This weeks sermon

 

Luke is my favorite Gospel.

       It is the gospel full of compassion.

       Mark is a New York Times article.

       Matthew has an agenda.

       John’s Jesus is too good to be accurate.

       But Luke reaches out to the lost.

       Like in today’s gospel about Zacchaeus in Jericho.

       Zacchaeus is a tax collector—like the man in last week’s gospel—he was considered a sinner by Jews because he took their money for the Roman Empire.

       I like Zacchaeus, not because of his job, but because, like him, I’m not very tall.

       I reached my full height in 9^th grade and was a very good Junior High basketball player.

       But by the next September, everyone else had grown and I couldn’t make the high school team.

       I know what it’s like to not be able to see over a crowd of people.

       I never climbed a tree to see, but I have stood on boxes and rocks to look over other people’s heads.

       Jesus had never met Zacchaeus, but he called him by name down from his sycamore tree and told him he would stay at his house that day.

       This is what I mean about Luke’s compassionate Jesus. The crowd was horrified that he was going to visit a ‘sinner’, one who had betrayed his own people.

       But Zacchaeus told him the would give half his wealth to the poor and repay four times what he had taken from others. That was a great ‘pay back’ to those beneath him and Jesus was pleased.

       Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.”

       THE SON OF MAN CAME TO SEEK OUT AND SAVE THE LOST.

       Talk about compassion!

       Let’s spend a few moments in silence thinking and pondering the compassion we have ‘shown’ and the compassion that has been ‘shown’ to us.

 

Another rainy day

The rain keeps falling--almost every day, it seems.

But today is even wetter--the Yankees were swept by the Astro's last night.

No World Series for the Yanks this year.

Astro's and Phillies (of all teams!)

So, my tears mix with the rain.

 

 

Looking bad for them

The Yankees lost both games in Houston.

It's looking bad for them--they have to win 4 out of 5 to make the World Series.

I don't have much confidence in them.

But I love the Yankees so.

I'll watch part of the game tonight but have church tomorrow.

Probably shouldn't pray about baseball--but I'll keep them near my heart tonight.

GO, YANKEES!!!

 

Indite already!

 A federal judge has said the former President 'knowingly lied' when he signed some papers saying the election figures he presented were accurate.

The document even said 'under threat of perjury'.

An email from John Eastman, the ex-president's lawyer at the time, revealed that Eastman told him the documents were false but he signed them anyway.

Legal scholars agree that if he weren't a former President he would have been indicted long ago.

So, cut to the chase.

Indite already!

Sleep

Last night was the best sleep I've had since being in the hospital.

I slept from 10:30 p.m. until 8:30 a.m.

If I got up to go to the bathroom, I did it sleep walking.

It felt so, so good.

Because I'm on a pill to rid my body of fluids, I usually get up twice in the night to go to the bathroom.

But not last night.

And the swelling in my ankles is almost gone.

Sleep is the savior of our lives.

Sleep well, tonight, beloved.

And pray that I do as well....

 

The Yankees won!

 After a 5 game series, the Yankees won and move on to the League Finals.

I am so glad.

I know you know I've been a Yankee fan my whole life.

I wish I didn't care so much because it causes me such angst.

But I do.

And will.

On we go.

Tomorrow is the first game.

You know who I want to win.

This week's sermon (written early because I need to listen to it!)

 

October 23, 2022

          Today, I want to talk about ‘humility’.

          Humility is one of those things we should all want but seldom have.

          The root word of ‘humility’ is the Greek ‘humus’, which means ‘the dirt’, ‘the earth’, the ground we walk on.

          Remember how in Genesis God ‘forms’ or ‘molds’ Adam from the dust and breathes life into him.

          We are created, according to that story, from the ‘humus’—so we should be full of ‘humility’.

          And notice how God ‘molded’ Adam, like a potter would mold his clay to make something—a pot, a vase, a piece of art.

          One way we describe ‘humility’ is to say we are ‘down to earth’—down to the dirt, down to the dust we were molded from.

          (As an aside: Eve was created from Adam’s rib, which means—though it’s often been forgotten or ignored over the centuries—that she did not come from his skull, to lord it over him, or from his feet, to be in subjection to him, but from his rib—to stand beside him and be his equal. We should never forget that women and men are equal in God’s creation.)

          I was, in my childhood, the youngest of 15 first cousins on my mother’s side. My grandmother, Lina Manona Jones, used to tell us: “don’t get above your raisin’.”

          I thought she meant a dried grape until one of my cousins told me she meant ‘raising’—who you were and who you came from.

          Good advice for those seeking humility—don’t get above you ‘raising’.

          Don’t pretend to be more important than you are, more than your gene pool, more than your family heritage.

          In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee—the highest caste in Jewish hierarchy—and a tax collector—someone who worked for the Romans and oppressed his fellow Jews.

          The Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”

          But the tax collector, his head bowed, beat his chest and prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

          “I tell you this,” Jesus told the crowd, “this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves we be exalted.”

          Which do we want? To be humbled or exalted in God’s eyes?

          Let us take a few moments to ponder ‘humility’ and not getting above our raising….

Amen and amen.