Deferring Honor

Luke 14:7-24

I think we all have some fear that we will go through life unnoticed.  It starts at an early age.  I see it in my children.  I remember it from my own childhood.  What are the two favorite words of a little child?  “Look daddy!” or “Look mommy!”  “Whoa, that’s amazing!” a parent exclaims while trying to hide to hide the fact that they’ve seen it a million times.  “Did you see me?” a child will ask.  And believe me, you’d better be looking or you might have to see it another ten times to make up for the one time you missed it.

Fast forward to the teenage years.  A girl finally gets the boy of her dreams.  She’s felt insecure and things aren’t going well at home for her parents.  She’s looking for love, for someone to notice her.  She’s looking for someone to make her feel worthy.  

A teenage boy will give in to peer-pressure.  He’ll give in to alcohol, drugs or some other illegal activity because he feels respected by other guys for doing those things.  

Later in life there’s jockeying for position and all kinds of politics while moving up the corporate latter.  “The only way I can move up,” the desperate employee thinks, “is to make myself look better than anyone else.  Then I can finally be respected.  I’ve got to look out for me first or I’ll be out of a job.”

Helping and Seeking Help

Luke 10:25-42, Luke 11:5-8

It’s great to be back with you today, after what seemed to be a very long trip for me – 8 weeks since I was last here with you in church. Having missed so many of the messages in this series I am a little worried about repeating what others have said, but I’m confident that you will bear with me if I do. Our topic today, Helping and Seeking Help, is an appropriate one, considering what I recently experienced concerning relief efforts in Nepal in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes on April 25^th and May 12^th (I was in Nepal for the second one) that killed more than 8000 people and destroyed about half a million homes. One of the encouraging things that I saw was an outpouring of love and compassion by Nepali Christians who wanted to reach out to help the people in the most-affected areas. In many cases, they were the “first responders,” and people did notice that they were generally the most equitable and unselfish in providing food and other necessities. We’ll see today how important this kind of “love in action” is in our response to God’s call on our lives.

Good Servitude

Luke 17:7-10, Matthew 18:23-34

Welcome! Today we talk about what it means to be a good servant. Now, as a culture, as a people, we have a really hard time even understanding or relating to this, let alone living it. The Greek word used for servant is doulos, which really means “slave.” In America we still haven’t recovered from the centuries of cruelty of racially-based slavery that were an important part of our history. To us, any thought of slavery is repugnant, disgusting, so much so that it is difficult for us to really enter into Biblical discussions that involve servants without imposing our modern types of thinking on top of it. This is a form of emotional baggage, and we need to overcome it if we are to understand the two parables that we will look at today.

It may help to discuss a little the nature of slavery in New Testament Bible times. Slavery then was just part of life. The average person probably didn’t have any slaves, but even in a smaller village, one or more of the better-off families probably would have one (most likely) or several slaves.

Good Shepherding

Matthew 18:12-14, John 10:1-18

Good morning!  Today’s parables lead us into familiar territory.  I think both of these parables are some of the best known and most often cited.  In fact, in an email to Carl, I described these as “cush” passages to deliver a message on.

Before we start talking about shepherding, it probably makes sense to take a look at sheep.  Does anyone have experience with sheep or sheep raising?  No?  Neither do I.  I know of one pastor out west who raised a few sheep.  I’m not sure if that was to learn more about them or because that’s just what he had experience with.  

Here’s a picture of a rather unusual sheep.  His name is Shrek, and we’ll come back to him in a minute.