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THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

Warner M. Bailey

               Genesis 1:21 states: “So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm.”  I always wondered why the author of the first creation story called out the “great sea monsters” for special mention when describing God’s creating the marine life of the world.  The scholarly explanation is that these creatures symbolized power that could strike fear in the breast of whoever encountered one of them.  The creation story writer was careful to point out that even those animals who make us afraid are God’s creatures.

               But I have another take on these great sea monsters.  Recently my son David took me on a fishing trip off the coast of upper British Columbia.  We were part of a larger party of 12 couples who lived for a week on a converted coastal patrol boat, one of the few remaining wooden tugs still in service.  Every day we would venture out in skiffs to try our luck and skill at catching salmon, halibut, and ling cod.  It was a most congenial make up of guests and a superb crew of captain, cook, hostess, and two guides.  Read More »THE GREAT SEA MONSTERS

HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR

HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR  Acts 17.26-34 

Warner M. Bailey

                The day Mary and I climbed the hill to the Acropolis we had not yet been in Athens 24 hours.  It was truly overwhelming and surreal.  The awesome proportions of the temples, the beauty of the statuary and carving, the stark white of the stones and the cobalt blue of the sky—not to mention the fact that we were still suffering from jet lag—made the experience distinctly disorienting, awesome. 

               I wonder if the Apostle Paul felt a similar disorientation when he visited Athens in its original splendor and was stunned as he looked up at the Acropolis upon which the Parthenon soared?  The story in the Acts of the Apostles of his stay in that capital city of wisdom, philosophy, and beauty does show us that the Acropolis had an effect on him, too.  He “was provoked” at all the idols he saw, and he argued with Athenians in their market place, the agora as the Athenians called it, a building fronted with Doric columns still standing today at the base of the towering Acropolis.  He preached about the resurrection of Jesus to this audience of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and his preaching got a mixed response which betrayed just how drastically the Christian good news was misunderstood by these Athenian philosophers..  Read More »HAD THEY COME BACK TO HEAR

LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE

LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE

Micah 6.1-8  

                When God’s Spirit takes the words off the pages of the Bible and burns them into your hearts, you become a different person.  You see things differently.  You act differently.  Listen again to God’s words from the prophet Micah.

O my people, what have I done to you?

In what have I wearied you?  Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

and redeemed you from the house of bondage;

and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

O my people, remember…

that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.

 

               O my people, what hardship have I put on you?  O my people, what requirement did you have to fulfill, what test did I require you to pass, in order to be eligible?   How many merits did you have to earn?  Answer me!    And of course, our answer to God is None!  Nothing!  It is all God, God, God. God brings out.  God liberates.  God nurtures and shapes.  A life of freedom begins with a gift of freedom.  And woe betides the person who forgets the gift part of their freedom.  The word from the Bible is that life with God starts with a gift that you could not have gotten by yourself.  Remembering that you live from a gift always must be the place from which you start as you plan on how you are to live.  Micah now talks about the “how” of the living.Read More »LOOKING AT THE WORLD WHEN LIFE IS FOR FREE

HAS HE SAID HE IS SORRY? GROUNDS FOR FORGIVENESS

HAS HE SAID HE IS SORRY?  GROUNDS FOR FORGIVENESS

 Matthew 18.21-35

Warner M. Bailey

                Just how merciful was the king if he was ready to sell his servant and his estate as partial payment for the debt?  Was it really possible for a king’s servant to run up such a fantastic debt?  Can I really believe that the servant would have been so unmoved by the forgiveness of the sum that he would have tried to gouge his fellow-servant that way?  How forgiving is the king, really, who would imprison a servant and have him tortured forevermore?  What is it, actually, that God will do to every one of us who does not forgive from the heart?  What does it mean to forgive from the heart?  Does it mean to forgive warmly, feelingly, sincerely, genuinely, authentically?  Was it easier for the rich king to forgive than the desperately poor servant?  These questions lead us to the heart of Christian forgiveness.  What does a deeper study of the parable tell us?Read More »HAS HE SAID HE IS SORRY? GROUNDS FOR FORGIVENESS

Faithfulness Builds Hope

The Kingdom Come: God’s Beloved Community
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52

“But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” 1956

A story very familiar to long-time St. Stephen members but which may be new to the rest of you is the story of The Hole. You see, the idea of this gothic cathedral has been around since the forties, when the session of old Broadway Presbyterian Church first dreamed of moving here. Plans were drawn up, some of which we have framed on the wall in the church office. The original sanctuary, what’s now the Parish Hall, was built immediately after the church moved to this site in the 1950s.Read More »Faithfulness Builds Hope

The Cosmic Do-Over Button

Fall and Creation
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
July 20, 2014
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX

Romans 8:12-25

“Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we’ll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we’re promised is much more interesting than that. It’s new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in.”N. T. Wright

I’m a year out from the 30th anniversary of my ordination in 1985. Don’t worry, I’m not fishing for another party like the one you threw me for my 10th anniversary. Frankly, the 30th anniversary of my ordination only reminds me of how old I am. But I do often have a fantasy. I sometimes wish I could go back to those first early years of my ministry, when I was a solo pastor of a small but wonderful little inner city church in Virginia, and start over again, but with all the knowledge that I’ve garnered from the past twenty-nine years. There were many good things about my years there, but many things that didn’t go so well either because of my personal shortcomings or because I simply didn’t know enough. That church in 1985 would benefit so much from what I know today in 2014 about pastoral care, preaching, worship leadership, community engagement, and social justice.Read More »The Cosmic Do-Over Button

Seed

Genesis 25: 19-34
Romans 8: 1-11
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

“Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of what will be.”
Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)

Carl Jung once said that we spend the first half of our lives building our personal kingdoms, and the second half defending them. You get to my age, and you start to think, I’ve arrived. Everything I’ve got, I think, is the pinnacle. It’s the result of my hard work. I should rest on my laurels. Change becomes viewed as a threat.

The problem is, the Gospel is all about change. Jesus came preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Repent has come today to mean, renounce your sins. But that’s not what it means in Greek. The word in Greek is metanoia, and it means change. Change, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The world is changing, because the world has to change when the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Change, because you and I have to change when the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

And the Kingdom of Heaven is always at hand.Read More »Seed

Joy

Genesis 24:58-67
Romans 7:15-25
St. Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis talks about one of three particular experiences in his life that gives him joy. It is, he says, “the memory of a memory.”

As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House [in which I grew up,] when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation of desire; but desire for what?… Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased.Read More »Joy

God of the Absurd

Genesis 22:1-14
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

“All the while Abraham had faith, believing that God would not demand Isaac of him, though ready all the while to sacrifice him, should it be demanded of him. He believed this on the strength of the absurd; for there was no question of human calculation any longer. And the absurdity consisted in God’s, who yet made this demand of him, recalling his demand the very next moment.” –Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

I spent a bit of time early in my life as a stringer for the Roanoke Times & World News in Christiansburg, VA. On the staff room bulletin board there was an article prominently displayed that had an attention-grabbing headline. It was called “First, Kill Your Babies.” It was not about homicide, but about writing. It was a variation on the quote often attributed to William Faulkner: “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” Stephen King—an expert on killing one’s darlings—put it this way: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even though it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill all your darlings.” The point, of course, is that often it’s the clever little touches, the ones we most enjoyed, that need to be brutally excised from an article or story in order for it to be a good article or story.

I thought of that as I reread Soren Kierkegaard’s striking interpretation of the story of Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac. It may seem at first an odd comparison. After all, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is not light-hearted writing advice but easily the most disturbing story of the Bible.Read More »God of the Absurd

St. Stephen the Visionary

St. Stephen

Acts 7: 51-60

 

“It is not the punishment, but the cause, that makes the martyr.” St. Augustine

 As many of you can tell us, the transition of old Broadway Presbyterian Church to its new location on a hill near TCU was a tough transition indeed. Rev. Hardie retired, preaching from Broadway’s pulpit; and the Rev. R.W. Jablonowski, former lawyer and former Marine chaplain led Broadway as it abandoned its old digs and started building here, on this site, in 1950. While the congregation waited for the new building to be erected, they met in the old Paschal High School auditorium, which is now MacLean Middle School. One of the more controversial topics that were debated during the transition was, what do we name this new church? Many were still fond of Broadway Presbyterian, but of course people pointed out, we aren’t located on Broadway Street anymore!Read More »St. Stephen the Visionary