God In Every Moment

Luke 9: 51-62

Roger Lynn

August 25, 2019

(click here for the audio for this sermon)
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I confess that this passage from Luke’s Gospel has often troubled me over the years. It always seemed too harsh. Why would Jesus be so hard on people for wanting to grieve and love their families? Isn’t that what being truly and genuinely human is all about?

And then, as so often happens, as I sought to find a different way to understand this passage, two things came into focus which cast the whole thing in a fresh new light. The first of these insights is one which applies to a wide variety of scriptural references. It has to do with the concept of prescriptive versus descriptive. For a variety of reasons, the most common way of seeking to understand any particular passage is to read it prescriptively. Put simply, we take it to mean that whatever is being described is the way God wants it to be, or even the way God causes it to be. Sometimes we do this because it is how we have been trained to interpret scripture. And sometimes we do this because it is the filter the writers themselves used to interpret the concepts and events they were writing about. In either case, there are a great many instances when reading the Bible prescriptively leaves us with an understanding of God that can be frightening, disturbing, and profoundly unhelpful. Today’s passage is a good example. One of the reasons I have always had such a difficult time with it over the years is because I was trying to read it prescriptively. Thus the question – why would Jesus be so hard on people? 

But what if it isn’t Jesus who is being hard on people? What if Jesus is merely describing the way things are when we make certain choices? In other words, what if we read such passages descriptively rather than prescriptively? It changes everything. Some of the language may still prove to be a challenge, but that is because at the time scripture was being written, the prescriptive filter was often the only one available. For the most part, they had not yet recognized the possibility of looking at things any other way. When we begin to look past some of the language to the meaning which can be found underneath, suddenly the comment about not being fit for the kingdom of God becomes a description rather than a judgment. It is as if Jesus is saying, “As long as you are distracted and paying attention to other things, your heart just isn’t in it.” 

Intimate, Ever-Present Mystery

Psalm 95: 1-7 & Luke 24: 13-35

Roger Lynn

August 18, 2019

Breakfast Under the Big Sky (Outdoor Worship)

(there is no audio or video this week)

God is all around us all of the time. Sometimes we miss this amazing reality because we limit the places where we look for God. Imagine how much more vital our lives might become if we could expand our awareness of God’s presence to include every moment and every situation of every day. We can, but it takes practice. We have at least two big obstacles standing in our way – hectic, busy lives, and a culture which values head over heart, thinking over feeling. There is nothing wrong with being busy and there is nothing wrong with intellect. But when they become the exclusive patterns for our living they tend to crowd out other equally important ways of perceiving the world around us, including the presence of God. It takes time to notice the little things around us through which God’s presence can be revealed. It takes an imagination of the heart to see beneath the surface of those things to discover God’s presence. 

This is not the same as worshipping the things themselves. The rock is not God. But God can certainly shine through the rock, if we will open our eyes and our hearts to that possibility. 

Seeing Beneath The Labels

Galatians 3: 28 & Luke 8: 26-39

Roger Lynn

August 4, 2019

(click here for the audio for this sermon)
(click here for the video for this sermon)

Sometimes it feels as if there is a lesson God really wants me to learn. So, it keeps showing up until I get it. Such has been the case recently. Over and over again, taking various forms but always with the same result, I have encountered people who simply refused to stay in the box I tried to put them in. You know the routine – they look this way, or attend that church, or use those words, so therefore I know who they are and how they think. Except, of course, I don’t. In the recent flurry of lessons that have come my way, it has involved people I assumed have a conservative understanding of faith, and therefore would be inclined to reject or dismiss my understanding of some particular issue or another. Each time I decided to go ahead and state my position anyway, without much hope of getting a positive response. And each time I found myself having to rethink my assumptions. So, I’m hear to say, “OK God! I’m beginning to get it!” 

Labels can be a useful thing. They serve as a sort of shorthand for making sense of the world. When I tell you I live on Harrison Avenue, it gives you a better sense of where to start looking when you come over for dinner for the first time. But if you start thinking that you know everything there is to know about my house because you were in a  house on Harrison once, or if you think you understand everything about me because you know what people who live in that part of town are like, then the limits of labels have probably been pushed past the point of usefulness. There is a fuller, richer truth just waiting for us to discover when we begin to see beneath the labels.