HOMILETICS

Have a Super Sunday

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and after today, we’re done with football for another seven months.

Last year, everyone thought that a Patriot win was a fait accompli, except Eli Manning and the Giants. The Patriots had not lost a game all season—not one. But they lost the last one, the biggest one.

This year, neither the Patriots nor the Giants will be on the turf. The Pittsburgh Steelers are in the Super Bowl game for what I believe is a record, sixth time, led by second-year coach Mike Tomlin. The Arizona Cardinals are in for the first time and at the quarterback position is Old Man Warner, a gunslinger from the O.K. Corral. Should be an interesting game.

But, a reminder to clergy in Arizona and Pennsylvania, your colleagues around the world, according to a Homiletics poll last fall, don’t think you should be wearing gold and black, or red and white colors for robes, stoles or other vestments today. And a sanctuary festooned with ribbons, banners, balloons and the like might also be a bit over the top. Try to find a way to have a Super Sunday, without it being a pep rally.

Here is our report on that poll: Don’t wear sport-related vestments. That’s the advice of respondents to a poll we put up last month. It was one of our most popular polls. A good 70% said that they would NOT wear the colors of the local sports team on the brink of going to the Super Bowl, or the World Series, not matter how frenzied their fan base in the congregation. About half of that group did not know why they were of this opinion, but the other half believed that to do so would be a profane intrusion into the worship space, and a distraction from the sacred purpose for which worshippers had gathered.

But 30% disagreed. About half of those didn’t know WHY they thought it was okay to wear fan-friendly vestments, but the other half thought that doing so promoted a sense of community and spirit.

BTW, you don’t hear too much about this in the media, although ESPN did do a piece, but Warner, a committed Christian, has a Web site (www.kurtwarner.org) that is a platform for his faith-based work, including First Things First, based on the banner Scripture text that is at the bottom of the page: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,” Matthew 6:33.

Don’t know if a Super Bowl ring will be added, or not. As Paul Brown famously said, “Football is a game of errors. The team that makes the fewest errors in a game usually wins.”

Sermon starters, some football quotes:

“In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.”
—Unknown

“Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things-blocking and tackling.”
—Vince Lombardi

“Football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.”
—Duffy Daughtry
   
“All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means... you're willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else.”
—Vince Lombardi

“Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.”
—Don Shula
       
“Most football players are temperamental. That's 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental.”
—Unknown

 “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.”
—Unknown

And my favorite: “Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.”
—John Heisman, for whom the college football award, The Heisman Trophy, is named

Updike at Rest: 1932-2009

John Updike, prolific novelist/critic and observer of the cultural wasteland we called suburbia in the last half of the twentieth century, is dead.

I loved reading Updike, and was one of the few writers I refused to ever skim. You know how when you get interested in a story, you might start to read faster or more carelessly to get further along in the plot?

Not with Updike. For one thing the “plot” didn’t move. It crawled in a deliciously curli-q-esque fashion until, when the story came to the denouement, you wished it hadn’t.

His themes were religion and adultery, both of which he found in copious and exhausting supply in the suburban (read: mundane) middle class culture which so fascinated him.

He admired or at least was intrigued by the theology of Karl Barth, and his declamations on things ecclesiastical and theological (Roger’s Version, for example), are fascinating—interesting to us “professionals” to watch someone outside of our academy, standing in the hedgerows, peering into our windows, describing what he sees and doing it so accurately.

I loved the Rabbit series—and the Bech books, and Couples, and one of his last books, Terrorist, which I thought was a very subtle and excellent insight into how a terrorist might be homegrown right under our noses.

Updike, who I think is to the last half of the 20th century as Henry James was to the last half of the 19th century, is one of those writers, like James, whose works I am perfectly willing to read, and re-read.

Here are a few Updike quotes culled from various Internet sources:

• “A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.”
• “If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”
•  “A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.”
• “Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.”
• “I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.”
• “To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.”
• “America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”
• “Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.”
• “Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.”
• “There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.”
• “When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.”
•  “Sex is like money; only too much is enough.”
• “We are most alive when we’re in love.”
• “The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.”
• “An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.”
• “We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.”
• “By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.”
• “Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”
•  “That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.”
• “Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.”

 

Stress on Assess

I was chatting with my niece the nurse about her new career. She’s been a real nurse for all of six months now.

She likes her work in Med-Surg.

She especially likes saying, “Med-surg.”

I asked her what her work in this department entailed. She works with post-op people who’ve had their knees replaced, and gall bladder removed or who have pneumonia. And so on.

She said the most important aspect of her work is assessment.

She makes assessments about every four hours. This involves taking vital signs, listening to the lungs, listening to the heart, listening to the bowels, checking pupils for brain function (I guess pupils are connected to the brain somehow), checking tubes and IV fluids, checking urinary output, as well as the repositioning of the patient to avoid bed sores, checking muscle strength, neurological signs (is your brain working right), circulation (skin color and capillary refill.)

Assessment, she says is the most important aspect of a nurse’s work.

See, I think this just nails what it means to be a pastor. Go back over that paragraph: Vital signs, listening—to the heart, the lungs and the crappy stuff. Checking for brain function, repositioning the patient to avoid sore, checking for muscle strength, and more. I know you can fill in the blanks.

Didn’t the apostle Paul describe his work as that of a nurse? 1 Thessalonians 2:7.

D.W. Griffith, Silent Film Legend

Eric David, who supplies Film Clip Ideas for the material we publish in Homiletics, has just published yet another article with Christianity Today, this one on silent movie legend D.W. Griffith: how he practically invented the cinema as we now know it, and how his faith influenced his films.

His last article, on John Ford, was published on Election Day; so it's apropos that this one came out on Inauguration Day. David writes that “Griffith, though blamed for racism in his film Birth of a Nation, also firmly believed in the social gospel. His film Intolerance was decades ahead of its time, and speaks to us even (especially?) today. His is a legacy of conflict, as is America's.”

David invites feedback via the Web site to the editors:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/commentaries/fof_griffith.html

This article is 10th in a larger series of which David has written a half-dozen:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/features/fof.html

Going to School Together

Jeanie and I were talking about the Inauguration and she mentioned something that had happened the other day in her 4th grade class. She was doing a unit that involved Martin Luther King, Jr., and that led to a discussion of segregation, a part of which was segregation in the school system. Black children and white children didn’t attend the same schools. If fact minorities were often left out, and pushed to the side.

When Jeanie mentioned that some children couldn’t go to school with other children, there were audible gasps in the classroom. Jeanie has 19 children in her class, and there’s a huge mix of ethnicities. 5 white kids, one black, 1 Serbian, 1 Bangladesh, 1 Malaysia, 1 Korean, 6 Other Asian, 1 Hawaiian, 1 Hispanic.

One girl said, “If we lived back then, we couldn’t go to school together!” It came as a shock, and class members sort of comforted each other.

Yes, that’s what it was like back in the day. Which made this Inauguration unique. As President Obama himself noted, here he was, taking the oath of office when years ago, his father would not have been served at certain restaurants—because of the color of his skin.

Racism is still with us and given the nature of hatred and evil, it will always be with us at some level or another.

But for these children, on this particular day, they could not imagine a world in which they would not be allowed to go to school together.

The Winter of Our Hardship

We have a new president, and in his inaugural address, he struck all the right notes.

It was a speech marked with a sense of humility, and a strong overshadowing of reality. We are in the “winter of our hardship” he said, but, citing George Washington, he urged Americans to “come forth and meet it.”

To spoke to the Muslim nations, and to the nations of the poor. He reminded leaders who sow corruption that they will be judged by what they build, not what they destroy.

He was not afraid to talk about God. Indeed, it was a pretty good sermon. And in the end he issued a call, as any good preacher should. He said that “God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.” The knowledge of this call, he said, gives us certainty and certainty brings hope.

He talked law and grace. Law in that the recession and tough economic times are testing and challenging us. Grace in that it is by “God’s grace” that we  “carried forth” the gift of freedom in the past and “delivered it safely to future generations.”

If you want to comment on the speech or send a note to either outgoing President Bush or President Obama, you might try Public Sentiment.

Public Sentiment, a new site designed to help provide an unfiltered view of opinions on a specific topic, could be the very lens needed to accurately analyze those varied opinions. Its inaugural experiment, “Farewell W, Aloha Obama,” demonstrates the potential of the service, according to one observer. More:

Designed to solicit opinions about the change in the United States presidency and make them accessible without editing or additional bias, “Farewell W, Aloha Obama” allows anyone to compose a short message that wishes outgoing President George W. Bush farewell or welcomes incoming President Barack Obama into office. The response format allows for both positive and negative sentiments to be directed at either politician.

What is the site hoping to accomplish with this offering?

“[W]e hope to reveal and share the spectrum of people’s unedited, raw opinions about certain current events. We hope you will participate by contributing your own sentiments and reading the sentiments of others.... This is not intended to be an authoritative source or official opinion poll, but we do hope that this venue can be an outlet and repository for individual, independent voices.”

The March-April 2009 Issue of Homiletics is Now Online

Check out the web site, www.HomileticsOnline.com, and you will find sermon resources that will take you to the end of April 2009. Of course, you can do a Scripture Search and find resources we’ve stockpiled over the past 18 years as well.

In this issue, you’ll learn that Scientists now say that an invisibility cloak is possible. It could happen. This is nothing new. The apostle Paul fears that Christians tend to be invisible all the time; it’s time, he says, for Christians to be visible.

That’s just one textual treatment. We also take a hard look at the Flood account in Genesis. “Flagpole Fixation” takes us from our preoccupation with building things tall, to the wonder of the created world. “Did Jesus Play the Blame Game?” is a Good Friday piece that explores the possibility that Jesus may have blamed God for his problems.

There’s much more, including “J.I.T. Grace,” “Dead Man Down Under,” “Massive Void” (an Easter idea suggesting that although astronomers think they’ve found a massive void in the universe—the biggest void is in the “empty tomb”), ”Jesus Trends” (a Palm Sunday suggestion using the Google Trends technology — compare Jesus and Pilate, for example).

But my favorite this issue may also be the densest and most challenging read: “Extended Ending” is also an Easter piece based on the gospel reading in Mark — a gospel that has three endings. This sermon idea is about those alternative endings. Could be really dry stuff, but Homiletics gives you the ingredients for a delicious and compelling sermon about the Easter possibilities for not only an “extended ending” but a new beginning.

Bon appetit!

Passengers Survive Double Bird Strike

This has got to be the best “feel-good” story to come down the river in a long time.

US Airways Flight 1549 took off from La Guardia Airport in New York City en route to Charlotte, North Carolina. Moments later, the captain, “Sully” Sullenberger, radioed the tower to advise controllers that they’d suffered a “double bird strike” and would be in the Hudson within minutes. Single bird strikes, affecting one engine are rare; double bird strikes are virtually unheard of.

Sully took the plane, now without power in either of its engines, and splash-landed it on the icy Hudson where it came to a rest, although now floating downstream on the strong current.

Ferry boats and rescue crews were quickly on the scene, as the “Miracle on the Hudson” began to develop. All 155 of the passengers and crew were saved.

They had survived a double bird strike.

They were told to “prepare for impact.”

They survived

Isaiah 43:1-2 — “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.”

I’m Not Ready to Be a Masterpiece

We are God’s masterpiece.

The Ephesians text doesn’t put it quite that way. It says, “For we are his workmanship” (2:10 KJV).

Apropos of this text comes news from Google Earth that we can now use this technology to view a Velasquez or a Rembrandt in Spain’s Prado museum.

The Google Earth Web site says this: “Now you can use Google Earth technology to navigate reproductions of the Prado's masterpieces, delving even deeper into the Prado's collection. In Google Earth, you can get close enough to examine a painter's brushstrokes or the craquelure on the varnish of a painting. The images of these works are about 14,000 million pixels, 1,400 times more detailed than the image a 10 megapixel digital camera would take. In addition, you'll be able to see a spectacular 3D reproduction of the museum. Experience art in a new way. Open Google Earth, check the 3D buildings layer on the bottom left panel, go to the Prado and access the masterpieces.”

Fine.

But back to Ephesians. I’m really not comfortable with God paying too much attention to me, his little masterpiece, but I am certainly not comfortable with others looking too closely at my life with a 10 megapixel camera or any kind of telescopic lens.

God is God and if it’s true that God can count the hairs on my head — in my case not such a big task — that’s one thing.

But I tremble at others looking too closely.

I’m not sure I’m ready to be a masterpiece.

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You're Down and Can't Get Up? Watch This.

First saw this on Tim Ferriss' blog (he's the author of The 4-Hour Work Week). And he says that the clip was sent to him by his mum.

Anyway, it's worth watching. Did you have a rough Monday? Did your sermon blow on Sunday? Tempers flare at the Board meeting last night? Kids driving you nuts?

Watch this.