September 10, 2023
Proper 18 – Bill Harkins
Good morning and welcome to each of you! Grace to you and peace on this 15th Sunday in Pentecost. The texts given to us today can be challenging in a number of ways. If we understand sin as somehow “missing the mark” in relation to one another—a definition based on a Greek archery term—then we quickly understand that we are all in need of grace, because no one among us is perfect. We all miss the mark at times. The Good News is that we hear in this text an invitation: right now, as we are, we can do the good, hard, messy work of looking at ourselves as members of the Body of Christ, and this includes people who are every bit as difficult as we are. Any good 12-step program has a variation on a theme of acknowledging that, often, the things that most bother us about other people—the ways others “miss the mark” can be the very things we don’t like about ourselves; those things, that is, that most need our attention in the form of what Carl Jung called “shadow work.” And the ultimate goal of wrestling with these things is reconciliation—with our own shadow selves, and with one another and the world. As Christians, we believe that Christ is reconciling us to God and to one another… an outward and visible sign of a grace. Even church conflict can be an opportunity to practice reconciliation; it can be sacramental.
September 3, 2023
Proper 17A – George Yandell
What’s in a name? From early childhood, I was told ‘George’ means ‘farmer.’ Now no offense to anyone who farms, but I was a city boy, and I didn’t like thinking my name meant ‘farmer.’ The only farms in E TN I’d visited were dirty, the farmers’ lives were tough, there was manure everywhere, and they smelled bad to me. Only later, when I began to study Greek in seminary, did I find my name ‘ge-or’gos’ meant also ‘gardener, vinedresser, husbandman.’ So I began to realize a deeper significance to my name. And now I’ve come to love growing herbs, tending plants, getting dirt on my hands. (And you know preachers are known for how they can spread the manure.) I guess I’ve come full circle.
In the early history of the Hebrew people, the name for God was ‘El.’ One of the first conversations I had with a man named Elroy, was about his name, which can mean ‘child of God.’ Beth-el in Hebrew means ‘house of God.’ From the time of Abraham, about 2000 BCE forward, the Hebrew people called God ‘El.’ Ancient times. Then around 1250 BCE a most intriguing change happens. The Hebrew people began to call God a new name. How and why?
The Hebrew people migrated from Canaan to Egypt @ 1650 BCE. You remember the story- Jacob’s 12 sons sold Joseph into slavery. He was carried to Egypt, rose to become Pharaoh’s second-in-command, and then gave sanctuary to all his father’s and brothers’
August 27, 2023
Proper 16 A – George Yandell
As we read the Exodus lesson, it’s important to realize that a lot of time has passed from last Sunday’s reading. In that reading from the end of Genesis, Joseph embraced his brothers who had sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph was the last of the line of remarkable patriarchs chronicled in the Genesis pre-history of Israel. Joseph, Pharaoh’s right-hand man, is long gone. The situation of the Hebrews in Egypt has deteriorated. They are being oppressed by ruthless taskmasters. The Pharaoh is anxious because the Hebrew people are reproducing at a fast rate. Male infants are to be eliminated at birth because the Hebrew population is growing so large.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs pointed out in a Jerusalem Post article in 2010 that the story of the midwives Puah and Shifra in the Book of Exodus is “the first recorded instance of civil disobedience, [setting a precedent] that would eventually become the basis for the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Shifra and Puah, by refusing to obey an immoral order, redefined the moral imagination of the world.” History’s proud line of social activists and conscientious objectors can trace their source back to these righteous midwives’ stand against the powers of their day. The Talmud states, “It was the reward of the righteous women of that generation that caused Israel to be redeemed from Egypt.” [This paragraph adapted from “Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching”, August issue.]
The intervention by the midwives was key.
August 20, 2023
Proper 15A – George Yandell
Some of you know that Susan as a Christian is also aligned with Buddhism. She told me a while ago she had rescued a turtle in the middle of Old Burnt Mountain Road. She stopped her car, got out and carried the turtle to the edge of the road it had been aiming for. She infected me with the same urge. A week later I too found a turtle in the road, stopped and carried it over to avoid it getting crushed. This has happened for both of us numerous more times. It got me wondering, “How did the turtles process these events we intended as rescues? Did they think, ‘Whoa, what did that human mean putting me over here? Didn’t it know I had just turned around to go back home because I left the coffee pot on? NOW I have to go all the way back across the road to the side I intended.’”
Consider how Jesus treated the Canaanite woman who shouted at him for her daughter’s relief from a demon. Did you hear how Jesus ignored her? His disciples urged Jesus to send her away because she was bothering them. Jesus seems to have heeded them, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” But she knelt at Jesus’ feet, gainsaying him with “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” She persuaded Jesus to heed her request. “Woman, great is your faith!