Amos was an ancient prophet writing in the 8th century to an Israel that had become corrupt, self-satisfied, and indifferent. During his reign, Israel’s wicked king, Jereboam II, seized political opportunity to gain control of trade routes and create commercial prosperity. His action created a wealthy class living in great luxury. Exploitation of the poor and other excesses were the byproduct of his corrupt rule. Continue reading An Ancient Warning
Category Archives: Food for Thought
Jesus said that if you have something ag
Jesus said that if you have something against someone you should talk to them personally. It’s a good idea. http://ht.ly/2ySAE
Children of Smokers
Joe and Sue (fictitious names) didn’t want their children to smoke. They knew the terrible cost of smoking firsthand: increased sick days at work, the high monetary cost of smoking, the smell, and the social pressure from people who don’t smoke.
Joe tried to stop smoking on several occasions. He used the patch, hypnosis, cold turkey withdrawal, and the cure du jour. Nothing worked for him. He never got much farther than a month off cigarettes because he couldn’t stand the withdrawal symptoms.
At age 14 Joe and Sue’s daughter started smoking. She tried to hide it from them, but they could smell it on her when she came home. Attempts to get her to stop were met with, “But you smoke.”
Like it or not, Joe and Sue had to admit that their daughter’s smoking was caused, to a large degree, by their own smoking. Some experts say that children of smokers are twice as likely to begin smoking between 13 and 21.
And if these statistics apply to smoking they also apply to other behaviors that children grow up in. If Abraham lived to see his grandson Jacob, he would have seen behaviors like his own: lying, duplicity, and conniving to save his own skin. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers because of the influence of his father Jacob’s life and the dysfunction of the family.
Parents would do well to be reminded that the behaviors their children observe become the seeds from which the children’s attitudes and behaviors will grow in the future: racism, selfishness, bad habits, etc.
If you want your own children to live in a certain way, you have to model that behavior.
Preaching on the subject of marriage is hard.
Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation, and it is used in everything we do from trying to decide what a road sign means to reading a comic strip. A street my family used to live on had a sign which said, “Caution slow children playing.” Without punctuation I had to decide if it was warning me about slow children or if I was being advised to slow down because children were playing. Hermeneutics.
Some of the passages about marriage and relationships require similar art when trying to apply their ancient instruction to 21st century contexts. Peter, for example, told women to not braid their hair and praised Sarah for calling Abraham “Lord.”
This week’s sermon is the second in a series on relationships and is an attempt to find the universal ideas about marriage that are applicable at all times and in all cultures. Did Peter really mean that women couldn’t braid their hair or was he warning against looking like a side of culture that is godless and immoral? That is the question of hermeneutics.’
Marriage is one of my least favorite topics to speak about. Why? Because of the amount of pain and brokenness that exists in regard to that subject. In any group of people listening to a sermon on marriage will be those who grew up in broken, fractured families. Who have suffered their own marital versions of heartache, abuse, and rejection. There will be a relative minority of folks who have long marriages in the audience.
The challenge of speaking on such a subject is to present the ideas in a way that is constructive and healing, not accusatory and hurtful. The cultural distance between the times of the Bible and today is huge and trying to speak from those texts without recognizing the distance only results in confusion and pain.
One of the premier texts about relationships between husbands and wives begins in Ephesians 5:21, “be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ…” When I did a search on that text in a software study program I use, it conveniently started at verse 22, “wives be subject to your husbands…”
I doubt that calling one’s husband “lord,” as Peter said or “wives being submissive to husbands” is the solution to marital brokenness. But the idea of mutual respect (husband to wife and vice versa) is a curative that will work. That’s what I want to convey.
The Road to Emmaus
The story of Cleopas and his wife Mary in Luke 24 has always been fascinating to me. Two people are approached by the now-resurrected Jesus, and they don’t recognize him. See John 19:25.
Luke lets us see the the pain and confusion that Jesus’ death had caused them. The Renovare Bible, in a footnote on this text, said, “How many times on our network of roads have we lurched with broken spirits because the unexpected seized the place of the expected and that with a wrenching disappointment?”
So Cleopas and his wife were headed home to the security of Emmaus. Away from the stress and confusion of Jerusalem.
Frederick Buechner says that “Emmaus is the place we go to in order to escape–a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, ‘Let the whole damned thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway…’
“Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had–ideas about love and freedom and justice–have always in time been twisted by selfish men for selfish ends.”
Emmaus begins with disappointment, confusion, and sorrow. But it ends with surprise and worship. The surprise comes when Jesus reveals himself to Cleopas and friend in a simple meal. Cole writes that Jesus comes “in the ordinary place and experiences of our lives, and in the places to which we retreat when life is too much for us. The story warns us, however, that the Lord may come to us in unfamiliar guises, when we least expect him.”
I like preaching from this story because it reminds me that things are not always as they appear. That holy things are sometimes cloaked and unrecognizable. That when we least expect it, the hood is pulled off and Jesus stands before us.
People on a Quest
In the Gospel of Luke there are several “quest” stories. These are stories about people who were trying to find something, and they include a paralytic person, a soldier, a woman with a medical condition, a
leper, a rich ruler, a tax collector, and a criminal. In every case these individuals had some condition which they could not personally change.
I like these stories because they are a microcosm of the whole world. In them you will find powerful people who find themselves in perplexing and impossible situations. Who can only say, “I give up; I need help.”
There are people who are so hated by society that they are entirely alone and powerless. People who have medical problems so great that they can’t work in gainful ways, nor are they even allowed to have relationships with their respective communities.
These stories sound like they could be lifted off the front pages of our newspapers: the politician who is barbecued in the political sector because of a daliance with a prostitute. What’s he to do to put his life back together?
Or the single mother who’s just lost her job and has no medical insurance for a sick child. Where is she to find employment or assistance? Will she end up homeless?
And of course, the person who realizes that there has to be more to life than what they are experiencing. This is the person who is asking the hard questions, but may not be willing to pay that cost just yet.
Quest stories are, in my view, a true picture of the human condition. Whether we are willing to admit it or not, we’re all on a quest. This is the subject of my sermon this coming Sunday.
Google and Merced
Google announced recently that it is planning to launch an experiment to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country.
These networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today. Communities being considered will be between 50,000 and 500,000 people.
The thought of having such a blazingly fast service motivated a cadre of Mercedians to pool their efforts. So County and City officials, along with Merced Ahead, the Chamber of Commerced, and Merced Boosters got together to press forward with the initiative.
Whether we get this high speed network remains to be seen. However, a great thing was accomplished in the pooling of energy and creativity that occurred here. Take, for example, the 300 people that got together one Saturday to spell “Google” on a local football field.
There is no way to understate the importance of communities of people working together for the common good. We are always better together than we are apart.
Writing a religion column
I’m in a writing queue of seven pastors. We write a rotating, weekly column for the Merced Sun-Star called “Religion 101.” It’s fun to be able to make the occasional contribution, but it’s also a challenge.
Many people have mental stereotypes of what they think they will find in the column–doctrinaire, dogmatic, preachy, and moralistic. Such stereotypes function as hurdles to understanding, both for the reader and the writer.
Writing in a way that surprises, intrigues, and even irritates is a challenge. For example, how can a writer surprise if what is written is only what the reader expects?
That is what made Jesus’ parables so powerful. A listener would ask Jesus what he thought was a simple-enough question. Jesus typically responded with a story that turned the questioner’s world upside down.
This week’s Religion 101 article is meant to be oblique and indirect. Rather than saying, “We should stereotype other people,” it tells a simple story. Check out this link and see what you think.
The Editorial Page
The Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper was longer today than usual. Counting the editorial cartoon the letters occupied a full half of the “Perspective” page. Eight letters comprise what I like to think of as the therapy section of the paper.
One screams out, “You really don’t get it do you?” as if they’re carrying on a conversation with a person across the table from them. Another says, “I am writing to inform you of my opinion.” Still another angsts over why a road project is taking so long.
Fake Friendship
We became friends because we were colleagues in the same group. It was a bunch of pastors from the same area of the state. We got together once a month for food and conversation and enjoyed the professional and collegial stimulation.
He was pastor for a church that eventually had some internal problems, and the church had a terrible split which created two churches. He left with the group that split away, and also left our group. He disappeared, and we didn’t see him after that.
MonoLogue 