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Sermon: Called & Chosen

Beth - blogger, coach, consultant1 Comment

Readings:

  • Exodus 33: 12-17
  • Isaiah 45: 1-7
  • 1 Thessalonians 1: 1-7

Most of us know the story of Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush, found in Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 to 17.  Although Moses was Jewish, he had been cast as a baby into the Nile River in a woven basket, his mother hoping to save his life, and he was plucked out of the river by the Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him.  Moses was brought up in the royal household, but things turned sour for him when he killed one of the Egyptians overseers, for having treated the Jewish slaves badly. And fearing arrest and execution, he ran away, into the desert. There he came to work for Reuel ( also known as Jethro), as a shepherd.

As the story in Exodus goes, when the Pharaoh died, the new Pharaoh treated the Jewish people worse than his father, and the Israelites groaned under this burden. And so Moses was out, tending the flock at the edge of the desert, near Horeb – which is known as the “mountain of God”.  And suddenly an angel of God appears to him as a flame of fire in a bush.  God calls out to Moses from the bush, tells Moses that he has heard the prayers and sorrow of the people, and that God will deliver them from Egypt, through Moses.

As we may remember, Moses responds to God with 2 things:

  1. I’m not the right person for the job!  I’m not a good speaker – I have a speech impediment!
  2. They’re going to ask “who sent you” – which God are you talking about? What should I tell them?

And so we are introduced to the concept of God as “I AM THAT I AM” –  ‘Jehovah, the God of your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent me to you.’

Today, I want to talk about being chosen and called by God: throughout the Christian Scriptures we read that “we are a chosen people” and “children of God”. And I want to also talk about how we respond to being called or chosen, because we have choices about how we respond to this.

I’m going to use the four examples that we saw this morning in our readings:

  1. Moses
  2. the children of Israel – that Moses leads through the desert and into the promised land
  3. Cyrus – as mentioned in Isaiah 45
  4. us – or other Christians

The first example, as I said, is Moses, and I just gave you a brief synopses above of his calling and being chosen by God. Most of us, however, have not had this kind of experience with calling or being chosen. Many of us are still struggling to find our purpose and passion – what are you supposed to be doing for the Kingdom of God?  Moses’ experience, as related in Exodus is supernatural.  Whatever kind of experience that it was – whether it was a vision, a dream or a surreal experience – the message and purpose was clear. You, Moses, are going to go and do this! I have chosen you, I am calling you, and this is what I want you to do.

I am sure that many of us wish that our calling were so crystal clear – although I’m not sure that I would have wanted Moses’ job either! I probably would have reacted the same as he did: I’m not the right person for the job, and I don’t even know how to do that. I don’t stutter, but I’m an introvert – you  need an extrovert for this job! Find someone better suited for the job.

But note, Moses doesn’t go down in the history books of the Bible for being a brilliant or great orator, even though he seemed to think that this was what the job he was being called for required. Numbers 12 3: says

“Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.”

And in Hebrews 11, verses 24 through 30, it talks about the great faith of Moses.  And in Deuteronomy 10, verses 12 to 13 it says that Moses chose to fear the Lord, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and keep the commandments of God.

Then, we have the children of Israel, who are mentioned throughout the Bible as being chosen by God. But, do you want to know something curious, it’s not only the Bible that says that the children of Israel are special and chosen.  The Quran, in 2:47 says

O children of Israel! Remember those blessings of Mine with which I graced you, and how I favoured you above all other people;

This choosing is mentioned in many verses of the Bible, such as Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 to 9:

For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery…  9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

We read, in Deuteronomy 26, verse 17  the response of the children of Israel to this calling:

You have today declared the LORD to be your God, and that you would walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments and His ordinances, and listen to His voice.

But we know that once again in Joshua 24 the children of Israel are asked to confirm their commitment:  “Choose this day whom you will serve”.

I want to mention also Cyrus, mentioned in the verses we read this morning in Isaiah 45.  Bible theologians mention that this prophecy regarding Cyrus was 150 years before he came to power.  Let me remind what these verses said:

This is Jehovah’s message to Cyrus, God’s anointed, whom he has chosen to conquer many lands. God shall empower his right hand, and he shall crush the strength of mighty kings. God shall open the gates … to him; the gates shall not be shut against him anymore. 2 I will go before you, Cyrus, and level the mountains and smash down the city gates of brass and iron bars. 3 And I will give you … secret riches; and you will know that I am doing this—I, the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by your name. … I called you by name when you didn’t know me.

This sounds a little like Jeremiah 1: 5, where God calls Jeremiah as a prophet:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

And Psalm 139: 16

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

But most of us don’t have the clarity of being told (as Cyrus was eventually told) or as Jeremiah was told in his vision or as David came to know – that they were called even before birth. And yet, each one of us is chosen and called.  How will you respond to this calling?

I realise that our calling is not as impressive as that of Cyrus – to crush nations and break down gates and walls, to conquer. We are not prophets of the stature of Jeremiah. We are not kings like David. But we are still called, chosen and given a purpose.

Thankfully, most of us can relate to the calling and being chosen of the children of God in 1 Thessalonians!  And I want to spend the last few moments of this sermon, discussing our calling and the choices that we have to being chosen.

  • You may choose to reject the calling – there is  no obligation on any of us to accept the calling the God makes to us. Like children of an earthly father, we may choose to drift away and not have a relationship.  We may choose to do our own thing, “be my own person” – sing “I did it my way”.
  • You may hear the calling and respond, but get caught up in the material world and daily life. I’ll call mum & dad tomorrow. I’ll visit them next week, next month, for Mother’s Day, for Christmas. With good intentions, but not developing and keeping a close relationship.
  • Or you may choose to have a close and active relationship with God & Source – listening to the good news with great interest, opening your Spirit to communing directly with Spirit, filling you with power and life!  You may live with strong faith, working with loving deeds constantly.  You may become a living example for others.

All of us here are chosen and called. Some us may respond with the same fear that Moses had. Other ones of us may choose to live like Cyrus, completely unaware until much later in life of the very existence of God or the nature of our calling.  Some of us will be like the children of Israel – knowing that they are called, but frequently straying and struggling to find our way back – letting material things replace the relationship with the Divine, looking for answers in the material world, rather than understanding that Christ is in us, our hope of glory.  And others of us will choose to live a life of faith and humility, of prayer and works of faith and labors of love.

Let us pray!

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Defining God, part 2

Beth - blogger, coach, consultant3 Comments

So, after 15 years as a happy agnostic – and I would say that I accepted that there might be a higher being, but it was not a personal God – I was decided to start searching for God again. I can’t identify (at least not at the moment) any trigger. I thought there wasn’t any particular event or tragedy in my life. Just at some stage (maybe 2008) I decided I wanted to find God again. But the decision was a decision of finding God for myself – not the God of my childhood or upbringing, but rather what did I believe and why did I believe it?

Then I remembered… I was reading a lot of self-help and leadership improvement books (at the same time as I was studying my Masters in Business Law). At some stage, I got caught up in “searching for Wisdom”, in particular about controlling my tongue. And if there is one thing that I haven’t forgotten from my childhood, it is the sound of Dad’s voice as he read Proverbs. Dad read Proverbs to us every night: I read Proverbs today, and I hear Dad’s voice. Apparently, reading through my 2009 journal, I was really looking for answers about the power of words over your life. Here’s an excerpt (September 30, 2009):

Yesterday, I had a weird experience.  I say weird, because it was definitely out of the ordinary!  Having read the 10 curses that block the blessing, I was speaking with Alexandra and she made a comment “I’m such a B***h” and I corrected her saying “don’t curse yourself”.  Just came out of my mouth, without thinking.  Another friend, that heard me, turned and said “oh, not another one that’s converted to Kabbalah”.
And I admit, I was a little lost.  I’ve heard the word “Kabbalah” before.  I know it refers to a religion.  “Sounds” Jewish to me, but I really didn’t have any idea what I had supposedly “converted” to.  Luckily for me, Alexandra “knows all about it”.  She knows a number of people that have “converted” to Kabbalah.  And gave me a basic explanation… and there wasn’t anything in her explanation that I disagreed with.
What most impacted me about her description of Kabbalah is that it is a way of life, not a religion.  Hmmm…  What does that tell you about how people see Christianity and the Church?  When they differentiate Kabbalah from religion, and indicate that it’s a way of life?  It’s that what Christianity was supposed to be?  A new way of living?  So, how did it move from being the radical, new way of life to becoming just a religion?  Food for thought.
Anyway, my intention was not to discuss Kabbalah and whether or not Christianity is a religion or a way of life… My intention WAS to discuss that one of the points that I totally agree with them on is that the Tongue has the power of life and death.  What you say (whether you intended to say it or not, whether you were thinking when you said it or not) has an effect in this world.  What you say can bring things into existence.  Life a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When I say “I can’t do this”, am I expressing reality? or my attitude? or am I creating a reality that will result in my not being able to do it?
Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is a well-known statement by Descartes from 1637.  Of course, he originally wrote it in French, not in Latin.  Obviously, what we think is what we speak.
mini book review “10 curses that block the blessing”… Chapter 1:  “The Creative Power of the Tongue”.  It starts with these simple words The number one way a cruse can come on your life and block your blessings is in the words you speak to yourself and others.  Many times we curse ourselves by the words we speak.  Like the author, I don’t much believe in those Christians that go around with the “Name it and claim it” religion.  But I have been reading a lot of Proverbs this year (One chapter a day, every day, since last December, to be precise), and it clearly states “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit”. (Proverbs 18:21).
… But I certainly didn’t remember the Old Testament story of the Children of Israel getting to the river Jordan, ready to cross into the “Promised Land”, and when they send out the spies, 10 of the 12 come back and say There are giants, they have really good fortifications, they have organised armies, there is no way we can beat them (well, I do remember that part), and God’s response to Moses was “As I live, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will do to you”.  Uhhh… what did you say?  As I’ve spoken, so will you do?  So, whatever comes out of my mouth, that’s what will be?
Proverbs does say it in a LOT of different ways:  (Proverbs 13: 2-3)  A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth, but the sould of the unfaithful fees on violence.  He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction.
So, what have I been creating in my life? How have I limited myself and my ability through words spoken without thought?  Throughout the book, the author mentions Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…”.  I’m starting to wonder what I have destroyed in my life, through not thinking that what I say may have a full effect on my life.  Negative words produce negative results, but positive words produce positive results.
Chapter 2: “Loshon Hora – The Curse of Evil Speaking”  Once again, be careful what you say.  But, with a slightly different slant.  Karma (if that’s what you’d like to call it) – the curse of gossip and slander.  When you speak evil of another person, it will come back to haunt you.  You do reap what you sow.  You speak badly about someone else, and it comes back on you.  I’d never really given much thought or consideration to how many times the Bible speaks about gossip, but it’s up there with murder, deceit, inventors of evil things, etc.   I’ve always tended to quickly read over the “whisperers, backbiters, proud, boasters, gossiping and slanderers”…

Somehow I picked that up in the bookstore… And I just found out (reading my journal) that since December 2008 I had been reading Proverbs every day – one Chapter a day. And it all came about because I was looking and reading about the power of our words and getting Wisdom. Now, admittedly I was reading a lot of Covey, Maxwell and other writers who I know come from church backgrounds – and their values and perspectives resonated with me.

But at the end of the day, I also know I came back to what Mum & Dad taught me as a child in my search for wisdom and growth. I may have chosen a different path, but the wisdom and love was still there under it all. Teach a child in the way that they should go and they won’t stray from it.  I’m not sure if that’s quite what it says, but this morning I don’t feel like looking it up to check it. It’s somewhere in Proverbs and it says something along those lines!

And it was a conscious decision after about a year of reading Proverbs every day, to start looking for God again in my life. Not to go to someone for them to tell me what to believe, but for me to discover what I believed for myself. To study. To search. And to spend time in silence.

And reading more through my journal, in September 2009 I joined a prayer group:

I also started going to a home-group, which was basically because I’ve started to understand the power of prayer and what I wanted was a small intimate group where you get real support from “real” people.  People that are, like me, struggling with living uprightly on a day-to-day basis.  I don’t really want to go to church, because I am still struggling with the values and hypocrisy you find in Churches.  And I have no excuse, the home group is literally “around the corner” from my house.

Interesting to look back through my growth and attitudes.  Okay, I admit – I’m still not big on organised religion! I’ll leave you with what I found yesterday in Facebook:

donttrustwords

So what are the patterns of my thoughts & words? Those are the ones creating my life!

 

accountable, Matthew, Romans, judgment, brother, sister, despise, judgment seat, heart, forgive, score, forgiveness, wronged, practicing presence, Shekinah, glory of the Lord

Sermon: Accountable before God

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

Readings:

This morning in Romans we read:

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. … So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

And in Matthew we read:

So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

The reading in Matthew started with:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
18:22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

Some say that means that we have to forgive 77 times and others say that’s 490 times: seventy times seven.  So, imagine with me, for a moment, if God actually kept score of our forgiveness of each other, the same way that we keep score of how others have wronged us. How would that ledger look? Do you ever make it to forgiving someone 77 times for one offence? Ever?

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And then imagine if God was as quick to pass judgment on us as we pass judgment on others. Romans asks us today, why do we despise each other? Some versions say “treat them with contempt”, others use the word “belittle” or “look down on”, and still other versions say “set at naught”. To set at naught means to treat as of no account, to disdain, to hold in disregard, to treat with ignominy, to hold as insignificant.

A loving Christian is meant to care, deeply, for others: family, friends, church members & neighbors. But when we go into survival mode, that vulnerability and authenticity get shut down. Poets have long claimed that hearts grow cold and become hardened:  we treat others with disdain and insignificance. In our attempt to protect ourselves from distress and dull the pain, we divest ourselves of caring and responsibility.

When broken people live together in a broken world, pain is inevitable for anyone who loves. The only way to avoid the crushing pain of a broken heart is to make your heart unbreakable. So, we become the person that says “I don’t care” or “whatever”, when the luxury of giving ourselves the time and space to feel is threatened. And much of this despising or indifference towards others comes from looking inwards at our hurt and pain, and the defense mechanisms that we naturally have to block this out: just stop feeling. And so our hearts become hardened. If you choose the becoming “unbreakable”, you will also choose to lose your compassion.

What is critical to remember is when a heart becomes hardened, the brain has its own reasons for pressing down upon vulnerable feelings. To feel sets the person up to get hurt and the brain is geared towards survival at all costs. To bring emotional defenses down, the heart must be softened. The question is how can this be done? For me, personally, forgiveness has played an incredible role. I have repeatedly worked with Ho’oponopono meditation, where you sit and repeat: “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.” I’ve used this focusing on loving myself, loving others, loving God.

Forgiving and letting go is so much more than just my relationship with other people: a hardening of heart inevitably means I have hardened my heart towards God. And when you forgive yourself and others, truly forgiving them, you begin once more to experience God’s love and light in your life.

Jesus knew this: which is why he said we need to forgive an offense 77 times (or 490 if you read the KJV). If we want to be compassionate in this world, we need to allow people into our hearts. People will hurt you. People will take advantage of you. People will manipulate you. Not everyone and not all the time, but some will. And you have two choices: you can either choose to forgive or you can choose to become hard. You can’t have it both ways.  And forgiving is a hard practice: for most of us, it is not something we just do once and then we’re done. Hence the need to forgive again, and again.

When we remember the offense that the other person has committed against us, we have to repeat: practicing forgiveness. And for a while we will forget and let it go. But the memory of the hurt and offense will come back again, and we will have to repeat once more. And repeat once again. Not because you are going to leave yourself in a situation where that person will continue to hurt or take advantage of you, but because you are choosing a relationship with God over and above all things.

When you are consciously aware that such-and-such a person is “like this”: let’s say that they always ask you to lend them money and they never pay it back. When you make a decision to forgive them and also to keep that person in your life, you know that you will be exposed to more requests for money that will not be paid back. And then you have two choices:

  1. You can give them the money, as a gift, freely, with love; or
  2. If you cannot find it in your heart to give them the money lovingly, you can learn the life lesson of saying “no”. Of learning how to say “no” with love, without attacking them; without putting them down. Just “no”.

But if you give them that money with resentment, it’s like you are putting a curse upon them, because in your heart: you are cursing them and resenting them. If you are going to give, then give with love and joyously.  Make it truly a blessing.

1 John 4: 20 reminds us of this truth:

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

There’s a lot of emotional intelligence involved in being a true Christian! You have to set loving boundaries in your life: where you love yourself enough to be true to yourself, and yet you love God enough to be willing to do the work to be open, vulnerable and authentic. We say we love God, but then we’re not willing to let go of our pain and hurt. That’s mine – my precious. I’m holding onto that pain. I’m not letting it go, I’ve been carrying it around for so long now, it’s part of who I am.

We say we love God, but then we’re not willing to let go of our judgments and prejudices against others. Paul says in Romans 14: don’t judge those who are vegetarians, or those who eat pork, or those who honor the Sabbath differently from us. Are we supposed to respect the Sabbath on Saturday, or on Sunday? We live in a society where dressing in a nun’s habit is okay, but it’s not okay to dress in a hijab. A society where girls should be allowed to dress anyway they like – but it’s their own fault when they get raped for dressing seductively. If we read Romans 4, verses 2 to 4 from the version The Message, we read:

For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume he should only be a vegetarian and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.

So who are we to judge another by appearances? Everyone has been invited to God’s table and is to be warmly welcomed. Even those who have hurt us. Even those who have somehow betrayed us. Our accountability before God is individual – I will be judged according to what I have thought, said, done or failed to do in honor of God. You will be judged and held accountable for what you have thought, said, done, or failed to do for God.

I leave us with this parting thought about the way we live our lives, in forgiveness and compassion for all others who are invited to the table:

None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It is God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other.  (The Message – Romans 14:7-8)

 

 

Define, God, path, destination, agnostic, personal God, higher being, books, leadership, wisdom, controlling, tongue, Proverbs, power of words, presence of God, practicing presence, Shekinah

Defining God

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

So one of the books that I’m reading at the moment is “In Tune with the Infinite“, by Ralph Waldo Trine. I am loving this book! Hard to believe it was originally written some 115 years ago – it’s easy reading! But what I really love about the book is that he focuses on Oneness with God, every moment of each day. Life hasn’t always been this way: I haven’t always valued being present and being aware of Presence or oneness with God.

I am much more comfortable with the terms he uses to refer to God than with those of some other books, but my awareness of the names we use to refer to God are also a reflection of the image we have created of how and what God is.

Is God personal or simply a Presence?

I really struggle with identifying where I stand on this? Maybe because I think God is both! God is God (omnipotent & omnipotence; omniscient & omniscience; omnipresent & omnipresence): why must we put God in a box and a definition?

A bit of background:

I grew up in a fundamentalist (of course, we didn’t call ourselves that!) group, where Mum & Dad worked as missionaries. Now when I look at the “do’s” and “don’ts”, the corporal punishment expected to be given (i.e. my parents were looked down on if they didn’t punish), and the control over how everyone lived their lives, I wonder how close to being a “cult” we were. Thankfully, Mum & Dad got kicked out of the mission, although it was heartbreaking and earth-shattering at the time. It was all I knew. Then we moved back to New Zealand, where I discovered that we were Presbyterian.

How does a Presbyterian end up in a fundamentalist group? Trying to save the world! I have to hand that to Mum & Dad: they truly believed that they were doing God’s will and this was the best that they can be. And I will say this for them: every time I go back to Soloy or Tolè, they are remembered by everyone with great love and affection. They positively impacted people’s lives. And in some cases, literally saved lives (mum was an RN and midwife, so in the boondocks with no EMTs or hospitals, sometimes mum was everything). And dad was love. He loved these people with his heart. If I had just an ounce of the amount of love that dad has for the world, I would be a great person! Do I disagree with some of dad’s opinions? Yes. But I can agree to disagree with him!

By 17 I had “left” the church: blame it on the hormones, the rebellious years, starting University and living the student life. But, the explanation that I gave to myself – as does every self-righteous 17 year old – is that I was sick of the hypocrisy. And by hypocrisy I mean: you know I go out drinking on Friday & Saturday night, and you want me to come to church on Sunday morning and pretend to be a good Christian. I would much rather sleep in and sleep off the hangover!

Reality, which I came to face years later, is that I was mad at God, at Christians, at the mission (especially leadership), and at “organized religion”. I didn’t know enough then to be able to think through all of those things or actually verbalize it yet. So, it was much easier just to be a rebellious teenager that no longer wanted to go to church with my parents.

Forgiveness & moving on

At 21, in the midst of an existential crisis, my flatmate leant me a book she had just finished reading as she went through her separation & divorce that had really helped her: Louise Hay “You can heal your life“. I read it through once. And then I read it through a second time, and did all the assignments as it suggested. And my happy (well, actually, miserable at the time) little bubble finished bursting! I literally packed a weekend bag and my dog (you can’t cry if you don’t have a dog to hug!), borrowed a friend’s bach in Kaiaua (pronounced: Ky-ow-ah), and went off to say goodbye to my demons! I spent the better part of 3 days grieving and forgiving. Letting go. And coming to terms with “what do I believe now?”.

I realized that I blamed God for everything: everything that had been done by so-called Christians in God’s name was God’s fault! A child’s view? Perhaps. But also the consequence of the way I was brought up!

My broken heart and broken dreams and broken family all tumbled out. I came to terms with everything that I blamed Mum & Dad for: and came to an understanding of how they were also victims to some extent of what had happened. And I realized, as a young adult, that they were human. They had done the best they could with what they had and they knew. They were not perfect: they could have done things differently, but they didn’t know any different. They protected me to the best of their ability, they same way they looked after my sister and brother. And for all 3 of us, it hadn’t been enough. We were hurt and broken. But so were they! Life had dealt them a beating and they were lucky to still be standing! I’ll write about all of that another day!

And most importantly, I started to forgive myself!

Twenty years growing up in Christianity and I had to learn from Louise Hay what forgiveness and letting go meant! I’ve read somewhere that tears contain healing properties. I must have completely healed my body in those 3 days with all the tears I cried!

Who & what is God?

Having said that, after that weekend, I came away with a view of God as an impersonal entity that was not involved in the daily affairs of men. I was done with Christianity! God and I were good, insofar as I no longer blamed God for how I had reacted to everything that had happened to me over the past 20 years. Man-made situations were simply that: created by other men & women who had claimed to be acting on God’s behalf. And I was done with organised religion and others telling me what God had said and how to read and interpret the Bible.

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And so there I stood, happily: standing on my own two feet. Responsible for my life and the life I wanted to have. Not some rebellious teen that didn’t want to go to Church on Sunday morning because she wanted to sleep off last nights drinks, but someone who simply decided that God was “out there” and not “in my heart”. Religion was organized to control and manipulate us, but each person had to decide for themselves what they believed.

I was suddenly comfortable talking to Mum & Dad about God and beliefs and life in generally without feeling guilty that I was living differently from what they believed. I built a new relationship with Mum & Dad: one that to this day is amazing! They’ve done a great job of growing up.

And so, for the better part of the next 15 years, I was a happy agnostic. I am totally responsible for my life and being, and God may exist, but it has nothing to do with me personally.

Living as a happy agnostic

So, as a happy agnostic, at 23, I came back to Panama to say “goodbye” to the ghosts and ghouls of the past, to forgive and let go of any last vestiges that might be in my subconscious. The plan: spend 3 months on holiday in Panama and then move to the UK to go backpacking for a year while I decided to do with life. But free and clear of anything that I was still hanging on to, because I always felt in New Zealand that I was in the wrong place. Something was still hanging onto me that wouldn’t let me move forward with life.

Of course, life never quite goes as planned: twenty-one years later and I am still in Panama. It is still home!

When I stepped out of the airport doors (which was air conditioned), and I was struck by the hot, humid air, something inside said “Welcome home”. And so, in a second, I changed my mind. I am not going to stay 3 months, I’m going to get a job and stay for 2 years. That plan isn’t the one that happened either. I’m still here!

Living in a predominantly Catholic country, where I would venture to say that the vast majority are non-practicing, it’s easy to be agnostic. No one is worried here about what church you do or don’t go to; no one worries about your “salvation” or what you personally believe. There’s superstition, possibly more than your fair share. I adopted a black cat – so I was definitely a witch! And I let people believe it, if that was what they wanted to think. It’s just a cat! But if you want to assign my cat some supernatural powers, so be it.

And so it went for about 15 years.

Inside out, Romans, Matthew, reject, rejected, gifts, calling, mercy, listen, understanding, practicing presence, squeeze, news, environment, true colours, masks, fears, anger, healing, love, fear, mouths, words, tongue, practicing presence, Shekinah

Sermon: Inside Out

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

READINGS:

    • Romans 11: 1-2a; 29-31
    • Matthew 15: 10-11; 15-20

 

This week, in the news from Charlottesville and then Barcelona, we see far more fear and hatred in the world than we are comfortable with. This is not the world that I want my daughter to grow up in. The unfortunate reality is that we are in an environment today where people have become comfortable showing us what they really hold on the inside – they are letting it come to the surface and showing their “true colours”. While I’m repelled by it, I’m also a little relieved that the masks are off – now that we know you have these fears and anger on the inside, let’s talk about them. Let’s talk about healing. Let’s talk about a love that casts out all fear!

Our readings this morning dealt with 2 particular topics:

  1. We each have a gift and calling from God that are irrevocable; and
  2. Whatever comes out of our mouths, comes directly from our hearts!

We are all like lemons: a lemon has some wonderfully positive characteristics; it’s full of vitamins, it can help your liver deal with bile, it can cleanse your bowels, you can use it to bleach your hair (if you don’t mind it getting dried out), we put “real lemon juice” in our dish-washing liquid and our furniture oil; it is considered anti-bacterial. On the other hand, it’s also sour, acidic, tart, astringent and in some cases just plain bitter! When you squeeze a lemon, what you get out is lemon juice – because that’s what is inside.

And when you or I are put under pressure and squeezed – the “real” you comes out: that which is really inside of you! And, like the lemon, you have some wonderful qualities, gifts and calling; and other parts of you are sour or bitter or not so pleasant.

STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES strengths, weaknesses, talents, gifts, serving others, learning, growing, born again, rebirth, transformed, renewing, God, Spirit, healing

Before I talk about your gifts and your callings, I want to remind you that our strengths and our weaknesses are usually connected: they can’t be looked at as independent attributes.  For example: your stubbornness is the determination that gets things done; your creativity is probably somehow tied to your day-to-day chaos; your inconsistency may allow you to remain flexible; your calm may be seen by many as emotionlessness. Many adventurers are seen as being irresponsible; someone who is realistic may tend to be negative and pessimistic; and someone who is self-confident may easily become arrogant.

Behind all of this, is the heart and the intentions of the heart! Is the heart coming from a place of love, caring and calling? Or is the heart  coming from a place of lack, fear and ego?

There is a story that is told of an old Cherokee teaching his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.  “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

WHICH “I” ARE YOU FEEDING?

If you have followed me so far, you will realise that every one of your weaknesses might actually be a strength – a gift that God has given you to help you fulfill your calling. They say that the best moment to plant a tree was 20 years ago; but if you didn’t do it 20 years ago, the next best day is today. If you haven’t identified your calling in life, today is the best day to sit down and identify what you were called by God to do. Every single person that is born was born with a purpose to fulfill on earth! Everyone.

“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10

You have your gifts and talents. You were given enough. But if you are busy feeding your heart anger, envy, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt & ego – that is what will win. When you are put under pressure and squeezed, that is what will show to the world!

So, when you look at your gifts and talents, and you identify your calling: then you have to strive to perfect those gifts. Use it, or lose it? Anyone that has ever tried to learn a musical instrument knows what no matter how much talent you have, without practice it’s impossible to improve. There are hours of practice of techniques, until muscle memory takes over instead of having to think about each movement. They say it takes some 10,000 hours to become a master! If you look at your spiritual gifts and your Christian life – how far along the path are you investing 10,000 hours to master being a Christian and following in Jesus’ footsteps?

If you considered a University degree – 4 years of study, which is about 8 months out of the year, let’s say 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? That would be about 5,500 hours that you spent only to reach a bachelor’s level of education. Most of us would not consider a recent University graduate to have mastered anything yet. So, when it comes to your spiritual life and transformation, when it comes to what you have inside your heart, why do you expect it to be so easy?

BEING “BORN AGAIN”

rebirth, transformation, patience, struggle, effort, hard work, mercy, gifts, calling, God, listen, understand,, mouth, heartI know for myself, there is this lingering idea that when you are “born again” you become a new creation! Suddenly it’s all easy, right? But if you remember, about 2 months ago we were studying Romans 7, verses 14 to 25, where Paul was agonizing over how he wanted to do good and yet was doing exactly what he didn’t want to do! It was a constant struggle. But as you get to know your strengths and weaknesses, as you cultivate yourself – you practice, sharpen, and develop – then your heart becomes transformed closer each day to the calling that God has for you.

But I would dare to say that “being reborn” is simply “the first day of the rest of your life”. As today is. As tomorrow will be when you wake up tomorrow morning. So use your gifts well. The gifts and talents that God has given you  are not for your own benefit, they’re for the benefit of other people. My gifts are for your benefit. Your gifts are for my benefit. You are to use those gifts in the service of other people. God has given you a special role in this world: you have a special contribution to make that others cannot replace!

1 Corinthians 7: 7 reminds us:

each person has a special gift from God, of one kind or another.

LIVING FROM THE HEART:true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good, virtue, praise, meditation, heart, words, mouth, acceptable, Lord, gifts, talents, focus, meditate, excellent, praiseworth, English speaking, Sunday service, Panama City, Panama

As we read in Romans 11:

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! … God has not rejected his people who he foreknew.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

God has NOT rejected us! God’s love abounds for everyone: the gifts and calling are irrevocable. But it depends upon us to make our way back to God’s calling and to use the gifts we are given. It is up to us to get ourselves back on track with the forgiveness, healing and help that God has promised throughout the entire Bible. We may reject ourselves. We may reject others. But God is love: God is not ONLY loving. God is love. This means that God cannot help but love us. We are all children of God, called according to God’s purpose. May our hearts and minds reflect this calling.

We read in Psalm 19, verse 14:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

David knew well that what he meditated on, in his heart, would control the words that came out of his mouth. As you take stock of your gifts and talents, as you identify your calling and purpose, how you are called to serve others, then you will find the focus on which you are meant to meditate, ruminate, ponder, consider, reflect and think. And as you spend more time, thinking on things which are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy, just, commendable: when you are squeezed by life – that is the fruit that will come out of your mouth from your heart! I trust, as we all leave today, that we will go forth to our calling, using our gifts as we were meant to do.

Readings:

  • Romans 11: 1-2a; 29-31

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! … God has not rejected his people who he foreknew.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you… have now received mercy… so they now, by the mercy shown to you, they too many now receive mercy.

  • Matthew 15: 10-11; 15-20

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”
But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”
Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions… false witness, slander [gossip, lying, cursing, blasphemies, evil speaking, complaining, railings, perjury, impiety of speech]. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Sermon: Rejoicing in Sufferings

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

READINGS:

  • Romans 5: 1-8
  • Matthew 9:35 – 10:8
  • Psalm 100

REJOICING IN SUFFERINGS

I invite you to think for a moment about that Olympian champion, the one that sat on the sofa every day watching TV, checking their internet, and reading books.  The one that slept in every morning, had a full cooked breakfast, eating anything they wanted, when they wanted, partying with their friends any time they liked, and taking it easy. On the day of the meet, the simply went out and effortlessly won gold because they were just the best.

What do you mean you never heard of that guy?  Apparently it’s not that easy to be an Olympian Gold Medalist! There may be suffering involved on the road to glory: it takes work, effort, consistency, perseverance, and faith to become perfect and complete, lacking nothing! Rapid success stories happen, true. But the reality is that most “overnight successes” come at the end of years of hard work and those witnessing the “success” part too readily assume the “overnight part.”

Joy comes in spite of our pain! To have joy in spite of difficulties and struggles  is not to deny pain; it is to recognize that they can co-exist. The same way a pregnant mother can go through the agony of childbirth and still have joy in thinking about what is to come. She knows that there is a beautiful light and life at the end of these painful hours.

This morning, Paul says that we are to “Rejoice” in Suffering!  And the reason that Paul gives for this is that suffering produces “endurance”: in other words

  • intestinal fortitude
  • grit
  • perseverance
  • stamina
  • tenacity
  • gutsiness
  • resilience

Paul  goes on to say that this endurance will produce character, and character produces hope, and out of hope comes an outpouring of love into our hearts.

James 1, verses 2 to 4 say something similar:

2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

I want to talk  this morning about cultivating resilience, which enables us to remain positive and focused. Resilience is a quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever – they rise from the ashes, rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve: a basic ingredient for happiness. So, Paul tells us to “rejoice in our sufferings” – note: he doesn’t say you will only suffer once.  There will be sufferings – did you hear the S? And yet, we are to rejoice, because this is how we learn and grow!

Paul says suffering will lead to endurance, and this will, in turn, lead to having character (that is, who you really are, when all the layers are peeled away – when no one else is looking!).  Said another way:  suffering produces steadiness, steadiness produces reliability, and reliability produces hope.  If we prove ourselves to be reliable, even in the face of hardship – there is hope!

How many of you here today have survived every day of your life so far in spite of the ups and downs?

Amazing! You have survived everything that life has thrown at you so far!  Every one here today is a survivor.  But here’s the challenge: it is not enough just to be here – you should be better for it!  Better equipped, greater patience, more understanding, a higher level of emotional intelligence, empathy for your fellow man or woman.  How do you make this happen, faster and easier on yourself and those around you?

For starters, I would say that the first step is acknowledgement: recognizing that you are in a situation that is outside of your comfort zone and that makes you feel that you are under threat.  The reason I say this is that when you are in denial, “this isn’t happening to me”, it’s impossible to actually act!  You can’t make any decisions about something that isn’t happening to you!   So, step one is admitting that you have a situation.

But I invite you to be careful in your choice of words: transform “hardship” into “challenge”, giving yourself the possibility of seeing opportunity and to make this a productive situation. What do you want life to look like on the other side of this adversity? Remember: your success rate so far is 100%: how will you come out of this one?

Step two, is getting a handle on your emotions.  The signs of a resilient person is that when they are in a difficult situation, they keep calm, evaluate things rationally, and come up with a plan, and so they can act.  The biggest emotion we have to face is fear – fight or flight or lizard brain (paralyzed by fear, shutting down).  Imagine how many times the word “fear” is dealt with in the Bible!  John 14: 27 says

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  … Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Or Joshua 1:9

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged…

Or even Psalm 23: 4

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

Our human response is we try to hide our fear – we mask it:

  • with anger (anger feels much more powerful than fear!);
  • with frustration (“I don’t know what to do” sounds better than “I know what to do, but I’m too scared to do it”);
  • with stoicism (I’m bearing this – rather than getting off my butt and doing something about it, because I would hate to make a decision and be wrong).

When you identify your fear or fears, you can then identify the possibilities that lie on the other side: opportunities. Managing  emotions requires that we grow deeply in emotional intelligence – so much to learn from difficult circumstances!

The third step in resilience is a little crazy: you need to be delusional! And by that I mean: you need to set the bar to recovery WAY HIGH! Crazy successful people and people who survive tough situations are all overconfident. And by overconfident I mean… a delusional sense of self-worth.  But wait!! – wasn’t step one and step two about acknowledging where you are and what you are feeling?  Yes. But now I am asking you to go all out in believing:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me…

Yes, you need to clearly understand and acknowledge the situation, but be overconfident about YOUR ability to get yourself through and out of the situation successfully.  Remind yourself of your strengths and accomplishments. Remember: so far your success rate at making it through difficult days and situations is 100%.What does successful look like this time?

Step 4 in the process is something continual: Preparation.  Whether you are in a difficult situation or not, you should always be in preparation.  Luke 12:35 reminds us:

Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit.

And likewise, 2 Timothy 4:2

… be prepared, in season and out of season…

It’s impossible to prepare for the unknown, but we can constantly improve ourselves, practicing good habits and overcoming our bad habits.  Habits are what will come through in times of difficulty.  Think of common habits you have: breathing, walking, putting on your seat belt…

When I was 22, I spent 7 hours preparing and training for the most important 10 seconds of that day.  I arrived at 8 a.m., with a group of about 20 other people, and we trained, over and over and over again, lying on the floor, standing up, hanging from harnesses in the air… and when they felt that we were actually ready, they put us all in an airplane, with parachutes on our backs.  And when we reached an altitude of over 3,000 feet, one by one, we jumped out of the plane.

I have complete amnesia about those first five seconds of the jump – no sense of falling, no sense of the wind rushing past my face, nothing!  All I remember is my security check: arms in position, knees bent, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, Check (over my right shoulder), check (over my left shoulder).  Parachute properly deployed!  We were static line jumping, in our first solo jumps from the plane.  I do remember the last 5 vital seconds of the experience – the landing.  There are really only 10 seconds in a jump that are the most important:  the first 5 and the last 5:  making sure your chute is open (otherwise releasing that chute and deploying the reserve – if that happens, go back to step one!), and landing on the ground.  You don’t want to collapse your chute 3 stories up in the air, otherwise you could break both femur’s as you plummet down straight onto your legs! But we spent 7 hours preparing for those 10 seconds – and hardly any time at all on how to actually control your parachute, turns and having fun.  Just pay attention to your headset and what the instructor is saying and you’ll be fine.

What does your preparation for the hard times in life look like? Does it bring you hope?  I had hope as I jumped out of the plane – not one, but two parachutes on my back, and knowing that I knew exactly what to do if there was a problem with the first one.  I was as ready as I could be.  There is an amazing adrenaline rush on the other side of fear!

Step five, is kind of obvious: hard work! Whatever the situation is that is bringing you suffering, there are things you will need to do! Whether it is the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a drop in income, or the ending of a relationship, there is work to be done. After acknowledging the situation, and facing your fear or pain or loss, and getting delusional about your ability to survive this, relying on all the preparation that you have brought to this moment in your life: you have to actually stand up and do what needs to be done!

Proverbs 14:23 reminds us:

All hard work brings profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

It’s not enough to talk about what needs to be done and what you are going to do. You actually have to do it! I understand the desire just to stay in bed and pull the covers up over your head and give in to mind-numbing sleep!  I am sure that we have all been there – plagued by the depression.  Step one:  get up!   Take the first step!

“Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes. That is an important step in creating an ongoing feeling of motivation and preventing the descent into hopelessness.”

It is those small victories that carry you forward – one more step, one more challenge, one more day.

And finally, help: there’s a time to receive help and there’s a time to help others. Having caring, supportive people around you acts as a protective factor during times of crisis. It is important to have people you can confide in. And sometimes, in our most challenging moments, what our souls and spirits need is to reach out and help others. It is when we find a sense of purpose in our lives that we transform the most. For example:

After her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver, Candace Lightner founded Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Upset by the driver’s light sentence, Lightner decided to focus her energy into creating awareness of the dangers of drunk driving.

I’m thankful for her impact – she reached me, as a teenager, teaching me two important lessons: never drive drunk and never, ever get in the car with a drunk driver.  So, I was usually the designated driver.  Candace Lightner will never know me, or the thousands of teenagers whose lives she saved: but she made a difference! Are you making a difference?

This is where we find hope and an outpouring of love in our hearts!

Sermon: The Good Shepherd

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

Welcome to the Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Easter (or the third Sunday after Easter if you prefer), where every year we remind ourselves of a special relationship that we have with our Creator.  Each year, we read on Good Shepherd Sunday two particular readings:

  • Psalm 23:  The Lord is my Shepherd
  • John 10: 1-10

Throughout our three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, while we may read different Epistles or different Prophets, the reading of the Psalm and this particular Gospel remain unchanged.  So I would like us to consider, this morning, what we can learn from them regarding our day-to-day living, because being of the Christian faith isn’t something you do on Sundays: it’s how your live your day-to-day life.  And the Creator’s offer to “shepherd” us is not something that we only need on Sundays: it’s a protection, guidance, purpose, security, blessing, and healing that should happen every day for each of us.

In the Old Testament, like in the book of Exodus, Yahweh is represented as a shepherd.  The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel compare Yahweh’s care and protection of His people to that of a shepherd.  “He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against His breast and leading the mother ewes to their rest” (Is. 40:11).

I would like to start with some thoughts, briefly, regarding the Gospel from John, and then focus on Psalm 23.

10:1 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.
10:2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

John starts chapter 10, speaking metaphorically of us as sheep and of the Christ as our shepherd, and he begins with entrance into our lives.  John reminds us that the legitimate way into our lives is through the gate: anyone who climbs in by any other way is a thief and a bandit.  Leaders may enter our lives through false pretenses, lies, manipulation, false promises, deceit, masquerade, pressure, threats, or playing on our fears (think of political leaders, electoral promises, fears that are preyed upon), but I AM enters our lives through the relationship that we voluntarily establish with God’s Presence, drawing our spirit into Oneness with God’s Spirit.  It is only in the presence of pure love that we can openly and willingly open the door our hearts, souls and spirits, to become one with the Holy Spirit, voluntarily.

10:3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Whose voice are you listening to? Maybe you are listening to political commentary, webinars, self-help gurus, podcasts by your favorite fitness guru. But do you take time in your day to listen to the voice of the Shepherd?  Is your life so busy and so caught up that there is no time for silence?  If you are feeling like you are a hamster on a wheel, maybe it is time to start saying “no” and learning to enjoy the Silence and stillness of “Be Still and Know that I AM that I AM”.  The promise we have in John 10 is that I AM will call you by name and lead you out, but in order for this promise to be fulfilled, you need to actually hear I AM’s voice.  That means time in silence.  Time in prayer.  Time in quiet peace and meditation.  And once you hear I AM’s voice, then you will hear where he wants to lead you.  Not your plans, but I AM’s plans and leadership.

10:4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
10:5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Do you know and hear the voice of I AM?  Or have you become so deaf to this voice that you are following the voice of strangers?  Searching for an earthly shepherd to take care of you, to allay your fears, to give you safety and security?  Who is your shepherd?  When we start to only follow the voices and advice and direction from our leaders, we start to believe that only they can hear the voice of the Shepherd and we simply do what they are telling us.  It’s certainly easier this way, we can abdicate “responsibility” and if anything goes wrong, “it was their fault”: certainly nice to have a scapegoat.  And that’s a sermon for another day…  Are you running from the strangers and following the voice of the Shepherd?  Or have you become so accustomed to the voice of the stranger that you have stopped following the voice of the Shepherd?

As I said at the beginning, I want us to turn now to Psalm 23, and go through this line by line, understanding a little bit more today our relationship with I AM.  Some of you may be wondering why I have used I AM so frequently through my sermon this morning:  God’s name is almost always translated LORD (all caps) in the English Bible. But the Hebrew would be pronounced something like “Yahweh,” and is built on the word for “I am.”  So every time we read or hear the word “Yahweh”, or our poor translation of it as “LORD” in the English Bible, you should think: this is “I am”, reminding me each time that God absolutely is. “YHWH Raah” – I AM, my Shepherd.

And Psalm 23 starts with this:

The Lord is my shepherd,

I AM is my shepherd.  I want you to think about this “I AM” for a moment.  This I AM is the same I AM that Moses encountered at the burning bush;  this is the I AM that the children of Israel followed out of Egypt and through the desert.  This is the I AM that is the way, the truth and the life. This is “I am the bread of life”.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 8:58). I am the light of the world.  I am the door of the sheep. “I AM the good shepherd.The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) I am the resurrection and the life.  “You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. (John 13:13). I am the true vine.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8).  I am the first and the last.   That’s our shepherd: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, all-presence.

This verse speaks about our relationship with I AM. And I would like to invite you, for a moment, to consider your idea of who and what God is.  If we are to effectively pray, listen and communicate with God we need to become clear on exactly who and what we think God is, and become clear about our feelings toward God.  Religions around the world typically classify God as Thou/You, Me (the indwelling Spirit), or He/She/It.

This first view of God: Thou/You – is “Our Father, who art in Heaven”.  The second view of God, is problematic for some Christians, as it views God as being within us, and yet we profess that we believe the Holy Spirit to abide inside us, and say “not I, but Christ that lives in me”.

 

And that third face of God is the Omni-Presence of God in all of life:  I AM the way, the truth and the life.  It is the breath of life that we breath each moment of every day.  As Christians, we are quite fearful of this face of God, seeing religions that are idol worshipers, because they focus on God in things and creation.  Yet, we fail to see that this is God:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  God, as Omni-Presence does not mean God in the air, “around” all things… it is God IN all things.  It is God that is IN this pulpit, it is God IN the floor, it is God IN the pew-bench on which you are seated, it is God in your car, in your steering wheel, in the gear shift.  It is God in your home, in your sofa, in your bed.  It is God in each bird, each butterfly, each mosquito (sorry… terrible example!). We say we believe God to be Onmi-Presence, but then when we talk about God, we seem to limit God to just being in the air “around”, rather than literally EVERYWHERE.

Let me try to explain this a little better:  you stand on a beach looking out at the vastness of the Ocean.  There are waves breaking on the shore, and in each wave that breaks on the shore, you will find the Ocean.  You take a bucket and you fill it with water, and in this water you will also find the Ocean.  If you took just one drop of that water, it would still be part of the Ocean.  Now, that drop of water is not the whole Ocean, obviously.  But how do you separate that drop of water from being Ocean.  And that, for me, is the Omni-Present God:  God is much more than JUST the bird or the butterfly or the mosquito… but God is there!

And having said all of this, I will admit, I don’t understand God: I don’t even begin to. God remains unfathomable to me!  I cannot wrap my tiny human brain around a definition that even comes close!

So, I invite you this morning to answer this question this week:  Who or What is God for you?

I apologise that I have spent so much time discussing this first verse of Psalm 23, that it will not leave me much time to go through the rest of the lines of Psalm 23, but I felt that “how we see God” is the very crux of how we interpret Psalm 23.

I AM is my shepherd,

And so, let’s continue with Psalm 23:

I shall not want.

Some translations write this as “I have everything I need” or “I lack nothing”.  YHWH Jireh, my provider.  I AM, my provider.  Are you allowing God to provide for you? Physically? Mentally? Spiritually?  Do you allow God to nourish your soul?
As a parent, I reserve the right to say “no” to all the whims and requests of my daughter. She would love ice cream, M&Ms and candy every day: I think about the teeth, the enamel and vitamins and minerals.  She will not lack anything, she will have everything she needs.

Do you accept that God may say “no” to your whims and fancies?

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

Are you resting with God?

He leads me beside still waters.

Are you following God beside still waters, so that God can refresh your soul?

He restores my soul;

How do you allow God to heal you?  YHWH Rapha: I AM that healeth.

He leads me in paths of righteousness,

We sing “Jesus take the wheel”, but do you let God actually drive?  You ask for guidance, but do you follow the guide?  “No, not there!  That’s not where I want to go… I want you to take the wheel when I’ve already got myself into trouble – just get me out of this and then give me back my steering wheel!”

For His name’s sake.

Are you living a purpose driven life?  I AM that I AM… His name’s sake…

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

Sometimes, on the road to greener pastures there will be trials and hardships and difficult paths.  Do you trust I AM?

I will fear no evil;

I will fear no evil.  This is a powerful declaration!  I will fear no evil.  How often do we allow fear to dictate our lives?

For You are with me,

YHWH Shammah – God is faithful, omni-present, everywhere we are.

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

The rod and the staff – they are for fighting off the wolves, the lions and the bears.  And for stopping us from going down the wrong path, to pull us back us (sometimes around the neck) when we’ve started to go over the edge.  Sometimes pulling us kicking and screaming from the edge, when we don’t realise we are about to step over the edge.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,

We have hope and abundance and moments of rejoicing!  Do you enjoy those feasts that God provides?

You anoint my head with oil;

We are consecrated to God.  Do you live your life as a consecrated child of God?

My cup runs over.

Are you truly thankful?

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

You are blessed – richly blessed!  Goodness and mercy follow you – do you show goodness and mercy to everyone in your life?  Do your acts reflect this goodness and mercy you have received?

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord

God is everywhere… you dwell in his house at every moment of every day.  Not just while you are here in the house of the Lord which is this building. But every moment. Do your actions and thoughts reflect that?

Forever.

Eternity… it’s a long time.

As you leave today, consider this:

  • Who, what and where is God for you?
  • What is your personal definition of God?
  • What does that definition mean for your relationship with God?  With others?
  • Who are you listening to? Do you recognise the Shepherd’s voice?
  • Do you allow the Shepherd to guide you?  To provide what you need?
  • Do you give thanks for the rich blessings, allowing goodness and mercy to shower those who come into contact with you?

Be blessed in every way!

 

Originally in the sermon, but then edited out to make it more understandable:

In The Three Faces of God we read:

“Most of us are familiar with three different perspectives from which to approach and describe God. These perspectives determine whether we address God in the first, second, or third person:
God as Ground of Being is the First Face of God. It is the experiential “I”—God within us, or God immanent.
God as an entity to whom we relate and pray to is the Second Face. It is God as “Thou” or “You.”
God present in the manifest world as the Web of Life, as Nature, as All That Is, is the Third Face. It is ‘He/She/It’ and is understood through our senses.”

This book, the Bible, attempts to teach us that God is all three.  We know this as the Trinity: God, as Holy Spirit, is the “I” within each one of us, the “not I but Christ that liveth in me” that connects directly with our spirit, bringing us to complete Oneness with God.  When we completely still, when we allow ourselves to finally connect, it is the still small voice that speaks to us.  God as the Father we know as Thou or You, this is the God that we pray to.  In many senses, it is the God we have a relationship with – some see God as a Santa Claus, that we make our requests to, others see God as an angry or justifying abuses.  The Three Faces of God reminds us:

“It’s the unhealthy version of the Second Face of God that has created so much trouble throughout history. Since medieval times and within hierarchical religions, the Second Face of a judgmental God who metes out punishments and rewards has been used as a weapon to marginalize, kill, emotionally wound, and control people and circumstances. Abuse of the Second Face of God resulted in a judgmental superbeing before whom we all stood as sinners.”

“Yet by rejecting the Second Face of God relationship entirely, we miss the richness offered by a healthy version. This is an understanding of God with whom we can experience personal and intimate relationship in our daily lives, to whom we can express gratitude and love and surrender. It’s God as unconditionally loving parent, comforter, supportive friend.”

Sermon: Dry Bones

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

READINGS:

Image result for images valley of bones

So, this morning we’ve heard the reading from Ezekiel: the Valley of Bones, and we’ve also heard the story of the raising of Lazarus.  Given that they were long readings, my sermon this morning is going to be adequately short, because I know we don’t want a repeat of last week’s service where we kept you here for an extra half hour!

I am going to have a quick look at the Valley of Bones, which we are presented with in Ezekiel.  Now, when you read Ezekiel, you don’t so much read it, as you do see it, it’s filled with imagery, like the song: “Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air”?  You know – that’s where the UFO people get their Biblical foundation for UFO’: the wheel in Ezekiel is said to be a UFO.

That aside, God was always telling Ezekiel to do really bizarre things, and the valley of the bones is one of those cases.

So, many sermons have been written the Valley of the Bones, using it to talk about Church revival, vision, purpose and passion ; and many more sermons regarding broken dreams, promises, relationships and reviving those broken parts of our lives!  But this morning, I don’t want to illustrate or tell you which one to apply it to.  I only want to give you some very basic lessons in how to apply it:

  • First and foremost:  It all starts with God, not us.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.”

While I realise that the analogy is often made about our lives or our Church being a valley full of dry bones, there are special moments when God takes us to have a look at this and wants us to see if as such.  And there’s a moment for God to act upon it, and if we try to do this in our own time and by our own strength, it’s very unlikely to work.

There’s an importance to listening and being open to the timing and vision that God has, not our own desperation of wanting to make things change. Are you open to God’s time and being where God wants you to be?

  • Secondly: God gives Ezekiel a promise to believe in:

“Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.“

Have you had a promise from God in your life that you haven’t seen happen yet?  Has God given you a vision of what God plans to do, that you’ve been waiting to see come into fruition and maybe you are tired of waiting?  This is not a culture and a world where we understand “wait” very well. We want it, and we want it now, no matter what piece of our life it is. For us to be able to hang onto a promise of God in the tough times takes trust, or faith if you prefer. There are many promises and declarations throughout the Bible that we don’t even have to wait for new ones.

  • Thirdly, there’s opening our mouths and declaring what we’ve been promised – the same way there is obedience in doing:

“So I prophesied as I had been commanded…”

It’s no good to just keep silent: how many of you have seen the studies with water or plants and the experiments with the power of words? What are you saying in your life?

  • Then, we start to see results, but sometimes it’s not a full result, and there’s still more to be done – we can’t stop half way through.

“… and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.”

So, I had this promise from God, and I started declaring it as I believed I was supposed to, and God raised an army from a valley of dried bones, but there’s no life in it… Maybe the jobs not done yet!

  • So, Ezekiel looks back to God, and God gives him new instructions:

“Then He said to me, “Prophesy…”

Do it again, but differently this time!

We live in a society where we are used to quick results, where satisfaction is immediate – where the internet should be at least 6 GB otherwise we have to wait more than 1 second for the browser to open and that’s just too long!  But many times, in life, finding your passion or your vision – re-finding your passion when you’ve lost your way, when you’re burnt out and lackluster, takes much longer than just a moment!  Often, there are many steps in the process.

  • And remember to breathe!

“Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

Most of you know, that the Hebrew word “rauch” refers to the “breath”, but also refers to “wind” and is another word for “spirit”.  This one word has all these beautiful meanings that are all one and the same:  It was the ruach of God that hovered over the waters at creation. It was the ruach of God that came into Adam and gave that clay life. It was the ruachof God that blew like a mighty wind at Pentecost. And it’s the ruach of God that Ezekiel asks to come and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

When you breathe, remember you are breathing in the breath of God, his life-giving breath.  The breeze that comes through these church windows: that’s the Spirit of God reaching out to touch you. That as you take a breath and you see wind, or you sense the Spirit within you, it’s all the same thing. How different our lives might be if we were conscious of breathing God in and out when we were outside.

For existence to become life, we need the breath of life – the Spirit to fill us.  It’s not enough for us to have bones, or to build a skeleton from those bones.  It’s not enough to cover those bones with sinew and muscles and skin!  We need the breath of God that animates us, that causes us to truly live, and not just to be connected bones.

If we are not a Spirit-filled church, it’s not enough to have a clear vision, purpose and passion.  We can have a structured leadership and a great organization, we can have ministries and teams that are all pulling together and working perfectly – but without the breath of God, we still won’t be able to get anything done.

 

 

FINAL ASIDE:

I want to leave you with this final thought regarding the breath of life (it’s from a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor):

“If you have studied earth science, then you know that our gorgeous blue-green planet is wrapped in a protective veil that we call the atmosphere, which separates the air we breathe from the cold vacuum of outer space. Beneath this veil is all the air that ever was. No cosmic planet-cleaning company comes along every hundred years or so to suck out all the old air and pump in some new. The same ancient air just keeps recirculating. Which means that every time any of us breathes, we breathe stardust left over from the creation of the earth. We breathe brontosaurus breath and pterodactyl breath. We breathe air that has circulated through the rain forests of Kenya, and air that has turned yellow with sulphur over Mexico City. We breathe the same air that Plato breathed, and Mozart and Michelangelo, not to mention Hitler [or Stalin or Mao]. Every time we breathe, we take in what was once some baby’s first breath, or some dying person’s last. We take it in, we use it to live, and when we breathe out it carries some of us with it into the next person or tree or blue-tailed skink who uses it to live.”

Sermon: Abundance of Grace

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

How many of you are awake this morning?  I’m looking for a show of hands here…

How many of you were awake while Betsy read the 7 verses from Romans 5: 12-17?  English Standard Version.  It seems amazing that the entire message of the Bible, from Genesis to the end,  is found here, all summed up neatly in seven verses.

If you all understood it, I don’t need to give you this sermon, and we can go straight to the offertory (we’ll skip the prayers) and then head downstairs to the coffee break.  How does that sound?

How many of you think you don’t need to hear this sermon?

How many of you think you can stay awake until I finish the sermon?

We’ll see how you all go with that, shall we?  …

This morning I’m going to take you on an intellectual (read: scientific journal mumbo jumbo), winding maze through one of the toughest texts that I’ve ever had to prepare for.

I am going to try to give you an explanation that you can hopefully understand…  although I am going to rely a bit on my high-school science as it relates to DNA sequencing in the human body and a very basic knowledge of NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming).

I want to start with the idea of the “Original Sin” and the effect of that “Original Sin” on mankind and how that is passed down from generation to generation.  Verse 12 of Romans 5 starts with

“just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men”

We’ve all been taught that Adam had everything he needed to live eternally, but that because of his sin in the garden of Eden, life becomes finite instead of infinite – death enters the world.

And I want to add to that mix the verse from Exodus 34:7 (ESV) that says:

Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

And I’ve wondered to myself how that might be possible on a molecular and physical level – can science explain what the Bible says happened to Adam because of sin and to all mankind, through the passing of the sin from generation to generation?  How does Adam’s bad nature get down to me all these millennia later? Well, some say, it’s like pollution or poison poured into a river. If a company dumps hundreds of liters of mercury into a river, then no matter how far downstream you go, you still get mercury poisoning.

Now – today I’m not going to give you a definition of sin – or even discuss what Adam’s sin was – trying to become like God, transgressing the Commandment God gave him, or whether sin is simply missing the mark of the most perfect version of yourself that God created you to be (like the archer that fails to hit the target).

What I want to look at is the effect that sin has upon us, as a human race, and then briefly touch about the gift of Abundance of Grace that we are promised in Romans 5: 17.

Our bodies have 3 billion genetic building blocks, or base pairs, that make us who we are. And we are somewhere between 99.5 to 99.9% similar to the person next to us.  A printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages! Of those pages, only some 500 would be unique to you. So how much of that do you think you inherited from 20 generations back?  How similar does that make you to the person sitting behind you?

And it seems that in 2017, scientists are getting closer to having the answers as they study the effects of stress and life-styles on our DNA codes and sequencing.  And now it seems that there is a reason for this, on 2 levels: epigenetics and the shortening of our telomeres (the protective casing at the end of a strand of DNA).   The field of epigenetics refers to the science that studies how the development, functioning and evolution of biological systems are influenced by forces operating outside the DNA sequence, including intracellular, environmental and energetic influences (and by energetic, I also mean the emotional forces that affect our bodies organs, such as when we get angry, are upset, or stressed and tired, especially for long periods of time).

Since the 1970s, researchers had known that the tightly wound spools of DNA inside each cell’s nucleus require something extra to tell them exactly which genes to transcribe, whether for a heart cell, a liver cell or a brain cell.

One such extra element is the methyl group, a common structural component of organic molecules. The methyl group works like a placeholder in a cookbook, attaching to the DNA within each cell to select only those recipes —  genes — necessary for that particular cell’s proteins. Because methyl groups are attached to the genes, residing beside but separate from the double-helix DNA code.  Originally these changes were believed to occur only during fetal development. But it has already been shown that DNA can be added to in adulthood, setting off a cascade of cellular changes resulting in cancer, diabetes or other illnesses.  Not only that, but epigenetic change could be passed down from parent to child, one generation after the next (hence you find the reference in the Bible that the sins of the fathers are passed down to the son to the third and fourth generations). A study from Randy Jirtle of Duke University showed that when female mice are fed a diet rich in methyl groups, the fur pigment of subsequent offspring is permanently altered. Just by playing with the diet, they could alter the colour of the fur of the mice.  Now, what if emotions, such as guilt, could play a similar role?

The medical field has already shown that stress has this particular effect.  Telomeres are a protective casing at the end of a strand of DNA. Each time a cell divides, it loses a bit of its telomeres. An enzyme called telomerase can replenish it, but chronic stress and cortisol exposure decrease your supply. When the telomere is too diminished, the cell often dies or becomes pro-inflammatory. This sets the aging process in motion, along with associated health risks.

Now we all know that old wives tale that tells a young pregnant woman not to cry during the pregnancy because her child will bear the effects of it through their entire life – but now science is beginning to understand that the negative effects of stress begin before conception.  A baby’s intrauterine environment is shaped by a mom’s pre-existing physical health. There have also been several studies looking at maternal health and telomeres in offspring: the higher a mom’s prenatal anxiety, the shorter the baby’s telomere length (i.e. the shorter the life span).

According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; a child whose grandparents lived through the ravages of a Revolution; young immigrants whose parents survived massacres; anyone who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories.

So what on earth does any of all this scientific mumbo jumbo have to do with the “Original Sin”, and Paul’s discussion of the original Adam and the posterior Adam (Jesus)?

Well, for starters – it explains how our genetic make up is affected by our habits, our environment, our diet, our stress, and even the stress and anxiety of being ashamed, berating ourselves, or failing to accept God’s forgiveness of our sins.  It explains how any resentment, bitterness or anger that we carry towards another person, when we fail to forgive, affects us to the most innermost of our being as David describes in the Psalms.

1. Your beliefs influence your behavior.  

One of the most basic ways that beliefs can shape reality is through their influence on behavior—no quantum physics or molecular genetics knowledge required.  Beliefs about your basic character—who you are as a person on a fundamental level—can be especially powerful. Research suggests that while guilt (feeling that you did a bad thing) can motivate self-improvement, shame (such as that felt by Adam & Eve in the garden), tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, reducing hope and undermining efforts to change, leaving you stuck in the rut of the very behavior you are ashamed of.

And your behavior will directly impact you with respect to your habits, whether they are good habits, or bad habits.

2. Your feelings directly affect your DNA:   

“When we have negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and dislike or hate, or think negative thoughts such as ‘I hate my job,’ ‘I don’t like so and so’ or ‘Who does he think he is?’, we experience stress and our energy reserves are redirected,” and I’m not talking about a positive redirecting. Part of our energy reserves, which otherwise would be put to work maintaining, repairing and regenerating our complex biological systems, which you probably know as your “body”, are used to confront the stresses these negative thoughts and feelings create, leaving your body unattended.

On another level, science is now beginning to understand that humans have multiple brains: the one you know in your head, your heart brain (which generates much of your energy field), and your gut brain.  So, when you are feeling heavy-hearted, what effect is this physically having on your DNA and body – how is it affecting the helix structure of your DNA strands?  When you are in a gut-wrenching panic or suffering constant anxiety, what effect is this having on the nutrients that are getting to your cells and DNA on a molecular level?

3. You may choose, or not, to accept the abundance of God’s grace:   

The entire Bible is about the transformation of man… having been made perfect, having become imperfect, and having reached perfection once more in the person of Jesus Christ.  Having loved perfectly: God and others – fulfilling the 2 greatest laws of the Bible:  To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself.  And how Jesus came to make the way for us to become perfect also in Him, breaking the curses so that they are no longer passed down to future generations, allowing us to re-write the code and become truly transformed, by the renewing of our mind (which will, of course, affect our bodies and even down to our DNA).

There is only one question:  are you willing to allow God’s grace to truly sweep through your life and transform you: To practice abiding in His presence on a daily basis until you reach a level of peace that transcends all human understanding, guarding your heart and mind in His love? 

Let’s pray.

 

Sources and further reading:

Sermon: Love Thy Neighbour

Beth - blogger, coach, consultant1 Comment

As you know, when I talked earlier this month, I spoke about Social Justice, in light of Isaiah 58 and the call to prayer and fasting that was pleasing to the Lord.  In the current political climate, in the US as well as in Panama, where there is such a backlash against “immigrants” and “illegals” and so much discrimination, I find it challenging that once again today’s readings focus on aspects of social justice and what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to really and truly love our neighbour.

We all know pretty well the text in Matthew, chapter 22, where one of the Pharisees asked Jesus about the greatest commandment of the law, to which Jesus replied (Matthew 22: 36-40):

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The ENTIRE message of the Bible can be summarised in this short paragraph!  You can ignore all of the small print of the Bible, if you just do these 2 things.  Easy, right?

Maybe not so easy, because we find that in another part of the Gospels, (Luke 10: 22 and following) a lawyer who wished to justify himself by asking “who is my neighbour?”, to which Jesus responded with the parable of the good samaritan.  I’m not going to look at, this morning, “who is our neighbour” – but rather focus on what it means, in a very practical sense, to love your neighbour.  What is the visible expression of your love for God and the commandments that were given to the people of Israel through the Law and the Prophets?

In Romans 13, verses 8 to 10, Paul says:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Our readings this morning, especially from Leviticus, give a context to the response that Jesus gave the Pharisee and then his conversation with the lawyer and the parable of the Samaritan.  When Jesus spoke of “Love your neighbour as yourself” he was making reference to these particular verses from Leviticus 19, which would have been well known to the Pharisee and also to the lawyer. We might not know them so well; so I’d like us to take a moment to review the verses we read this morning and the examples of what it means to love your neighbour in a very practical sense.

  • Verses 9 and 10 – be kind to the poor and the alien by leaving something for them in your fields and vineyards: do not reap to the very edges, do not gather the gleanings that fell, do not go over your field a second time picking up what you missed and do not pick up what has fallen.  The poor and the alien still have to work for it, but it is made easy for them to find and forage for food.
  • Verses 11 & 13: teach us compassion and absolute honesty and justice in our relationships
    • no lying
    • no fraud or dealing falsely
    • no stealing
    • no defauding
    • and don’t keep for yourself an employees wages until the next day – always pay on time.

It’s interesting this last point, because under the Law it was perfectly legal to pay the labourer the next day for his work – you didn’t have to pay him the same day.  But God’s law says – it’s just and right to pay him that day, so that he can take food home to his family.  It wasn’t about what was legal, it was about what was right.

According to an article I read recently, it says that a persons lies 2 to 3 times every 10 minutes.  Yes, mostly totally white lies:  “How are you doing?”  “I’m great!” – the lie may be the person asking how you are doing – when they really don’t care, or the lie may be the “I’m great” when they really aren’t feeling that way…  And of all the lies we tell, 25% of those lies are for the sake of the other person!  Very thoughtful of us, isn’t it!

Nietzsche said:

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on, I can no longer believe you.

  • Verse 12:  Don’t swear in God’s name
  • Verse 14:
    • don’t curse the deaf
    • don’t put a stumbling block before the blind

It’s very easy to make fun of someone that can’t hear what you are saying or see what you are doing, but that doesn’t make it right.  Verse 14 reminds us to treat every person with empathy according to their situation and not take advantage of any weaknesses that they might have.

  • Verse 15:  be just and judge your neighbour with justice
    • do not be partial to the poor
    • do not defer to the great
  • Verse 16:
    • Do not speak badly of others
    • Do not profit at your neighbour’s expense
  • Verse 17:
    • Do not hate in your heart anyone of your family
    • If your neighbour makes a mistake, be the one to tell him so that you aren’t an accomplice to his actions.    When you give feedback to an employee, do you care about them enough to tell them the hard truths, the mistakes or omissions that they are making that are holding them back from doing better?  Do you love someone enough to tell them that they are messing up and that they need to turn their life around?  Or do you just want to be seen as the nice person that loves them just the way they are?   Loving your neighbour is more than just being nice – it’s also practicing tough love, to become all that they can be.

Imagine, if you will for a moment, your child:  when they make a mistake you correct them – because you love them enough that you want them to grow and learn.  You know that this mistake now may cost them dear later on in life and so you make a point of having the hard conversations now, so that later on in life they do better.

Do you do the same with other people in your life?  Or is that simply not your problem?

  • Verse 18:
    • no taking revenge
    • no holding grudges

And it ends with “but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Because God is God, you should do this!  Because God is love and we are children of God, we do this!

Matthew 5, part of the Sermon on the Mount, illustrates this love for your neighbour in greater depth.  If you haven’t already done so, re-read the entire sermon on the Mount!

In today’s passage, we read the following:

  • turn the other cheek if someone strikes you
  • give your cloak and not just your coat
  • go the 2nd mile
  • give to everyone who begs from you
  • do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you
  • love your enemies
  • prayer for those who persecute you
  • be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect

Because if you only love those who love you, what reward do you have?  If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?  God sends rain to all: the righteous and the unrighteous – and so, as children of God, we should follow this example and not only treat well our family and friends, but treat everyone well.   The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies – probably because, generally speaking, they are the same people!

So, make an effort today to love your neighbour:

  • your homeless neighbour
  • your immigrant neighbour
  • your poor neighbour
  • your uneducated neighbour
  • your gay, lesbian, trans neighbour
  • your jewish neighbour
  • your right wing neighbour
  • your fundamentalist Christian neighbour
  • your athiest neighbour
  • your disabled neighbour
  • your drug addict or alcoholic neighbour

And let us all remember, 1st John 4: 20

If anyone says “I love God” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.  

Let’s pray.