New Sermon Thoughts

The Islamic Scholar Reza Aslan writes this on the Bedouin tribal ethic:

The structure of the Bedouin life naturally prevented the social and economic hierarchies that were so prevalent in sedentary societies like Mecca. The only way to service in a community in which movement was the nor and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense of tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources. The tribal ethic was therefore founded upon the principle that every member had a essential function in maintaining the stability of the tribal, which was only as strong as its weakest number. (Quoted in Jim Wallis' The Great Awakening, p. 98)

Moving toward an ethic that is rooted deeply in the collective necessity -- for the individual to survive and prosper the community must make allowances for the creativity and gifts of all. Notes on a music staff, words strung together in prose or poetry, color splashed or dabbed in canvas, dance filling human-size space care all forms of art, as forms for the human spirit to breath into ordinary living. Each skill, each gift, each offering, each discipline add texture an dimension to flattened spirits, despoiled souls. When McDonald's defines food taste, when Applebees defines neighborhood or all indigenous stores become Macy's, we find ourselves homogenized into bland taste.
Tabasco sauce is the new condiment of choice in America -- surpassing tomato catchup. Its fiery flavor masks the insipid. There is not much "flavor" to Tabasco sauce (I want to say I use this regularly!). Its main quality if hot, with the clear intention to torture. Its original use was to cover the smell bad food or rotten meat.
Where do we see a new spirit arise into human consciousness unless its roots go deep into the Holy, the Divine, into the very heart of God.

Prayer

“I don’t pray because it makes sense to pray. I pray because my life doesn’t make sense without prayer.” — Noah ben Shea

Being Thirsty Over the Wrong Things

What makes you thirsty? What makes me thirsty? Thirst is a a life saving sense. We know that if we do not get enough water each day we will become dehydrated -- shrivel up and loose our life.

Now it is true that we can drink some liquids that contain water but will not quench our thirst. You can drink coffee or tea and it will refresh you, but will you still not be thirsty if you have not had some water free from coffee? Further, we can drink some waters/liquids that are to replace water but will not keep us healthy -- just think Coke or Pepsi.

There are goals we can set for our lives that seem to offer a quenching of a thirst for being a significant person. We might believe that being number one is the most important rung on a ladder. But, all safety notices tells us that being on the top is very precarious and tenuous. In other words it is less than permanent place for the fullness of life. On the top we can easily lose our balance for there is nothing to hang on to.

This does not me we must not to use fully the gifts that God had given us to benefit the whole of society, but we need to keep a perspective of the danger of walking over another to achieve a personal goal, or disregarding the consequences to out families and the environment.

One-on-One with Jesus -- Lenten Texts

Three weeks ago the Lectionary began a series of one-on-one encounter with Jesus and a person caught in a life struggle. The first encounter is with Nicodemus, (John 3:1-21) the teacher who comes during the night. The next meeting is Jesus and the Samaritan woman meeting at Jacob's well in the middle of the day. (John 4:1-42) The third one-on-one is with the man born blind. (John 9:1-41) Finally, the climatic encounter is when Jesus encounter Lazarus, four days in his grace. (John 11:1-44)

The encounter that has stayed with me through these Lenten texts in the one of Jesus' struggle with the Samaritan woman. The first dilemma I faced in thinking of this story was the need to give her a name. People of the margins deserve names even if we must fabricate the name from thin air. I referred to her as Samantha the Samaritan. This seems a bit contrived but "in for a penny, in for a pound."

Names mean something in the Bible. Nicodemus' encounter allowed a name. Lazarus' get his name recorded, but what of the two marginalized characters, the Samaritan women and the man born blind? To personalize them I bring a name forward, Samantha for the Samaritan and Barney for the man born blind. Silly? It seems to make a sense I cannot articulate very clearly.

The one-on-one encounter between Jesus and Samantha (the Samaritan), after some bantering back and forth, there is the central verse, The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. (4:14) This passage is followed up later with,

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink," you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."This is a promise that is a truth about who Jesus, the Word made flesh, is. The "Word made flesh" that challenges Samantha at Jacob's well will provide living water that is life itself.

In reading this passage, my mind wanders to Genesis 2 where we read that God caused a spring to bubble up (a stream would rise up from the earth (Gen 2:4)) in the midst of a desert (God had not caused it to rain upon the earth (Gen 2:5)). It is from this stream – living water – that all life comes. First there is the mud, the combination of the earth and the water. Then there is the "breath"/"spirit" that brings the adamah to full life as a human being. The living water, possibly an artesian well, is the "stuff" God uses in this part of the creation epic to mold life.

Samantha wanted the "living water" that was fresh. She may have been longing for this living water with its "gushing up" because she had had to many years of drinking the polluted waters that caused her life to be a living death.

This is the point I have thought about since giving this sermon two weeks ago. First, I have thought (and confessed) about the polluted waters I have drunk from when I was thirsty over the wrong things. Second, I have tried to reflect on why polluted waters can be so tasty and even appear to be refreshing, while at the same time, leading one (me) into the valley of deepest darkness.

MORE LATER

December 2, 2008 -- First Sunday in Advent

How comfortable are we when we travel far from home? For the six years we lived in Mauritius, we had more than enough opportunities to see tourists behavior in a foreign land. We observed South Africans, French, Germans, Chinese from Hong Kong, Japanese, and even a few Americans. To offer to big a stereotype of tourists would be unfair, but I did observe more than one time how people visiting foreign lands never leave home. It comes in the forms of comparisons. Too often I heard comments about how Mauritius was not like their home country. This was done most often in the negative, "How can they eat a baguette with flies on them?" or "They seem too slow to get anything done!"

Traveling into a foreign land is a bit disconcerting and will keep us off balance. Advent is a bit like leaving home if we take it at its face value. Advent asks us to be patient, expectant, look to the unknown for hope. The readings form the Old Testament ask us to think about a peaceable kingdom and a Prince of Peace. We hear this in a time of open warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Hidden war with the terrorists.

It is the Messiah that will come, unbidden, into our age and travel with us in this foreign land of waiting upon God's promise to be fulfilled before our eyes.

November 25, 2007 -- Christ the King

SOME THOUGHTS ON CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY

Jeremiah 23:1-6;
Colossians 1:11-20;
Luke 23:33-43

Christ the King is a "hinge Sunday." It stands as the hinge between the long series of Sundays from Pentecost to the end of the Christian year, and is the Sunday that "swings" us to the new season -- the season of Advent -- the season of the Incarnation.

Each of the three texts for this Sunday gives the Christ followers an elevated picture of the the rabbi, teacher, healer who walked from Galilee to Jerusalem and, the "babe" to be born in a Bethlehem stable yard. These texts show us the importance of a just and merciful King that will not reign from a throne of gold and precious stones, but will reign from a rough hewed cross stained with blood.

This Christ reigning from the cross rules with forgiveness. From Christ's vantage point, he speaks these words which are heavy for us to hear, "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing." Do these words bring us to shame? No. They bring us to humility and grace. They are not meant to weigh us down but to lift us up.

This Christ reigning from the cross rules with hope. The good thief, Dismis (a name found in some non canonical books), makes a plea to the Christ who reigns from the cross, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Dismis wants the future to be a new reality. He calls it "Jesus' kingdom." The kingdom is the promise of hope. With no future there is no hope. With no future today disappears into the black hole of timeless misery. Dismis knows where the Christ on the cross is going and he is willing (and able) to go with the Christ.

Our faithful and good shepherd (contra the shepherds in Jer 23) does not scatter the sheepfold to fend for themselves. No, this good Shepherd/King rules with forgiveness and hope for the redemption of all -- the believer and the unbeliever.

(I do hold out hope for the "bitter thief" that he too would find himself, not along side Christ on the hill called "the Skull", but embraced through graciousness.)

Back to Galatians

Beginning October 14 I will be returning to a series of sermons on Paul's letter to the Galatians. Background material can be found at:

http://joesgalatianblog.blogspot.com/