Books I Read

Here are the books I read in 2017. This is more for my records, then for others, but I would recommend nearly all of them.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
3. A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren
4. All That Glitters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
5. America at War with Itself by Henry A. Giroux
6. American Religious History by Patrick Allitt
7. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
8. Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
9. Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin
10. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
11. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
12. Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflection on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy
13. Canada by Mike Myers
14. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
15. Christmas Every Morning by Lisa Tawn Bergren
16. Clip In: Risking Hospitality in Your Church by Jim Ozier and Fiona Haworth
17. Con Ed by Matthew Klein
18. Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness and Justice in American Culture and Politics by Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski
19. Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark by Marcus Borg
20. Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic
21. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydide's Trap? by Graham Allison
22. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
23. Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the US House of Representatives by Robert Draper
24. Engineered for Murder by Aileen Schumacher
25. Finding God is a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Spiritual Exploration of the Star Wars Saga by Timothy Paul Jones
26. Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible by Daniel Burrus
27. For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn
28. For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn
29. George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones
30. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
31. Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q Whitman
32. Holy Spirit by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon
33. Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches edited by Walter Wink
34. How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain by Gregory Berns
35. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language by Simon Horobin
36. How to Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Catron
37. How to Read Proverbs by Tremper Longman III
38. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
39. Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
40. Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
41. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
42. J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys by Andrew Birkin
43. Jim and Casper Go to Church: Frank Conversations about Faith, Churches and Well Meaning Christians by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper
44. John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz
45. Lost at Sea: An American Tragedy by Patrick Dillon
46. Love Works: Seven Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders by Joel Manby
47. Lovingkindness: Realizing and Practicing Your True Self by William Miller
48. Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis by Nicholas Eberstadt
49. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
50. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
51. No More Work: Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea by James Livingston
52. On Immunity: An Innoculation by Eula Bliss
53. On Tyrrany: Twenty One Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
54. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
55. Paper: Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky
56. Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson
57. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku
58. Preaching from the Minor Prophets by Elizabeth Achtemeier
59. Printer's Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History by J.P. Romney and Rebecca Romney
60. Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself by Rabbi Donniel Hartman
61. Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income can Renew our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream by Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz
62. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
63. Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insight by Gary Klein
64. Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality by Rob Bell
65. Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane
66. Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds by Carmine Gallo
67. Tall Tales and Half Truths of Pat Garrett by John LeMay
68. The Arena: Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-Scalping, Mascot-Racing and Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport by Rafi Kohan
69. The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes by Sarah Burns
70. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
71. The Deadliest Cast Member by Kelly Ryan Johns
72. The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition by Dan Hofstadter
73. The End of Leadership by Barbara Kellerman
74. The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones
75. The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts came to be as They are by Henry Petroski
76. The Gospel According to Star Wars: Faith, Hope and the Force by John C. McDowell
77. The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die by Niall Ferguson
78. The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle
79. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
80. The Kindness Challenge: 30 Days to Improve Any Relationship by Shaunti Feldhahn
81. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
82. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
83. The Martian by Andy Weir
84. The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson
85. The Other 1492: Ferdinand, Isabella and the Making of an Empire by Teofilo Ruiz
86. The Plot Against America: A Novel by Philip Roth
87. The Second Death of George Mallory: The Enigma and Spirit of Mount Everest by Reinhold Messner
88. The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World by Michael Lewis
89. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Daniel Jones
90. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
91. The Whistler by John Grisham
92. The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer by Roseanne Montillo
93. The World America Made by Robert Kagan
94. Thrawn by Timothy Zahn
95. Three Weeks with My Brother: A Memoir by Nicholas Sparks
96. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman
97. When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner

Star of Wonder

Here is my sermon for Christmas Eve. The text was Matthew 2:1-12:

I was camping in northern New Mexico one year, and when I say camping, it was walk 20 miles into the woods with a pack camping, and so we were in the middle of nowhere, with no artificial lighting around, and it was in August at the time of the Perseid meteor shower, which is usually one of the best meteor showers of the year, with normal output of around 100 meteors an hour, and sometimes as high as 250 an hour. So, we stayed up late, and walked into a meadow, away from our campfire and just watched as meteor after meteor entered and burned up in the earths atmosphere. But these were just little displays, we were watching them streak by lasting for 7-10 seconds, and not just one doing that, but dozens. Until we went to see the total eclipse this year, it was by far the most amazing astronomical phenomenon, or show, that I had ever seen. And it is something that we are normally separated from because of the ambient light, or light pollution, that is always around us, that drowns out the night sky. There are people who have never really seen the stars at night, have never experienced the brilliance of the Milky Way being splayed out across the sky, have never seen thousands of stars shining, maybe never have even seen a hundred stars. There was a truck commercial this fall in which a father gives his daughter a telescope, and then realizing that she couldn’t really see the stars, he takes her in his nice new truck out to the forest so she can gaze at the sky, of course he then leaves the headlights and the interior lights and the light in the bed of the truck on, which sort of defeats the purpose of getting away from lights, but did show off the truck really well, although I don’t know which brand, and so I’m not sure how effective it really was.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. We don’t have to go back very far in our history to a time in which they night was not perpetually lit all around us. When people paid attention to what was happening in the sky, and depended upon knowing because often their lives or livelihood depended upon it and they couldn’t get up in the morning and ask google or Siri what the weather was going to be that day. The 19^th Psalm begins, “The heavens the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (psalm 19:1-4 NIV) I think that Calvin is right, and that’s not John Calvin, but Calvin and Hobbes, that if we spent more time looking at the stars, of seeing the splendor and wonder of creation, that we might all live a little differently, or at least approach how we live differently.

Songs of Thanksgiving

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:39-56:

If you were here last week for our incredible Christmas Cantata, for the scripture reading you also heard the passage known as the annunciation, in which Mary is told that she will give birth to a child and she is to name him Jesus. Additionally, we lit the third candle of Advent, the candle of joy. The other candles of Advent are purple, which represents royalty for Jesus, and the coming birth of the king, but also for repentance and suffering, which like Lent, are part of the season of Advent, although they are now greatly downplayed in importance. The pink of that third candle also comes from a Lenten practice, in which on the fourth Sunday of Lent, there was, and is, a pause from the theme of repentance surrounding Lent, and also the color purple, with a change to pink, or rose and it was a Sunday of rejoicing, a break from the penitential practices of the season. It is seen as a day of hope as we approach the darkness of holy week and then the celebration of Easter. Traditionally no one could be married during Lent, except on this day, it was a day of celebration. And so, when Advent came into being as a liturgical practice, it followed the time of Lent, and the third Sunday too was represented by pink, and the theme of joy, that no matter what is going on in our lives that we can have joy in the presence of God and in the expectation of the coming of Christ.

I think that idea is important as we think then about the stories of Elizabeth, whom we have been hearing about since the first Sunday of Advent with the announcement to Zechariah that she was to bear a son in her advanced age, and then with John the Baptist preparing the way for the coming of Jesus, and even in the annunciation, Mary is told that her cousin Elizabeth is with child. Now it’s not clear why Elizabeth plays such an important role at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, and he is the only one to mention her, and she disappears after the birth of John the Baptist. Perhaps it’s to emphasize that John is not as great as Jesus, after all he leaps in his mother’s womb in praise of Mary, not the other way around. And then, of course, John says that one who is greater than he is coming. Or perhaps Elizabeth is seen as playing the mothering role for the young Mary, as there is no mention at all of Mary’s family. But whatever the reason, Elizabeth clearly plays an important role in Mary’s life at this time, and her response to her pregnancy, and to Mary’s pregnancy, perhaps gives more indication to Mary of how she too should feel and approach the coming birth, as will then be seen in Mary’s song of praise, known as the Magnificat.

If We Make It Through December

Here is my sermon for our Blue Chritmas service. The text was Romans 8:18-28:

There’s an old Merle Haggard song entitled If We Make It Through December. It tells the story of a man who has hit hard times after he has been laid off at the factory, but who is hoping for the best, and for better times. He says, “Now, I don’t mean to hate December, it’s meant to be the happy time of year, and why my little girl don’t understand why daddy can’t afford no Christmas here.” And so, he says, if only they can make it through December, everything will be alright. Occasionally you will actually hear that during this season being played along the other songs of the season, but it’s pretty rare, because it doesn’t really capture the feeling of the season that people think you’re supposed to have. It’s not holly, jolly and certainly not merry, and so I suspect if they played it too often people would start complaining. And yet, for many people it sums up their feelings a little too well, and I’m assuming for most of you as well, that you think, “If we can just make it through to the New Year, then things will get better. It won’t hurt as much.”

I’ve said this in year’s past, but I think this is the most important worship service we do every year, and yet it is the one I struggle with the most, because it’s the hardest one to sort of encapsulate what might need to be said, because that need is different for everyone of you, and I feel the need to try and say something, to try and give some level of comfort even in my inadequacies in doing so. I know some of you might think it’s because us preachers just can’t be quiet and if given the chance to talk, we have to fill up the space, even if just to hear ourselves talk. But honestly, it’s more out of fear. One year I am going to be strong enough to just come here and let us sit in silence for 10 minutes, but I’m not ready to do that yet, and maybe you’re not ready either. Sometimes we need to hear some words of comfort, some words of promise some words of hope in this time, in this moment, that at some point everything might be alright and so I hope that they are more than the words offered by the friends to Job in the midst of his suffering, because as long as they were silent, everything was okay. It’s once they began to speak that they got themselves into trouble, and perhaps that was because they then tried to give justification for why Job was suffering, rather than simply being present for him.

Making the Way

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:1-8:

Last week we heard scripture from the gospel of Luke announcing the birth of John the Baptist to his father Zechariah. But, because he and his wife are getting on in years, Zechariah does not believe the angel Gabriel’s announcement, and for that reason he is struck mute for the length of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, which had to be a long wait. And yet, they had already been waiting a lifetime for this momentous occasion to come. They had been praying to God for a miracle to take place, for them to have a child, thinking and probably believing that it was never going to happen. And so, as we look through their eyes at the miraculous birth of their son, who we are told will make the way for the coming of Jesus, we see their waiting and the waiting that John the Baptist will also have to do, although we don’t have to do that same waiting because last week when the scripture passage ended Elizabeth was 5 months pregnant with John and today we encounter him, and he is around 30 years old, man does time fly.

John is a special character in scripture, because he is the only person who is continually referred to by what he does, that is he is John the Baptist. So, we have to note that John is not a Baptist, it’s not like saying John the Methodist, but he is known for being the one who baptizes, which we will dig into a little more in the new year when we come back to Mark’s account of Jesus baptism by John. As part of the proclamation to Zechariah, he is told that John “must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” What this statement means is that John was a Nazarite, which again has nothing to do with a specific denomination like the Nazarenes, but instead this was a very special group of people, men, in Judaism who took special vows. Two of the most famous Nazarites were Samson and Samuel, who both also happened to be the result of births of formerly barren women, and they entered into their vows because of pledges their mothers had given to God about what they would do with their child, if they were able to have a child. Of course, in this case, it’s not the pledge of the mother, or at least not that we know of, although Elizabeth was praying hard for a child, but instead the pledge that God is making on behalf of who John is and who he will be.

Silenced By God

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:5-25:

Time is a strange thing, because although we measure it in seconds, and minutes and hours, and days and years and even longer, and we can say how long each of these things are, it turns out that these are not actually set amounts of time, because time changes We all know that time is not constant. It can go long, or it can be slow. In fact, Einstein’s theory of relativity even says that the length of time varies depending upon which relatives we are around. If we want them to go away soon, then time goes slowly, and if we want it to last longer, then it goes too quickly. Or at least I think that’s what the theory of relativity is about. But, that’s when we have to understand that there are two different types of time. There is Chronos time, that is the time measured by the clock, or sequential time, this is what we normally mean when we talk about time. Then there is Kairos time, which is about God time, about those thin moments in life, when we encounter the divine, when time slows down. It’s a time that often comes with waiting, or as Paul says its about the fullness of time, and that’s what the season of Advent is about, a season of waiting and preparation.  And, as I say nearly every year, there is not a war on Christmas, which doesn’t start until December 25, and then we have 12 days of celebration, there is a war on Advent. I think some of that is because waiting is hard to do because time is not a constant. For those of you who are a little older, do you remember when you were a child, how long it took for Christmas to arrive? And the closer you got to it, the longer it seemed to take, time slowed to a crawl. Now it just seems to fly by, except when it doesn’t, and we see something very similar in the story of Zechariah.

The passage begins by telling us “In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah.” Does that introduction sound familiar to other parts of the Bible? That’s right the prophets, so right at the start, Luke is making a connection to the historicity of Judaism. Abijah is a descendent of Aaron, who was the brother of Moses, and the head of the priestly class, and he represented one of 24 divisions into which the priesthood was divided under king David. We are then also told that his wife Elizabeth was also a descendent of Aaron, so this is a family that has some historic connections although they are not at the top of the social circle. Additionally, we are told that both are righteous and blameless before God, which means they are following all of the commandments and regulations of God. Luke gives us that information as well so that those who were not familiar with those terms will understand what that means. And yet, Elizabeth is also barren, or without child, which she says has brought disgrace upon her, and by default on Zechariah. And so, we have a juxtaposition of ideas here.

The Kindness Challenge: Carrying Out Kindness

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 25:31-46:

After last week’s message on practicing praise, I had a lot of people coming up to me to give me thanks, and so then I had to decide whether it was just everyone working on practicing praise, especially the injunction not to let people assume you are appreciated, but to tell them, or if there were lots of people who decided to practice the kindness challenge on me. But, since one of the things we are working on is assuming the best of intentions for others, rather than the worst, I am going to go with the first answer. Today we conclude in our series on the Kindness Challenge, which is based off a book by the same name by Shaunti Feldhahn, and so a quick recap of the three rules of the kindness challenge. The first rule is to nix the negativity, that is we are not to say anything negative to the person we are doing the kindness challenge for, not to say anything negative about them to someone else. The second rule is practice praise, that is as we start to stop focusing on the negative we instead look for positives and to give one piece of praise or affirmation about someone else every day, and tell someone else what you praised them for. If you missed either of those messages, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them, which then leads us into the final rule, which we cover today, and that is to carry out kindness, or to do a small act of kindness or generosity for the person you are doing the kindness challenge for every day, and to do all three of these steps for 30 days, although you don’t have to stop there.

Additionally, as we are doing the kindness challenge for one person, if that’s what we choose to do, we will also find that we can do these steps for everyone so that we are seeking to bring kindness into all our interactions. But, one thing to keep in mind as we think of ways to be more kind is that except for this third rule, you can do the first two rules for anyone, even if you never come into contact with them. So, you can be more kind to that certain politician you can’t stand, by removing negativity and practicing praise, and remember first is that you don’t have to like someone in order to be kind, and everyone is deserving of kindness even if they are not being kind to others. You can do it for someone who has died, and you need to bring some healing to that relationship, or to someone you have cut out of your life because of something that they did to you. Kindness, and practicing acts of kindness, can be the first steps to bringing about healing and forgiveness, and remembering that forgiveness is not about condoning, enabling or forgetting a hurt, or even saying that it didn’t hurt, but about freeing ourselves from carrying that burden any more so that the perpetrator no longer has control over our lives. Nor is forgiveness about denying that we have the right to be resentful, but for us to say that we are going to put aside that right in order to practice kindness, compassion and forgiveness, with the big caveat that Jesus never said that we only had to forgive people up to a certain point, but that if they crosses our line in the sand, that we didn’t have to forgive. Instead he tells us not to forgive 7 times, but 70x7 times and that unless we learn to forgive then we will not be forgiven. And kindness, acting in kindness can play a significant role in that, because kindness is not just about what we think, but it is about what we say and what we do.

The Kindness Challenge: Practice Praise

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 17:11-19:

There are lots of stories of Jesus healing people in the gospels, of which the healing of the 10 lepers which we heard from Luke this morning seems to be one of them, except, this story is not really about a healing. Yes, a healing does take place, but all we are told about it is that after Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest that “as they went, they were made clean.” That is they left Jesus before they were healed of their leprosy, which was a default term used to describe lots of skin diseases, not just the one we typically refer to today as leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, which still infects some 200,000 people a year around the world, and most of the cases in the US are believed to come from exposure to armadillos. But, that’s just of interest, at least to me, this story is not about the healing, but about the thanksgiving and how it takes place. At the beginning of the story, Jesus is traveling, and these ten men call out in unison to Jesus, to have mercy on them. There is a subtle distinction in the major translations here that I think is significant to point out. In the NRSV, which is what we heard this morning, and the translation I prefer for several reasons, the are simply referred to as ten lepers, but the NIV refers to them as ten men who had leprosy. The difference is subtle, but important, because the NIV simple makes their disease an aspect of something they have, rather than who they are. They have leprosy, rather than they are lepers. It gives them dignity and humanity that is lacking, or can be lacking, when we refer to them by whatever characteristic we choose to say that they are, which I think is important as we think about gratitude and praise and how we see and respond to others.

But Jesus hears their request, which may simply be a request for alms, or money, not a request for healing, as the story is not clear, as it is in other healing stories, that that is what they are asking for. And Jesus listens to them, and sees them, another important point, and offers them healing or cleansing, as leprosy is about ritual impurity, and then they go on their way and then are healed. As one person I read this week said, “a portion of Jesus’ ministry is his willingness to be interrupted by the intrusion of human need.” That is, he sees these people in need of his help and he takes the time to help them, regardless of what is going on, or how busy or exhausted he is, and by implication calls for us to do the same. But how often are we irritated by the intrusions we have in our life, the things that we don’t think are important, or, again, that we might attribute the worst of intentions towards the person who is coming to us for something. But what we see in this story is that just we never know who we may encounter that needs healing, even if they are not seeking it, so too we never know who will be a vehicle for God’s grace to us, as it is here. Because of the ten-people healed, only one returns to thank Jesus, to give him praise. It’s not that the others have their healing go away, they simply go on with their lives. But one returns, and he is a Samaritan at that, one of “those people”, someone not liked by Jews, and he praises God with a loud voice, and then bows down at Jesus’ feet, an act of worship, and thanks him. He sees Jesus’ act of grace towards him and responds with praise and thanksgiving. His life becomes an act of worship towards God.

The Kindness Challenge: Nix the Negative

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:21-24:

In Jewish tradition, every sin is ultimately atoneable, or forgivable in this life, except one, and that is the sin of desecrating or profaning God’s name, which can only be atoned after death. When we think of profaning God’s name, it’s usually something about taking God’s name in vain, or cursing, but according the Rabbi Rav, the core desecration occurs when those who are most closely associated with God act in ways that would be perfectly legitimate for other people, but that are not for those who proclaim faith. That is, when representatives of God appear to act in ways that do not adhere to the highest moral standards, their behavior reflects poorly not just on the faith, but more importantly their behavior reflects poorly on God, and consequently God’s name is desecrated. In the daily baptismal prayer we have talked about, and have available, we pray that everything we do that day would honor God, but what if we thought about that not only honoring God but also not dishonoring God to others, because what we do matters.

As we continue in our series on the kindness challenge, I had a number of people come to me to tell me that the person they were going to do the challenge for, the person they were going to work on practicing kindness towards, were not believers, which means it’s even more important that our actions match what we proclaim to believe, because it’s not just that we are setting a bad example and picture of Christians, and there are plenty of people who do that already, as we see on an all too regular basis, especially in trying to use scripture to justify bad, or even illegal, behavior, but within this understanding we are also desecrating God’s name, just to add a little more pressure for us all.

The Kindness Challenge: Breaking Bread

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 22:14-23:

A little more than two week’s ago, former presidents Bush and Obama made speeches about the current political atmosphere in the country. Obama said “Why are we deliberately trying to misunderstand each other and be cruel to each other and put each other down? That’s not who we are!” while Bush the younger said “We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty…. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.” Now, this decline in civility has been building up for a long time, and is clearly found in more than just politics. Just turn on the television and we see people screaming at each other on cooking shows. I’ve spent some time in kitchens, and every kitchen I’ve been in that type of behavior would not be tolerated, but it makes for good television. There is a reason why we don’t have a show called the sweetest housewives of Beverly Hills, because that’s not exciting, and people don’t want to watch two political commentators agree with each other. Instead we’d rather watch people be oppositional, except we’ve moved passed just disagreeing to being disagreeable. And as much as we say that we don’t like it and we want it to be better, the truth is our behavior says exactly the opposite because people are watching these shows.

Reformation and Re-Formation

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 22:34-40:

When European Christians began building their great cathedrals, and then began to paint the ceilings, they encountered a unique problem, that is it’s hard to project true geometry onto vaults and domes. Because the space starts large at the beginning, but then pulls into a point at the top, the sense of perspective gets totally off. If you were, for example, to be painting the image of a saint in the dome, the saint’s feet would be really large, but then the body would have to get consistently narrower until they ended up with a really small head. So, artists had to create a new way of showing perspective, but even then, sometimes it would be a little off depending on where you stood, that is in some churches there is an ideal viewing location. When he was painting a soaring trompe l’oeil dome, that is a fake dome, on the ceiling of the church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Rome, the artist Andrea Pozzo had an even more unique problem. Because not only did the perspective need to be done correctly, but because the entire thing was fake, and there was no true vanishing point in the center, he inserted a marble disk in the pavement of the church to indicate where people should stand to be able to witness his masterpiece. There is only one place to stand to have proper perspective on the painting, and the farther you get from that, then it stops being effective.

When I read of that a few months ago in a book on the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition, I thought it was the perfect metaphor for what’s going on in the world today. That for a long time, most people were standing on the marble disk and so the world looked okay, it looked like they expected it to look, and certainly how they wanted it to look, and how others said it was supposed to look. But now, we have moved off of the marble disk and everything seems weird, the image to some people is now distorted and they are searching desperately for the marble disk, so they can go back and stand on it and the world will make sense again. Except that we can’t go back to the marble disk for the very reason that the disk isn’t even there anymore and the image itself is changing anyways, so even if we could find the spot where it used to be the image still wouldn’t be the same. As much as this strikes anxiety and outright fear into some people, and celebration into others, this I not all that unusual in the history of humanity and its true in the church as much as it is in politics.

Give All You Can

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 21:15-22 and Mark 12:41-44:

Last week after worship someone came up to me, and they will remain nameless, and asked if I was now done preaching on money. I told them that we had one more week left, and they were grateful that that was it, although they would have been just as happy if we were done last week, and perhaps that’s you as well. If it is, know that you just have to make it through today, and then we will make our way onto other things. But those things might not necessarily be more important things, because money is a spiritual issue. We don’t normally think of it that way, but the Protestant reformer Martin Luther said that there were three steps to conversion. First was the conversion of the heart, second was the conversion of the mind and finally was the conversion of the wallet. But, he said, they didn’t always happen at the same time, and he argued that the wallet was the last to come around. Now, as James Harnish says, “salvation is about a lot more than money, but it is never about anything less than money, particularly in a culture that is compulsively driven by the power of money.” That is, ideas of salvation end up being partly about money because money plays such an important role in our culture and in our lives.

This is nothing new, Jesus was dealing with the same issue which is why he talks about money and possessions so much, and he tells us directly that we cannot have two masters, that we cannot serve both God and money, or God and possessions. That we have to choose our allegiance. Now he doesn’t say that money in and of itself is bad, but what we decide to do with it, how we are going to treat it and relate to it that makes all the difference. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism emphasized exactly the same things when he talked about money, and in establishing what have become Wesley’s rules on money which are to first make as much as we can, with some very clear stipulations about what that means, the second was to save all that we can, and the third, and I know this is the message you have all been waiting for, and you’re sitting on the edges of you seats now in anticipation, give all you can.

Save All You Can

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 12:13-21:

A clergy friend of mine told me about a member of his church who was very wealthy, or at least everyone thought he was very wealthy. That was the rumor, although no one was really sure if it was true, and there was much speculation as to his true worth. Well, one day he died, and as the ladies of the church were gathering to prepare a reception at his funeral, one of them said, sort of casually, “I wonder how much he left behind.” There was sort of an awkward pause, and then one of the other women responded, “all of it. He left all of it behind.” Although you don’t see it much anymore, there was a time, and many of you remember it, when you were prone to see the bumper sticker that said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” What they won was never really clear, and I think part of the reason you don’t see that anymore is because people came to realize that you didn’t really win anything, because, in fact, you did leave it all behind. That you can’t take it with you, and so while it might help here in this life, and we might argue about the true merits of that, it doesn’t matter in the next life. And so perhaps the other bumper sticker that says, “we are spending our children’s inheritance” might be a better way to think about it, and yet we are also called to be good stewards of the resources with which we have been entrusted, and what we hear in Proverbs is that the good leave an inheritance for their children’s children. But simultaneously, Jesus tells us not to save earthly treasurers were moth and rust can eat them, and don’t worry about tomorrow, so which are we to do?

With those questions in mind, we continue in our series on the money rules of John Wesley, which are to earn all you can, which we covered last week, to give all you can, which we will cover next week, and today we discuss his rule to save all you can. As I’ve been saying for the past few weeks, when the Methodist movement began, John Wesley laid down some rules, three of them, that people had to agree to abide by if they were going to become a Methodist. They were to first do no harm, second was to do good and the third was to attend upon all the ordinances of God, which Bishop Job changed to stay in love with God. Among the things that it meant to do no harm, which was not just to others, but also to yourself, was not to buy spiritous liquors, love that phrasing, or to drink them, which sort of closes the loophole of someone else buying it for you. Not buying things on interest, that is not buying anything you can’t afford to pay cash for, and not wearing gold or expensive clothing. What Wesley, and those in the church found, was that when people started doing these things, especially not wasting money on alcohol, which is still an enormous amount of money, that people then had more disposable income which could then be used for other things, like education, which then allowed people to get better jobs, which paid better, and thus more income, and so that was the reason why Wesley then established his rules

Earn All You Can

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Matthew 25:14-30:

Last week Samantha asked me if I would rather have too much or too little? Would you rather have too much or too little? I had to think about it for a moment, and then I said too much, and there are some things we would rather have too much of it, but then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t really like to have too much pain, or sorrow, or illness. On the flip side, we might like to have less of those things, or something else, but we wouldn’t want to have less happiness or joy or laughter. I think sometimes we think the same thing about money. We want to have more money rather than less, right, but at the same time we also know that have too much can bring problems, and there is also a sort of guilt that comes with having too much money, although perhaps we all think we’d like to be a little more guilty than we are. But, it’s that idea that leads us into today’s message continuing in our series looking at Wesley’s rules on Money. As I said last week, as people began to follow some of the expectations that Wesley had set down on how to live your life if you were going to be part of the Methodist movement, people found themselves doing better economically, which we’ll hear about more next week, and so Wesley felt he needed to respond to new economic issues and he laid down three rules, the first was to gain all you can, or as James Harnish said, to earn all you can, the second was to save all you can, and the third rule was to give all you can.

Now today we start with the first rule, and for most people it is the rule that is most surprising and that is being told to make as much money as you can. That’s shocking because of some of the comments that Jesus makes that would seem to contradict such an instruction, like that it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to get into the kingdom of God. That would seem to say that being rich is a problem, and Wesley would actually agree with that, but it’s dependent upon why we are seeking money and more importantly what are we doing with that money. Wesley says that “the right use of money” is “an excellent branch of Christian wisdom… inculcated by our Lord on all his followers.” And then says of Christians, who don’t normally talk about such things, that they “generally do not consider… the use of this excellent talent. Neither do they understand how to employ it to the greatest advantage; the introduction of which into the world is one admirable instance of the wise and gracious providence of God.”

2017 Reading Challenge

This list was a "challenge" that was going around Facebook at the beginning of the year, so thought I would add it to my list as I am selecting books to read this year. I will update the list with what book qualifies as we go through the year.

1. A book you read in school
     1984 by George Orwell
2. A book from your childhood
     The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
3. A book published over 100 years ago.
     Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic
4. A book published this year
     Irresistable: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
5. A non-fiction book.
     Lost at Sea: An American Tragedy by Patrick Dillon
6. A book written by a male author.
     The World America Made by Robert Kagan
7. A book written by a female author.
     A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren
8. A book by someone who isn't a writer.
      This is a hard one because if they wrote it aren't they a writer? But going with Raising the Floor by Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz (Lee Kravitz is a named ghost writer, or assistant writer)
9. A book that became a film.
     The Hunger Games series
10. A book published in the 20th century.
     Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
11. A book set in your hometown/region.
      Christmas Every Day by Lisa Tawn Bergren set in Taos, which is the region, but the main character is also an alum of St. John's College in Santa Fe, as am I, and will be joining the faculty there by the end of the story.
12. A book with someone's name in the title
      The Second Death of George Mallory by Reinhold Messner
13. A book with a number in the title.
      23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joong Chang
14. A book with a character with your first name.
     John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz
15. A book someone else recommended to you.
      The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones
16. A book with over 500 pages.
     One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
17. A book you can finish in a day.
     How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language by Simon Horobin
18. A previously banned book.
     Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
19. A book with a one-word title.
     Thrawn by Timothy Zahn
20. A book translated from another language.
     Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, translated by Elizabeth Manton
21. A book that will improve a specific area of your life.
     The Kindness Challenge: 30 Days to Improve Any Relationship by Shaunti Feldhahn
22. A memoir or journal.
     Three Weeks with My Brother: A Memoir by Nicholas Sparks
23. A book written by someone younger than you.
      Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
24. A book set somewhere you will be visiting this year.
     Engineered for Murder by Aileen Schumacher (takes place in Las Cruces, NM)
25. An award-winning book.
     In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (National     
     Book Award Winner)
26. A self-published book.
     All that Glitters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

Know The Cost

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 14:25, 27-33:

Today we begin a new sermon series looking at John Wesley’s rules about money.  Wesley, who is the co-founder of the Methodist movement, put down some strong rules and expectations for those who chose to join the movement, including about simple economics, which we will hear more about over the course of the next four weeks. As people then began to live out those rules, they began to advance in economic possibilities and opportunities, moving out of the lower economic classes, and then Wesley faced an unexpected situation with members wanting to buy nice clothing and bigger houses and, heaven forbid, they even wanted to finance fancier churches. And so, Wesley responded in several ways, but one of them was in writing a sermon entitled “On the Use of Money”, of which we will also cover more, but in that sermon Wesley expounded on three rules when it comes to money which was first to gain all you can, which James Harnish, who wrote a book on this, changed to earn all you can, second was to save all you can, and then finally was to give all you can.

Now I know some of you are saying, O pastor John is talking about money, it must be stewardship time again, and the good news is that it is. But, this sermon series is not about how much you should give, as important as that is, but instead this is about your personal finances and making them better, or at least helping you understand them better, especially from a biblical perspective. Because the truth is, I could tell you that you need to be giving ten percent, or even 50 percent of your money, to the church and other causes, but if you don’t have even 1 percent to give because of other issues in your home economics, then it doesn’t matter what I say to you about what you should give because you can’t do it. But, if I can teach you some new skills, or maybe some new ways to think about our resources and how best to be a good steward of those resources then we enter a space where I can actually give you guidance about giving and how to invest your money for God’s Kingdom.

Proverbs: A Woman Of Valor

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The passage was Proverbs 31:10-31:

Today we conclude our series on the book of Proverbs by looking at what has become known as the Proverbs 31 woman. When I began planning this series, I knew I was going to address this passage even though I didn’t know what else I was going to talk about. But, I wanted to address this, because it has become one of the most used, and in my opinion, most abused scriptural passages, at least for a portion of the church. In her wonderful book A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans says “In the [Fundamentalist] Christian subculture, there are three people a girl’s got to know about before she [hits puberty]: 1) Jesus. 2) Ronald Reagan, and 3) the Proverbs 31 woman… Wander into any Christian women’s conference and you will hear her name… [and] Visit a Christian bookstore, and you will find entire women’s sections devoted to books that extol her… [visit any] Christian College” and you will find guys wanting to date her and girls trying to be her.

Now, I do have to admit that I did change Rachel Held Evans quote a little because she didn’t originally use the term fundamentalist, but instead talked about the evangelical church, but I reject the cooption of that term. In the past few decades Fundamentalist Christians rejected the term fundamentalist because of the negative connotations that began to accumulate with that term, and instead started calling themselves evangelical, but we in the middle or progressive side of the church need to fight against the claiming of that word, because we too can and are evangelical, without being fundamentalists, but that’s just me on a personal tangent.

Proverbs: Righteousness

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture was Proverbs 11:2, 4, 21; 12:10; 15:3, 25; 16:31; 17:15; 19:17; 21:13; 24:17-18; 31:8-9:

Righteousness is one of those words we only seem to use at church. I mean there was the 80s surfer dude, like Sean Penn’s performance as Jeff Spicoli, saying “the waves were totally righteous,” and we talk about someone being self-righteous, that is believing themselves to be morally superior to others, but about the only time we talk about or hear about righteousness otherwise is in church. I’m not sure why that is, but today we’re going to be talking about righteousness, and in particular about what it means to be righteous according to the book of Proverbs in our penultimate message in this series, but first I’d like to do a little, of what is the word I’m looking for, oh, pandering by starting with one of the passages we heard from this morning which says that “gray hair is the crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” And so, everyone who is trying to hide your grey hair, in doing so you are hiding your righteousness, or as Linda likes to say her wisdom highlights. Now, just because you have grey hair does not actually mean that you are either wise or righteous, because Proverbs also wants to say, as the immortal Buck Owens encapsulated in a song, there is no fool like and old fool.

Now righteousness means different things in different places in scripture. In the Hebrew scriptures, righteousness is something you earn by your behavior. But it is more than just virtue, or virtuous behavior. Instead it is tied directly to covenantal relationships. So, you can be righteous in your relationship with another human with whom you have entered into a covenant, which means honoring and preserving that covenant, but, in particular, righteousness refers to our covenantal relationship with God. One of the reasons God is referred to as righteous is because God is always faithful to the covenants that have been made with humanity. So, actions on our part that also maintain and honor God’s covenant are deemed righteous, and those that “corrupt and violate” the covenant are considered unrighteous. While obeying the law is considered the standard for righteousness, as we will see, it goes much farther than that, including injunctions made by the prophets as well as further instruction from God. So, righteousness on our part is a reminder that we are in a covenantal relationship with God, and that there is active engagement by both parties in that relationship, and it’s about our obligation to remain faithful and observant to that relationship. That’s why this about more than just ethics, but about the entirety of the relationship and how what we do preserves or breaks that covenant.

Proverbs: Money

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 10:22; 11:24, 28; 13:7, 11, 22a; 19:4; 22:2, 7, 26-27; 23:4; 27:23-24; 30:8b-9:

Huey Lewis and the News once recorded a song that opens by saying “If money is the root of all evil, I’d like to be a bad, bad man.” The title of that song is Time Aint Money, because, as Huey sings, if time were money, ah-ha, “I’d already be rich.” Of course, that opening line is a misquote 1 Timothy, which actually says that it is the love of money, which is the root of all kinds of evil. In its entirety, scripture has a conflicted message about money. In some places wealth is seen as being a blessing from God, and indeed as we heard in last week’s message from proverbs, being rich is seen as being a direct result of both hard work and God’s bounty. But, scripture also sometimes implies exactly the opposite of that. Jesus’ view on money is that while it’s not necessarily a sin, it is potentially a significant problem. And, contrary to what is often said, Jesus actually does say give all your money away, although it is not a universal rule, because there is context to the situation in which he says that. The book of Provers tends to have a fairly positive view of money and of wealth, as long as that wealth was not gained in illicit ways, such as lying, cheating, stealing or unjustly, to name just a few. and, just as Jesus has a lot to say about money, and we ignore that

Now a few weeks ago, Wanda Wanczyk, won $758 million in the Powerball, which was the largest jackpot ever won by just one ticket. I heard from lots of people who said they had bought a ticket and, I’ll be honest I bought one too, and while there is something to be said about dreaming about what we’d do with that, but winning it is actually something entirely different. And winning is not all it’s cracked up to be, as columnist Gregg Easterbrook said, $1 million will change your life, $100 million will ruin it. And I know most of us have probably said something to God like, “The money won’t change me, just let me win and I’ll prove it,” but it will change us, and not for the better, and it’s not a gift from God. Proverbs says, “The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it….” Did you know that 70% of those who win large jackpots declare bankruptcy within 5 years? Just five years. That doesn’t sound like a blessing, that sounds like sorrow. Now this proverb doesn’t mean that if you are blessed that bad things won’t happen to you, although there are some proverbs that do want to say that, but we know that’s not true. But, the difference is in whether the sorrow comes as a direct result.

Proverbs: Work and Reward

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 6:6-11; 14:23; 21:5, 25; 24:30-34; 26:13-14:

In 1904, Max Weber, a German economist and philosopher, began work on what became his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is considered one of the founding works in the creation of the field of economic sociology as well as within sociology itself. Weber argued that it was the Protestant reformation which created the spirit of capitalism and drove the northern European countries to economic prominence because Protestantism imbued the idea that everyone was a minister, that everyone was called by God to be productive in life, that all had a calling, and that the ideal was no longer to be secluded in the religious life, which eschewed things like making money, and instead the ideal became working hard for the community and for yourself, with all the benefits that came from that. Weber argued that in particular this was driven by the Calvinist belief in predestination, and since you didn’t know if you were truly saved or not, the only evidence might be seen in what happened in your life, and hard work and frugality were seen as signs of election, plus if you were gaining wealth it must mean that God was blessing you, and therefore another indication that you were saved. Now it could be argued whether Weber is correct or not in his analysis, but this idea of hard work has been tied to our understanding of work, wealth and worthiness in America. And yet, some it goes back much further than Weber. It goes back to scripture, and in particular, to the views, or at least some of the views, in the book of Proverbs, and so appropriately enough for this Labor Day weekend, we are going to be looking at some of the proverbs about work and laziness.

Now, as we heard from the few passages from this morning, Proverbs wants to make a direct correlation between work and prosperity, laziness and poverty, remembering that in Proverbs it wants to present that there are two paths we can choose, the path of wisdom or the path of folly, and thus you can guess which path it is that those who are wise follow. This is also a critical piece in Proverbs of warning about consequences. That if you do x, y will happen, and thus the results of the bad things that occur are not because of outside forces, it’s not because God is punishing you for something, but because of what you have chosen, or not chosen, to do. So, for example, it could say, if you choose to step off a tall building, you will fall to your death. If you smoke for 50 years, you’re going to get cancer. While much of wisdom literature is concerned with the question of why, and in particular of asking God that question, why did this happen? Why is there suffering or evil in the world? Proverbs, for the most part isn’t concerned with that question because it knows what the answer is: Because we choose not to follow the right path.

Proverbs: Words Like A Sword

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 12:13, 18; 13:3;14:17, 29;15:1, 28; 18:6, 21; 19:19; 21:23; 29:22:

I can be an angry driver. Not like cutting people off and then slamming my brakes angry, but calling people not nice names, or responding to things they do. So, for example, the other day a woman decided to make a turn in front of me, when I clearly had the right of way, and so I hit my brakes and honked at her. She in turn hit her horn, as if I was the problem, and flipped me off, and so I returned then gesture and then quickly thought “I hope that’s not a member of the church.” Now the positive side of this is that the girls are learning the rules of driving, because when I say something like “what are you doing idiot?” they will ask me what the other person did, and then I explain how what they did was wrong. Or at least the positive parts is the story I tell myself. Of course, the things I yell at the tv, especially when the Yankees are playing can be even worse. But, the problem is that by saying the things I do, and reacting the way I do, I am also teaching them many negative things as well, and some of the things that we are told not to do in scripture, and in particular in the book of Proverbs, and so we continue in our series on Proverbs looking at anger and the power of the words we use.

Now we may say that sticks and stones may break our bones but words will never hurt us, and even though that rhymes and therefore has the ring of truth to it, we know that it’s not true. That, in fact, words not only can hurt, but they do hurt, and can do considerable damage to us and to others. Words are powerful things, and we should understand this as Christians because we know that words matter, that they can make a difference, that they can change the entire world because we proclaim that Jesus was the word made flesh. The Word made flesh, and so words matter, but how much attention do we really pay to the words we use, the words we say, how we say them, or even the thought process that goes behind them, even if we don’t say them. Do we understand the power they can hold over us and over others?

Proverbs: Wisdom

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Proverbs 1:1-9:

Today we begin a new sermon series looking at the book of Proverbs, which is part of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew scriptures, and I’ll explain exactly what that means in a moment. We are undertaking this series for several reasons. The first is that I track what scripture readings I preach on, and there were some glaring holes in areas of scripture that we had not covered in my four years here. We obviously do fine on the gospels, and other areas of the New Testament, although I’ve been a little light on what are known as the general epistles, or the letters not written by Paul, which we’ll cover at some point, but there were clearly large gaps in the Hebrew scriptures. One of those was in the prophets, which we made some dents in by looking at the 12 minor prophets in the spring, but then there is a lack in the histories, cover books like Kings, Chronicles and Samuel, and then the wisdom literature.

Wisdom literature as we find it in the Bible, is “an umbrella term that encompasses humanity’s quest to understand and organize reality, to find answers to basic existential questions, and to pass that information along from one generation to another.” It seeks to provide both instruction for how we are to live our lives, but also exploration or explanation about the way the world works, especially around the problem of suffering. The books of the wisdom literature include the book of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, which is also sometimes known as Quoheleth, as the name Ecclesiastes comes from the Latin name of the book, whereas in Hebrew it’s called Quoheleth, and then Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, a series of love poems that the rabbis said no one should be allowed to read until they were adults, with the age of 35 sometimes thrown around. Sometimes the Psalms are included with the wisdom literature as well, but while there are some Psalms that have the marks of wisdom literature, scholars are not in agreement on which those are, but do say they are not the majority of Psalms, and so are more often not listed as wisdom literature. There are some other books in the apocrypha which are also counted as wisdom literature, but since they are not part of the Protestant cannon of scripture, that is the accepted books, we’re not going to address them now.

How To Read The Bible

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was 2 Timothy 3:14-17:

I want you to think back to the first Bible you can remember receiving? Who gave it to you? What did it look like? Was it a children’s Bible or a regular Bible? How old were you when you got it? Did you have a special place in your room or in the house where it went? Did your family have other copies of the Bible? How did your copy compare with theirs? Do you still own it? If not, what happened to it? I want you to think about that and then share with someone sitting near you for a few moments and tell each other about that Bible. The first Bible I can remember having was big and it had a blue cover, and it wasn’t a little kids Bible, but it wasn’t a full translation either, or at least I don’t think it was, and for the most part it just sat on my bookcase. I would occasionally take it out and open it up and read something, but it wasn’t something I read all the time. I knew the book and the stories were special, but I couldn’t tell you why they were special, I just knew they was special. It was different. I mean it’s pretty rare these days to hear any book read out loud in a group, but we do that with the Bible. But no one ever sat me down to tell me why it was special or to teach me how to read the Bible, or even if to say that we had to read the Bible differently than we read other books. I think I assumed we had to read it differently, but I didn’t know how. I suspect that is true with you as well, that few of you ever had someone walk you through a Bible or talk with you about how to engage with scripture.

It is regularly said that the Bible is the bestselling book of all time, but I think it also has to rate right up there with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as book that people own but don’t read. In polls people say they read and understand the Bible, but then their answers to follow-up questions show the exact opposite, such as that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, 10% of the population, or the 40% who believe that both the Old and the New Testaments were both written a few years after Jesus’ death. We know it’s important, we say it’s important, but yet few people actually engage with the Bible on a regular basis, and perhaps some of that is because we’re not really sure what to make of the Bible or even where to begin. And so as we send our students and teachers back to the classrooms this week, I thought it might be an appropriate time, to do a quick sermon on how to read the Bible. And let me start with my first caveat that there is no way I can even begin to say everything that might be said about how to approach scripture, and the different ways to read scripture, but I hope to give just enough that some who might be sitting on the sidelines saying “I’d like to play, but I don’t know how” will get off the bench and begin engaging with scripture.  So that’s the first point. The second point is I want to provide a little bit of background that I think is important and necessary to know as we look at, think about and engage with the Bible. The last caveat is that this message didn’t turn out the way I had imagined it as I was preparing for today, which could mean either that I listened to the movement of the Spirit and went a different way, or I didn’t listen and went a different way. We’ll find out in about 25 minutes which of those it was.

Giving All You've Got

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture was John 15:12-17 and based on Star Wars: Rogue One.

When we think of the word love and when we talk about love, the most common reference is that of romantic love or the love we feel for our families. The love that’s expressed in Hallmark cards and Lifetime movies. It’s not necessarily physical love, but it does make us feel something different than what we feel for other people, and thus when we hear that we are to love everyone, or that, as the Beatles prophetically said, all we need is love, and we realize how difficult or impossible it is we begin to despair thinking that perhaps we aren’t worthy. That perhaps there are people who are capable of doing this, but we aren’t, and are thus failures. It’s as Father Zosima said in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.” Or worse, we begin to think that maybe Jesus wasn’t actually being serious about this, that it was hyperbole, just as he said that we should rip out our eye or cut off our hand if it causes us to sin. It’s there to help us to understand the seriousness of the command, but to understand that it’s not really what he is saying to do.

Now there are multiple different words in Greek that are translated as love. One of those words is eros, from which we get the word erotic, that touchy feely love, but that is not the word that is translated here that Jesus is using. Instead, the word here is agape, which when translated into Latin was caritas, from which we get words like charity. That is that this is not a feeling that we are supposed to have for one another, this is a doing, a way of being. So, while we can have eros for a few people, we can have agape for everyone. And I think it’s crucial to pay attention to the fact that Jesus does not say this is a recommendation, or even just come out and say love one another. Instead, what does he say? Let’s read it together. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. And no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is a commandment. The reason why the Thursday of Holy Week is called Maundy Thursday is because this passage is read, and Maundy comes from the Latin word Mandantum, meaning commandment. Jesus commands us to love one another, just as we have first been loved. And so, we are going to be looking at that idea as we conclude our all too brief sermon series on the gospel in Star Wars, although perhaps some think it’s been too long, by looking at the last of the Star Wars films to come out which was Rogue One.

Redemption

Here is my sermon from Sunday. It was based on Romans 8:31b-39 and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

When people are asked to name the best villains in movie history, Darth Vader is consistently near the top of the list. He is easily responsible for hundreds of deaths, and that’s before we begin to talk about the entire destruction of the planet alderon. But one of the things that separates Vader from the other top movie villains, people such as Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates, is that he is not psychotic, or at least to me Vader doesn’t appear to be psychotic. Now I could be wrong on that, and I’m not saying he’s a good guy. He’s not, for example, Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, who tops the list of the best movie heroes. He seems more like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, who are not mentally ill, they are just mean and nasty people. Perhaps that’s even worse because it means that they intentionally chose to be the people they were, and they are not people you want to invite over for a dinner party. But the question we have to ask ourselves, and the question we will seek to answer today is whether these nasty people, these villains, because of the choices they have made in their life have moved beyond God’s grace and redemption, and we will do so by looking at the film that completed the original Star Wars trilogy Return of the Jedi, which is my personal favorite film.

Released in 1983, Return of the Jedi has the empire working to rebuild the death star, but it begins in the palace of Jabba the Hutt, sort of the Godfather of a crime syndicate, who has Han Solo encased in carbon and hanging on his wall, and so Luke, Chewbacca, Leia and Lando Calrisian undertake a rescue operation that eventually leads to Jabba’s death at the hands of Leia. Intelligence, and a trap set by the emperor, then leads the rebels to the forest moon of Endor where the new death star is being built and is protected by a shield being generated on the moon’s surface. While Han, Leia and Chewie make their way to Endor, where they encounter the Ewoks, a race of small teddy bear like creatures who will help them in their battle with the empire, Luke goes for some final training with Yoda, who dies, but not before revealing that Princes Leia is Luke’s twin sister, and thus the daughter of Vader. Luke eventually joins them all on Endor, voluntarily surrendering to the imperial troops so he can meet with Vader, who takes him to the emperor. Vader and Luke again engage in a lightsaber duel, but Luke puts his weapon away because he will not kill his father and he finally realizes Yoda’s lessons about violence and the dark side, and when he refuses to fight, the emperor then seeks to kill Luke himself, but I don’t want to give away the ending just yet, as it works into the understanding of redemption. But two issues to point out.

You Must Choose

Here is my sermon from Sunday. It was based on Genesis 4:1-9 and the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

Today we continue in our series on the Gospel in Star Wars by looking at the Empire Strikes Back. Released in 1980, it is widely considered the best of the Star Wars films, although it is not my personal favorite. After the rebel alliance had destroyed the death star at the battle of Yavin at the end of the first film, the empire strikes back, as the title says, and seeks out to find and destroy the rebels who are now hiding from the empire. After their base on the ice planet of Hoth is attacked, they retreat again, with Luke Skywalker going to the Dagobah system to receive instruction from Yoda, the last remaining Jedi Master, and put in a different order, his words are, therefore making him sound super smart. Meanwhile, Han, Chewie and Leia are being pursued by the evil Darth Vader when the hyperdrive on their ship won’t work and so they retreat to the cloud city of Bespin, controlled by an old friend of Han’s, Lando Calrisian. Calrisian betrays them to Vader who uses them as a trap to get Luke to come to their rescue, where he and Vader engage in a lightsaber battle, with Luke losing his hand, and where Vader reveals, and I hope this isn’t a surprise to anyone any longer, that Luke’s father was not killed by Vader as he had been told, but that Vader himself is his father, and along the way Luke learns somethings about the force and himself that turn out to be important as well, and we are going to use this is a way to discuss the issue of predestination versus free will and our relationship with sin and the dark side.

Now the Star Wars movies play both sides of the card when it comes to whether things are predestined or not. In the later prequels, when Qui Gon Jinn meets the young Anakin Skywalker for the first time, Anakin makes a remark about how fortunate that they had to land where they did to get their ship repaired, and Jinn says “Our meeting was not a coincidence. Nothing happens by accident.” And then of course there is both Vader and the Emperor, known by his Sith name as Darth Sidious, who tell Luke that it is his destiny that he join the dark side and rule the galaxy. Of course, that doesn’t happen, putting a question about whether everything is in fact destiny, and then there is what Yoda has to say. Now I think we could do an entire sermon series on the wisdom of Yoda, who really does have some of the best lines, like Size matters not, do or do not, there is no try, and better yet, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering, but about destinies, Yoda says that the future is impossible to see, or as he says in the Empire Strikes Back, always in motion the future is. That means we can’t predict the future because there are too many variables, too many choices that people can make, to be able to determine the future outcomes. So, which do we believe?