Monthly Archives: September 2010

An emerging technical problem

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I first published this back in September.  Since then, a couple of things have been happened that require that I update this.

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We are all by now familiar with the Nigerian bank scam or one of its variants.  You know the routine – you get an e-mail from someone who has a relative that left them a huge sum of money but it is somewhere where they can’t get it.  So they need your help and your money to get it.  We have even received this as a note from the FBI!

But I have noticed lately a number of messages coming from friends and family through Yahoo e-mail accounts.  The first few of these had nothing on the subject line and only a link to a web site but the last one did actually have content in the message.  It was so poorly written that it just added to the suspicious nature of the message.

I don’t think these messages contained a virus or anything like that (no attachments and my security alarms didn’t go off).  The links did work and went to rather questionable sites.  All of this lead me to believe that I wasn’t receiving the message from a friend.

Now, when I get these weird, strange, suspicious messages I communicate with the sender through an alternate channel and let them know what is happening.  (In one case, the “sender” received a message from about 15 friends within minutes of receiving the suspicious note!)  In the case of those who were using a Yahoo account, the problem appears to be at that level and not on the individual computer.  Unfortunately, the only solution seems to be to close or stop using that particular account.

I have no idea what the goal these “hackers” is.  It may be to plant a cookie on the recipient’s computer for later work; it may be a new way to send spam type e-mail; it may be something entirely different.  But it does appear that somehow the “hacker” has gotten into the on-line system and gotten hold of the address book associated with the e-mail account in order to send out these messages.

But these message reinforce the safety protocols that should be in place.  First, and foremost, make sure that you have an up-to-date security program in place on your own computer.  If you have a wireless network in place, make sure that it is secure and “invisible” to the outside world.  You do not have to be a technical wizard to insure that the security of your computer system is up-to-date; you will need a technical expert to fix the problems if the security is not.

And if you get a “strange” e-mail from someone you know, it always helps to check with them via alternative routes.  I think in this day and age, when we rely on electronic communications as a substitute for personal contact, we are more vulnerable.  I like computers and the accompanying technology; it has made things far easier for me.  But I sometimes wonder if we are relying more on the technology than we are on our own creativity.  These “messages from friends” and various scams seem to reinforce that idea.  Too many people “trust” requests that they receive in an e-mail, especially if it comes from someone they know or a company that they do business with. 

And, finally, when someone says that their new device cannot be “hacked” or is immune to a virus, that sounds to me like an open invitation for trouble.  Any device can be, given enough time and effort, can be “hacked”.

I just wanted to highlight a technical problem that I see happening more and more these days.  The next step is up to you.

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After I published the above notes, I updated the post with the following: 

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To update this, I just received an e-mail that was ostensibly from the IT department of the college where I am presently doing some part-time teaching.  My folders now contain the dreaded DGTFX virus and I need to send my e-mail address and password to the IT team right now to have the virus removed.  Failure to do so will result in my account being terminated!  That wasn’t was written but that was tone of the message.

The key to this is that no IT department is going to send out such a message and no IT department is ever going to send you such a request.

I confirmed that this was a phishing attempt because I called the college IT department for confirmation (which they did not do and which confirmed what I suspected).  Also, I did a quick search and found some 1300 references to this new virus, all which stated that it was clearly a phishing attempt.

So, if you get such a message, contact your IT department and let them know what is happening and then delete the message.  If you have responded, then start changing your passwords and make sure that any other confidential information has not been compromised.  I would be interested in knowing what attempts have been made on your accounts.

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And now, I got the following note from NPR:

The Zombie Network: Beware Free Public WiFi -- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130451369&sc=emaf
I haven’t had this problem simply because I haven’t seen any such networks.  I have seen some of the ad hoc networks that can be created and of course no

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Additional thoughts on the matter of e-mail scams and hacks and what to do:

23 September 2007 — “For What Is The Truth?” – notes about what to do and what not to do with messages from friends

5 May 2008 — Virus Warning – note about the “The Bad Times Virus” (humorous)

7 April 2009 —  “So Where Is He?” – detailed notes about e-mail hoaxes

14 July 2010 —  “Let’s Think About This For A Moment” – references to the earlier works

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A blog for the weekend

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This is the blog for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 12, 2010. The Scriptures for today are Jeremiah 4: 11 – 12, 22 – 28; 1 Timothy 1: 12 – 17; Luke 15: 1 – 10.

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I really never came up with a name for this weekend’s blog. I looked at the Scriptures and saw the threads of my thoughts but a title didn’t jump out, so this is a just “a blog for the weekend”. I suppose that I am going to get into trouble for writing this but I need to express some thoughts, thoughts that some people will find blasphemous or heretical. But I also hope that, as with many of the other blogs that I post, they will cause you to think.

Let’s start with how we began, how we became human. I once wrote that I believe that we became human the moment we discovered/created/realized who we were, when we became conscious of our surroundings and our place in said surroundings.

And when we became conscious of our own being, we had to begin asking “why?” We saw things and we had to wonder why they occurred. Some things that we saw (when I use “saw”, understand that I am using that term to mean a use of all five senses – sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing.) were easily explainable; others were not.

It seems to me that is why we created gods; it was an easy and logical means for explaining complicated observations and phenomena. There was conflict between people – it must be that there is a god of war. There are seasons – there must be gods that control the weather and the world around us. Plants grow and die – there must be gods for the crops and fertility. Mankind, in all places around the world, developed or created a god to explain everything observed.

Perhaps that is why we developed religions. We need some sort of organization to help us better understand who we are and where we are in relationship to this universe. But I have also noticed that many religions and many cultures had a supreme god, a central figure to whom all things were ultimately directed. And therein lays perhaps the greatest problem of all times.

Our position in the cosmos as Christians is predicated on a belief and a faith that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that He came to us to offer salvation and the chance for redemption. But we sometimes forget, and there are many who don’t even know, how we became Christian.

We forget that the lineage of Christianity goes back to Judaism. And that Judaism began when Abram understood that there is and was only one God. Because of this revelation, Abram became Abraham and had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, both of whom became the founders of great nations. It will be Isaac whose sons and grandsons will lead to the nation of Israel; it will be through Ishmael that the nation of Islam will form.

Whether we are talking about one branch of this extended family tree or another, it still remains that all those who profess to believe in God as a Jew, as a Muslim, or as a Christian (what we call the Abrahamic religions) all have as a basic core belief that there is one God and you shall hold no other Gods before Him. We recognized that all those other gods (the god of war, the god of fertility, the god of money, and so forth) really don’t exist; though the way we live today would perhaps suggest that many still see such gods as real and more powerful than God.

I really don’t think it matters whether you choose to say you worship Allah, Yahweh, or God; the person who answers to all three names is the same. But I do hope that however you worship, you are true to your beliefs. I know many people who have experimented with a variety of religions and belief systems, trying to either resolve their own internal thoughts or because they feel that the religion is somehow no longer true or valid in today’s society. I am certain that others have attempted to create a belief system of their own through a study of all other systems and picking the best of each for their own. I really don’t see how that can work; one would be trying to create something out of a conglomerate of various parts of different sizes and shapes and somewhere along the line, you would have to force things to fit. And such a system, if it could be created, would be incomplete. There is a reason for a belief system and you have to accept the good parts and the bad parts, even if you don’t want some of the parts. And again, there are quite a few people today who do try to take only the good parts or somehow force the parts to be what they want. Maybe this is why we have so much trouble inside denominations and religions and between denominations and religions.

All I can say is that you should make sure that you follow whatever path you choose to follow. The animosity that occurs between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity occurs because adherents of each branch claim that only their branch is the true one and all others are false. And if you wish to get to heaven, then you must denounce your belief in other options and accept their option as the only viable and feasible one.

Now, because I was raised in a Christian environment and I was given the opportunity to think about the path that I wish to walk, I choose to follow Christ. There were times when I thought about that decision and I did explore, as others have always done, other options. But it always came down to who I was and what could I do and I was only going to find those answers in a path where I walked with Christ. I know many individuals who perhaps had the same path laid out before them and they have chosen to follow another one. That is their choice and I wish them well. But I see my life in the words of Paul, who understood where he was going and what he was likely to encounter because of his life as Saul.

Saul saw his life as the enforcer of the truth and he did a very good job of prosecuting and persecuting the early Christian church (which wasn’t called the Christian Church but that’s for another time). Saul was the penultimate fundamentalist – there is only one path and I know what it is and you will follow that path to its conclusion or pay the price!

I can’t speak to why he converted. Maybe something inside him was driving him to justify his own faith; maybe watching how Stephen dealt with his stoning began to make him ask questions about his own belief. But on the road to Damascus, Saul’s life changed and he became Paul. As Paul, he pushed for the new faith but not with the ferocity that he had pushed Judaism as Saul. He did make it clear what he thought the best path was; he did make it clear what he believed were the consequences if one chose to follow an alternative path. But he did not condemn those who failed to follow his direction or chose to follow another path like those in today’s world do.

In the end, the choice of the path that we are to follow is our choice and our choice alone. We have to live with its consequences and enjoy its rewards. It is not up to us to say to others that you have to follow the same path that we are on. And if others say to us that they will go where they feel they must go, so be it. In the end, they have to deal with that choice and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it. It is their choice and God gave them free will to choose.

All I know is that there are those in the world today who are lost, who seek answers. They may want others to provide the answers; they may want others to offer them the evidence so that they can make the choices. If I am to be a faithful follower of Christ, then I must offer that evidence to those who seek the answers, whether they accept what I offer or not.

It means that I lay out the evidence before them (such as using this blog); it means extending an invitation to come and visit my church, sometimes at home (services are at 9 and 10:30) and sometimes when I go somewhere as a lay speaker (see “Working for The Lord – Summer, 2010”).

We are at an interesting time in the life of civilization and this planet. We have the capability to destroy this world and those who live on it, both quickly and slowly. Our desire to use violence as the answer to violence says to me that we can quickly destroy this world if we do not change our course; our seeming indifference to what we have done and are doing to this planet tells me that we are slowly destroying this world and if we do not change course real soon, we will one day wake up and see that we have destroyed this world and wondered how it all happened.

And that is what I think when I read the words from Jeremiah today. I hear the words of the one true God telling this world that we have to make a change in the way we live, in the way we do things, and in the way we treat others in this country and around the world. Because of our indifference to the thoughts of others, because of our desire to believe that our thoughts are better and more important than those of others or that we are better or more important than others, we are on the verge of destroying this planet.

We have forgotten who we are, where we came from, and who brought us into this world. It is time we remember and it is time that we begin to change.

“There is a Rock and Roll Heaven”

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It was September of 2004 and I had been at Tompkins Corners for just over a year.  I was trying to find a way to bring some life back into the Tompkins Corners UMC and I thought a revival might be the answer.  But many in the church at that time wanted a memorial service on 9/11/2004. 

I wasn’t entirely sure that such a combination was feasible or practical.  If you have read the message I gave on 9/16/2001 (“Seeking The Truth”), then you know that I questioned the combination of Christianity, war, and revenge.  Even today, in 2010, there are still those who want to put the three together.  And I still believe that is not a good idea.

The Scripture readings that I used were based in part on the idea about “A Rock and Roll Revival” that I would published two years later.  But they were also based on my thoughts about what we need to be thinking as a proper and lasting memorial to that date and the people who lost their lives, the people who lost friends, and the many, many individuals who have died or been injured in the war fought more for revenge than justice.

The revival didn’t turn out like I hoped it would.  That’s not to say that I wouldn’t try it again.  I also know that I will never lead or participate in a service that seeks to interject militarism into Christianity or tries to turn Christianity into militarism.  The two are not compatible and we should never try to make them so.

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If you are like me, you didn’t give much thought to the lyrics of the songs you listened to in the 60’s and 70’s. You may have searched for a secret message or the true meaning contained in the incomprehensible lyrics of "Louie, Louie". You may have laughed, as did Peter, Paul and Mary when people suggested that their song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" was a coded message about drug use. You may have wondered how "Along Comes Mary" by The Association could be construed an anthem highlighting drug use when, if you listened carefully, the words were against drug use, not for it.

And as we watch a generation ponders the meaning of Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of Christ", we are reminded how, much to the chagrin of pastors and parents alike, we reveled in "Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "Godspell". But these modern adaptations of the Gospel were not the only references to either the Gospel or the Bible in our lives.

The Righteous Brothers sang of the band that must be in heaven. The Doobie Brothers spoke of Jesus being all right with them. Norman Greenbaum sang of the Spirit in the Sky. And even Paul Simon sang of the rock of ages in his song, "Love Me Like a Rock."

Perhaps like me, your first introduction to the Bible outside the context of Sunday School might have been the Byrds’ rendition of Pete Seeger’s song, "Turn, Turn, Turn" in which we heard the words of the Preacher from Ecclesiastes 3. The references to the Bible and to the Gospel are there if you listen carefully.

And in this day and time, perhaps we should do so. Jimi Hendrix sang "All along the watchtower", Eric Clapton and Cream sang of the crossroads, and Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane sang of the shepherd feeding the sheep. In this day and age, when the world around us seems so confusing, perhaps we should heed the music of our youth and listen to the voice of the ages.

The watchtower that Hendrix sang about was the building built by a landowner to watch over his land. It was also part of the fortress walls that towns built in order to see oncoming troops. For the people of early Israel, living in the crossroads of the Middle East, being able to see the invading armies coming from Assyria and Babylon in the North or Egypt from the South was very important to the defense of the nation. So they built the watchtowers and fences to shut out the invaders.

So too do we build watchtowers. We try to build walls that will protect us and keep the unwanted parts of our lives away. We build watchtowers so that we can see oncoming danger and find ways to avoid it or defend against it. But, in building the walls that protect us, we also cut ourselves off from the world of which we are a part.

We build these walls because we are uncertain about tomorrow. The events of three years ago and the continuing violence in the Mideast only seem to make that uncertainty greater. We grew up believing that tomorrow would be better but now we don’t know. The question we have to ask is how can we deal with that uncertainty; how can we know that tomorrow will be better than today?

In Isaiah 21: 6, we hear of the lookout in the watchtower, watching and waiting, reporting on what might be coming. The lookout is presumed to be Isaiah who reports that Babylon has fallen. But this is not what either Isaiah or Israel was hoping for. Babylon was Israel’s ally against Assyria. Instead of defeating the enemy, the enemy has defeated Israel’s ally and that can only mean disaster for Israel.

In calling out the destruction of Babylon, Isaiah is announcing the failure of his own prophecies. The watchtower was to be part of the defense structure protecting Jerusalem but it was to protect Jerusalem from the armies of Babylon, not the armies of Assyria. Isaiah’s announcement tells of the fall of Israel.

We hear today from preachers across the land telling us that America’s is doomed. We hear that we need to return to the ways of the Bible, a return to older ways, less advanced but more secure. But this, I fear, is more a call for division when there should be unity, it is a call for hatred where there should be love, it is call for war when peace is so desperately needed. Those who say we need to return to Christ would have us build higher and stronger walls, keeping people out rather than letting people in.

If we are not careful, we will make the walls we build our prison, walls that imprison us and restrict the dimensions of life. But this is also a moment in time when we are given the opportunity to respond to the call from God. God is calling us at this time, in the place to respond to the new possibilities. This moment in time gives us the opportunity to move toward a new community, one without walls, one with division, one truly in Christ and revealed by Christ in His Gospel message.

This is a time for Christ in our lives. This is a time when we need to be more aware of Christ in our lives. But we have to think about what Christ calls us to do in these times. We have to think first remember why Christ even came into this world.

I believe that God sent His Son to this world so that we could be free. I believe that God sent His Son to this world so that sin would no longer control and conquer us. I believe that the defense we seek in these times is not found in earthly walls or mighty defenses but in what Jesus called for us to do, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, free the oppressed. If we are to heed the Gospel message, then the forces of evil cannot survive.

Should we just defend ourselves against evil or should we remove evil from this world? If we take on the task of completing the Gospel message, I think it is possible to do the latter. Jesus calls us to lower the walls between people, not build them higher. Jesus calls us to build bridges among nations, not destroy them

We stand at this moment in time at the crossroads of decision. We hear the words of the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, "We will not walk in it."

I appointed watchmen over you and said, "Listen to the sound of the trumpet!" but you said, "We will not listen." (Jeremiah 6: 16 – 17)

We stand at a crossroads, seeing choices before us. We have heard the watchmen call out and warn us of the dangers that are coming. But we seem to ignore the calls. We as individuals and as a nation have ignored the calls of the watchman, we have ignored the calls of the prophets and the seers, we have ignored the calls of our God. How can we expect anything less than bad times.

But one might say, "I have not heard the calls of the watchman. I have not heard the call of the prophets. How can I know what is coming?" But the call of the watchman is the call of the poor, the homeless, and the oppressed.

When the Jefferson Airplane sang of feeding the sheep, they were invoking that moment on the beach by the Sea of Galilee when Jesus challenged Peter. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he, Peter, loved Jesus. And each time Peter responded " Yes, Lord, you know that I do." And each time, Jesus challenged Peter to find the sheep. That is the same challenge that we are given. If we love Christ, then should we not take care of the sheep? If we love Christ, should we not mirror that love in the way we feel about others in this world? And if we love Christ, should we not try to help bring that love to this world?

The call is for us today. We can feed the poor, we can clothe the naked, we can see that housing is built for the homeless. But if it is not done in the name of Christ, with Christ in our hearts, it is a meaningless gesture. Remember Jesus telling the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar outside the rich man’s door. When the rich man died, he was thrown into the fires of hell, condemned to a life of suffering and pain. In his agony, the rich man saw that Lazarus, who suffered in life, was safe in heaven. In his agony, the rich man called out to Abraham and God to tell his family of his need, only to be told that the chance had been given before and it was too late. You cannot simply do the things that need to be done in hopes of protecting one’s self. The protection for your soul comes when you tear down the walls and open your heart to Christ.

Then and only then will you find the true defense needed in this time of uncertainty and change. We stand at a crossroad this day. As we look down the one path, we can see nothing but darkness. It is not clear what is down that path and this uncertainty brings despair. Down the other path it is much brighter, much clearer.

It is that shining city of the hill, so often in our dreams what heaven really looks like. When the Righteous Brothers sang of all the musicians of our own generation who might be in heaven, they were also thinking of all the ones before them who laid the groundwork for music and other arts, science and other creative endeavors. To be certain, there is a heaven, rock and roll or otherwise. And it is down this second path. But when we look again, we see that there is a hill that we must climb before we can get to heaven.

And there is a cross on that hill. It is that cross that we have known about all our lives, the one that tells us that there is victory in this world, victory found not by building stone walls or mighty castles but victory found when we open our hearts and let Christ in.

When we see this hill for the very first time, it looks so imposing, so high. It seems that it is too great a hill to climb. But when we look at the hill a second or a third time, it doesn’t seem to imposing; it doesn’t seem so large. Perhaps it is because we have heard the words, perhaps it is because we know that the cross is empty and Christ died for us, so that we could live, so that we could get to heaven.

As we sing our closing hymn today (“Where He Leads Me”), I challenge you to make that choice, to choose which path you will walk. Our altar rail is simple today, just as that cross was so simple. I invite you to come forward, perhaps to pray, perhaps to recommit your life to Christ. For some this may be the first time that they have ever seen this path; for others it has been there all their lives.

You don’t have to come forward today. But let your hearts be open and let the Spirit of Christ come into your heart; let the power of the Holy Spirit settle in and help you as you ponder what choice you wish to make. Know this, tomorrow morning, the doors to Tompkins Corners will be open at 9 so that you can come and pray. Know too that the choice in path will always be there in front of you; it will not go away until you are ready to make that decision.

So open your heart, your mind, your soul. Take this time to renew the presence of Christ in your life. Seek the Lord and find that peace that you have been searching for this day.

“The Great Tulip Boom and Bust”

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This was the message that I presented at Tompkins Corners UMC on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, 19 September 2004.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Jeremiah 8: 19 – 9: 1, 1 Timothy 2: 1 – 7, and Luke 16: 1 – 13.

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There is a certain irony to the parables and encounters with Jesus. The problem is that we do not often see the irony. A woman comes to the village well at mid-day, seeking both to gather water for her family and, as it turns out, to avoid the crowds that would be at the well in the early morning. When she leaves the well and her encounter with Jesus, she seeks out crowds to proclaim the majesty and the glory that is Christ.

A group comes to Jesus, seeking his wisdom and guidance. It seems that they have caught a woman in the act of adultery and they wanted to know if stoning is the appropriate punishment. Yet, they all leave when Jesus allows that the one who is without sin may cast the first stone. They came expecting to find that the power to control granted them righteousness but left finding out that righteousness was not a product of earthly power.

Throughout Jesus’ entire ministry, the people sought a kingdom on the earth and missed the message of the eternal kingdom in Heaven that was theirs for the asking. As I said, there was a certain irony in what Jesus said and did and what we heard and did in return.

The same is true for the parable for today. We read of a foreman who has been charged with squandering the property of his master. The master, apparently believing those around him, fires the foreman. The foreman immediately slashes the amounts owed the owner in order to settle the accounts and close the books. And as Jesus is telling this parable, he is commending the foreman for what are seemingly illegal or, at least, unethical acts.

We school our children to be honest and here is a passage where Jesus commends dishonesty. Did something get lost in the translation? Did Luke, in writing the stories of Jesus miss something? Or was it that something was left out?

This was a time of the Roman occupation of Israel. It was a time of high and oppressive taxes. Remember that tax collectors were considered sinners, not only because they were for the most part Israelites working for the Romans but also because they often collected more than was required, keeping the balance. In about a month, we shall encounter Zacchaeus, the tax collector. In repenting, Zacchaeus gives back up to four times what he collected, so it is clear that what he had collected was far more than was needed.

It has been suggested that those who had to pay the taxes had to do the same; that is, they had to raise the prices of the goods they made and sold far above their true worth in order to pay their taxes and have something left over. So it is that when the foreman slashes the prices that his manager is owed, he is merely asking for what is actually owed.  (Adapted from "Belated Ingenuity" by James Howell – sermon notes for September 19, 2004 — additional notes by John Howard Yoder, "The Politics of Jesus")

It was, if you will, the popping of the bubble. We have come out of what financial people call the "great dot.com collapse." During the past few years, the price for various Internet and telecom related stocks rose far more rapidly than the actual value of the material and goods that the companies were producing. But this financial bubble was not the first time; prices for goods were far in excess of the value of the goods. We can look back to Holland in the 16th century and see that people have placed greater value on things than the things were actually worth.

Tulips came to the Low Countries (Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg) from Turkey in 1559. Within ten years, single bulbs were fetching prices approaching the million-dollar range in today’s prices. Driven by the thought of instance wealth, individuals in the middle and lower classes were mortgaging their homes and businesses in order to buy the bulbs. But market collapsed, leaving investors penniless and worse.

But apparently, nobody learned from this boom and bust cycle. In the early 1700’s investors in Great Britain, including Isaac Newton, were pouring all of their savings into what became known as the South Sea Bubble. Based on unrealistic expectations of future profits, prices paid for shares reached extraordinary levels. And then the petals fell off. ("Investment bubble blues" by Bruce Cameron, published on the web at http://www.persfin.co.za on 11 July 2003)

There have been schemes and plans throughout the ages. The one I like was the one where what was being sold and what it would do were unknown. Yet, people poured their money into it. And this was in the 1700’s. Our own economic history is documented by great schemes and plans which only culminated in the bubbles bursting in 1929, 1967, and most recently in the 1990’s. All have been based on the notion of large profits from very little investment. And when the truth becomes apparent, when it becomes apparent that deception is more the driving force than reality, the bubble bursts and we are faced with the crisis of the moment.

Go back and read the Gospel messages for the past few weeks. These readings have spoken about the friends we choose, how we spend our time, and how we use our wealth. In this, the sixteenth chapter of Luke, we are familiar with who Jesus eats dinner with and how He feels about wealth. We sympathize with the rich young ruler who has been turned away because he cannot give up his wealth; we have watched in amazement and perhaps delight as the prostitute washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. We even possibly made notes about the proper place to sit if invited to eat at someone else’s house.

Now we read of a worker faced with a crisis; a crisis not too different from what many workers today are encountering. This worker must quickly determine a course of action that will secure his future. Urgency defines his reality. But is this crisis any less urgent than the crisis others face each day, the crisis that Jesus interjects into our lives? Some how, to hear Jesus say "follow me" doesn’t pack the same punch as Donald Trump saying, "you’re fired!"

Yet, even if "follow me" sounds subtler, it too has high urgency and it too requires a life-changing response from us. Today, Jesus is telling us — one more time — that how we live right now has important consequences for God’s kingdom.

The presence of Jesus places a crisis in our midst. We cannot hear the call and give no answer. Even silence is answer, after all in silence we are saying no. And if our answer is yes, the decision to follow Jesus is not the end of the crisis but only the beginning. The crisis confronts us daily through the values we hold, the relationships we form, and even the way we use our money. Each little choice we make every day has important repercussions for God’s future. The time is at hand. How we will live into God’s future now that we know God’s expectations of us for the present? (Adapted from "Shrewd Investment" by Jennifer E. Copeland, Christian Century, September 7, 2004)

The words of Jeremiah speak to us today. Jeremiah speaks of the people of Israel trying to find solace and hope in other things. One of the commentaries that I use says that the Hebrew words for "foreign idols" was "foreign futilities." Jeremiah was noting that the people looked for deliverance in useless and motionless images. Instead of trusting in the covenant with God, they sought their future elsewhere. And they quickly found out that there was no future, no hope. We sing of the balm in Gilead but it is gone; the one thing that will ease our pain is not there.

Paul reminds us that our future is not found on earth but in Heaven and that whatever price we may wish to pay for admission, it is not enough. The price to pay has been paid by the blood of Christ. No matter what we do, God will have God’s future.

So what shall we do? We are called to take care of God’s world, to know our lives are God’s. But we have spent so many hours and days living for ourselves. We like to have money, to eat and drink, to enjoy the rewards of the powerful. Pray each day, reflect on God’s word, or serve the poor? Those are the actions of fools in this day and time. But are those not the things that we should be doing? Have we not squandered our master’s gifts? (Adapted from "Belated Ingenuity" by James Howell – sermon notes for September 19, 2004)

I always hope that these words go beyond the boundaries of this building, for that is what the Gospel is supposed to do. We live in a time when the response to violence is more violence. We live in a time and a society where a person’s appearance is more important than what is inside that person.

I know that I have told this story before, though perhaps not here. In November of 1965, Linda Fuller told her husband that she was leaving him. So absorbed had he been in his business and the making of 1 million dollars a year that he failed to see her slipping away from him. Panicked by this wake-up call, he gathered together his children and took them and his wife south to Florida.

On the way, they stopped to visit friends in Georgia. This was how Millard Fuller came to meet Clarence Jordan. And from this meeting and from the challenge that Clarence Jordan put before Millard Fuller came the idea for Habitat for Humanity.

We are not called to do something spectacular. But we are called to be resourceful and use what we have been given. At our disposal we have hope in God’s justice, faith in God’s peace, and trust in God’s grace. These are the best possible resources. In using them, others will say, "the master commended them because they acted shrewdly."

Those that bought into the great tulip craze of the 16th century and all the other great speculative ventures that have transpired and got out before the market collapsed were all "shrewd" investors. But somewhere along the line, there was that one person who was the last person left; the one person who would lose it all when the market collapsed. The foreman in the gospel was the last in line.

But his actions allow him to acquire the greater rewards of friendship and the gratitude of his neighbors and those from whom he acted unkindly. Jesus declared "practice the jubilee which I am announcing. By liberating others from their debts to you, liberate yourself from the bonds that keep you from being ready for the kingdom of God."1

The interesting thing about the great Tulip Boom and Bust was that you bought the tulips before they bloomed. Your expectations of great wealth and security were based on something that had not happened. And there was every bit the chance that instead of a spectacular bloom, it would be a bust and your fortune would be wiped out. Would it not be a great thing if, through our faith in God and the uses of the resources given to us, that we have the most beautiful bloom ever known?

“The Healing Process”

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This was the message that I presented at Walker Valley UMC on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, 23 September 2001.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Jeremiah 8: 19 – 9: 1, 1 Timothy 2: 1 – 7, and Luke 16: 1 – 13.

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in the despair of the moment, we wonder where we will find comfort and solace. Like those who used the balm of Gilead to soothe the aches and pains of their hurts, what shall we use to heal the wounds that we have suffered? And while the passage from Jeremiah that we read would seem more appropriate for last week, it is appropriate for now because we know that our losses are truly God’s losses and that He has shed the tears we shed. This passage for Jeremiah was read to people who felt abandoned by God, who felt that God had left them to suffer and die in the ruins that were Jerusalem.

The power of this text comes from what it helped the people of Israel to do. The purpose of this passage was to help them rebuild, to begin again. It was pointed out that this passage was read in the Temple while people who had experienced the destruction of Jerusalem sat in the pews. The passage helped them frame their own sadness, helped them deal with their own sadness about the loss of everything. Jeremiah recollected the people’s grief and gave them a way to share their pain and grief. In doing so, the people were given back the focus they had lost when the Temple itself was destroyed. In destroying the Temple, the central aspect of their life was destroyed. Jeremiah sought to find ways to give the people back their focus.

What we do from this point on must be done with a clear understanding of what our lives are about. We cannot be like the manager of the properties, content to lead our lives and hoping to avoid any accounting for mistakes that we have made. At first glance the Gospel reading for today suggests that the steward was stealing from the owner of the properties and seeking revenge for having been fired. But it is more likely that manager was either reducing the interest charge on the debt, which would have been illegal under the law at that time or simply reducing the amount of commission that was owed him from those with debts to the owner of the property. That the owner of the property commended the steward/the manager for his actions suggests that the latter two ideas were more appropriate. It is clear from the parable that Jesus was suggesting that action taken to benefit one’s self are not often the best action taken.

It is obvious from the parable and what we know today that the owner of the property was God and that we are the stewards of God’s world. Jesus wanted to make the point that it is never our own money that we are dealing with; it is always God’s money. All that we have comes from God and we are expected to give back to God that which is God’s.

The focus of our lives must be God. That is the central reason why Christ came to this earth. His function was to reestablish the connection between the people and God and to show the people that salvation was theirs.

Paul tells us that it is God’s plan for the salvation of everyone. It may be that God has chosen some people to be saved, as was written in 1 Peter 1: 2. Some may say that God has selected in advance those who would be saved; others would say that God knows in advance those who will come to know the truth and thus be saved. But this contradiction and the belief that all can be saved if they come to Christ is not for us to decide. When we begin to guess what God is thinking, we get in way beyond our ability of reasoning and thinking.

What is more important is that we, through our prayers and our actions, come to a better knowledge of the truth. In our acts of worshipful prayer, we truly become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We become agents for God’s plan of reconciliation.

It is by our prayers and our actions that we not only assist in the completion of God’s objectives but also bear the true nature of God. Paul reminds us, as he reminded Timothy in verses 5 and 6 that just as Christ’s function was to mediate between god and humanity, our call to reconcile is no different.

Evelyn Underhill wrote

"We are always praying, when we are doing our duty and turning it into work for God." He added that among the things which we should regard as spiritual in this sense are our household or professional work, the social duties of our station, friendly visits, kind actions and small courtesies, and also necessary recreation of body and of mind; so long as we link all these by intention with God and the great movement of his Will. (From The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill)

We are not members of Christ’s kingdom for our own sake. We are his disciples so that by our actions others will come to know Christ. We often overlook the fact that we make disciples by a number of ways, including praying for those outside our congregation and being agents of reconciliation in nature.

The healing process begins when we understand that God grieves with us. It continues when we realize that the responsibility for overcoming the evil in this world, that the responsibility for seeing that actions which lead to evil never occur begin with us. There are those in this world who will say that there can be no God because He would never have let this happen. But when we show, through our actions, our words, and our deeds that God still exists and that He still loves us, then we insure that such actions cannot take place. True, it takes time but then healing is never a quick process.

It’s A Journey, Not A Thought

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Here are my thoughts for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, 16 September 2007.  I am preaching at Dover UMC (Dover Plains, NY) this weekend.  The Scriptures for this Sunday are Jeremiah 4: 11 – 12, 22 – 28; 1 Timothy 1: 12 – 17; and Luke 15: 1 – 10.

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This has been edited since it was first published on 15 September 2007.

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As most people know, I have a Ph. D. in Science Education with an emphasis in chemical education. But many people are surprised when they find out I am also a lay minister.

Somehow the training that you receive to be a chemist is not appropriate for the ministry. In one sense, that is correct. In an ideal world, one receives the call to follow Christ at a young age and goes to college to get degrees with a theological orientation. In our society today, those who choose to walk a path that wanders through scientific laboratories automatically eliminate religion from their lives.

We live in an interesting society. It is one that encourages individuality but only when everyone else is doing the same thing. When you choose to walk a different path and find a different solution to the questions in your life, you are often labeled a heretic, a rebel, or sometimes something worse.

To follow Christ is to walk a different path, to take a different journey than the one society thinks you should walk. Being a minister does not mean that you spend all your time in cloistered seminaries, pondering the imponderable and asking great questions of life that are only answerable in the ethereal wonder of life. I have had the pleasure of knowing several individuals whose call to follow Christ came during a first career. One pastor was a lawyer before he heard the call from the Supreme Judge of Life; another was a printer before he began preaching the words of the prophets instead of putting them on paper; and a third was a nurse before she began her work as an assistant to the Great Healer. A good friend of mine is both a Catholic priest and an organic chemist. You can believe in science and God at the same time and suffer no ill effects.

But, at a time when our world is becoming more and more complex, at a time when the direction the world is taking it becomes even more confusing, we are not sure where we can turn for direction and guidance. Do we turn to science and hope that science and technology can build us a better path? Or do we turn to religion and hope that there is substance to something we cannot see or define?

But what we see when we turn to either area makes it even more confusing. Too many people in the church today tells us that science is lying (See “Why the Creation-Evolution Controversy Is Important”) and too many people in science tell us that there is no God and all that churches do is offer some illusion to life.

We would like to find direction in the church today but we sense a dissonance there. We hear and see preachers whose message is one of prosperity through the Gospel. We think to ourselves that it must be working because these preachers command great fees for their appearances and lead lifestyles that reflect the wealth they say we all can gain. There seem to be great crowds wherever they go and we remember that Jesus Christ also had great crowds following Him. But we read in the Gospel that Jesus taught us to give up wealth, not seek it. And we remember that the crowds began to leave Jesus when He spoke of the commitments that one would have to make and the work that people would have to do in order for one soul to be saved.

We remember that Jesus welcomed all who sought Him, not just the rich and the powerful but the poor, the meek, the weak and the sick. We remember Jesus speaking of freeing the oppressed and then we see and hear preachers preach a litany of hatred, exclusion, and war.

We see and hear preachers give us sets of rules that will make our lives better but we see that they don’t follow the rules that they want to impose on us. We see and hear preachers who want to tell us what to believe and how to think. We see and hear preachers who want us to ignore the signs of the world around us because what we find in the real world conflicts with what the Bible tells us. Each day, as these contradictions become so much clearer, that feeling of dissonance comes over us.

Perhaps we can find a life through simple, rational thought. When mankind was just beginning to find its path in this world, it was easy to believe in gods. Gods provided the reason and the answer for why there was rain and wind, snow and cold, hot and dry. Gods provided the reason for why there was war and why we had to fight; gods provided the reason why people got sick and died or just suffered. As we grew in our ability to understand the world around us, these gods diminished in their importance in our lives.

Now we hear that there are no gods; that the God that we worship on Sunday is only a construct of our imagination and not the product of rationale thought. Everything that we seek or desire is found within us, not in a church on Sunday. Only in rational thought based on what we see and hear in the physical world will we find the path that we want to walk.

Proponents of rational thought cannot explain why every culture has some form of Supreme Being. They cannot explain why all cultures have stories that explain how mankind came into existence. The only way they can explain why there is evil in the world is to suggest that it is part of human nature. In a world based solely on empirical evidence, good and evil become part of us and determined by who we are and where we are. Our lives are then controlled by the real world and the concept of free will has no place in our lives. If we have no free will, we cannot choose; if we cannot choose, then there is no hope. And we find in the seemingly safe world of rational thought and empirical evidence the same dissonance that we find in the church.

The problem is that we are not going to find the answers we seek nor determine the direction that we are to go in a wholly scientific setting or in a wholly theological one. Science and religion speak two languages; science speaks the language of facts while religion speaks the language of values. Science attends to objective knowledge about objects in the present whereas religion attends to subjective knowledge about transcendent dimensions of ultimate concern. As Albert Einstein once noted, “Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.” Science works best when it explains what is happening and religion works best when it explains what it means to us (http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/content/06-06-15-peters-1.asp; I am not sure if this link still works).

If we try to live a life by rules imposed on us through science or religion, we will quickly find ourselves trapped in a prison of our making. Both scientific fundamentalists and religious fundamentalists want us to follow rules that have very little flexibility. They offer a philosophy but not a direction. They give answers but not to the questions that we face each day. Christianity is not a philosophy and Jesus Christ was not a philosopher.

Christianity is a pathway, a way of life. It is not a set of creeds and doctrines that require total obedience. Christianity was, in fact, a reaction to a religion narrowly defined by law and ritual. The people of “The Way” swept through the Mediterranean world like a “mighty wind” of radical freedom. (Adapted from “Why The Christian Right Is Wrong” by Robin Meyers, page 68)

Instead of a society where the rules focused on what you did within society, a society was created where everyone was free and your concern was for the others as much as it was for yourself. This was an idea first expressed in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments do not begin with “Here are the Ten Commandments, learn them by rote,” or, “Here are the Ten Commandments, obey them.” Rather, they begin with “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

The Ten Commandments are not rules that confine people but set them free. As Joe Roos noted, the Ten Commandments set you free from using the ways of society to get ahead. (Adapted from “The Foolishness of the Cross” by Joe Roos in Sojourners, August 2007) You need not covet what your neighbor has or steal their belongings to establish who you are. Yes, they are rules but they are rules to live by, not confine us. They offer direction, not imprisonment. It is a freedom that extends to all and it is a freedom that we must seek for all.

The words of Jeremiah this morning (Jeremiah 4: 11 – 22; 22 – 28) apply today as much as they did some three thousand years ago. Jeremiah speaks of the words of the Lord who warns the people about limiting their understanding to simply following a set of rules. From Jeremiah 4: 22 we read, “My people are foolish and do not know me. They are stupid children who have no understanding. They are clever enough at doing wrong, but they have no idea how to do right!” (Jeremiah 4: 22) The terms “foolish” and “silly” that are used in this passage from Jeremiah are contrary to the terms “knowledge” and “understanding”. Understanding means going beyond the basic information. The Lord, through Jeremiah, is warning the people that they are walking the wrong path; they are headed in the wrong direction. Instead of sustaining the world, they are destroying it; all because they have not taken the time to understand what the world is about and what it means.

Paul, in referring to his own career as a prosecutor of Christians (1 Timothy 1: 12 – 17), says the same thing. He recognizes that his life before his encounter with Christ was one fixed in the law, unchanging in its nature, and essentially doomed to failure and defeat.

The journey with Christ goes beyond the limits of society’s rules. The journey with Christ goes beyond how one thinks of themselves but rather how one thinks of others. If you accept Christ as your savior, you make a commitment to walk a new path and find a new way. If you accept Christ as your Savior, then you go beyond just posting the Ten Commandments on courtroom walls. You seek to put “blessed are the merciful” on the same walls; you seek to put “blessed are the peacemakers” on the walls of the Pentagon. As Jesus pointed out in the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep (Luke 15: 1- 10), you are more concerned for the one who is lost more than the ones who are saved.

If you accept Christ as your savior, you have said that you will not be limited in your belief to just the things around you or things somewhat ethereal. Rather, your world becomes a world of great possibilities, of understanding the world in which we live and the one which was provided by our divine creator.

We are called today to begin this journey. It is a journey that began some two thousand years ago when a group of people gathered in a room to celebrate a journey from slavery and death to freedom. Those in that room that night did not understand that their journey was just beginning; they did not understand that the words of freedom and victory that their teacher and our Lord spoke were not just thoughts but steps. They did not understand then but would in a few days understand what the words of freedom truly meant. We know today what the words of freedom and victory over sin and death mean. Thus we are called to continue the journey that was begun so many years ago. Let us begin that journey.

Hold On Now

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I am at Dover United Methodist Church this morning (Location of church).  The Scriptures for this Sunday are Jeremiah 18: 1 – 11, Philemon 1 – 21, and Luke 14: 14: 25 – 33.  The service starts at 11 and you are welcome to attend.

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When I first read the Gospel message for today I could not help but think about what the people who first heard those words might have thought and might have said. This is not the first time that Jesus challenges us to think about our priorities nor will it be the last. But, more importantly, if the words of the Bible and especially the Gospel message are to have any meaning in our lives today, we should not think about what they said two thousands years ago but rather what we would say today.

That is the secret if you will to the understanding the Gospel. It is not to see or think about the words that were said some two thousand years ago and see them only as words written in some history book. No, rather, it is important that we see them in the light of our own lives and our own thoughts.

And that is why the sermon is entitled what it is; because that’s how many of us would respond to the challenge placed before us this day. Just as so many others have said before us, we would say to Jesus that we have to take care of our children or our parents or our siblings. We have only so much time in the week and we have to ration it for everyone.

And we certainly would object to the idea that we have to give everything up. We worked hard to get our car and our home and all the stuff that we have in the house and now Jesus is asking us to give it all up or give it away. Those are radical and revolutionary ideas and not the kind of talk we want to hear today.

We don’t mind Christianity; it is a pretty good idea but you have to be realistic about it. These are dangerous times right now and to give up our possessions, to turn away from our families are just not the things that one does. It is alright to love your neighbor, just as long as he or she loves you as well. But, let’s face, when your neighbor doesn’t like you, loving them doesn’t work.

But I think that the time has come to truly think about what it means to hold on to the present, to say that right now is better than anything that might happen tomorrow, and to say that yesterday we understood what was right and wrong and now today we don’t. It comes down to this; how can you say you are a Christian, a follower of Christ, when you advocate violence and war. How can you say that you have a right to keep all that you earn for yourselves when there are those in this world who have nothing?

The Gospel message speaks to all people, not just a select few. It comes at a price, a price too many people are not often willing to pay. Such are willing to say they are Christians and the bet is that you will find them in church on Sunday morning, nodding appreciatively at the words the pastor speaks. But that is only as long as he (and they most definitely want a male pastor) speaks in gentle platitudes that speak of the rewards of being a Christian and not the cost. Let the pastor be a female and you are almost certain to hear a rush of cars peeling out of the parking lot as the people leave to find a more appropriate church. Let the pastor challenge the people to do the right thing, to get out and work in the community or even worse, invite the community into the church and it is almost certain that the entire Staff-parish committee membership will be on the phone to the District Superintendent to demand that a new pastor be assigned to their church.

And then, when the changes are made and everyone in the pews is satisfied that the church has returned to normal, there is a realization that something is missing. Oh, yes, there are a few people missing but they were never happy and it is just as well that they left. But the people look around and they wonder why there haven’t been many visitors to the church or why there have been more funerals than baptisms. Some churches look around and think that maybe they can change the setting a little bit; let the kids play their guitars every now and then. Perhaps they shouldn’t get so uptight when the pastor wears sandals or blue jeans in the office instead of a coat and tie. And you know, they think to themselves, there are some female pastors that aren’t that bad; maybe we should think about that again.

But no matter how hard such churches seek to change, they hold on harder to what they have and they still miss the point. It isn’t the stuff on the surface that counts; it is the stuff underneath, the stuff in the soul that matters the most.

When I started preparing to enter the teaching profession, I watched a movie about a sculptor carving a statue. When asked what was being carved, the sculptor essentially responded that she didn’t know yet; the stone would tell her what to carve. The problem is that if one misreads the story in the stone, the stone is wasted. Now, I see and hear too many people today who have that attitude when it comes to Christianity. It is literally carved in stone and it cannot be changed.

But if we use the analogy of the clay, as described in Jeremiah, we know that until the clay is fired in the kiln, you can work the clay over and over again until you get it the way it is supposed to come out. When Paul writes to his friend Philemon with regard to Onesimus, it is not to challenge the system. In fact, Paul is working well within the system but he is also pushing the boundaries of the system.

In effect Paul is challenging Philemon to find a way to create a better solution than the one in place. It is to take the clay and make a better pot out of the clay than what is being considered. It is to see beyond the moment, to see what might be, not what is.

We are reminded that when the church was in its earliest stages, it was thought that one had to be Jewish before one could be Christian. Now, in part, this makes sense. Those who began the early church were Jewish and they were raised within the framework of Judaism and Jewish law. The Scriptures were clear and there were to be no questions; if you want to follow Christ, you must first be a Jew.

But such laws, such ideas would have effectively barred many Gentiles from ever becoming Christians. If the early disciples had not seen beyond the words of the Scripture and the years and years of tradition to see what God wanted from us, then it was most likely that we would not be Christians today. God called on the members of the early church to move beyond their comfort zone, to move beyond the moment and stop saying “hold on now” and welcome those whom God had already embraced.

You have heard me speak of Clarence Jordan and his Cotton Patch Gospels, his translation of the New Testament from Greek into words of the South. But before he even started on that project, he was involved in a greater application of the Gospel and its meaning for life today, the Koinonia Farm in Georgia.

The story in Acts 2: 43 – 47 and Acts 4: 32 – 37 of the communal life of the early disciples, where the members of the early church shared all that they owned with everyone else, became Jordan’s sounding board for an expression of Christian love and sharing. The Farm began as a fellowship that sought to imitate the early Christian community of “holding all things in common.” (From the introduction to The Cotton Patch Version of the Hebrews and the General Epistles by Edward A. McDowell, Jr.)

Koinonia, founded in the late 1940s, was one of the first attempts at integration in the Deep South. As such, it was the target of attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups. Clarence Jordan asked his brother Robert, an attorney, to represent the farm in some of the civil actions against the Klan.

The conversation between the two brothers speaks of the conversation that must have followed Jesus’ words in the Gospel.

Robert Jordan refused to help his brother claiming that it would hurt his political aspirations (he would later become a Georgia state senator and then justice on the State Supreme Court) and that to represent an integrated church related organization would amount to political suicide and that he would lose everything, his house, his job, his family, everything.

Clarence noted that he, too, would lose everything. To which Robert said that it was different for Clarence.

Clarence then challenged his brother. He reminded him that they both joined the church on the same day and that when the preacher asked if they had accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they both answered yes. There could be nothing different in their situations.

Robert’s response was to say that he followed Jesus up to a point. And was that point the foot of the Cross, asked Clarence. Robert said that he would go to the cross but that he would not be crucified. Clarence said that Robert should go back to his church and tell them that he was only an admirer of Jesus, not a disciple.

I don’t have what Robert’s exact words were but they surely included “hold on, now. If everyone who felt like I do were to do what you suggest, then we would not have much of a church.” Clarence only asked if he, Robert, even had a church to go to. In the end, Robert Jordan would become a disciple and work for the betterment of society. (Adapted from Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs – Saints and their stories by James C. Howell)

So, here we are, hearing Jesus’ words once again to cast off all that we are and begin anew. And we hear so many people say that we should hold on to what we have right now, to stand and admire what Jesus has done but not do anything which threatens what we have.

But if we hold on to what we have today, what will we have tomorrow? And how will the Gospel have any meaning if we do not work for tomorrow? How will the Gospel have any meaning if we stay where we are, holding on to what we have? To hold on to what we have is the sensible thing, the practical thing.

But God’s grace offers us a better opportunity than whatever we have. It is the potter remolding the clay so that the new pot is better than the old. It is the freedom that comes when one goes beyond the artificial boundaries that society seeks to impose.

The opportunity to begin anew is before us. Yes, the road is long, hard, and often dusty. Yes, it will cost more than we are perhaps prepared to spend. But, what lies at the end of the road, beyond the Cross, is far better than anything we have right now. Shall we hold on to what we have now or shall we let go and reach for the Hand of God stretched out for us? The choice is yours today.

“Clearly The Choice Is Ours”

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This was the message that I gave at Tompkins Corners UMC on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, 12 September 2004.  The Scriptures for this Sunday were Jeremiah 4: 11 – 12, 22 – 28; 1 Timothy 1: 12 – 17; and Luke 15: 1 – 10.

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In Mel Gibson’s movie, "The Passion of Christ", he puts the devil on Jesus’ shoulder as He hangs on the cross. In this scene the devil reminds Jesus that He has the power to change the outcome of the crucifixion; He has the power to end His own suffering and death.

This, of course, is not the way any of the accepted Gospels tell the story of the temptation of Christ. The temptation of Christ, the dialogue between Jesus and the devil occurs during the forty days in the wilderness just before the start of Jesus’ ministry. But there are suggestions that Jesus still struggles with this temptation during those last hours before his trial and execution; remember his painful struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, so we know that the temptations of Christ were not just one brief moment in His ministry.

Now, I am not going to discuss whether or not this changing of the Gospel is appropriate or not. But we have to know that Jesus certainly knew that He could end His own pain. But, were He do to have done so, He would not be able to end our pain. To surrender to the devil, to surrender to temptation is to lose the entire meaning of the Gospel message. Jesus had to make a choice between doing what was right for Him and what was right for us and His ministry. He had to make a choice.

Throughout his entire ministry, Jesus spoke of the choices that we must make. If we are to follow Jesus, we must make choices that we may not necessarily like to make.

It will come as a surprise to some and as a disappointment to others but there is no stop on the road to Damascus in my life like there was for Paul. There is no time when my heart was strangely warmed like there was for John Wesley. I have no conscience memory of a time or a place when there was a life-changing event as either Paul or John Wesley described.

But there have been times when I suddenly realized that Jesus was my Savior and that he died for me. To some, this would mean that I have not been "born again" and, thus, my words contain no power. But that does not diminish in any shape or form the choice I made many years ago, unconscious as it may have been, to follow Christ on my life’s journey. On at least one occasion in my life, I know that I was struck by the singular notion that Christ’s death on the cross was for me, even though it occurred almost two thousand years before I was even a consideration in this world. And on at least one occasion I have been reminded that it was God’s grace that has as John Newton wrote, "brought me safe thus far". These events are singular and they are reminders that the ministry of Jesus in this world is a singular event, meant to be between Christ and each one of us. But they are also events that must be shared for the Gospel is nothing if it is not shared with others.

As United Methodists, we believe that our faith is both informed and experiences. Ours is a faith that is both intensely personal but one that must be shared. While I may not have had the life-change experiences others may have had, I do know that my awareness of Christ, not only as a figure in the history of this world, but as my Savior comes from my own experience and knowledge. I choose to follow Christ because of what I learned growing up. And, as United Methodists, we affirm our belief in one God as revealed through Jesus Christ but understand and appreciate that there a variety of ways in which that affirmation can be expressed. And to complete this point, as United Methodists, we hold a concern for the spiritual, physical, and social concerns for all persons, not just some or a few.

Now, I will admit that the anti-establishment side of me likes the fact that Jesus challenged the status quo, that He put aside societal conventions and reached out to all individuals, not just a select few or those deemed worthy of being in his presence. At a time when I was searching for the person that I am, it was important for me to know that Christ was looking for me and that I was as important as anyone else. I think this point is lost on a lot of people today, who while saying that they accept Christ as their personal Savior are not willing or able to let others do so as well. This was especially true in the Gospel time.

As noted in today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees and scribes took offense that Jesus ate with sinners. They did not associate with sinners because to do so would make them unclean and unworthy to serve God. Jesus ate with sinners so that they, the sinners, would be made clean and worthy to serve God.

I once characterized Jesus as a radical and was strongly chastised by one of my Lutheran minister cousins. I said this because Jesus was offering a new and decidedly radical view of life. It was this approach that made the "powers that be" angry with Him. My cousin felt this was a bit too strong, but a year later, this minister of over fifty years, also characterized Jesus as a radical. And he acknowledged that his mind set about his Savior, long set was changed when he heard my views. As we learn about Jesus, as we learn about the Gospel, we grow in our understanding and amazement of the power of God. There are some that do not want us to learn about Jesus, preferring that we keep Him a mysterious figure whose access they control. But the more we individually learn, the more we find that we do not know and the great our amazement of the power of God through Christ.

When I started preaching, I had the luxury of knowing the specific dates and places where I would be preaching. Those dates were far apart, the places where I preached were of my choosing, and I picked the topics on which I preached. Now, of course, I preach according to a calendar that has a Sunday every week. I serve in churches at the direction and desire of the District Superintendent and Bishop.

And while what I write and preach is still my own, it is based on scriptures from the Revised Common Lectionary. When I started, I picked the scriptures that I wanted to use. But when I began to supply the pulpit, as what I do is officially called, I found that my own knowledge was limited. So I began using the lectionary, that collection of Old and New Testament readings that takes the preacher through a three-year cycle of the Bible and life of the prophets, disciples, and Christ.

I was advised that it would be better to simply use one of the three readings for each Sunday and focus on that particular reading. But I always felt that, if three readings were given for each Sunday, there should be something connecting the three together and I should look for that connection. And each Sunday as I prepare and study for this moment in time, I become more and more aware of what Jesus means, to me individually and to this world.

And as I learned through my own reading and my own experience, I found that Jesus ministry was very much a singular event. No matter how large the crowd, he sought out the one individual. He truly cared for the one soul that was lost when others were concerned with the many that were not.

Paul also makes it clear that salvation is a singular event. As he writes, if there was ever someone in Christianity that should not be there, it was him. And he knew it. Yet, it was by God’s grace that Paul was given the ability and the power to proclaim the Gospel.

Yes, some of his writings and pronouncements trouble us today. There are times when what Paul wrote two thousand years ago seem out of place in our day and age. And many debates will take place as to how we are to use what he wrote. But Paul was writing to individuals and groups struggling to build their collective identity in Christ, fighting to keep the old ways of living from overtaking the new life they had found in Christ.

And I think that is why it is so important today that we read the message that the prophet Jeremiah passed from God to the people of Israel. Not simply because it is the Old Testament lesson for today, but rather because it part of the idea that there are choices in what we do each day of life.

We may not like what Jeremiah passed on to the people of Israel, for the past few weeks the words God commanded him to speak were not friendly words. They were not words of hope and promise but rather of death and destruction. But through the lens of history, we know that these are words of choices. The people of Israel had chosen not to follow God, choosing instead to follow the paths of least resistance with their neighbors and allies. God is basically telling them what the consequences of those actions will be. These prophetic words apply just as well today.

I see a world in which the various Christian denominations have changed to Gospel message; it is no longer what it was meant to be. It is a message in which the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is pushed aside, simply because it might scare away people. I am constantly reminded by print and visual media that what Christ asked of us is no longer seen as practical or appropriate. What was the major complaint about Mel Gibson’s movie, the "Passion of Christ"? The major complaint was that it was too bloody and the details of the crucifixion were too explicit. But should we not know that Christ died in the most inhumane way ever conceived by mankind? Should we not know the pain and agony inflicted on Christ, pain and agony that was meant for each one of us when we die in sin?

The problem is that when we take the cross out of the picture, when we try to soften the requirements of the Gospel, we make a choice that removes Christ from our lives. Churches today seem more concerned about who they let in rather than what the Gospel requires. Again, it is a choice that removes Christ from our lives.

And I fear that the words of the prophets of old are directed to the churches of today just as they were directed to the people of Israel some three thousand years ago. Churches today, as individual churches, as denominations, and as individual members, seem more hung up on the foibles of life that there are focused on the real problems of the world.

We have preachers even today crying out against the moral decay of the people of this earth, blaming every institution on earth except the church. This is not to say that we should try for a stronger moral character in our lives but we have to focus on what causes the decay. But we have to work for those things that are good, not work against those things that are evil. There were some preachers who claimed that the floods that ravaged the Midwest portion of this country back in the early 90’s were God’s sign that the end times were upon us. This hit close to home since I knew many of the people sandbagging the Mississippi River in the Hannibal, Missouri/Quincy, Illinois area. I didn’t think that their lives were all that bad. These were good, hard working people, people trying to earn a living from the soil and to be told that the floods covering their farms and homes was punishment for sins unseen and unsaid was a little too drastic. I did think that the practices of flood control, creatures of man’s thought, were more the reason for the devastation. I found it hard to believe that there would be individuals saying that the floods that ravaged the Midwest back then were God’s sign of the end of the world. After all, God himself told Noah that He never again destroy the world by flooding it.

I do not hold to the concept of the end time and destruction of the earth through God’s wrath. The unfortunate thing is that while God gave us great abilities to create, the same abilities can also be used to destroy. There is no reason for God to destroy the world when we are capable of doing so on our own and, are in fact, doing a wonderful job right now. The development of nuclear power not only gave us a wonderful source of energy but it also gave us the power to destroy just as easily. And though the threat of total nuclear destruction may have been eliminated from this planet, our own ability to destroy this planet countless time over is still present. We may have removed one way of destruction but we did not remove what leads to the destruction.

God gave us the ability to think and make choices. In the words that Jeremiah writes, we hear of the consequences when we make the wrong choices. But in what we do today, in the act of celebrating communion, we are reminded of the one choice God Himself made. He chose to send His Son to this world in a singular act of love so that we might live. His Son, our Lord and Savior, chose to come to this world and forsake all the power and glory that was His and become our servant so that we could better understand the love that God has for us.

Christ chose to die on the cross so that we could live, free from the slavery and death through sin. As we come to the table, we are reminded of these choices. The question thus is what choices do we make? Do we continue on the path that we have picked, ignoring others in our lives and hoping that our own abilities will provide the strength needed in times of stress and pain. Or do we chose to follow Christ, a hard one to follow I know, but one that gives us much that we do not have and a lot when it is needed the most. Clearly, the choice is ours.

“Seeking The Truth”

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This was the message that I gave on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, 16 September 2001, at Walker Valley UMC; The Scriptures for this Sunday were Jeremiah 4: 11 – 12, 22 – 28; 1 Timothy 1: 12 – 17; and Luke 15: 1 – 10.

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It was also the first Sunday after 9/11/2001 and I had to weight the thoughts in my heart and my mind with the Scriptures for this Sunday.  I am not certain that we have come to grips with what transpired that day nor am I certain that we have responded in a way that reflects the nature of this country or our what we say we believe. 

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If you are like me, the events of last Tuesday have left you wondering why and how could this have happened? When I first heard that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and that the twin towers had collapsed, I could not believe it. After all, all my training in chemistry and engineering told me that such an occurrence was impossible. But then they came around and let us know that in fact such an incredible and seemingly impossible event had occurred.

Like many, the thoughts of how this could have occurred left me stunned. How could God have allowed this? Even more so, why would God allow this to happen? These are the most difficult types of questions to answer and they are made even more difficult to answer because it will be up to us to explain why this happened, why so many innocent people died, to our children and our grandchildren. And we will have to face tomorrow.

And perhaps that is the most important task we, both as a nation and as individuals, will ever have to undertake. How we react, tomorrow and in the future, will say more about who we are and what we are, as a nation and individually than anything said or done in the past. We cannot react to something like this out of fear or ignorance. To do so will only serve to further the cause of those who directed and funded this plot. Our freedom is based in part on the fact that we understand what freedom is and what freedom can be. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

There are those who will call for action. There is a need to remember all those who died in this tragedy. Even though our community was far away from New York City and Washington, we may have loved ones that were hurt or are missing. Certainly, we know those in our own community who were directly affected. The heritage of this church, resting on land that originally belonged to the Walker Valley Fire Company, ties us indelibly to the tragedy and the firefighters and rescue workers who lost their lives.

But, if we react in the same manner in which we were attacked, then nothing will be gained. Vengeance may be the Lord’s but it is not ours. The action that we take must be done from the power gained through democracy and knowledge. In using all of our resources, all of our abilities, and all of our knowledge, we are better able to drive ignorance from the face of the earth. You know of my heritage and the pride I have in my grandfather and father who served in the Army and the Air Force. Such a heritage and pride calls for an action which is both swift and decisive and which would avenge the death of those taken in such senseless act of violence. But the action taken must be such that the fundamental basis for our civilization is not compromised and that what is done is ultimately right and just.

If there was any more frightening aspect of this whole tragedy, it was that it was done in the name of God. We must understand that those who committed this act did so because they believed that this act would guarantee them a place in heaven. But they were, if you will allow me the most obvious of puns, dead wrong. Nothing in the Koran suggests that those who act this way will gain such a wonderful reward. And while the Koran may suggest the validity of a holy war, it also prohibits the killing of innocent people.

This is, I am afraid to say the single most dangerous aspect or explanation of this atrocity. And it is magnified by the fact that so much of the violence in this world today is committed in the name of religion. In 1998, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright listed 30 of the world’s most dangerous groups; more than half were religious. They were Jewish, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. She didn’t include Christian militia and other paramilitary organizations both within and outside the United States. The Rand-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism lists 56 terrorist groups as worthy of fear for their operational capacity; 26 are identified as religious. (From Sojo Mail 9/12/01)

And while we struggle with this most obvious of contradictions, we are confronted by the fact that there are Christian ministers telling us that God allowed this to occur, and that this senseless act of violence was directed towards the United States because the United States has turned away from God.

And though we may differ in how we worship God, we must understand that the God of the Koran is the same God of our Bible, the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8: 32)  So we must ask ourselves, what is the truth? It was Jesus who the Pharisees and scribes hated because he ate and traveled with sinners. We must decide if we are to be like the Pharisees who hate someone because society says to it is okay to hate them or like Jesus who saw the good in every one.

If we choose to live believing that God sought revenge for the way we live, we would be living as if the Bible consisted only of the Old Testament, with readings of doom and disaster as promised by the prophets such as Jeremiah. Perhaps that is the case. But we are not an Old Testament society. Our hope is not built on a book that ends with the last words of Malachi, "Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4: 6)  For that is taken out of context, for God promised the people of Israel a greater gift, that of a hope and a promise for the future.

And that hope, that promise was the birth of Jesus Christ. Paul was, as we read this morning grateful for having been saved through Christ. And Paul noted that though he was one of the greatest sinners there ever was, Jesus showed patience knowing that Paul would not always be a sinner.

And while we may not understand the total nature of this tragedy, we know that God did not cause it nor did God allow it to happen. Those who hide in the darkness caused it. Our task this Sunday morning is to show to others that God’s love is still here. The Pharisees and the scribes all grumbled because Jesus would eat with sinners. To do so was not in their mind; sinners were lost and could not be saved. But Jesus showed the same compassion for all, he was willing to make the sacrifice to insure that all would be welcome in God’s heaven. But everything that we do, everything we say will go a long way to showing and making sure that it never happens again. As we seek the truth for what happens in this world, we are again reminded that our own search for the truth begins with Jesus in our heart. As we go out into the world this week, we are again reminded that it will be through encounters with each one of us that others will come to know the peace of Christ.