Welcome

Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Monday, September 30, 2019

on being "lite"


The Lite Church
Home of the 15-minute sermon
The 45-minute service
And the 7.5% tithe
We have only 8 commandments, your choice
Sugar free grape juice and gluten free bread
Everything you’ve wanted in a church, and less
                     Source unknown – a cartoon many years ago
____________________________________________________

Sometimes Jesus really makes it tough
I mean seriously!?

Just when we think we have this whole Jesus thing figured out
Just when we are getting comfortable

Boom!

We run across something that blows our socks off
And maybe a few other undergarments as well

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions”

There is no ducking that passage
Following Jesus is tough work
It demands a radical letting go
A radical allegiance
A radical cost

And, Jesus tells us, we must “count the cost”

We cannot avoid it, or pretend it is not there
Or we will be like a real estate mogul who gets in over his head
And goes bankrupt
And cannot finish the job

The trick is this
Knowing which cost we are avoiding?

The fact is, we all are masters of avoidance
We just pick different things to avoid
And different things to cling to

It’s a “twofer”
We avoid avoiding by patting ourselves on the back
For the things we fuse with

So one person might hold on, for dear life
to the idea of inerrant literalism,
and thus assume “they” are the ones who are true believers
while at the same time refusing to marry a couple of mixed race

Another person might fuse, hold on for dear life
to what they see as a “pro-life” stance,
but then turn a blind eye to caged children,
or children being gunned down in schools…
and totally miss the incongruity

Yet another person might be ready to side
with every oppressed person in the world,
the poor person,
the person of color
the immigrant,
but will then judge and ridicule those who struggle
with those issues

we can argue whether all “sins of omission are equal”
but my point is simply this

what Jesus calls us to do is to figure out what it is
we are fused with?
what is it we cannot let go?

success?
security?
our own sense of righteousness?
our wealth?
our guns?
our racism?
our hate?
our anger?
our literalism?
our political ideologies (when they don’t match the teachings of Jesus)?

I have things I need to let go of
Anger (right now) is one,
So is my tendency to judge
So is my fear

I have things that cause me to treat others
Talk about others
Think about others
Feel about others

In ways that are not “Jesus”

What about you?




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