Sermon Thoughts 9/12

The liturgy for this week is about the lost sheep. "Who wouldn't go and find a lost sheep and leave the ninety-nine others? I have to think about that for a moment. My first thought is well maybe the ninety-nine are the most important. It's only one little sheep I have ninety-nine more. However, with that attitude then, what if I loose another then another until they are all gone. What happens then? I have no sheep! I know that Jesus is telling us to drop everything to go and find the lost. My goal for this lesson is to uncover why??

From my sermon 9/12:

It was 9/11 yesterday. As many of us ran errands and did chores around the house, many cried their eyes out yesterday because their loved ones were lost on September 11th. When there is a tragedy so significant and horrific, people run to help to try to find that which they hope will not be lost forever. In a burning tower, a flooded house, a muddy slide, a devastated land, people search every ounce of the area to find those who are missing.

Let me ask you this question: Do they stop and say, "Was this person a sinner or a tax collector? If so, I'‘m not going to save them". No of course not! They save anybody they can. Every life is so precious that they will search until they cannot search any more. This searching is exactly what God does for us when we are lost. There is so much great celebration from heaven and all the angels and all people rejoice for one who was lost has now been found.

Jesus rejects the idea that the responsible party for restoration is the "sinner." The stories Jesus tells are clear about this. Why do you think that Jesus tells this parable and uses lost things such as coins or sheep. It is because lost coins and lost sheep cannot restore themselves. Neither do lost people. So to Jesus, we all have the responsibility as the community to help these lost people. They cannot do it on their own. They are lost. The lost themselves cannot find their way home. That’s why we call them lost.

I can tell you all without any hesitation that if one of my children were lost. I would never give up until I found them. God never gives up on us. God never quits searching for those who may be lost.

Everyone is part of God's keeping, and those who have gotten lost in one way or another therefore need special attention from God and from us.

Thoughts on Emotions

I am thinking a lot about emotions and trauma lately. In this book that I am reading about trauma, it states that there are three aspects of each of us: what we think (mind), what we do (actions) and what we feel (emotions). Life is about patterns of each and all of those.

Each day is a pattern. It takes the pattern of what happens and how we react to what happens to us. As I said in my last post, we have little control over much of our life. However, we do have control over how we act and perhaps how we feel. In my readings the symbol of a triangle is used to discuss the three part system that we tend to call mood. Thoughts affect feelings, feelings affect actions and actions affect behavior. They all can interact which one another.

So as I see it from a theological perspective we are all about transformation. We are called to continually be in a change mode. Change is the one thing that is forever. The next time we tend to feel bothered by our actions or others we can change. When we feel a certain way, we can change.

Reflections on Sermon Sunday 9/5/2010

Hello,

I thought it would be nice to stop and reflect on what I liked and did not like about the text I preached about on Sunday. I struggle as many of you do with control. Well the topic text on Sunday was the potter and the clay. I know that I am not the potter. I feel many days exactly like the clay being pressed upon by life as if a push for me to adjust.

I know that I am not in control of life. I know that I do not control people or things. However, the issue of God's plans and how much of them are known is an issue for me. I am like clay in the potter's hands. I have free will to do whatever I choose to do. Do I really grasped the idea of control and acceptance? To truly give up control one must accept first that they never had any control from the beginning. I think that I fool myself into thinking that at one time I may have had control over things. I realize now that I never did.

What does all of this control have to do with the great potter shaping me and forming me? It reflects each of our desires to tell the potter how and what to make of us. I want to be this or that. In reality, we can only become what we have accepted and allowed the potter to make of us. Our acceptance means that we give in to the need to control.

The clay seems to just be there and allow formation to take place. It goes with the bending and creating. It becomes something new and is ok with its newness.

Do we allow the potter to shape us? Are we being reworked each day or merely resisting the potter's movements to shape and change our lives?

Only time will tell what is really formed and by whom!