Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,
“Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you,
if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” From Luke 19
Apparently
the crowds buzzed with the message that the Messiah, the Lord, was coming. What a day for the disciples of Jesus, who
probably began to think it was all starting to go their way. Even the religious authorities began to think
that tide had turned against them; they were in an almost panic mode as they went
to Christ and to tell him to order the disciples to stop the proclamation, to
stop this rejoicing, to stop this coronation parade. And Jesus responds by saying that even if he
would do so, it would not be enough, because even the stones would cry out.
Have
you ever been that excited that you were bursting at the seams? Have you ever seen a child that has a secret
to tell that they just can’t wait to tell it, but they been ordered to keep
silent. Sometimes we even tell people
they look like the cat that swallowed the canary. In these situations the words almost seem to
leak from us. Our emotions, our expressions,
our gestures, cannot contain the power of the message behind them. Perhaps in some ways, this was the triumphant
scene that played out on this rocky journey, on this road to Jerusalem
As we prepare to hear again this Sunday the journey of
Jesus into As we approach the city of
Highlights from Sunday, March 25
....
Where is reality taking us? What have been some of our expectations? What has happened? How are your brackets in life playing in
out? Maybe our brackets in life aren’t
going our way, maybe we expected a decision or direction to happen a certain
way and then we find it has went just the opposite. Maybe you expected to retire early, but
you’ve watched your 401K bounce all over the place. Maybe you made certain career decisions and
now find yourself wondering about your entire vocation. Maybe you expected a lifetime of marital
bliss, and now the reality has sunk in that it isn’t going to happen. Maybe you expect to go this place and do this
one particular thing but now news of your health condition has put all that in
jeopardy. Maybe you had such high hopes
for your child, only to see a young person drift aimlessly in the world around
them. Maybe you thought things would be
better in a new community, or a new school, and you find yourself struggling
with issues of picking up your roots once again. Maybe you expected one thing and you got
another.
What do we do when faced with these
human dilemmas? An author writes about
the difficult nature of following God’s will: “Many times we start a new
project believing that what we are doing is the will of God, and yet very often
things do not work out as we planned.
You took the new job, and it didn’t work out . . . Trouble doesn’t
necessarily mean you are out of God’s will.
It might mean that you are doing exactly what God wants you to do . . .
No one was ever more in God’s will than Jesus, but He was murdered by His
enemies. The fact that your life hasn’t
worked out exactly like you planned doesn’t necessarily mean your decisions
were wrong. Sometimes there are other
factors at work.”
Salvation is free, but discipleship
can cost you many things. The disciples were beginning to see that they had
expected one thing and they were getting something else. When life turns out differently than we
expected, first of all, we can hold on to our values and our faith. Those values and faith can give us strength,
meaning, and hope. Secondly, the things
that happened differently in our life might be asking us to go deeper into our
faith.
In our Gospel text,
after Jesus declares, “Father, glorify your name,” we read these words: “Then a
voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’”
Then notice these intriguing words: “The crowd standing there heard it and said
that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An
angel has spoken to him.’” That is an
interesting way of describing situations, the same occurrence different
responses. Perhaps some people were
ready to hear God’s word, while others heard only thunder. Do we hear God or do we just hear thunder? In our lives today, if we allow ourselves to
think of our spiritual questions, are we hearing God, or just what seems a loud
bang in the sky? What are our expectations and what are our reactions, when we zig and
life zags?
When life has not turned out the way
we had expected, perhaps it can be a call to go deeper into our faith. Spend more time listening to God. Read God’s word faithfully. Spend more time in
prayer. Perhaps God can give us new
insights into God’s will for our lives; and perhaps in doing so we may hear
more than thunder.
... Perhaps in this Lenten season, as we travel that road once again to the cross of
The stone throwing began before anyone ever picked up a rock. It began with a malicious intent to discredit Jesus no matter who got harmed in the process.
Why did these religious leaders want to throw stones? At first glance most of us would come down hard on these Pharisees because after all their behavior is hypocritical. However, are we really that much different from the Pharisees? Haven’t we all at one point or another pushed to get our way? Haven’t we all had times when we got upset over things that are really insignificant? Haven’t we all done things that we desired instead of what God desired?
Why did these religious leaders want to throw stones? The same reason that we want to throw them.
• We throw stones because we harbor hatred.
• We throw stones because we hold on to bitterness.
• We throw stones because we are entangled in anger.
• We throw stones because we want to have revenge.
• We throw stones because we will not let go of the things that upset us.
Why did these religious leaders want to throw stones? The same reason that we want to throw them.
• We throw stones because we harbor hatred.
• We throw stones because we hold on to bitterness.
• We throw stones because we are entangled in anger.
• We throw stones because we want to have revenge.
• We throw stones because we will not let go of the things that upset us.
The motive of the religious leaders was not to promote the things of God but instead they were promoting their own agenda and were looking out for their own interests. The truth of the matter is that we are all guilty of this brokenness; we are all guilty of throwing stones. Most of us would never think of actually throwing stones at other people but far too often we throw emotional or spiritual stones at one another. Jesus said: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Where in our lives do we need to drop the sticks and the stones and move on? Where in our lives do we need to remember and know the great promise of forgiveness for our shortcomings, for when we have messed up? Highlights from March 4 Sermon -- Lent 2 -- Pastor Randy
... A part of the Lenten journey is to remind ourselves, that without God, without God’s divine love for us, we would be left with nothing, left with aimless purposes and priorities to our lives. In seeking to make God a stronger part of our lives, we look to find ways of integrating our discipleship into all that we do. The challenge becomes in seeking to pick up our cross and follow Christ, while at the same time trying to juggle with all the demands of life that call out for our attention, for it is so too easy with the demands of parenthood, of jobs and daily schedules to let our minds, like the disciple Peter, become set on human things instead of divine things.
...The reality is that often when the heat is on, when push comes to shove, when things become challenging in our lives, we sometimes deny who we are, deny even our principles to make sure we get out of the situation. I know because I do it too. Perhaps in some cases it is understandable, but the warning flag becomes if we allow ourselves to become a chameleon as we search or deny our personal and core values, our beliefs, and our faith. It is not always easy to take up the cross and follow Christ; in fact sometimes it is very hard. To set our minds on divine things is tough to do, especially when we feel so bombarded by life’s demands. The Good news is that God understands our predicament better than we do. God still reaches out to us in the middle of all our struggles, in the middle of the stones we carry, to remind us that the road to
Highlights from Midweek Message: Rejected Stones
....part of God’s great love is that God is going to reach out, by sending the Son, who will come and tell everyone that in God’s eyes all our accepted, none have to be rejected. But what is humanity’s response? We reject the very one who comes and tells us that we are accepted, that we are loved. The message of that new covenant from God, given through the proclamation becomes too upsetting for us that what do we do? We reject the message and we crucify the messenger, as we try to silence the message. But this God of ours doesn’t stop there. God doesn’t let our rejection, be the final story. Instead: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
....., there is something of value of taking this journey to the cross. There is something in it that can shape our own spirituality in a significant and perhaps even profound way. This getting away is really a journey into ourselves, not as a selfish thing to block out others and areas of life importance, but rather a purpose-filled time to check in with our individual humanity. From the onset of Lent, beginning with mere ashes, we are reminded of where we came from and where, if let to our own selves, we would end up. The journey into our self can expose our shortcomings, can reveal our vulnerabilities, but this focus is to help reattach our need, and in the end, our utter dependence on God. The focus of Lent is not to demean humanity; it is not to inflict pain or sorrow, as it is often billed, but rather it is a time to open ourselves for our own individual reflections. And it is this honest inventory that leads us to repentance and ultimately to renewal. Perhaps Lent is like Spring training, if you will, it may not always be fun and sometimes it hurts to stretch those muscles, but to take some time to get into shape rewards us in immeasurable ways for the game of life.
.....
For something to be tempting to us means that there is a certain allure to it. If someone offers us a piece of chocolate cake and we hate chocolate, we don’t resist temptation by saying no; we are only expressing our choices. In the same way, we can overlook scripture by realizing that for these to be actual temptations for Christ; there must have been some allure to them. At some point in the experience perhaps Jesus weighed on going the opposite direction than his mission was to take him. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is only after such self-introspection that Jesus comes back and begins to embark on his ministry. This is part of the journey of Lent - dealing with the role of temptation. It doesn’t mean that the pastor needs to stand up here and list the Ten Commandments and say do this and don’t do that, but perhaps the journey is more complex. Perhaps the Lenten adventure is to see what is it that drives us to weigh in on certain aspects of the human experience.
......We can become masters at creating loopholes. Often we attempt to play the same kind of spiritual game with God’s word and direction for our lives.
Yes, it is about temptation, yes it is about some of the brokenness we cause to others or ourselves, but often that is the surface action. Part of the journey into Lent is to see what are our driving forces, because often we can discover that they are not God-inspired. Instead they revolve around issues of power, ego, control, or maybe even escape from something else.
Highlights from the Ash Wednesday Sermon – Pastor Randy O’Donnell
…… A Christian author once wrote: "God uses for his glory those people and things that are most perfectly broken." The truth of the matter is that perhaps when we approach God we become moralists of our lives or others and sometimes we come making excuses. Instead, what God is calling to us is to come as you are. Come with are your sorrows, hurts, stones, and broken hearts. God wants us to come in the midst of the realities of our lives, both the joys and the pains. When we begin the look honestly at some of the brokenness in our lives, we quickly realize that beyond perhaps disease and natural disasters, much of our hurt is humanity induced. We break one another's promises; we break one another's hearts…….
A prestigious man in a community had a son that was in the army. The son made a terrible mistake, got into trouble, and was given a dishonorable discharge. He said he knew what he had done had disgraced his family, and thought his father would be outraged. But he also felt he had to tell him what happened. So he did. He wired his a telegram. The father sent a telegram back containing three sentences that read: "I will stand by you no matter what happens. I will be there in the morning. Remember who you are." That is the way God works in the covenant promise to us. …..
We listen to God's word, then we look at our lives, and we have to confess that we have not lived up to God's expectations. This Lenten season we will look at how our journey in the faith often becomes stone-filled. It is challenged, twisted, and tested, but it is because of that, we know that God sends his Son, so that we, even in our brokenness, can be made whole. There is a quote that says "It is beautiful to see what God can do with a broken heart when God has all the pieces." Everyone who falls short is reminded that God's love breaks through with forgiveness, comfort and hope. The season of Lent calls us to think about being broken. Human beings have a distaste for what is broken, but God is not like us. God welcomes the broken hearted. Look what God does throughout the scriptures with the broken-hearted. God seeks the broken hearted. That is how we come to God, we come aware of our own brokenness our own shortcomings, but also aware that Christ's body was broken for us, broken in the cross event, which calls us to remember the event of Christ: God's love is written in unbreakable stone. So we come with broken and contrite hearts, as we together continue on the rocky journey. Amen
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