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Sermon Transcripts

Wake Up

9/28/2022

Comments

 
​Luke 22:39-46: And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14).
 
I have this vivid memory of one particular class at seminary: it was my Old Testament Hebrew class, it was Friday afternoon, in summer heat of 100 degrees, with no air-conditioning, and sounds of the lawnmower, and the other students getting into their cars to drive home for the weekend….  And the professor’s voice gradually fading into the background ….and out of nowhere the words “Why are you sleeping”.
It was not like I planned to fall asleep. I did not come in saying “This is my sleeping class”…… It was just that the warm afternoon, and the end of a long week, and the soothing sounds of his voice – seemed to have an effect on me!
“Why are you sleeping?” still rings in my ears all these years later –
 
These were the words of Jesus to his disciples
There was a crisis at hand – Jesus was about to arrested, and they were sleeping.
They did not plan to fall asleep…
But they slept while the crisis evolved around them: the plans had been made, the arresting party put together, the torches of those coming to arrent Jesus were visible…and Jesus finds his disciples asleep. And so Jesus words: 
“Why are you sleeping”
This becomes the kind of question that rings throughout history –
There are many moments that people have seemed to be asleep when they should have been awake…..
  • I think of the man who experiences shortness of breath, or dizziness, or an unexplained pain, but he distracts himself from thinking about it by working harder - and so is asleep to the danger of ill-health.
  • I think of the woman who has financial problems, but distracts herself from this by taking the credit card on a shopping trip – and so is asleep to her financial crisis.
“Why are you sleeping”
 
Politically I think of the people of Rome being entertained in the circus while the emperor and the senators skimmed the top off the taxes for their personal wealth and so the citizens of Rome are asleep to the crumbling of the Roman Empire,
or in our time the people who watch football, basketball, baseball – in fact anything to distract us from the nasty civil discourse that is breaking this nation in half.
“Why are you sleeping”
 
Spiritually I think of how we sleep our way through the illnesses of our culture that sees the abuse little children, and violence to women and the use of alcohol and substances that numb the mind.
And so the crucial question: “Why are you sleeping?”
 
It seems to be a human condition that we fall asleep. This is pointed out by St. Paul in a letter to the Jesus-followers in Ephesus: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14). This letter points out that it is possible for followers of Jesus to fall asleep – to become spiritual sleepwalkers. This is a life where we go through the motions of life without the alert spiritual awareness of people who are in a relationship with God.
 Let us hear the voice of our Heavenly Father saying to us – it is time for you to wake up:
discover your joy for life / live your live as if today matters.
Let us refuse to live on autopilot…Wake Up.
 So How do we wake up?
Let me begin at the other end: we fall asleep when we lose our curiosity about life / when we become complacent / when we think that we have nothing more to learn.
I recall visiting a care centre for the elderly, and a nurse telling me of a new patient they had admitted. She told me that she gave him 6 months to live. I was astounded – because he looked healthy. When I asked her why she said that she answered – “He gets us each morning and switches on the television. And he sits in his chair in front of it until bedtime. He does nothing else with his day.” And I was at his funeral 6 months later: he literally fell asleep in his chair and never woke up.
 
The only way to stay awake is to Cultivate Curiosity – be open to looking for signs of God at work in our lives. Let us not think that we know all that we need to know: God has so much more in store for us!
I want suggest two simple things:
  1. Be curious about learning something new: Keep a journal: put a question mark on the page and ask: what new thing have I learned today.
  2. Find a way to serve Jesus in every day – stay curious and expect to find new ways of serving God that you had never thought of before. 
Video: https://skitguys.com/videos/comfort
 
Charles Wesley, a founder member of the Methodist movement, challenges us with these words: “it is high time for us to awake out of sleep before the 'great trumpet of the Lord be blown”. [1]
 
Prayer
O God of all Creation,
you call us to trust you in every circumstance of our lives,
yet we try in vain to control our lives.
And so like sleepwalkers we wander away from you, absorbed by our own wants and desires, blind to all you have planned for us.
We no longer expect you to show up in our lives
We forget to serve you,
And we close our eyes to those around us who need love and care.
Forgive us, O God..
Turn our hearts to you,
Surprise us with your love that we may taste fullness of life.
Keep us curious and open to the renewal of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
 
Benediction:
Pursue righteousness, godliness,
faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
Live curiously, trusting God with everything you are
and everything you have.
Take hold of the life to which God calls you.
Go forth, rejoicing in God.
Amen.


[1] Taken from the Sermon “Awake, Thou that Sleepest.”
Comments

What do people say about me?

9/18/2022

Comments

 

Jesus and his disciples are visiting Caesarea Philippi. This city was made up of a mixed population of Greeks, Romans and Jews. It lay at the foot of Mount Hermon, and had a giant spring that gushed from a cave and tumbled down the valley. The Greeks originally called this town Paneas: and believed that Pan, the Greek God of deserts, lived in the cave. The Romans renamed the city to honor Caesar Augustus and would offer annual prayers in the name of Caesar. And the Jews preached against this this idolatry and prayed for a messiah to liberate them from Roman rule. This was a city that was consumed with gossip – as the various groups of people watched each other and plotted their own futures free of each other. 
This is an appropriate place for Jesus to raise ethical questions about gossip: 
Mark 8:27-29: And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 
Introduction: Stella was the town gossip and self-appointed supervisor of everyone's morals. She always stuck her nose into other people's business.
Many of the local residents didn't appreciate her activities, but feared her enough to keep their silence. But the day came when she made a mistake. She accused Bert of being an alcoholic. “Bert” she said, “Your pick-up was parked outside of the bar. Everyone knows what happens when a man’s pick-up is outside of a bar”.
Bert was a man of few words. He stared at her for a moment and just walked away without saying a word. Later that evening, he quietly parked his pickup truck in front of her house and walked away, leaving it there all night.
Yup – everyone knows what happens when a man’s pickup is parked outside of a house..
This the trouble with gossip – everyone knows because everyone has been telling the story: but nobody stops to ask “Is this true?’

In today’s scripture passage, Jesus asks the question “Who do people say that I am?”  In other words – what is the gossip about me?
And his disciples admit to the various stories that they have heard: they tell him that people are comparing him to the great prophets of Israel: 
• John The Baptist: King Herod had killed him to silence him – but people see Jesus preaching as powerfully as him.
• Elijah: this is the great Old Testament prophet. There was a deep-rooted belief that Elijah would return from the dead to revive the Kingdom of Israel.
• A great prophet – people had been moved by Jesus teaching and example and were talking about him as standing in the tradition of the great Jewish prophets.
This is human nature: we see someone doing something extraordinary, and we have opinions. 
And so the disciples are sharing public opinions about Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, a Prophet…and at this moment Jesus drives home the point: you have told me what everyone else says – but what about you “Who do you say that I am?”.
And here it get really quiet, because the disciples have to look inside of themselves for an answer. Note that out of the twelve, only one had the courage to answer. Peter was the only one willing to dig deep and offer his own opinion. 
We are good at passing on gossip – it is far harder when we are face to face with the person and we have to give our own opinion. Jesus calls his disciples out: Tell me to my face – what are you saying about me?
Here is the thing about gossip – it is easy to put someone in a box when we listen to gossip: Like the story of the town gossip who saw Bert’s pick-up outside of the bar – she thought that she had all the information she needed to describe him. But perhaps her indignation was about her experience of alcohol abuse, and she gave Bert no latitude to be anything more than and alcoholic: or even if he did have a problem, she gave him no space to turn his life around. 
I found this quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister and public theologian: 
The indignant pile-up on a person who everyone has decided is the identified problem can be troubling to me. These attacks are more often fueled by our convictions about an issue than by the actual irredeemability of the individual. …... We so often seem to collapse the distinction around our feelings about an issue and the worth and dignity of a person who has been accused of something we loathe and I wonder what it looks like to just take a breath
Jesus challenges us to go deeper – to look beyond the readily available gossip and wonder about people: when we think we know someone – there is no space for that person to be anything else. I am inviting us to be willing to admit that we do not know everything, and instead to become curious about other people. To be willing to see beyond the first impression: 
Bear with me on this: I want to add one more idea: This invitation to be curious is more than gossip about individuals – it can also be gossip about groups of people.
Before I came to the United States – people from South Africa were eager to tell me about Americans: and most of what I heard was gossip. Everyone had opinions about Americans. Some of it was right, and some of it was wrong. When I became curious, I discovered the rich warm hearts of the people of the Mid-West. 
I see the same happening here in the USA: people have opinions about Mexicans, and about immigrants crossing the southern US border. This week Governor Ron DeSantis put people on a flight to Martha’s Vineyard – And the gossip is that they are illegals. Once we have turned human beings into a category, it becomes OK to use them as a political weapon. And we lose our ability to see them as human beings who are loved by God. Jesus challenges us to become curious – to dig deeper – and to discover that people are far more than a one-dimensional answer.
I want to use a video to make my point:
https://wwwq.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ4YSXv6Xkg
(For those who are online, we are going to mute the sound and a link will be placed on the screen that you can click on) 

Today I am inviting us to move beyond the initial gossip which relies on “What do other people say” to the place that asks the personal question: “What do you say?”. And this begins when we become curious about people, and curious about God’s view of the people we encounter.

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