Forgive Us Our Debts As We Also Have Forgiven Our Debtors

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Colossians 3:12-17  and Matthew 6:5-15:

The Lord’s Prayer, which we have been looking at for the past four weeks, consists of a series of petitions. The first of those petitions are really about God, although about things we might be doing, like hallowing God’s name, which means making it holy, and then it turns to personal petitions, things we are asking God to do for us. And as a reminder that is the plural us, not the individual us. And so last week we began with the first of those personal petitions asking God to give us, and everyone, this day our daily bread. This image is from a freeze from the Roman Senate House which was originally constructed by Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. It was updated over time, and this carving represents the emperor Trajan who ruled from 98 to 117 CE. We actually know some really interesting things about the early Christian church because of a series correspondence that Trajan has with Pliny, who was the imperial governor of what is now modern day turkey. Although it’s hard to see now due to age and destruction, Trajan is sitting on his throne, with some of his advisors behind him, and standing in front of him is a woman who was originally holding a child, although the child has been broken off, and Trajan is extending out his hand and giving the woman and her child bread. This is to show his magnificence as through his generosity, and through the generosity of the kingdom of Rome, Trajan is making sure that this family does not starve to death.

My Sins of Omission

Here is my sermon from Sunday:

One of the advantages of going down to Sacramento Methodist Assembly is that because it’s in the mountains there is only very limited cell phone coverage, and their Wi-Fi access is not very good, so even if you want to be distracted by the world, it’s very difficult. And so last weekend we were cut off from the world. My phone will occasionally get a good enough signal that I would get an update on the final score of the Yankees game, they won once and lost twice, which about sums up their season, but that was about the extent of our knowledge of the outside world.  So it wasn’t until we stopped for lunch coming home that we were able to do anything online, and Linda went onto Facebook, and saw a bunch of posts asking for prayers for Orlando, and so I looked up on my phone to see there had been a shooting that had killed 50 people.

I’ve said before that one of the things with which I struggle as a preacher is when to change my message versus when to lift something up in prayers, but still say what I was going to say. Unfortunately, there is not any hard and fast rule that can be applied to this situation, and the truth is I could talk every Sunday about some tragedy or even triumph that had occurred in the last week.  Just two weeks ago when reporting on Annual Conference we brought a request from the mayor of Roswell that we pray for his city and the violence they are experiencing, and so it wasn’t just the shooting in Orlando, there was also the shooting in Roswell in which a man shot and killed his wife and four daughters, ages 14, 11, 7 and 3. Every day in the United States an average of 39 people will be killed by guns and another 76 will be injured. Every day.

But simply dealing with guns won’t do anything unless we also try and deal with our obsession with violence in this country, we might also call it hyper masculinity. The need to strike back if we feel victimized, or strike out against someone has attacked us, or even to just call us a bad word.  And unless that begins to change, and we actually hear what Jesus says to us about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, and I do think he was serious about that, then we aren’t going to change anything. But even more importantly than our obsessions with violence, we also need to move past this obsession we have with making people the “other”, someone different, someone not like us, someone to be looked down upon, or deemed or to be less than human, or perhaps even not human at all, because when we do that then it becomes really easy to strike out and attack and kill.

Battling Giants: Racism and Violence

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was the familiar story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:4-11, 19-23 and 32-49, but the message was changed because of the shooting at Emmanuel AME in Charleston:

I dislike weeks like this past one.  First there was the strange story of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington, and who knew Spokane needed an NAACP chapter?  Then there was the announcement by Pizza Hut that they were releasing a pizza that had 21 mini hotdogs baked into the crust, because that’s exactly what we all need.  And finally Donald Trump declared that he was going to be running for president, and every comedian rejoiced.  For a normal week that would be enough and unfortunately, these stories sort of typify certain aspects of American culture.  But then there was the news that we all woke up to on Thursday morning of the shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, which sadly is also a part of American culture.  As a pastor I know that such tragedies need to be addressed, but as a preacher I’m never quite sure what to do.  Do I stay with what I was originally going to say, or do I change it all up in order to address these issues?

I had a good sermon about David and Goliath all planned out that I was going to try and somehow connect to Fathers’ Day.  And while I wasn’t really struggling with that message, it wasn’t exactly coming together either, and so Linda asked if perhaps I needed to stop working on that message and instead talk about what happened in Charleston.  And yet the story of David and Goliath I think also has a lot to say to us about this very issue because of two things that are easily overlooked.

But let me start by saying what might be the most important thing and that is that God did not cause this event to happen, or allow it to happen, as some part of God’s master plan.  Because if that is true, then God is not on the side of the victims, but instead on the side of the perpetrators.  But what we see time and time again is that God sides with the victims and with the least, the last and the lost, and that takes part in the story of David and Goliath as well.

This passage can be seen as a story of violence and yet it’s also a story against violence.  Goliath calls to the Israelites and asks for one person to come forward and fight him.  This is known as single combat, and the purpose was to try and eliminate the largescale death and destruction of war, by having only two people fight.  Sometimes the people doing battle would be the best soldiers, and other times it would be the respective leaders who fought each other.  Perhaps this should be something we should think about as it would certainly greatly limit the saber rattling of our politicians if they knew that instead of sending others off to fight for them that they themselves would be fighting.