A(nother) Sermon: (Look out!)

(everyone stand as scripture is read)

Luke 10:25-37 "And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise." (some emphasis mine)

. . . . . Well, it was a pretty lengthy scripture this morning, and some of you are probably wondering where you can get a good table quick or what you're gonna order at the restaurant, so, for a change, I'm not gonna take up a lot of time here this morning. Instead I'm going to mention the newspaper article I wrote for the Hattiesburg American back in '78, where I commented that possibly no two areas of life had seen more progress (and what progress! I wrote) in the past hundred years than communication and transportation. It really kind of boggles my mind to consider it even today.

. . . . . If our first priority was to see that no man, woman, or child fail to get at least once a day a bowl of beans and rice, or lentils and noodles, or black-eyed peas and cornbread, and, you know, a cup of milk or an egg once a week say, if we made that our first priority, with the communication and transportation capabilities we as people on this planet have, I bet it wouldn't be a month before nobody dies of hunger. (See statistic here.)We can communicate and we can transport. We just can't agree on what's important. That's kind of awful to consider isn't it, that we don't care more than we do. That's the power of ordinary mind, which is all over this web site but i tried to address it particularly in A(nother) Sunday School Lesson.

. . . . . That's the power of rationalizations, the machinations we have sought out, where the "gray areas" some of us really like a lot come from. (We like them, you know, because they absolve us of responsibility. They were featured in my first [would-be] sermon here.) Church doctrine is full of such machinations. I can sit here and let you know all these things because you don't have any power over me, you know. You can't talk to your neighbors about how amazing (read 'crazy') my doctrine is, you can't write to the Southern Baptist Convention or the Pope or the Dali Lama and get me fired or transferred or even reprimanded. You might can get me run out of town, or even killed, and the only thing that bothers me is that God's will might not be fulfilled. I see God's will as what I call on this site Jesus' primary vision. (Reckon feeding and sheltering everybody in the world mattered to Him?)

. . . . And try to imagine how much politics has gone on in churches all over the world for how long. What I've called the great chapter Jeremiah 5 ends with the lament that "the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so". Well, if you bother to think about it you'll probably realize that the priests are in fact governed by the people; what the people want to hear is what they pressure the priests and rabbis and preachers and teachers to say. I think knowledgeable people will agree that public schools standards have been disintegrating for many many years. That's because of public pressure, from students who don't want to learn and parents who don't want to know that their children aren't learning.

. . . . . Organized religions have faced similar pressures, since their inceptions. Man's doctrine has evolved in no small part from people wanting doctrine to be less harsh. Examples abound. Does anybody remember when Catholics weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays?  Politics is nothing but pressure. Watch pat robertson pressure his tv viewers to pressure their congressmen, maybe just to consolidate pat's sense of power, his desire to rule. God knows.  But yeah, if we wanna separate church and state we have to outlaw people talking about politics in church and people talkin' about church anywhere outside of church. Turn in your neighbor if he talks trash about the sermon. But I digress.

. . . . . When Paul wrote in Ephesians 6 that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" he was addressing ordinary mind. "Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air," he wrote in Ephesians 2, in 2 Corinthians 10 he adds that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ". We naturally listen to the devil of ordinary mind, and the people who have the most power and means to further God's will on the earth naturally wish (and work) to maintain the status quo. And blame it on (or credit it to) common sense, often not even realizing that common sense (or 'ordinary mind' or 'the wisdom of this world') is the prince of the power of the air. The devil.

. . . . . I mean, the scripture we just read contains a parable I've heard come up in a lot of sermons and, incredibly enough (to me anyway), the emphasis is never on needy people ('the poor ye have with you always' huh?) but instead always seems to be on the fact that we should be like "the good samaritan". I've never heard a sermon on who our neighbor is, actually the question Jesus was answering in the text, even though He seems to clearly be saying that our neighbor is anybody who needs help. Anybody who needs help is our neighbor. It's almost like the will of the people is not for this proverb to say that the world is one neighborhood, that we should help anybody who is in need of help (and yeah, those lines [check these] come in mighty handy here, those machinations and rationalizations that want to rip and tear and nag and define and delimit; ordinary mind rears its ugly head up at every opportunity we give it i know) but rather the people (me too) want to hear that the focus should be that Jesus said the Samaritan was the neighbor, that the man looked down upon and despised because of his ethnicity say, turned out to be a good guy, and that's what we should aspire to (if that made any sense).

. . . . . So here's what I want everybody to do: go have a good lunch and think about the fact that twenty-four thousand people are gonna die of hunger today. Can you imagine a preacher saying that? Yeah, yeah, I know, your preacher is a sincere God-fearing man who has a personal relationship with God and he'd never say anything like that because he knows how destructive guilt is and how far off base I am and how separated from God's will I obviously am or whatever. I know all that. Really. All I'm asking is that you prayerfully consider everything. Talk to your neighbors about the madman across the river or whatever, just tell them you think you would be willing to have less so nobody will starve to death. Write your Congresspeople and tell them forget a tax break, let's get real. (Yeah, still dreaming.) But really, the will of the people could change things and people need to change their will to change the will of the people. I'm not saying do anything like give half of what you save every month to Save the Children or Care or the World Food Program; just agree that you're willing to do something and for heaven's sake (there's a turn of phrase huh?) tell people about changing your priorities, your thoughts, and how maybe they should consider it too.

. . . . . A newspaper from a church I used to attend, after a while they started putting on the front of it (in gray like this):

Our Mission Statement We will love God. We will love each other. We will learn and obey the word of God. We will commit our lives, our talents and resources to the task of telling as many as we can about the love of God in Jesus Christ.

They really believe the Great Commission is about lip service. (Mark 16:15 says "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." That's what some people like to call the Great Commission, though in Matthew 28:19-20, another closing chapter with another version of the commission says "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations," and adds "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." [emphasis mine]) Here is a bit about the great commission; another small bit is here.

. . . . . These professing Christians, who claim to believe that Jesus is Lord of their lives and that His Holy Spirit resides in their hearts (God will judge; He will search the hearts ["deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9 asks] and minds), spend a lot more money on their church than they do on missionaries and they spend a lot more on missionaries than they do feeding the hungry and protecting children against diseases that are almost gone here in ameriKa and let's just say generally treating the human race like they would like to be treated. And the rationalization is that they are active members of a church who witness to people when they can (about God and Jesus and their great love for us and stuff) and tithe and give offerings too, they maybe sing in the choir or organize missions to South America and Monte Carlo and Dallas to not just spread the word, the Gospel, the good news, but to help build a church or a house for somebody, you know, good works even. But there's only so much one person can do you know. And don't get me wrong, i'm in the same boat (except for maybe the mind/heart set; well, maybe I'm rowing to a different drummer, but i'm sure in the same ocean). When Jesus said in Luke 14:12-13 "When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind" that wasn't a commandment like He talked about in Matthew 28:20. And if it was, hey, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out He certainly didn't mean for us to make a habit of it. Hey, the United Way counts, you know, giving to all these charities and good causes, right hand not knowing what the left hand's doing. Dinner parties, barbeques, hey, I wouldn't know even where to start looking for poor people, ya know? I mean, come on. The status quo won't change, everybody with any sense knows that.

. . . . . Only problem is, Jesus didn't know that, which means God doesn't know that, which means maybe we've got some unfinished business to do and the wise thing to do would be to go about doing it. That's what I'm doing now. Laying it all on the line. I've written of some of my woes. (Sob.) Actually my new landlord raised everybody's trailer lot rent like fifty percent last November (starting December 1st merry CHRISTmas ya know) and last month raised it another maybe 7-8 percent and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he did it to get my neighbors to get rid of me. Yeah, this dude has copped an attitude about me and sure let me know. So what did I do? I wrote the letter that I want y'all to pick up as you leave the church and read after din din. I mean, I don't want you feeling guilty or ashamed or afraid, I want you excited about the prospect of attaining the kingdom of heaven, which is still right here, right now. And it looks like the best way to get people involved is to show them what the fear of the Lord is all about. Remember, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

. .

(kind of yelling running down the aisle:)

. . . . Oh yeah, I wanted to be sure and mention that I signed my name in all caps because that's the way the landLORD's notice was done; as a matter of fact, wait just a sec and let me run out to my car and get y'all a copy of his second raise rent (btw, another 8 bucks a month) notice (and notice how "respectful" this is):

Pace Mobile Home Park, LLC 406 West 7th Avenue, Mailing Address: 534 Eucutta Road, No City, OrState 555-666-lord MEMORANDUM TO: ALL RESIDENTS May 30, 2001 Due to an increase in operational expenses, Effective August 1, 2001 all rental lot spaces will increase to $120.00 per month. Water, sewage and garbage will still be included. Respectfully, GREG PACE

(i did put a link to some personal stuff here, but i've moved it to the bottom of a study of scriptures addressing the matter of poor people found here, which i think might be good background for my personal situation)

Top of Page
To the God's Truth Page
To the Table of Contents
To the SAFE Home Page