HOMILETICS

One Plants, Another Waters …

I was traveling in a third world country recently and visited an orchard of orange trees. It had been planted in terrace fashion on the side of a hill, and I could tell the farmer and his workers had put a lot of time into building the terrace walls of stone, creating irrigation ditches, tending the small trees and so on. He was very proud of his little orchard. It was his livelihood and he worked hard. All manual labor. No mechanized help whatsoever.

I asked him how he got his oranges to market.

He said that he did not harvest the oranges himself. Rather the “businessman” came to him and the two of them negotiated a price, and then the “businessman” picked the fruit and hauled it off to market—via donkey cart or ox cart.

Of course I thought of the Scriptures—the apostle Paul’s reminder regarding the growth of the church: Some plant, some water, some reap the harvest, but all is done to the glory of God.

This is a good reminder in a day when we’re often so concerned about numbers and size and success.

It’s more important to take care of the ministry at hand, and the rest will be fall in to place. So if we’re planting seeds, let’s plant seeds. If we’re watering, let’s water. If we’re reaping, let’s reap.

What To Wear, What to Wear?!

Halloween.

This has got to be the most ridiculous holiday or festival ever. Really.

No one knows why in the world we're doing this, and I'm never sure about what I'm going to wear. I prefer something subtle yet understated. Obama is hot this year, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller outfit. I might just jump into a Lady Gaga outfit and see what happens, or, failing that, get out my Richard Nixon mask. Always good as a conversation starter.

And then you have the kids knocking on your door asking for candy.

I got into real trouble from parents one year because I said to a coven of little sheet-covered PreK-ers at my door, “Ghosts don’t exist! Zombies don’t exist! Vampires—they don’t exist either. Get over it.”

My wife, the teacher, explained it to me: “Honey, U.S. core curricula standards have established that we don’t tell kids the truth about vampires, Santa, and the Easter bunny until at least fourth grade. Get over it.”

If it’s Halloween, we must be on the cusp of November, and that’s hard to believe. Wasn’t it August just a few days ago?

But, speaking of Halloween, I have an assignment for you: Think about your congregation and all they’ve been doing this month and the clothes—“costumes”—in which they’ve been doing it. Not scary costumes, to be sure, but the clothes of ministry.

Think of the people who’ve put their aprons on to cook in kitchens[ or the overalls the mechanic has put on to repair the car of a single parent who needs it desperately; of the running shorts put on by people running for “the cure”; or the backpacks worn by youth workers out on the trail with teenagers.

Think of the “clothes” of kindness, compassion and gentleness worn by so many in the community to help make the lives of other better.

This kind of costuming in not ridiculous, it’s real.

These clothes are also suggestive of incredible stories. They tell us about hours of preparation for choir rehearsals in order to bring music every Sunday and during Advent coming up in only four weeks or so;  they speak to the humanitarian relief some church members bring when they go on a Habitat for Humanity trip; they remind us about teamwork and team-building as people come together to clean up the house of worship, or meet with the homebound to rake the leaves and make small repairs.

I’ll bet there are a lot of stories the clothes/costumes could tell in your congregation.
And every day we’re creating and telling stories, and when we leave church, moving on and out into the community and we take with us core values and a faith enriches us as well as others for the rest of our lives.

Meanwhile, I’ll still be wondering what to wear for Halloween.

I’m leaning toward Little Dead Riding Hood or Einstein mask.

Probably Einstein.

 

Measuring Forward Progress

The post-season baseball series have had a few issues with umpires, and even with extra umps on the field, mistakes are made. A long ball to left field is called foul when it was fair by a Texas mile. And baseball has no rules that provide for overturning the call. The home plate ump could’ve called that particular ball, for Pete's sake.

Our subject for  today is football, not baseball, and commandments. After all, there are a lot of rules, or commandments, in football. And if you’re like Bill Cowher, former head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, you want to abide by the rules. That’s what he meant when he said, “We don’t want to circumcise the rules, or anything.”

I’m lifting this stuff directly from the Homiletics material for this coming Sunday. This is such great stuff, I want you to be sure to see some of it.

Football has so many rules that not even the players, coaches, referees and commentators can possibly know them all. That’s why football players can sometimes appear, well, a tad ignorant. Former Dallas Cowboy Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson once said of former Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who has four Super Bowl rings and now sits in the TV analyst booth, that he “couldn’t spell ‘cat’ if you spotted him the ‘c’ and the ‘a.’ ”

Football, unlike baseball, is arguably the most technologically advanced sport out there: You’ve got the radio receiver sending plays into the quarterback’s helmet from the sidelines, overhead cameras, super slow-mo video replay, challenge calls by the refs and computer-generated graphics on the field indicating “downs and distance” to the audience watching at home. …

But in one respect, things are a little more “old school”: determining where exactly the ball is supposed to be located and how far the offense has to move it for a first down. The way that’s done today is the way it’s been done since 1906 — the year the NCAA determined that a team needed 10 yards, not five, for a first down, and the year that the forward pass was legalized. Spalding’s Official Foot Ball Guide of 1907 set down the rules that have lasted for more than 100 years: “To assist in measuring the progress of the ball, it is desirable to provide two light poles about six feet in length, connected at their lower ends with a stout cord or chain 10 yards in length.” Thus, the “chain gang” was born.

Since then, at every football game from Pee Wees to pros, a group of officials stands about six feet off the sideline holding blaze-orange “poles” with a 10-yard length of chain stretched between them. One end is placed ostensibly at the football’s original spot, lined up by the official’s eyeballs with the nose of the ball (even though the ball itself may be more than 25 yards from the sideline). The other end marks the line to gain 10 yards away. When the play ends, an on-field official estimates the new spot of the ball, marking it with his foot and tossing the ball to another official to set for the next play. When the new spot is close to the first down end of the chain, that’s when the “chain gang” trots out to “measure” whether or not the offense gets a new set of downs.

Often, this is one of the most dramatic and breathless moments in a football game. Sometimes the drive continues by an inch; sometimes it comes up just a chain link short.

Now, you’d think with technological advances such as GPS and lasers it would be a no-brainer to figure out just where, in a pile of large, sweaty humans, the ball actually was when the running back’s knee hit the ground. Just put a computer chip in the ball or something. And if they can paint a virtual yellow line on the field to show the TV audience the yardage the offense has to gain for a first down, then surely they can figure out a way to do that on the turf itself, right?

Wrong …

And the material goes on from there to talk about the two yardsticks Jesus gives by which to measure forward progress.

Well, It’s Saturday

Saturdays are such interesting days.

I know that people thank God for Fridays.

But I like Saturdays.

Most preachers don’t really like Saturdays because it’s on Saturdays that we can expect a perfect storm of problems to arise that all conspire to prevent us from doing our normal sermon preparation at 11 p.m. tonight.

Saturdays are lazy days.

This is really the Sabbath day of rest. Sunday is our worship day, but Sabbath, being the seventh day is a day of rest. So I’ve been resting.

Slept in.

Then spent two hours driving round trip to retrieve a thumb drive I’d left behind.

Then, spent some time with a nerd who repaired my broken Internet connection—which is why I can now gab with you for a few moments.

Then did some shopping for some little kids in Utrecht, the Netherlands, wondering what little Dutch girls, 6 and 8, like to play with.

While in the store, I witnessed one of the most awesome displays of childish obstreperousness that I have ever seen. This little girl, about 7, was on her knees in the toy aisle clutching a toy, but wanted another one which her mother refused to buy. She was not only crying, she was wailing—loudly. It caught the attention of other shoppers.

The mother scolded her, but didn’t give in. She could have ended this drama sooner than she did. But finally, to her credit, she simply walked away. This instantly infuriated the little girl and the wailing became louder, and she dropped her first toy and ran to catch up, and the wailing grew more distant, and I never saw or heard her again.

It was such an amazing display, that a father, shopping in the same aisle, asked me what I’d do if my son or daughter had cried and wanted a toy like that. I replied that, 1) no child of mine would even DARE to put on a scene like that at home or in public. So it would not come to that, and 2) if he or she did, I would have put toy number one back on the shelf, picked up the child and removed her from the store, and given her a paddling in the place God provided for paddling.

Good parenting should require very little paddling, but when it’s required, well, it’s required. (ASIDE: When I see something like this in public, I am always aware that some children are special needs children and different strategies are required. But this little girl was not a “special needs” child in a clinical sense, although she certainly had some specific needs!)

Interestingly, of my son and two daughters, it was the daughters who had the most “requirements” in this regard.

But I digress … So I witnessed that little drama … and then I took a nice walk in the gorgeous autumn weather. I told you almost a month ago, that I LOVE October, and I guess I really like Saturdays in October.

Talked to both my aforementioned daughters--one in Denver, another in Houston.

Tonight, going out with the wife for dinner.

Mexican.

She always orders fajitas.

How was your day?

John Wooden at 99

Anyone past the age of 40 surely knows of John Wooden.

A member of the basketball hall of fame as a player and coach, Wooden led his UCLA teams to 10 national championships in a span of 12 years, and won more than 600 games (while losing less than 150) in his 27-year career with the southern California university. .

Anyway, last week he turned 99. If you bing or google him, you’ll find a bunch of stuff about him commemorating this event including a good interview with him by ESPN’s Rick Reilly which you can see here.

What do you suppose you’re going to be doing on your 99th birthday? Wooden just published another book. He’s already well known for his “Pyramid of Success.” Now he’s added another book to the body of his work. A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring.

Wooden is known as a person of utmost integrity and his players to a man speak of him with the highest respect, and confess that they learned a lot about life from their coach.

Wooden is fond of saying, “If you’re through learning, you’re through.”

It’s Reformation Sunday in a few days, and while Wooden is 500 years past the “Reformation,” were we to adopt Wooden’s perspective and attitude, and good reformation would take place.

 

Global Hand-washing Day

I was confused. I thought today was Global Hand-washing Day. It was actually yesterday, Thursday, October 15.

This is the second annual observance of October 15 as Global Hand-washing Day. It’s aimed at promoting a culture of hand-washing with soap in countries around the world, especially those vulnerable to disease for a variety of reasons.

Many organizations have lined up to support this day, and I think it’s a great idea. The spread of infection can be greatly reduced if people, especially children, remember to keep their hands clean.

Of course, I see a moral lesson here too.

In the Old Testament, including the psalms, references to ritual hand-washing abound. “Who shall ascend to the hill of the LORD? They who have clean hands and a pure heart.”

While in the middle east, you might have noticed the spigots around many a mosque – provided so that the faithful can wash their feet.

When pilgrims ascended to the hill of the LORD, they had to be ritually clean.

What does that mean for us in our worship today?

While certainly we cannot suggest that only saints –no sinners—step through the church door, this metaphor and these Scriptures remind us that while there is a putative sense in which we are “clean” not only through the Word spoken to us, as Jesus said, or via a vicarious layer of righteousness through Jesus’ life and death – clearly, the purpose of our faith and relationship to God through Christ is to help us keep our hands clean and our hearts pure.

That is to say, who we are and what we do should be informed by our faith.

I would like to think more about the “and soap” part of the instruction, but I guess that will have to wait. I just remember affirming in front of my mother when I was a kid, that I had indeed washed my hands before coming to the supper table. Another question inevitable followed as the sun rises in the east: “With soap?”

We need to use soap. (It’s made in part of lye, right? A burning acid, right? And stuff that doesn’t make it burn so bad.) Some soaps include an abrasive, soap, like the LAVA brand my mom used to make us use.

Well, that’s all for now.

Sermon Idea No. 437

Since the Homiletics blog went up, I’ve posted more than 500 times, and I figure at least 436 of those must have had some kernel of homiletical insight however small. So the following is No. 437.

Asylum.com published a few days ago a list of 8 phrases we get wrong. You can read the full list here, but I give you a sampling, to wit:

1. I could care less
What you think it means: "I couldn't care less."
What it actually means: You actually do care.

2. It begs the question
Would you think it means: To ask or raise a question
What it actually means: To use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove.

3. I did a 360
What you think it means: Completely changing your opinion.
What it actually means: Your opinion changed, but then changed back to your original opinion.

4. PIN number
What you think it means: A non-repetitive way to refer to your personal identification number
What it actually means: That you're being redundant. Especially when you use your PIN number at the ATM machine.

5. Lion's share
What you think it means: The greatest of multiple shares
What it actually means: You're not technically incorrect, because, over time this has become one of the phrase's definitions. But the phrase originally comes from an Aesop's Fable in which the lion took all -- not the largest -- of the shares. Because that's what lions tend to do.

6. I am nauseous.
What you think it means: I have a sick feeling in my stomach.
What it actually means: It depends. Prior to World War II, you'd have been clearly saying, "I make other people sick," and the correct term would have been "I am nauseated." However, over time, the usage has shifted to the point that many language experts have deemed "I am nauseous" as an acceptable explanation of your own queasiness. Just be careful using that term around the old folks' home.

The sermon part?

Think of some of the over-worked platitudes we are muttering all the time in church and do some re-thinking. Do they mean what we think they mean?

1. God is love.
What you think it means: No matter what I do, God has warm, fuzzy feelings for me.
What it actually means: God’s nature is love. That’s why if you manage through some gross stupidity on your part to screw up and make God angry, you have really messed with the essential nature of God.

2. We all believe in the same God.
What you think it means: As long as you worship something, or someone, the universe is going to be kind to you.
What it actually means: You are simply lazy and don’t want to really study your faith, or explore theological questions.

3. God must have a reason or he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen.
What you think it means: I didn’t screw up. This happened because God was behind it, so fortunately, maybe I can find a way out.
What it actually means: It doesn’t mean anything. It’s nonsensical.

And so on.

Think of some phrases of your own. I think you can get some mileage with this. I just spent four minutes on this post.

Think what you could do in four hours.

President Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Let’s talk about the Nobel prizes for a few minutes.

First, let me say that I am "surprised and humbled" that I myself was considered for nomination to the Nobel committee for a significant body of work--if I do say so myself--achieved over a number of years.

Not for the Peace prize, of course. But I was sorta expecting a nomination for my research in the 1970s which involved the motion of psychic straws in the bars of Chula Vista, California, not to speak of the seminal work I did at the same time developing origami roses out of bar napkins.

But that was another time and another place.

Yesterday, I’m sitting in front of the TV watching the BBC and I see the ticker at the bottom scrolling left, announcing, of all things, that President Obama had become the first sitting president since Wilson about 90 some years ago to be awarded the Noble Peace Prize.
 
Literally—my mouth gaped, and my first words were, “For what?”

The guy’s been in office for all of 270 days, and he gets an award for “extraordinary” efforts to “strengthen cooperation between peoples to meet global challenges.”

Show me one blog site, major newspaper, or media outlet where Obama’s name was even mentioned prior to the announcement as a possible recipient of the award.

In fact,  the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in the days prior to the announcement had predicted that “Sen. Piedad Cordoba [of Colombia] [was] the most likely recipient among three leading contenders …” the others being Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Islamic faith at Jordan University, and Afghan physician and human rights activist Sima Samar.

So we have President Bush who gets a dusty shoe thrown at him by a disgruntled Iraqi journalist, and President Obama who gets a Peace Prize dropped in his lap by a remarkably gruntled Prize committee.

And the world, frankly, is non-plussed.

This makes for good water-cooler discussions to be sure—as to who was more deserving: Bush or Obama, and there are some who would argue that Obama should get the shoe, or the boot, and Bush the Peace Prize. Rational arguments can be, and are being, made for all positions, trust me.

Here’s my problem: I feel a sense of pride as an American that my President was awarded this prize. On the other hand, my American sense of fairness interferes because I just can’t see it, and neither can the pundocrats around the world. I fear that this announcement trivializes the award—but then perhaps that has already happened.

So Sunday, I think that it would be appropriate—not to comment on the controversy—but to pray for the President that he may grow into the oversized suit that has now been given him. And if he’s had insufficient time to demonstrate his peace-making skills, perhaps awarding him the prize will encourage the leader of the free world to aggressive in the pursuit of peace.

But here again, it gets tricky. Every field commander the president has is telling him that 25,000 to 40,000 more troops are needed in Afghanistan, or we might as well set up the gallows in the town square of Kabul and sharpen the swords to make the Taliban’s Friday afternoon hanging parties and beheadings more convenient. Will Obama make the hard decisions? Can a Nobel Peace Prize president escalate a war, defend our country by every means necessary, keep military options on the table?
I hope so.

And I hope Obama is up to the task.

So far I am not convinced that he is. But I echo the sentiments of Gil Troy of the Boston Globe: "Let the aspirations embedded in his award quickly be transformed into impressive achievements."

Computers Can Now Read Ancient Texts

Israeli researchers say that they’re created a program that can read ancients texts hitherto unreadable and that in the future, scholars might be able to do a Bing-like search of historical documents.

The program uses a “pattern recognition” algorithm like databases that search for fingerprints. This computer program doesn’t identify fingerprints, but is rather able to distinguish between letters, words, and handwriting styles.

All of this and more can be found in the December issue of the journal Pattern Recognition where the program is explained in such detail, that it would take another computer program developed by Israeli nerds just to dumb it down enough for me to understand it.

But it would appear that the study of ancient biblical texts will be enhanced by this technology which according to some of these researchers will reduce in some cases YEARS of research to MINUTES of research.

I did fairly well when I took Greek in seminary. Never took Hebrew.

But people tell me that I have definite skills in ENGLISH.

And there are a ton of ancient texts already available in ENGLISH, including the Bible.

So computers can read ancient texts. Big deal. So can I.

I know that someday I will benefit from what these researchers are doing now. But it might be a good thing if I’d read some of the material that’s already accessible.

Why I Love October

It’s Monday morning, and we’re five days into October. It’s my favorite month of the year.

I love October days.

I love Oktoberfest and the smell of brats on the grill.

I love the colors of the trees, and the patches of golden aspen on the shoulders of the mountains.

I love sloshing through fallen leaves and listening to the sound of them under my feet.

I love the crispness of the morning air.

I love stepping out into the morning of the first frost.

I love seeing the children in their Halloween costumes.

I love pumpkin pie.

I love pulling on a sweater for the first time.

I love noticing that the days are getting shorter.

I love reading in October.

I love singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on Reformation Sunday.

It’s great to be alive! Life is grand!