Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw from the 10am Sunday Worship, 6/9/2024: "Frogs and Breakfast"
Centering Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, May your will be done, through me.
Good morning everyone, said the preacher, who wondered about... preaching!
That's right, the message and ministry of Jesus that is on full display in our gospel reading this morning, had its own specific flavor!
And have you ever wondered:
What was it about Jesus' message - Jesus preaching... that made him so popular, so admired, so feared, so hated, and ultimately, got him killed?
Jesus seemed to be this colorful blend of: Joel Osteen, Michael Curry, Louis Farrakhan, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all rolled into one!
How did Jesus inspire masses,
garner followers,
make the religious elite tremble,
worry his family to death, and influence the societal establishment to ultimately kill him?
I think that he preached on three things that are still integral to the wholeness and happiness that each one of us are looking to maximize in our lives!
We are going to jump into all three of them by talking about:
Jody the frog
Apoptosis
And The Denny's Grand slam breakfast.
Yes, you may not ever be inspired by my sermons, but you're usually surprised!
Earlier this week I was walking up the sidewalk here at church, when I noticed a very small little frog, barely the size of a dime.
Thank God that the alter guild frequently keeps odd-sized jars in the sacristy!
Because I grabbed one, scooped up that frog, and knew that I had my 5-Year-Old son's favorite graduation gift safe, secured, and in my pocket!
Later that day when he graduated from preschool, Cap, gown, pomp, and circumstance! He opened up all his presents, but his most beloved, most talked about, was his new pet frog!
We took some time naming him, he lobbied for Jody, I lobbied for Kyle, but he won out! And Jody it was!
Having never successfully cared for a frog, we consulted the local pet store, we're an employee urged us to purchase flightless fruit flies, and feed the frog 10 of them each day after we had purchased well-constructed artificial habitat
This helpful pet store employee said we would have to purchase a new supply once per week, because flightless fruit flies don't live forever, And that's where she lost us, and we confessed that the more humane decision may be to let Jody return to the wild and fend for him or herself.
Wise move, said the pet store employee.
This was not welcome news by the 5-year-old, who seemed to have envisioned growing up and growing old together with that dime-sized frog.
Tears, sadness, and disappointment lingered.
Reason, as we tried, that the truth, Jody would be much better off living in the wild, was not something that our 5-year-old wanted to hear.
Truth is sometimes like that.
When we don't get our way, instead of dealing with that reality, we try to change reality, and change the truth.
It happens in our personal lives, it happens in our political lives.
Are you believing in the truth - or a fanciful story?
Because we're living in an age when conspiracy theories and falsified science are on the rise it's important to ask.
We may want to note that we humans have a penchant for stories -
We will often believe in a story - over verifiable facts to the contrary: we will side with a tribe who is embracing a story that's appealing, instead of doing the needful work of verifying what's behind it.
Take UFO's for example - and our obsession with them that began in 1947 when grainy photos were widely circulated.
We know two things: there is almost certainly life on other planets.
There are a lot of objects flying around that are hard to identify.
So here's the story that got popular: that aliens from other planets are now flying around in UFOs.
However, has anybody noticed the decline in UFO sightings now that everybody has a smartphone?
Yes, there are a lot of good reasons to believe in UFO's - but evidence that holds up to scrutiny is not one of them.
One way you can tell if you're believing in a story versus falsified science, is that the story changes when evidence is brought to the table.
Years ago as a TV reporter, I went on a hunt for Bigfoot in rural Ohio with the nation's leading authority on Bigfoot. I asked him why no one had seen a dead Bigfoot and he told me that Bigfoots always bury one another underneath very heavy rocks. And why hadn't we ever seen Bigfoot excrement - it was because they always defecate in rivers.
No evidence - just a changing story.
Crop circles, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster are useful stories. But they’re also busy evading our ability to find them. If someone gives a new excuse every time there’s better data about medicine or other useful technology, it’s a clue that we’re hearing a story, not a scientific debate.
So how do we arrive at truth versus a good story?
A key to embracing the truth is humility.
We don't know it all - we can't explain it all - but we can learn - we can adopt a humble vocabulary and live into our limited capacities.
Instead of trying to criticize and condemn things that do not jibe with our story, we pause, with curiosity and careful consideration, over the possibility that something we don't initially embrace might have some merit to it.
Jesus had constant run-ins with his detractors who did not want to do that!
You and I are having constant run-ins with too many people who don't want to do this!
So be aware of our human need for good stories - but don't let the facts get in the way!
Be humble enough to admit more evidence! And smart enough to change our minds when it's the sensible thing to do.
What stories are you believing in that don't stand up to scrutiny?
Where do you suspect the truth is lurking in your life, a truth that you are denying?
How is God calling you to a more humble position?
Might God be where you least expect it?
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I was dusting the other day and noticed that there's a lot more dust in the rooms that people use the most. My wife was not surprised - well she was that I was actually doing housework - but being a medical professional - she knew that 90% of dust is actually dead skin.
I know, it's pretty icky - but...
Do you know how many billion cells you will shed today?
Anybody want to guess?
It's about 60 billion, with a B !
If you are eating healthy, exercising, sleeping right, saying your prayers, and taking your vitamins, 60 billion cells, perhaps 1% of you, will die today.
Of course, they are being replaced!
Your body is an amazing cell factory that is perfectly designed to handle this process.
The biological name for it is apoptosis.
And this happens in living organisms of all sorts!
You'll find dust from cats, dogs, even lizards if you're looking for it...
What this tells us is that those cells that are dying in your body, all 60 billion of them, are all doing so as part of the plan. When you have 60 billion cells dying in your body everyday, you are perfectly healthy, things are normal.
And yet, when things die in our lives, when things naturally decline and pass away, we tend to look at them as aberrations - as signs that life has gone off the rails!
We forget, as Virginia Wolff famously said, that, "A self that goes on changing, goes on living."
Just like last week, if you remember that sermon, the invitation of Jesus is an invitation to change - to live a full life is to change!
The critics we meet in this morning's gospel did not get that.
Those benefiting from the status quo rarely do.
We hold onto the things we know because we've adapted to it, it's familiar, and humans are scared and skittish beings who yearn for the comfort of familiarity.
But God is more than likely calling you to change today - God may be calling you to die.
And it's natural and it's good - and it's probably needful to you and the world -
Yet we're fighting it.
When will we understand that: We're called to die because we're called to live.
What change are you fighting today that you may want to, instead, accept?
What are you being called to die for - that might just bring you new life?
Sitting around a Denny's breakfast table was a men's group I used to belong to.
Does anybody remember the grand slam breakfast?
It had eggs, pancakes, sausage, hash, browns, absolutely delightful if you like to start your day on a full stomach!
It was over this breakfast that one of our men's group members shuffled in a bit late.
He said he had been down at the jail, because 12 hours earlier, one of the younger members of our church had been caught drunk driving, and thrown into the lock up.
This had not been his first time, this wayward, quasi member of the church, had a rough home life.
Most recently he had been living on a friends couch, while trying to put out the bare minimum to graduate from high school.
Our friend said he had spent quite some time with the 17-year-old, and thought we could help, could he come to our men's breakfast?
A few weeks later, out on bail, that 17-year-old joined us.
Things got tense as he opened up his heart, shared his story, which prompted others to share theirs.
One of our older members opened up about his wayward, past, abusive parents, alcohol abuse, and then a stunning invitation: He asked the 17-year-old to move in with him while his legal ordeal was being worked out.
Another man spoke up, and admitted to his alcohol addiction, and offered to be an AA sponsor for the 17-year-old. This brought tears to the young man's eyes, and more invitations from some of the other guys to pitch in and help.
By the end of the breakfast, the young man had found accommodation, advice, and support. By all signs, it appeared he would be turning over a new leaf.
And then he said this, "All my life. I have been looking for a family, and today, here at Denny's, I feel like I've found it. For the first time ever, I feel like there's hope."
In today's Gospel we hear about Jesus' family expressing concern over the direction of his ministry, trying to talk him out of what God has clearly called him to do.
Jesus makes some astonishing claims by equating his new family of faith, to that of his family of origin, preferring the former, acknowledging that being knit together in the love of God rivals, and can even surpass, blood.
This is what Christianity is about.
You have found a new family.
We are knit together, not by ethnicity, income, education, or geography - but by the love of God through the blood of Christ.
What that 17-year-old found that morning is what I hope you'll leave with here today:
Hope.
Hope that no matter where you are, what you've done, said, thought, or fought - God has a Grand Slam breakfast for you.
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Jesus preached about three things that are integral to the wholeness and happiness that each one of us are looking to maximize in our lives.
You can find and live into truth.
You can change.
You have hope.
May we more deeply embrace his message, his preaching, that our lives, and our world, may find the happiness and wholeness God desires.
Amen.