evening sermon

DR I think spoke for 12 minutes last night.  So one point is about all you can get in.  But it was a great one.  I'm going to try to do it justice.

The scripture were Isaiah 5 about Israel as a Vineyard that had produced wild grapes.  Now God is going to pass judgment on his vineyard which has not done right.  Then a gospel selection was read.  Jesus speaks a parable about a vineyard owned by a rich man who then lets it out to tenants.  He expects to get grapes from the tenants but when he sends representatives to get them his representatives are abused, rebuffed, beaten, even killed.  Then he decides to send his son.  The tenants determine to kill the son thinking then they will own the vineyard.  But of course they do not own it.

DR made the point that we are like those vineyard tenants.  They thought they were owners.  But they were just taking care of it.  Jesus points out to the Pharisees that they too are simply tenants of God's temple, religion, and people.  They are to take care of it.  They do not own it.  But they acted like they owned it.

We too act as if we own things.  We own money, our, house, possessions.  We forget we are only temporarily given possession.  After we are gone someone else will live in our house.  We sometimes forget our children are not "ours".  We are simply given care of them while they grow up.  But they do not belong to us.  They will grow up and go out on their own.  They belong to God just as we do.

We need to take good care of our house so that those who come after us will get it in good condition.  We need to remember when we give alms that the money we control is not ours but Gods.  He will take care of us.  When we hold it tightly and just use it for ourselves we do wrong.  We are acting like we own it and have no responsibility to anyone else.  But this is absurd if we only think about it.

Our lives, our bodies, every breath we take is on borrowed time.  God has given us possession of them for a little while.  Then we will leave this earth and others will take our places.  Maybe it will be our children, if we have children.

I have been wondering a lot about mortality since it is not just a theoretical issue anymore.  That sermon helped me to orient my priorities better and answered better for me the question of why I am here.  I am a tenant, taking care of a body lent to me, to a family given to me to take care of, to a world I can help take care of.  It is my responsibility to take care of all these things as I am able, my body, my family, my friends, my world.  Lord help me to do it all better! 

I can get mad about that but what good does that do?  My life is a precious gift.  I thank God for it.

Notice in the parable Jesus tells how patient God is.  If it were us, after the first rebuff, we would have sent in our private army and killed all those tenants.  But God is very patient, he sends envoy after envoy.   He is so patient that in their foolishness they fool themselves into thinking they are in charge.  But they are not.  For me death is the final arbiter.  We cannot cheat death.  Then there will be judgment.

Evangelicalism

David Bebbington in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (1989) defined evangelicalism as:

1) Conversionism - an emphasis on "new-birth" as a life changing experience.

2) Biblicism - a reliance on the Bible as ultimate religious authority

3) Activism - a concern for sharing the faith

4) Crucicentrism - a strong focus on Christ's redeeming work on the cross

I think this is about as good as I have seen.  I resemble this I think and my posts do too for the most part.  I think it is great. 

Do you agree that this describes what an evangelical believes?  I imagine most everyone reading this would fall into this category, evangelical.  Do you feel comfortable calling yourself an evangelical?  Why or why not?

Walking

A TV show called Everwood - produced by Gary Berlanti

I suspect no one cares about this as much as  me.  Still I want to rant a little.

As I go through Everwood again I cannot help marveling at Greg Berlanti. It seems that he used season one to touch on all his hot button issues.  He is teaching or preaching on a lot of controversial moral issues.

I noticed another one I missed before, the one about surrogate motherhood that was coupled with the creating of a non-standard family.  In the 60 year old woman who receives a baby we have a less controversial image of a non-standard family.  Married couple families have always been the best, the standard.  But from the dawn of time there have always been non-standard families.

In 112. we are introduced to medicinal marijuana.  I think in one scene several voices speak to the producer's feelings about drugs all having good uses when proscribed properly.  This includes marijuana.  Whether he would favor legalization in not expressed.  The treatment of the subject implies yes.

I have yet to get to the father who turns homosexual and the abortion one. I'm sure I've missed some yet. Or forgotten them.  The thing I object to the most of any of these topics is in the treatment of the gay father.  I object to the idea that the wife might forgive him if he had been fooling around with another woman but since it was another man, that's different.  Perhaps not.  He attempts to apologize and sa it will never happen again.  How is that different from if it had been a woman?  In the story will was going to forigve him until she finds out it was a man.  In the shock of the moment I can toally understand her reaction but it seems based on a totally false premise.

Whether a woman should forgive is not my context here.  Surely if he has been heterosexual before he can be again.  How is it that now that he has dabbled once he can never go back?  That makes no sense.

I think it is 122 where they deal with a secret abortion.  I have to say it is tastefully done, as tasteful as the murder of an unborn child can be shown.  The show ultimately had no title but it seems originally is was called Blind Gimps.  That title may have been too controversial itself and got dropped.  It might imply a lack of compassion on those who decide to kill the baby.  If so I approve.  The show successfully shows several very selfish people making a short sighted decision that will cause long term mental anguish for the girl and her family.  The show does attempt to show the disastrous repercussions of abortion. At the time it was originally shown it had addictional disclaimers and a short guidnnce speech at the end about abortion.

One more I remembered.  It occurs in one of the first shows when the wife of the pastor leaves him after completely making over her looks.  She starves herself and works out and becomes a beautiful woman.  The pastor cannot deal with the change and they split up.  The situation seems to be both of their faults.  This one may resemble a bit the later divorce caused by the man having a gay affair.  In both cases the couples moved apart in their interests and so a divorce was shown to be natural.  I certainly object that especially in this first case the couple did not work hard enough.

Funny thing I did not see this dealing with burning lifestyle issues in the next three years of Everwood.  Nor really is there too much of it in Brothers and Sisters, the show he is producing now. It seems like he got it all out of his system in the first year. After that  he concentrated more on making interesting TV plots.

(Research shows he did a lot with Dawson's Creek before he created Everwood. I never saw any of those so I cannot comment. Everwood seems to be the first show he had complete control over.)

He is very talented and I have nothing against a man putting something of himself in his work.  But I felt a ned to comment on the positions he seems to take on issues that I include under moral or morality.

Ambition