Sermon Sampler: June 26, 2005

Poor Paul! God had given him this wonderful message of free grace and forgiven sin, but instead of receiving it with joy, the people wanted to turn it into a license to sin, or a new kind of works righteousness!

Paul was trying to make clear the road that John the Baptist had begun, the road that leads us home to eternal peace with God. But on either side of this road, it turns out, there are rather deep ditches. Swerve to the left and you tumble into the murky slough of cheap grace. Veer off to the right and you'll crash headlong into stony, unyielding legalism. We know where we want to go – heaven! – and we know what the two ditches are. What’s hard to see is the rather narrow strip that leads between them, the road that points us true. If God’s grace is neither free license nor a new law, what sense can we make of it?

The answer can be found in four little words: 'already, but not yet.' On the face of it, they make no sense. How can something already be true, but at the same time not yet have come to pass? It doesn’t make sense. Yet we live our Christian lives in the puzzle of those four words, in the tension between them. 'Already, but not yet.' They are the road down the middle, the one that points us straight and true toward heaven.

Read more of this sermon (or any other one) at my Sermon Archive...

International Man of Mystery

More to follow...

Tokens of encouragement

Much of the time as a pastor your work seems to be invisible to many of the people you serve. The things that are the most important part of your work are often the ones more hidden from public view. It can be easy to become discouraged.

But God blesses us from time to time with reminders that the work we do in his name does make a difference in this world, and that those to whom we minister do receive our gifts with gratitude:

Pastor Bob,

We Froemkes thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the love, care & kindness you showed to Mom. The service was so meaningful thanks to your wonderful gifts that our Lord has showered upon you. We will never forget how you just seemed to 'show up' at anytime and become a part of our family, sharing your knowledge, jokes and thoughts about so many things. We admire & respect you. God Bless You,

The Froemkes

Mossback: "The Rights of (Corporate) Man"

Individuals today have fewer rights than corporations. Individuals are protected by the Bill of Rights, but an American corporation gets that and more. It can exist in perpetuity; it has limited liability; it receives enormous tax breaks and government subsidies we mere people can only dream of; it has a regulatory system designed to protect and enable it. (Clear skies! Healthy forests!) To top it off, corporations avoid the responsibilities of citizenship: It is their right to behave as selfishly as possible. They can betray the public that ostensibly sanctions their existence.

The rights of man? They're nothing compared to the rights of corporate man, a Frankenstein of increasing power.

This is scarily on the money. A recommended read.

AP - "House Approves Move to Outlaw Flag Burning"

Don't they have something better to be working on ???

Picture from Sunday

I serve in a small, rural community, so baptisms are a rarity for me. I've had only two in more than two years here - the most recent being Sunday. I was taking pictures for the family after the service when the baby's mother asked to take my picture with him. =) I'm tickled with the picture... and with the baptism itself!

Mosquitos are evil

What more is there to say? They're absolutely everywhere right now, swarming in broad daylight as soon as you set foot outdoors. Take, for example, this prime specimen I caught munching on one of my friends the other night...

The Seattle Times: "Born gay? How biology may drive orientation"

This is a helpful overview of the scientific study of homosexuality. There seems to be good evidence that biological factors do play an important part in determining sexual identity. At the same time, studies also indicate a significant role for outside influences - although identical twins have a much higher rate than fraternal twins or other brothers of both being gay, there is still only a little more than a 50% correspondence, which means that sexual identity appears right now to result from a very complex stew of factors.

None of this directly influences the theological debate over homosexuality, of course. The relative weight of nature and nurture (and individual choice, according to some in the debate) are important considerations, but are only one facet to be examined. Still, this is an area that is often neglected in church conversations about homosexuality, and I hope that voices like the Seattle Times' article might be heard by those taking up these difficult questions.

Friedman on auto technology

All I can say is a hearty "AMEN!" to the Times' Thomas Friedman:

We don't need to reinvent the wheel or wait for sci-fi hydrogen fuel cells. The technologies we need for a stronger, more energy independent America are already here. The only thing we have a shortage of now are leaders with the imagination and will to move the country onto a geo-green path.

NYT: "Questions, Bitterness and Exile for Queens Girl in Terror Case"

Slumped at the edge of the bed she would have to share with four relatives that night, the 16-year-old girl from Queens looked stunned.

On the hot, dusty road from the airport, she had watched rickshaws surge past women sweeping the streets, bone-thin in their bright saris. Now, in a language she barely understood, unfamiliar aunts and uncles lamented her fate: to be forced to leave the United States, her home since kindergarten, because the F.B.I. had mysteriously identified her as a potential suicide bomber.

'I feel like I'm on a different planet,' the girl, Tashnuba Hayder, said. 'It just hit me. How everything happened - it's like, 'Oh, my God.'

Why the hell aren't Americans outraged at this? The government has refused to discuss Tashnuba's case and has forbidden anyone involved to discuss it. If this girl was such a threat, then let's hear about it. And if she wasn't (as seems very likely), the government has ruined yet another family's lives in its witch hunt.

Of course, the safest policy for a secretive government in a complacent culture is simple to play it mum. Eventually even those of us who have heard about Tashnuba will get bored and move onto the next news story; all the government needs to do is keep its mouth shut and it'll get away with whatever it wants to do.

The culture of secrecy the Bush administration nurtures is the key to all its other misdeeds - because it resists any and all attempts to gain information for the public, because it fights at all costs any measure of government transparancy, it is able to operate with impunity and simply stonewall when it is challenged. As long as it can keep Americans afraid and convinced that such secrecy is the only thing that is keeping them safe, the administration has it made. And we're dumb or apathetic enough to believe that line of crap instead of demanding the information we're entitled to.

Absolutely disgusting.

NYT: "Comedian for Senator? Don't Laugh"

Minnesota is featured in today's Times, as the possible candidacy of Al Franken for senator is analyzed:

There would not seem to be much of a fit between Mr. Franken and his re-adopted home state. Minnesota Nice, as it is called, means that when the woman serving coffee at Caribou, the local doppelgänger of Starbucks, asks how you are doing, she really wants to know. Although Mr. Franken is affable and sports a backpack jammed with wonky articles and books, he is not exactly Minnesota Nice. His last book was titled 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,' and he spends enormous amounts of time on his three-hour radio show truth-squading and savaging various people on the right.

Then again, Minnesota is a place of enormous, and not easily explained, contradictions. A place where lions of the Democratic party - Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy - once strode the earth, it takes voting very seriously, with a 79 percent turnout in the 2004 general election. Yet in 1998 it elected a professional wrestler to run the state. Minnesotans, who show up in droves at the state fair to marvel at seed art and butter sculptures but also show up en masse at the legitimate theater, are their own darn thing. So frequently cast as droll practitioners of the art of common sense, they have displayed some fairly atavistic tendencies, electing Mr. Ventura out of nowhere as both a slap and a jolt to the system. In their own quiet way, they remain mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.

Public broadcasting in jeopardy?

From the MoveOn newsletter:

You know that email petition that keeps circulating about how Congress is slashing funding for NPR and PBS? Well, now it's actually true. (Really. Check the footnotes if you don't believe me.)

Sign the petition telling Congress to save NPR and PBS:

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

A House panel has voted to eliminate all funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," and other commercial-free children's shows. If approved, this would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting, threatening to pull the plug on Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch.

The cuts would slash 25% of the federal funding this year—$100 million—and end funding altogether within two years. The loss could kill beloved children's shows like "Clifford the Big Red Dog," "Arthur," and "Postcards from Buster." Rural stations and those serving low-income communities might not survive. Other stations would have to increase corporate sponsorships.

If we can reach 250,000 signatures by the end of the week, we'll put Congress on notice.

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

Thanks!

P.S. Read the Washington Post report on the threat to NPR and PBS at:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=745

Avenue Q

How did the Best Musical of 2004 escape my attention? I must see this!

"Now the people will fight..."

This one's just for you, Jeff...

Reuters: "Porn sites to get their own Internet domain"

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said late Wednesday it would move ahead with plans to set up a separate .xxx Internet domain for sexually explicit material.

Sex sites won't be required to sign up for .xxx addresses. But the new domain will enable porn sites to label themselves clearly and help filtering software keep underage users away, according to ICM Registry Inc., the company that will oversee the domain.

This is a good start. I've been in favor of a .xxx or .red top-level domain for a long time, now. It's good to see ICANN, the body that sets up these domains, moving in this direction.

Now that the technical issue of establishing the domain will be resolved, it seems to me that the government would have a very legitimate way of regulating sexually explicit material online... at least that material which originates within the US. Just as it's constitutionally appropriate to regulate adult shops through city zoning laws, it should pass muster to legislate that all US adult businesses use the new .xxx domain. They could be allowed to keep their .com domains, but only to forward visitors automatically to the new .xxx site, and not for any content. Violators could be subject to heavy fines.

This would both preserve the First Amendment rights of businesses to produce and sell pornography and individuals to purchase and view it, while protecting young or unsuspecting viewers from accessing such materials by means of a very simple menu option. Browsers could automatically block sites at domains ending in .xxx, giving parents greater control without requiring costly (and often inaccurate) web filter.

Other nations could follow suit, putting pressure on pornographers to bear their share of responsibility for cleaning up the web. Although there would certainly still be "safe" nations from which adult sites could launch .com addresses, each nation to come onboard with strong legislation backed up by action would be a great improvement.

I believe strongly in civil rights, and this solution seems to be the best way to protect the rights of those who support the adult website industry, as well as to ensure that the rest of us need not be unwillingly exposed to material we deem objectionable.

ICANN has made the first move toward making it happen. Now it is up to congress to do its part. Let's hope for a speedy delivery.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

What if Darth Vader kept a blog?

The fan-created site "The Darth Side" attempts to answer that question. Its entries give that "Day in the Life of a Dark Lord" experience, written in Vader's own voice. It's not official Star Wars material, but it's danged interesting, nonetheless!

Thanks, Jeff, for the link...