Got Diligence?

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text 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 writing 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 sociology. 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 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 under predestination 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 labor, wealth and worthiness in America. That if you are poor, it must be your fault, at least to a degree, an idea we will come back to. And yet, some of our ideas about work go back much further than Weber. It goes back to scripture, and in particular, to the views, or at least some of the views found in the book of Proverbs. And so today we are going to be looking at some of the proverbs about work and laziness, or a more general term of diligence.

Now to help us understand these proverbs in particular, it’s important to remember the purpose of Proverbs which is to provide instruction to young men of a certain social position as they are about to embark into adulthood, meaning getting married and also assuming their proper role in society as leaders. And so while the proverbs may have been known to those of lower class, or day laborers, that was not to whom proverbs was primarily addressed. Additionally, as I said in our introduction, Proverbs is an overly optimistic book, and while it is not fully this way, it does at least give off the impression that if you do the wise things, and work hard, that good things will result, including wealth and success, and if you follow the way of foolishness that the opposite will result. That is if you do x, y will happen, and thus if bad things are happening, it is 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. And since one of the things that the teachings and laws want to do is to make sure first that there is a next generation and second that they will be protected and cared for, the proverbs can make a little more sense within that context.

That's a Mistake. It's a Perfect Ten.

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:43-48:

Just a week short of a year ago, as we made our way through Genesis, our passage was God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, whom he loved. And I said that when we dealt with that story that we had to deal with the reality that we sacrifice our children for many, many lesser reasons. And I quoted Russell Baker writing in the New York Times who said, “Parents who make their children's lives hell in order to make the parents proud of themselves are a commonplace of American life.” Especially when it comes to sports and then I also reminded us that we also see our children sacrificed as victims of sexual and physical violence, neglect and homelessness, child labor and poverty. And I don’t think we can actually talk about the Olympics without naming those realities, especially as we look at the film Nadia, which came out in 1984 as a made for TV movie about Nadia Comaneci. While some of you may have seen it at the time, I doubt that it touched many of you with its cinematic brilliance. There is actually a Facebook page for fans of the movie and it has a whole 128 people who like it, so not at the top of the Olympic movie pyramid.

But, I choose it for several reasons. The first is that I wanted a film that featured a female athlete, and there just aren’t a lot of them out there. The second was that I thought Nadia’s achievement of perfection in the 1976 Olympics could provide us a good perspective to talk about perfecting our faith, as hear in the gospel passage we have for today. And third, it could also provide us some perspective on Olympic achievements and their aftermath, which are not always pretty, nor is the path to get there. Although today’s message is going to be very different than what I had thought it would be because of the events of this week in women’s gymnastics especially as they surround Simone Biles. If Biles is not the greatest female gymnast of all time, she and Nadia Comaneci are certainly in the conversation. And it turns out that they actually have a lot in common.

Resurrection: Mental Illness

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 5:1-20. To see the testimony given, please visit our Youtube page.

Last week in the parable of the prodigal son, the son goes off to a gentile area where he does his dissolute living, which means it’s a land of impurity, and just to emphasize this fact, we are told that he ends up tending to pigs, which is one of the ultimate humiliations for any Jew because it means that they will remain ceremonially or religiously unclean all the time. That plays an important role then in the son’s restoration into the father’s house. Today’s passage is also about ritual impurity, but more importantly about Jesus’ reaction to it. Jesus has crossed the sea of Galilee into gentile territory. On the way there, a storm strikes the sea and the disciples are terrified, but Jesus is sleeping through it, until they wake him up and Jesus calms the storm, which amazes everyone because not only is Jesus able to overcome the forces of nature, but more importantly water was seen as a sign of chaos, and so Jesus’ calming the storm is the first sign of what he is able to overcome. Just as the miracles of healing the woman with the issue of blood and raising Jairus’ daughter immediately after today’s miracle are also crucial for showing his power and dealing with things that were said to be unclean.

So, he goes to the area around the town of Gerasene where he immediately encounters the man known as the Gerasene demoniac. But, Mark also wants us to be very clear about this man in relation to rules of Judaism. So, he is in a gentile land, unclean, he lives among the tombs, which is pointed out three different times, unclean, and he lives near pigs, unclean. But, the man is not only surrounded by uncleanness, he is also said to be possessed by demons, which means he is “utterly and completely alienated by God.” Everything tells us that this is not the person anyone who is religious is going to come near, nor can he approach God. He is as far from God as you can possibly get. He is also separated from society itself, which is why he lives not in the town, but in the graveyard outside of town. The best modern analogy is that the man is like a homeless man we might encounter who is walking down the street ranting and raving, perhaps not even saying words that make any sense, the man who makes us want to cross the street, or maybe even go to another street because we’re not sure what to do and we’re not sure what he will do. And neither did the people because they had tried to contain him with chains, which was to keep him from hurting himself, as we are told that he is hurting himself, and so finally it seems they had just given up. There was nothing they could do to contain or control him. He is the one that no one wants to talk about, that we wish would just go away, and is clearly separated from God.