Texts: John 12:1-8; Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126

Speaker: Mark Rupp

“Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.”

It is a strange command from a prophet who only moments before had wasted so much breath and spilled so much ink to remind the people about those former things, to recall their story of God liberating them from slavery and bringing them through the sea.  This Exodus story looms large within the identity of the Israelite people.  It is, in many ways, their founding story; it defines who they are.  They remember, and re-remember, and consider, and reconsider this story through rituals and worship, not unlike we do in this space with our founding story of Christ. 

The prophet invokes the story of the Exodus, claiming to speak for the God who brought the people through the sea and extinguished their enemies like a wick, so when he suddenly makes a u-turn and tells the people not to remember these former things, it would have come as a surprise.  Rather than a denial of the importance of remembering, however, I see this line as a rhetorical device meant to get people’s attention, to make readers perk up and say, “What’s he doing here?” 

There is a pregnant pause…then the voice of God continues through the prophet, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

To understand this new thing, it is important to understand the context in which the prophet is writing.  The book of Isaiah is actually better understood as the books of Isaiah, with different authors writing during different movements in the history of the Israelite people.  The passage here in chapter 43 falls in the second major movement where it is widely thought that the prophet is writing during the exile…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/20190331sermon.mp3

Text: Luke 15:1-2; 11-32

This is a parable about a prodigal son.  This son requests an early inheritance, goes away and spends it, all of it.  He returns home in desperation.

This is a parable about his older brother who stayed home to run the family business.  Uncelebrated.   And he is unwilling to celebrate the return of his desperate, disgraced brother.

This is a parable about a father.  It’s about a father, and his two sons.

This is a parable about a mother and her two very different children.  How in the world did these children come from the same mother?  So small and precious and then, well, they grow up, don’t they?

This is a parable composed of different generations.

It’s a parable about what we inherit – and not just the property, but the love, the unspoken expectations, the patterns, the scars, that get handed down through the generations.  It’s about how we receive all those things.  And whether there will be anything of value that passes through us to the next generation.

In this parable, the very different brothers may or may not find a way to live together in peace.  The mother will try her best, but those children do have a mind of their own.

The father is wealthy, that much is clear.  Property, servants, fields – large prosperous fields, a robe, a ring, plenty in reserve to throw a feast at a moment’s notice and invite the whole neighborhood.

Let us suppose he was not one of those mythical self-made men who started with nothing and made it big.  Let us suppose that he himself was the recipient of a great inheritance, and that his parents received the wealth of their parents after they were dead and gone, generations on back.

There were other peoples who once lived on the same lands many…

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9

Speaker: Rachael Miller

“Scripture says: Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.”
Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
This line from the musical Hamilton comes from Micah, chapter 4. It’s the bit that follows the familiar verse:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not rise up against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

It is an image of peace, prosperity, and safety. The fig is a ready image and a frequent metaphor for the people of ancient Israel. It is used to signify both times of prosperity (as when the tree is full of fruit), and times of unrighteousness and divine judgement (as when the tree has no fruit).

In the parable Robin just read, the fig tree is barren. I haven’t heard many sermons on this passage in my life. What I have heard, and as I’ve read this on my own, the thrust of the parable is this: all sinners are alike and deserve death, and if you can get on it and start properly bearing fruit, you might escape the fires of hell. Even when it’s not taken that far, the argument is similar. Do more for God. It is as though the fig tree, and those it represents, are not doing enough to bear fruit. That it needs to step up and start producing already.

I want to invite us to hear something different this morning.

There are 2 reasons I think a different reading is warranted. First,  the story of our faith is a story of impossible life. God shows up again and again throughout scripture to transform barrenness into fullness of life. The story of Sarai, which we heard…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/20190317sermon.mp3

Texts: Genesis 15:1-6, 12-16; Luke 13:31-35

One of the comic strips that has rotated on and off my office bulletin board is from Opus.  For the uninitiated, Opus is a large-beaked penguin in a world of humans, plus Bill the Cat.   This particular strip is set outside in a grassy meadow.  Opus and his young friends Oliver, Michael and Milo are sitting under a night sky.  Opus begins by looking at the reader and saying: “I love these summer evening reality checks from Oliver.”  Oliver, the intellectual of the bunch, takes it from there.  Sitting by his telescope, Oliver says to the others: “Hold out a speck of sand at arm’s length…”  The picture moves in tighter on the grain of sand he is holding up.  Then we can see through it, revealing the piece of outer space that lies on the other side.  Oliver says, “That’s the portion of the night sky at which they pointed the Hubble telescope for a week.  It was there – deep within the dot of dark nothingness ten billion light years distant – that they found the unexpected:  Galaxies!  Thousands!  Thousands!  …with billions of stars…and trillions of new worlds.  And beyond these…more!”

Several frames show colorful images of deep space.

Then we’re back to Oliver and company under the vast, luminous canopy.  He continues poetically, “All in the space of a single grain of sand, on the vast beach of the cosmos.”  Oliver faces his friends: “Which nicely frames the question humanity has been asking for millennia.”  To which Michael replies, “What question?”

Oliver, looking back up with his hands open, “What’s the center of it all?”

To this question Michael and Milo, looking back at Oliver, have the same thought bubble:“Me.”

And Opus’ thought bubble, smiling as he reclines on the ground, looking up at the sky:…

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/20190310sermon.mp3

Texts: Deutermonomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

11 million data points.

A week and a half ago I was up in Elkhart, Indiana.  I was attending the Pastors and Leaders event at the Mennonite seminary where I graduated – AMBS.  One of the speakers was Dr. David Anderson Hooker.  He’s a core faculty member at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The topic was systemic racism and the church’s response.  Part of his talk touched on how we unconsciously classify and categorize people, right when we see or hear them, with race as a primary construct.

The best research out there, Dr Anderson Hooker noted, the best research we have to date suggests that at any given moment there are about 11 million data points within a person’s field of perception.  11 million.

So, the feel of your big toe in your sock, that’s a data point.  Your sock rubbing up against your shoe, that’s a data point.  The feel of your breath exhaling out of your nose, and the way it passes over your upper lip.  Data points.  The air temperature.  The sound of my voice.  The sound of a seat mate shifting on the pew.  The smell of cologne or perfume.  The way the light falls on the wood of this platform.  The sight of someone sketching on a large, blank canvas.

11 million data points at any given moment. Physiologically, this means the brain receives that many bits of information for processing per second.

Now I have no idea how they came up with that number, but that’s what the good Dr. said, and he spoke pretty convincingly, so I’m going to go ahead and take him at his word.  I also did a little online research afterwards which affirmed he wasn’t just making it up.  According to research, the brain indeed…