those who won’t hear are those who appear to be the most religious.  At least the most set in their ways.)  This is true because God’s Word is fire.  It challenges our hypocrisy and our religious closed mindedness as it seeks to create a dangerous spirit in us.  The spirit of love!  The kind of love which brings God’s kingdom to this world in ways which make it a different and better place for all. 

 To live as God’s chosen people is to live as radicals who dare believe in love as the most powerful and most important power in all of life.   It is, I fear, what is most missing in our world today.  The spirit of love which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things”.  (I Cor. 13:7)  And we seem to be so indifferent about it! 

“The opposite of love is not hate, 

it’s indifference.” 

Elie Wiesel

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to hear what I don’t want to hear and dare believe more than I dare believe.  Help me to not be indifferent to what the spirit of love calls me to be and do. Amen

Aug. 7, 2022 9th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 12:32-40

32"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

What we live for is what we become.  I will end up - my heart will end up - where I put my energy and hope.  We become possessed by what we set out to possess.

Because this is more true than we would like to admit, we need to be reminded often  that life is a gift not a possession; and so is the Kingdom of God.

To lose life is to find it; to be possessed by the gift of the Kingdom is to become a servant in the work of the Kingdom.  It is not just ours to have.  It is ours to give.

And this means we will do strange things, even surprise ourselves.

For God’s Kingdom, freely given, joyfully received, becomes not a possession we have but a possession which has us!   

"You are Christian only...so long as you 

constantly pose critical questions to the 

society you live in, so long as you emphasize 

the need of conversion both for yourself and 

for the world, ...so long as you stay unsatisfied 

with the status quo and keep saying that a new 

world is yet to come.  You are Christian only 

when you believe you have a role to play in the 

realization of this new Kingdom, and when you 

urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled."

          Henri Nouwen, "Circles of Love”

Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, possess me with love and thankfulness, so I can be a servant in your Kingdom.”

July 31, 2022 8th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 12:15-21  (The Message)

15 Speaking to the people, he (Jesus) went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

16-19 Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’

20 “Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’

21 “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”

You can, to a large degree,  determine a person’s theology by the pronouns they use.  For pronouns give direction to life.  They point to what is important in one’s life.  Mine...yours...ours...Thine.

What a difference it makes when we are able to look at our possessions and say “Thine”.  Then our possessions fall into their rightful place in life.  Then they are not ours in a selfish way, but ours to use in a redemptive way.  And we get out of the trap of thinking they are all that matters, when so often they can do so little to satisfy our deepest needs.  For we were created for more then just abundance.  We were created to know and be known by God.  Our spiritual needs cannot be satisfied with material goods - no matter how hard we try.

 

“Ah, there is only one problem, only one in all the world.  How can we restore to man a spiritual significance, a spiritual discontent;  let something descend upon them like the dew of a Gregorian chant...don’t you see, we cannot live any longer on refrigerators, politics, balance-sheets, and crossword puzzles.  We simply cannot.”   Author unknown 

“When you have everything, 

something is missing.”

Jewish proverb  

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to love what is worth loving and treasure 

what is precious in your sight.  Help me to be redemptive in my living.”

July 24, 2022 7th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 11:9-13 (The Message) 

9 “Here’s what I’m saying:

Ask and you’ll get;

Seek and you’ll find;

Knock and the door will open.

10-13 “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?”

Prayer is more then something we do to get our way with God.  Prayer is something we do to discover God’s way with us, and discover how true it is that God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs.

Prayer is one of the most important spiritual disciplines by which we open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Henri Nouwen:
“It is impressive to see how prayer opens one’s eyes...prayer makes (us) contemplative and attentive.  In place of manipulating, the (person) who prays stands receptive before the world (and before God).  He no longer grabs but caresses, (she ) no longer bites, but kisses, (they ) no longer examine but admire.” 

Prayer is a joy, not a duty’ a privilege, not an obligation; it is talking to PAPA - who loves us and will give us more than we ask.

“Prayer enlarges the heart until it is  

capable of containing God’s gift of himself.  

Ask and seek, and your heart will grow big 

enough to receive God and keep God as 

your own.”  

Mother Teresa

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, may my prayers open my heart to Your

way in my life.  And help me to both see it and live it.”