In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness. In the story a slave who owed his master an outrageously large amount of money is forgiven his debt. Within moments of being forgiven, that same slave shows no mercy in calling in a debt for a ridiculously small amount of money. Upon hearing about this hypocrisy, the king calls the first slave back in, and promptly punishes him. At the conclusion of telling this story, Jesus says that the king is God, and the slaves are us. He warns that if we do not sincerely forgive one another that we will not be forgiven by God.
I began with this story and remarked that the king in the story, must have said "are you kidding me!?!?" to the first slave. Here this king just forgave a debt that could never be paid off, and the slave turns around and shows no forgiveness to his fellow brother. I find myself thinking the same thing, when my oldest daughter Emily (3 years old) will come to me apologizing for tearing half the pages out of my favorite book, and then once receiving forgiveness, turns around and pushes her sister, Hannah (18 months) down for playing with a toy she never even plays with.
I then pointed out that this phrase, "are you kidding me!?!?" must be exactly what God says every time we fail to forgive each other! God is that king. God has forgiven us all a debt we could never pay, the debt of sin. God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, that we might reap the rewards of that which we do not deserve (ie life everlasting). For us to accept God's forgiveness and then not grant forgiveness to others is literally a joke! It is the pot calling the kettle black!
In an attempt not to be too hard on everyone, including myself, I did acknowledge that some people make it very hard to forgive them. You know the ones who do terrible things to you or your loved ones, and then proclaim that YOU are the one in the wrong! The person who pokes, and picks, and wrongs you as if that is what they are employed to do. The person who doesn't ask for your forgiveness, and if you told them you forgave them, would be angry that you thought they needed your forgiveness.
I lived next door to a person like that, growing up. This person always seemed to think that he was better than me and my family. Our homes had a stone path between them, that lead from his house to ours. As a young child I remember walking on the path to visit his elderly mother (who owned the house). Within weeks of her death, an eight foot wall was erected right through that stone path. This neighbor used to clean his pool and then throw the junk he cleaned out over that wall into my yard. He would neatly rake his yard after mowing and deposit all the leaves and grass clippings into our yard. He and his family seemed to think that our yard was their garbage can! This man owned a classic Corvette, and one day threated to kill the family cat if he caught it near his car again. He made this threat to my 4 year old sister!
So I shared that I knew such a person, and was quite familiar with those who are harder to forgive. Then I pointed out something that was shared with me. Such a person does not deserve our anger, but rather our pity. A person like that is not a mean terrible human being, they are a sad, little (inside) person. Someone who seems to live only to make your life miserable is really someone who's life is so empty, and so sad that they have nothing better to do. Having said all this, I still acknowledged that forgiveness is not always easy. Therefore we spent the next few moments focussing on the person(s) in our lives that we need to forgive the most and asked God to help us begin to forgive them.
I would encourage you to stop what you are doing right now, and pray to God. Ask the Lord to help you in coming to forgive that man or woman who seems so unforgiveable to you. You might find that in attempting to bless another you yourself are the one who is blessed.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
August 31st Sermon Capsule - Canonization of Scripture
Our final sermon in our "Summer of All Request Sermons" was all about the Bible and how we got the final product we now have. This final requested sermon was not only educational, but it gave those in attendance the opportunity to participate in mock biblical text selection!
To begin with, the word "Canon" is not the big gun that shoots out cannon balls, but rather it refers to a religious community's sacred texts. In the case of Christianity we call it The Bible, and Sunday's sermon described how those texts were chosen both formally and informally. Another point of interest, that we only spent a short period of time on is what we commonly call the "Old Testament" or Hebrew Bible. The reason we spent only a short time is because the Hebrew Bible was already mostly established by the Jewish community, and because there is only so much time in alloted to any given sermon. I did discuss the fact that like the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible was written over a long period of time, and then gradually portions of it were accepted by the larger community as being authoritative. Unlike other books, the Hebrew Bible, and New Testament were not written all in one sitting, nor where the books within each section compiled all at one time.
We began our discussion of how the New Testament came to be what it currently is, with a very rough timeline hitting some of the highlights of the canonization process, beginning with Jesus birth sometime around 6 B.C.E. and ending with the ecumenical councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393, 397, and 419 respectively. In between we had rough dates for Paul's epistles (50-60 C.E.) and the four canonical Gospels (70-100 C.E.). The real important point on the timeline was 144 C.E. where a man named Marcion started his own church in Rome, and also officially set what he claimed to be an authoritative Christian set of scriptures. Marcion's "bible" included most of the Gospel of Luke, and Paul's epistles, but nothing else. He claimed that the other texts, including the Hebrew Bible (which had been the primary scriptures for the first generation or two of Christians) were too focussed on the material/physical world which were evil. Therefore he rejected any scriptures that mentioned the physical world, or the God of Creation.
In response to Marcion's radical understanding of Christianity, the rest of Christianity began to more precisely set its own canon. The process first began unofficially in local churches, where Paul's epistles, one or two Gospels, and other epistles from prominent Christian leaders were read in worship alongside the Hebrew Bible. Finally the process took on a more official tone at the Council of Hippo in 393 C.E. and at the two Councils of Carthage in 397 C.E. and 419 C.E.
This marked the end of the history lesson part of this week's sermon. Now we turned our timelines over where there were three hypothetical lists of Scripture. The congregation engaged in narrowing these lists of hypothetical scriptures from 6 to only 3. This activity was to illustrate the criteria used by early Christians to determine what texts became canonical (or got into the Bible) and which ones did not.
The Criteria we used were as follows:
1. Authorship - writings with apostolic authorship were more readily accepted
2. Content - writings that agreed with other established sources and orthodox (right) Christian practice were more readily accepted.
3. Location - writings to major cities, and/or stable locations were more likely to be preserved and therefore were more likely to be considered for inclusion
Once we completed the three examples, I encouraged everyone to remember that The Bible as we now have it, was written over a great period of time, and was not compiled until even later in the history of Christianity. I also pointed out that The Bible is the text that we as Christians claim to live our lives by, but sadly many of us have a very limited knowledge of even the most fundamental portions of The Bible. I pointed out that the best way to solve this problem is for each of us to spend more time reading our Bibles, and more time in conversation about what we've read.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
To begin with, the word "Canon" is not the big gun that shoots out cannon balls, but rather it refers to a religious community's sacred texts. In the case of Christianity we call it The Bible, and Sunday's sermon described how those texts were chosen both formally and informally. Another point of interest, that we only spent a short period of time on is what we commonly call the "Old Testament" or Hebrew Bible. The reason we spent only a short time is because the Hebrew Bible was already mostly established by the Jewish community, and because there is only so much time in alloted to any given sermon. I did discuss the fact that like the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible was written over a long period of time, and then gradually portions of it were accepted by the larger community as being authoritative. Unlike other books, the Hebrew Bible, and New Testament were not written all in one sitting, nor where the books within each section compiled all at one time.
We began our discussion of how the New Testament came to be what it currently is, with a very rough timeline hitting some of the highlights of the canonization process, beginning with Jesus birth sometime around 6 B.C.E. and ending with the ecumenical councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393, 397, and 419 respectively. In between we had rough dates for Paul's epistles (50-60 C.E.) and the four canonical Gospels (70-100 C.E.). The real important point on the timeline was 144 C.E. where a man named Marcion started his own church in Rome, and also officially set what he claimed to be an authoritative Christian set of scriptures. Marcion's "bible" included most of the Gospel of Luke, and Paul's epistles, but nothing else. He claimed that the other texts, including the Hebrew Bible (which had been the primary scriptures for the first generation or two of Christians) were too focussed on the material/physical world which were evil. Therefore he rejected any scriptures that mentioned the physical world, or the God of Creation.
In response to Marcion's radical understanding of Christianity, the rest of Christianity began to more precisely set its own canon. The process first began unofficially in local churches, where Paul's epistles, one or two Gospels, and other epistles from prominent Christian leaders were read in worship alongside the Hebrew Bible. Finally the process took on a more official tone at the Council of Hippo in 393 C.E. and at the two Councils of Carthage in 397 C.E. and 419 C.E.
This marked the end of the history lesson part of this week's sermon. Now we turned our timelines over where there were three hypothetical lists of Scripture. The congregation engaged in narrowing these lists of hypothetical scriptures from 6 to only 3. This activity was to illustrate the criteria used by early Christians to determine what texts became canonical (or got into the Bible) and which ones did not.
The Criteria we used were as follows:
1. Authorship - writings with apostolic authorship were more readily accepted
2. Content - writings that agreed with other established sources and orthodox (right) Christian practice were more readily accepted.
3. Location - writings to major cities, and/or stable locations were more likely to be preserved and therefore were more likely to be considered for inclusion
Once we completed the three examples, I encouraged everyone to remember that The Bible as we now have it, was written over a great period of time, and was not compiled until even later in the history of Christianity. I also pointed out that The Bible is the text that we as Christians claim to live our lives by, but sadly many of us have a very limited knowledge of even the most fundamental portions of The Bible. I pointed out that the best way to solve this problem is for each of us to spend more time reading our Bibles, and more time in conversation about what we've read.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
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