May 25, 2008
SCRIPTURES
-Isaiah 40-66 uses female images for God more frequently than any other Old Testament body of literature. Terence E. Fretheim Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
-One of the keys to interpreting this passage for preaching hinges on the word you in verse 8. I have answered you; I have helped you; I have kept you; (I have) given you as a covenant to the people
-SCRIPTURE (Matthew)
-The verse ends with a summary statement: You cannot serve both God and Money. The Greek word for Money is Mammon, which was taken from Aramaic, the language of Jesus. It meant wealth, property, or possessions, without the negative connotation usually attached to it. The Greek word for serve means to be a slave to someone. So the meaning here is that while possessions are neither good nor evil in themselves, one cannot be a slave to possessions and be a disciple in the kingdom of God. The word life, which in Greek is also the word for "soul", refers not only to biological life but more importantly to the totality of a person's purposeful existence in the presence of God The Voice
-Matthew 6:25-33 is generally considered part of the Sermon on the Mount. This portion resembles the wisdom teaching of the Proverbs. The subject is anxiety.
- in the words of the AA motto, "Let Go, Let God". In itself, that is wise - and different from the naive "don't worry, be happy".
-divided heart vs the single eye
-We are slaves precisely because we are our own masters.
-If any man would be master; he must be servant
-The use of rhetorical questions is designed to convince the hearer that anxiety or worry does not have the ability to solve any of life's problems:
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing (verse 25)?
Is God aware of your needs?
Can you trust God to care for you?
-to displace the holiness of God with the perishables of wealth and power is the ultimate human tragedy.
- means and ends or priorities. (We make possessions our ends when they should be means to greater ends )
-Greed and selfishness, which are the cause of most wars and human conflicts, are rooted in an underlying anxiety about material goods. psychology of scarcity, not enough to go around, so I'm going to hold on to what I have and get more if I can. Jesus much preferred a psychology of abundance shared, there is plenty to go around if we let go of our anxiety and greed. Rev. Richard Fewkes
- Normal anxiety is proportional to threat. Abnormal anxiety is disproportional to threat
-What do you buy for the man who has everything?" Jesus says, he's still lacking something! Craddock.
SERMON MOST VALUABLE POSSESSIONS CANNOT BE INSURED. (Or need not be insured) Lindy
-The opposite of rich is not poor but free. BBTaylor
-Money can be the way we assign value to our lives. Money is frozen desire or incarnate desire James Buchan
-Receive your life as a gift rather than protecting it as if was a possession
-Hard to carry full cup
-Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds the faithful, "There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control, but to share."
-Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power Covey
-If there is to be any peace, it will come through being not having. Henry Miller
-Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth...Matt.6:19
-Do our possessions own us?
-You are a passerby whether you like it or not. At the end of your journey you are left with nothing material, a paradoxical journey for in a sense you have made no progress. Amundsen
-People are blue because they adore and want things they do not own
-The best things in life aren't things
-We live in the kingdom of thingdom.
-Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. Don Herold
-We must find the more beyond the plenty.
-When we cease expecting, then we have all things. Buddah
-Who being loved is poor? Oscar Wild
-You can only lose what you will not give away
-There are many people who have money and people who are rich. Coco Gabrielle Chane
-Worship reminds us of values the world makes us forget
-What the world has to offer is not enough
QUOTATIONS
-The question is not what we have to finish the job, the question is, "What has us?"
-The richness of the poor in spirit and the power of masters who serve.
-A discontented man finds no easy chair. B. Franklin
-Man sees himself and others as commodities and tends to value himself as such. Causes anxiety. Fromm
HUMOR
-When we see the lilies spinning in distress, taking thought to manufacture their own loveliness. When we see the birds all building barns for store….twill then be time to worry, not before. From Uncle Ben’s Quote book:
-He needs a faith lift
-the farmer put a want ad in a farm journal which read, "Wanted: a woman in her thirties interested in marriage who owns a tractor. Please send a picture--of the tractor." Sounds very much like a society that puts material values above human ones.
-George Carlin wrote, "The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships
ILLUSTRATIONS
1Compare Jesus' teaching about the lilies of the field with
Buddha's teaching about the secret of the golden flower. The story goes
that one day the Buddha was gathered with a large assembly of his monks
on a mount somewhere. The Buddha was not one who minced his words. He
was gifted with a shining intelligence and could articulate his
doctrine and teaching at great length if he so chose. For all the
words he had spoken to his monks over the years not many of them truly
understood what it was he was trying to say. They got the words, but
they didn't really get the teaching in terms of first hand experience
of enlightenment. This time he would see which of them would
understand his teaching in a wordless sermon. He picked up a golden
lotus flower, turned it in his fingers, and held it silently before his
listeners. The minutes went by, but no one understood what it was he
was trying not to say, except for one monk, Maha Kashapa, who suddenly
smiled in full recognition and enlightenment. Because he alone among
Buddha’s disciples had grasped the Secret of the Golden Flower, the
Buddha then designated him as his successor. We cannot hold onto
life and beauty by grasping and clutching it to ourselves, that way
leads to endless anxiety and bottomless greed. We can enjoy life
most fully only by letting it go.
2.The ass and his masters. Aesop keep trying out new masters...who never really care about us. AN ASS, belonging to an herb-seller who gave him too little food and too much work made a petition to Jupiter to be released from his present service and provided with another master. Jupiter, after warning him that he would repent his request, caused him to be sold to a tile-maker. Shortly afterwards, finding that he had heavier loads to carry and harder work in the brick-field, he petitioned for another change of master. Jupiter, telling him that it would be the last time that he could grant his request, ordained that he be sold to a tanner. The Ass found that he had fallen into worse hands, and noting his master's occupation, said, groaning: "It would have been better for me to have been either starved by the one, or to have been overworked by the other of my former masters, than to have been bought by my present owner, who will even after I am dead tan my hide, and make me useful to him."
3.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. (William Blake)
Flower
in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. (Tennyson)
CHILDREN
-Illustration 2 would be good.
PRAYER PHRASES
Forgive us when we try to live without a master
Help us when we try to be our own master .
.Help us to find that lack with in us that makes us need to have so much control.
Help us to find the reason we cannot trust more than ourselves.
Help us when our possessions become our master. .. Too often we allow THEM to give us our direction and our purpose. Lindy
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