Baptism: Do You Accept the Freedom and Power...

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 4:1-11:

Last week I noted that in the ancient church, Easter was the only day on which people could be baptized. Part of the reason Lent was established was to use these 40 days for final preparation in receiving instruction about what it mean to be a Christian and what it meant to be a member of the church. And so, we are spending the Sundays of Lent looking at the baptismal questions that we ask people before they are baptized into the church in preparation for doing the baptisms we have scheduled for this Easter. And another reminder that if you are interested in being baptized, or having someone else baptized, please speak with me. Last week we talked about the first question that gets asked and it is “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?” Now as part of that I said that portion of answering this is to be able to say that evil exists in the world and to be able to name it. I read this week that in response to his interview with Vladimir Putin, who at best is an authoritarian despot and whose chief opponents keep dying suspiciously, Tucker Carlson was asked how he responds to accusation that Putin had his latest opponent killed. And his response was, and I quote, “Leadership requires killing people.” Now we just finished a series on leadership, and never did I think that I had to say that, because I don’t think it’s required. And he wasn’t talking about tough decisions that some leaders have to make, like presidents ordering military strikes, or generals, and others, sending troops into harms way. He was talking about just ordinary politicians and leaders. And so, I’m good to be bold enough here to say that that is evil, or at least excuse making to cover evil. That doesn’t mean that Tucker Carlson is evil, but that he is giving into what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Justifying the ordinary terrible things that we can do to each other.

Because if you can justify the killing of one innocent person, then you can also justify the killing of many more. And so, while yes there are some things that may require leaders to take life, those are the extremes and never taken lightly by those who do them, or at least not taken lightly by those with a conscience and there are plenty of presidents and generals who have talked about the terrible cost that decision takes on their very being, but that is not what leadership itself requires. And so, I think that leads well into the second question we ask because it has direct relevance, and that question is “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Baptism: Do You Renounce the Spiritual Forces...

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 8:31-38 and Romans 6:1-14:

We are now four days into our Lenten journey and so beginning a new worship series that will carry us through this season. Now Lent came into existence for two primary reasons. The first was for people who had been removed from the church to repent and prove their desire to rejoin the church, and part of this practice was to cover themselves in ashes and sackcloth. The other reason, and the one we are going to focus on, was as the final preparation and learning for those who were going to join the church through baptism on Easter Sunday. And Easter was the only day then that you could be baptized and join the church. And so these 40 days were set aside for this work. And someone asked me this week how come there are said to be 40 days of lent, but there are more than 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter. And that’s because Sundays exist outside of Lent because every Sunday is a little Easter, and so a time of celebration, rather than repentance. And so yes, that does mean that if you have given something up for Lent that you can stop doing that on Sundays because they aren’t technically part of Lent, although that then begins to become about rules rather than grace, as we heard in the passage from Romans today, and that certainly plays a part in our understanding of baptism. 

Before we baptize people there are a series of questions that get asked of the person being baptized, or of their parents or guardians, if its for someone who cannot answer for themselves, which is more than just for infants and toddlers. And so, we are going to be looking at each of those questions over the next five Sundays in preparation for Easter when we are scheduled to be doing baptisms, as well as a reaffirmation of baptism. And let me just add that if you are interested in being baptized, please speak with me. But that leads us to the first question, which, like most of them, is actually a multiple part question and that is “On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?”

Little Green Army People: Knowing Your Role

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 14:25-33 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31:

We are now concluding our series on Toy Box Leadership. I am very glad that so many of you have commented that you enjoyed this series because I wasn’t really sure about it going into it. I can say that I have never specifically preached on leadership before, although as I said when I read this book a long time ago, I thought it had possibilities. But I’ll be honest that I have sort of thought about leadership as this separate thing from spiritual disciplines. We talk about the second of those things a lot, but we don’t really talk about leadership, not because leadership isn’t important, but because we just don’t think about it in the role of worship, I guess is the best way to say it. That somehow these two things are separate and never the twain shall meet. But a few weeks ago, in one of the daily emails I receive on church things, it had a story from John Ortberg saying how incorrect that position was. That leadership is a spiritual discipline, and spiritual disciplines include leadership. And as I thought about it, I was definitely one who kept them separate, but now see that I was mistaken. And that has lots of implications to it, including that we have to work on it for the good of ourselves, the church and living the faith. It also means that like all spiritual disciplines it comes in different forms and also has seasons to it. But that’s going to take some more thought from me on what that means, how to communicate that as well as how it fits into what we do in worship and our expectations. It definitely connects, though, to the theme of today which is understanding and knowing our gifts, graces and roles as we look at the last of our toys little green army men. And again, credit is due to Ron Hunter, Jr. and Michael Waddell for their idea.

When we looked at the yo-yo I said that those who study these things have said that the doll is probably the oldest toy in the world, and it’s followed by the yo-yo. Well toy soldiers are nearly as old as well. Tiny military figures have been found in Egyptian tombs. Whether those were technically toys or not is up for debate as they could have been for military strategy, but we can be sure that others were using such things as toys. Over the millennia, toy soldiers have been made out of clay, wood, flour, paper and different types of metals, including, and maybe most popularly tin. They grew in such popularity in the 17th century that they began to be mass produced for not just war games but also for massive displays to be put together of famous battles. But it was in the late 1930s with the rise of the use of plastics that toy soldiers took the shape and name by which so many of us know them – Little Green Army Men, although you can now purchase them in lots of different colors including blue, pink, purple and grey. The poses and weapons have also changed some over time. And these little figures were adopted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.

Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Romans

Some of you have heard this before, but when I was growing up and would spend time with my grandparents, to try and get me to eat my vegetables, my grandfather would always say “it’ll put hair on your chest.” I never considered that an acceptable argument for doing something I didn’t want to do, and will note I still don’t. But that’s what I always think of when I hear Paul’s words that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.” But if that’s what it takes to get hope, wouldn’t you rather pass? Not that I don’t want to live without hope, but I don’t want to suffer either, and let’s also note that anytime someone says about something that it will build character, you can be pretty sure that it too will be an unpleasant experience, like having to eat your vegetables as a child. And so, with that, we move on to today’s toy, the Weeble. And again credit is due to Ron Hunter, Jr. and Michael Waddell for their inspiration for this series.

This is the newest of all the toys we will look at, and thus one that many of you did not grow up with because it wasn’t yet invented, but one that your children, or perhaps grandchildren did grow up playing with. It also happens to be the only toy we will look at that has not been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. But it is based upon a much older toy. The television show Romper Room, which began in 1953, introduced a clown punching bag that was weighed down by sand at the bottom so that when you punched it, it wouldn’t stay down but would right itself so you could punch it again, and keep going. Nothing violent about that. And some of you may know the toy because there was a duplicate that had Bozo the clown on it. When toy manufacturer Hasbro purchased Romper Room in 1969, they wanted to market the punching bag idea, with a twist, and so they shrunk it down, made it solid, and shaped it like an egg, and thus was born, in 1971, the Weeble. And what made them so unique was not only their shape, but the fact that when they got knocked over, that because of the weighting, that gravity would cause them to right themselves, thus creating the famous advertising slogan that “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Allegedly this helped introduce children to basic physics, perhaps a stretch, but it is there. Now I will note, first that I couldn’t find any reason why they were called Weebles, perhaps just because they wobble, and second now they are much shorter and squatter than the originals, allegedly because the originals posed a choking hazard, although that seems like a huge stretch to me, not because kid’s wouldn’t put them in their mouths, but because they were still really big and I can’t imagine a child actually being able to get it stuck in their throat, but there we are. And so that leads us back not really to the idea of suffering so much as to the idea of resilience because Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.