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| Standing Inside the Fire; (sermon 8/15/10) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 13 2010, 07:51 PM (263 Views) | |
| Dewey | Aug 13 2010, 07:51 PM Post #1 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Isaiah 5:1-7 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! ===== Luke 12:49-56 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? ===== This past week, a friend pointed out a news story on CNN’s website, about a certain newspaper’s “relationship advice columnist” who wrote an article about the unusually high percentage of single black women in America. In the article, the advice columnist largely blamed the black church tradition for this statistic. She pointed out that a significant number of black women are very strongly committed to their Christian faith, and being part of their church, and they don’t want to get involved with any man who isn’t equally committed to their faith and being part of the church family. To the advice columnist, this means that these women are hurting themselves by being too picky. They’re limiting their dating pool, as she put it. She accuses them of allowing their faith to shape and inform the way they live too much; of taking the teachings of their faith too literally. And she advises all of them that if they don’t want to be lonely, they’ve got to get out of church and into the bars, the clubs, the far less spiritual places where the advice columnist says they’d be much more successful at finding a man. Now there is some truth to the advice columnist’s claim that some churches – and you can find it in predominantly white churches just as easily as in predominantly black ones – can become personality cults, where female members become emotionally, even romantically, enamored with some personally dynamic, charismatic male leader, which makes it difficult for them to form real, healthy relationships. But by and large, I believe that the advice columnist is completely off base. In fact, given the reality that fully half of all marriages are destined for divorce, we need more pickiness in forming our relationships, not less. In the case of these women, they’ve decided that they aren’t just looking for someone to have fun with on Saturday night. They’re looking for a lasting and meaning relationship based on a common worldview, a common set of values, and most importantly, a common commitment to Christ and living a Christian life. To these women, their faith matters – it makes a real difference in how they live. And for that, I applaud them. It’s that kind of commitment to one’s relationship with that’s at the heart of the two passages of scripture that we read this morning. It’s the idea that if we have faith in Christ, that has to have consequences in how we really live our lives, every day. It means our attitudes about material things have to change. The way we prioritize our time has to change. Our moral responsibilities and our behavior becomes even more important. Or at least it should. We should be able to look at specific aspects of our lives, and say, “I live this way because I believe that Jesus Christ really is who he says he is.” “I do this thing because I’m serious when I say that I’m a follower of Jesus, and that isn’t just a matter of having a golden ticket to heaven; it has real consequences to how I live my life every day, in every place, in every relationship.” And obviously, there will be times when some of the people around us are going to disagree with our different priorities. That can, and will, sometimes cause friction and difficulty. We can, and sometimes will, pay a price for our different priorities. That’s what Jesus was talking about in today’s passage from Luke. He describes it as bringing fire to the earth – a fire that will continue to blaze until the final setting-right of the world that will come with his return. He tells us that the decision to follow him, and to live with the priorities that he tells his followers to have, will cause divisions within our lives, our relationships with others, even sometimes within our own families. Jesus warns us to expect the difficulties caused by our different priorities. He’s telling us here that’s part of the deal when it comes to really following him. There’s a quotation attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus says “Anyone who stands with me is near the fire, and anyone who is not near me is far from the kingdom.” The Gospel of Thomas isn’t part of our canon; it doesn’t rise to the level of scripture. But I don’t have any problem imagining Jesus actually making that statement; it’s consistent with his teachings that we find in the canonical gospels. We know the old saying, if you get too close to the fire, you’re going to get burned. Jesus tells us yes, that’s true. Come stand here next to the fire anyway. I’m not a huge Country & Western music fan, so it’s a little unusual that I’d quote country songs in two different sermons in the same month, but Garth Brooks sings a song called “Standing Outside the Fire.” In the song, he talks about people who play life cool, and supposedly successfully, playing by the rules of the world, never getting too invested or too passionately involved in anything to ever get hurt, to ever get burned. They live life standing “outside the fire,” he says, and the world makes fun of those fools – the ones the song describes this way: They're so hell-bent on giving, walking a wire convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire. You see, that’s precisely the supposed foolishness that the advice columnist was criticizing. And yet, that’s precisely the kind of life Jesus calls us to live for God, through him. Jesus tells us to stand inside the fire. Live the transformed lives that he expects from us, and take the occasional lumps that come along with it. Miss out on the promotion at work because you aren’t comfortable doing business the way the boss wants you to do it. Take the bruise to the ego for not driving a newer or nicer car, because you’ve committed to increase your annual giving to the church. Miss out on starting in the big game, because you missed practice when the coach scheduled it the same time as church. Be true to Christ, even if friendships are lost and family relations are strained. Stand in the fire, Jesus says, live the spiritual and moral life I’ve called you to live. Because if we really paid attention to the signs around us, we’d realize it’s later than we think. We’d recognize the signs of the present time, that in an important way, the kingdom of God is already here among us, and we have things to do, choices to make, things that will sometimes cause us problems, but still things that we need to do, now. We have to make the tough spiritual and moral stands in our lives; we have to allow our faith to shape our behavior just as much as those women the advice columnist criticized. We have to examine and re-examine if the priorities in our lives truly match the priorities Christ tells us we should have. If we’re really serious about our faith in Christ, we simply cannot abide standing outside the fire. Jesus’ fire is the fire of pain, and persecution - but it’s also the fire of Pentecost, and purification. Thanks be to God. |
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"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685. "Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous "Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011 I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14 | |
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| Dewey | Aug 15 2010, 01:25 PM Post #2 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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This was an interesting day. Our musical director/organist/pianist is on vacation this week, and in her absence, we had a guest accompanist - Robert, a retired minister and the father of a member of our congregation who is mentally disabled and lives a couple of blocks away in a personal care facility. I knew Robert, and his wife Beulah, having met them a number of times in the past. Several times they've gifted me with jars of homemade preserves and such, and it's always nice when they visit. I'd known that Beulah was apparently having some health problems; their son had requested prayer for her several times in the past couple months. In speaking with Robert before the service, I found out that her health condition is pretty serious; they're awaiting the results of several biopsies but things are not promising. They haven't told their son the seriousness of her condition, not wanting to upset him. Robert takes it in stride, saying that they've both been so very blessed in life, and they're in their 80's and can't hope to live forever, and besides, she's feeling and looking pretty good today. I wondered how these two would react to the service. A couple months ago, I tweaked it - again - this time, adding a looping Powerpoint-type slide show giving all the morning announcements, along with some Bible verses, some "General Knowledge of the Bible"-type questions, a few notes on "This Week in Christian History," etc. While this slideshow loops, I feature different genres of Christian music as a background. It might be gospel, contemporary, organ music, Celtic-styled hymns - anything, really, but I try to emphasize music styles that wouldn't normally make it into the main service. This morning was going to feature some more up-tempo contemporary stuff, and I wondered how Robert and Beulah would react. In addition to that, I was preaching this particular sermon - not that it's bad, but to my mind it was a rather middle-of-the-road, nothing to write home about sermon (my thoughts seemingly confirmed by lack of commentary here). Then, this is the weekend that's wrapping up the local county fair. Many of the congregation spent the whole week there - some of them literally; this fair is the largest "camping" fairs in the state, so some of my flock were there around the clock, showing livestock, running around, and generally having a good time along with a lot of hard work. So I knew that our attendance would be down. I was right - we only had 28 folks show up, including Robert and Beulah, and one other visitor, the grandson of a member who happened to be in town. I've received a number of comments that people liked the pre-service slideshow and music, but I still wasn't sure. Numbers are typically down this time of year, but I've been second-guessing myself that maybe this time it was that they didn't like me messing with the service (they've actually always been very receptive to my changes, but it's always possible to take one step too many). Anyway, I finished the service, and Beulah caught me afterward. It was like she was on fire, she was so animated. She kept complimenting me on "this morning's sermon, the whole service - it was just powerful, from start to finish, it just spoke to my heart! What you said today is the truth, with a capital T! I haven't heard a sermon like that in a long, long time, and it's just what I needed to hear today! I commend you, and recommend, you," she said, beaming at me. Some mornings, you wonder if your sermon spoke to anyone. For my part, I still think today's was a relatively workmanlike message and delivery. But I guess, today's sermon wasn't meant for me. Today's message was addressed to Beulah. And I'm pretty okay with that.
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"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685. "Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous "Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011 I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14 | |
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| Optimistic | Aug 15 2010, 02:06 PM Post #3 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Great! A lot of times when people appreciate something (be it a sermon, a performance, a class, etc.) they don´t think to let the person know how they were affected. That´s cool she let you know.
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PHOTOS I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up. - Mark Twain We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -T. S. Eliot | |
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| brenda | Aug 15 2010, 03:48 PM Post #4 |
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..............
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I was going to say God bless Beulah, but it sounds like that's taken care of for today.
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“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” ~A.A. Milne | |
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