Mindful Leader

The sermon is on the Luke 18: 35 to 19: 10.  I am not 100% sure why we read the passage before except maybe for the forecast of Calvary.  I used this as an opportunity to review where we had been over the earlier four weeks and try, key word - try, to put a cherry on top of those four reflections.  

 

This reflection is drawn from the Luke 15, three parables.  The liturgist will only read the first two to provide context, and then I re-tell the third one.  A parable familiar to us.  

 

This is the familiar story of the Good Samaritan.  This was acrtually extremely scandalous for Jesus to use this imagery.  Amy Jill Levine, Jewish New Testament Scholar at Vanderbilt, suggests that the image is someone coming to your rescue, that was so detested, that you would just as soon die rather than be helped by him.  Wow.  

This is an excellent text for us to examine in this most hostile of times.  How do we learn to listen to each other in a way to understand rather than to hate and reject?  

Luke 7: 18-21 -- Go Tell John

John the Baptist has sent his men to see Jesus and ask him, if he is the one.  Jesus answers pointing to the ideas of trusting his senses and affirming John the Baptist focus on Fruitfulness.  

We have posted several of our musical offerings ... bells, congregational singing, and our praise band.  

 

Luke 7: 18-21 -- Go Tell John but more than that.  It is a moment of inviting John the Baptist to "trust" and advocating a ministry focused on fruitfulness.  

This podcast is the 9:00 Service .. 

 

This podcast includes my statement of the them, our prayer over our plates, Emily's exegesis before my sermon, and the sermon.  It also includes a brief commentary on the fact I/we reserve the right to critique the state (both Federal and Utah) on what it is, and perhaps is not, doing.  

The scripture is Luke 6 and mine is mostly on 1-11 but we read to 16.  Narrative Lectionary. 

I probably should give this five minute reflection about once a year.  I do have a mistake or two in what I said, for example, Jesus was not only in conflcit with the religious but also the political.  I goofed that up.  

Scripture, experience, tradition and reason.  

Experience = individual traditon.

Tradition = corporate experience.  

All grounded in Scripture. 

Reminder and not discussed here, but Scripture is a function of Tradition.  

 

This is from Psalm 90 and Luke 5.  

Emily Flemming and I are trying a little different approach.  We are going to read the other's scripture before the sermon with a teaching moment.  

This reflection is more from the Luke than the Psalm, but it gets to both.  I have been talking a little about Emotional Intelligence (EQ) of Jesus and how he has done, and offer Peter up here as a good example of how he has made himself open to the idea of possible change, and from that, a new vocation.  

We come back to the Luke 4 14-30 Passage a second time and build off of the where we were in Advent.  That sermon offered that Jesus knew who he was ... here he is inviting the congregation to expand the scope.  

The reader on the Scripture Passages is Leigh Anne Duff -- and the scripture is Luke 3: 1-22.  Three ideas about how God works through John the Baptist that speaks to us in our particular now.