sermon

so here's manuscript of my sermon for preaching class, I thought it turned out OK, so I'd post it for kicks. I used Blue Like Jazz for the illustration, if you don't have the book, shame on you, go out and buy it right now. Of note: I managed not to offend any one this time, at least they didn't put it in their reviews. I also got to say the words crap, urine and the phrase "Was God trying to tell me I'm gay?" in Emmanuel's chapel. I'm such a rebel.

(first part of the girlfriend story in Blue Like Jazz in the chapter loving yourself that I don't feel like typing)

Sebastian Moore is a Benedictine priest who wrote there are two levels of Spirituality.

Level one Spiritual maturity starts when we are babies. It begins as sense that, hey all these people are paying attention to me ALL THE TIME. That makes me feel good, my needs are met. I feel desired, there must be something inherently good about me. They want to give me what I want, what I want must be good. I must be good (of course this is a overgeneralization here. I have 15 minutes, you want more, go read the book).

This euphoria comes crashing down around the age of two (if we are lucky and have parents who love us) when our will begins to be thwarted. We can now express what we want, and sometimes we don't get that. But what we want most of all is to be wanted, to feel loved.

Eventually doubt starts creeping in to our self-definition. We're not so sure we really are all that good. But we still want to feel like we are good. It becomes a hunger that needs to be fed. We are attracted to people and things that affirm our goodness, but we become dependent on these outside opinions to keep us afloat.

Moore says it this way, linking the pattern to one seen in the relationships of early adolescents: "If you desire me, than I desire you because you desire me, since I don't desire myself. If I believe you instead of myself, than perhaps I will come to accept myself."

The pattern continues to a rejection that I am so dependent on the opinions of others (I don't care what anybody thinks about me), but at the same time a struggle to stay in control of the situation and in control of these influences to make sure they keep telling me I am good. That's what Don is doing with his girlfriend, using her to say his is good and then being frustrated for using her in that way.

We've seen this in a thousand ways. We fish for compliments, we display our best qualities, highlight them at all opportunities. We pick our qualities we want to define us: I'm smart, I'm strong, I'm funny, I'm tough, I'm pretty and then we set about making sure we hear other people agree with us. All the time this is fueled by that nagging fear, that deep down, I am right, I am no good.

We bring the hunger to God too. We stake our claim and identity as Christians in the belief that God has defined us as loved, which is a good thing. But sometimes I think that can be rooted in fear, in a hunger to have an external source say that we are good. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so (I think). I am a child of God, adopted into his family (I hope). I'm standing on the promises of God (I hope they hold). I don't think this is a question of believing harder or a proof that faith is for the weak. I think the problem is how we are defining how we relate to God.

It's like Don said, he was never satisfied with his girlfriend's expressions of affections, he always needed more. It wasn't about her not loving him, it was about him doubting his ability to be loved.

Level 2 Spirituality is characterized by " a shift from a reflected other-oriented sense of desire (I am drawn to you because you like me) to a direct, self-oriented experience of desire" To put in another way 1 John 4: 16-19 says

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.


At level two, you stop chasing the external affirmation that you are good, you start to believe that you are actually good.

Now, I am going to say a couple of statements. The challenge is to actually HEAR me and not blow this off as Sunday school fluff. Also, it is going to take work to really believe these things, they don't happen easily.

You are good. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but at the core of your identity you are good. God made you as you are intended to be made, with the capability of growth, yes, but also as you are. He knows you are good, right now, right where you sit. He also knows how much you have screwed up and how many blatant mistakes you have made, mistakes that may have dire consequences, but that does not change your goodness. You would not be more good if you were a little bit smarter, a little bit better looking, a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser.

Now, a couple of you are getting a little squirmy right about now about original sin, about salvation through works, about the spiritual realities about sin and righteousness. I understand. I have story that might help. It's the story of my final's week last semester. God has funny timing.

I took intro to care and counseling last semester. And I HATED it. It was the weirdest thing: I liked the subject, liked the reading, liked the professor, liked the class discussion. But for some reason I was TERRIFIED of this class. If you have a chance to take a Care and Counseling class, do. As you are learning to help other people with their screwed-upness, you will stumble across all sorts of screwed-up in yourself you either thought you were over or never realized was there.

So I spent a lot of thought trying to figure out what was the deal with this class. This is what I figured out: It didn't have rules, I like rules. I wanted to be able to do the reading, process the models and then be able to come up with the perfect questions in a counseling setting. But there were no right answer because counseling deals with people and people are messy. So there was always another way to ask the question, another direction to go in. We would have to get up in front of the class and practice "counseling" our classmates. I would spiral into an academic panic that I have not experience since timed multiplication tests in third grade. Why? Because I would ask my questions and then be told how I should have done it. It wasn't the criticism that was the problem. Tell me what the mistake was, and I will do my best not to make it next time. But the problem with counseling is there is never going to be a next time that looked just like this one, never a chance to ask that question better. As you might have guessed by now, I had a hang up with "right" and "wrong". Not is a Brie Vandecamp, desperate housewives perfect all the time kind of way where my way IS right and everyone has to do it my way, but in a I like winning the game way, I want to have a quantitative way to improve my score, tell me what is right and what is wrong. All this "better" stuff was driving me nuts, I kept wanting to say "WELL WHAT IS THE RIGHT WAY?"

Now, why was this bugging me so badly? This is where is gets ugly. Because I wanted to be good at it because I wanted to look smart. I wanted the professor to think that I was smart and I wanted the students to think I was smart because I have defined myself as smart. That's who I am, that 's what I do, because being smart makes you good. Because I had the nagging suspicion that I wasn't smart and I wasn’t good and the more I felt myself losing control of the situation and not knowing the "right" answer, the harder I fought to regain control. Yuck, that's really ugly isn't it? And every rational part of my brain was screaming at me that this was completely stupid to be placing so much weight on what other people thought of me, that I should straighten up and get a grip. After all, God said I was good, didn't he? But did the logic of dissecting my emotions make me believe it? Nope, not even a little bit.

And then I realized it. I didn't believe God, really 100% believe him when he said he loved me. Just like Don wouldn't believe his girlfriend loved him enough, and I couldn't believe I was smart unless I had the right answers, I couldn't believe that God loved me enough. In fact, I didn't believe anyone when they said they loved me. I thought, yeah, well, if you really knew me… And I hadn't been letting God really know me, I was hiding in some ways from him, hiding the piece of me that doubted his love for me, doubted that I was good. You know how some times when you give words to something that has been lurking around in the back of your mind for ever, it sounds so completely dumb you wonder how in the world it ever got there. This was my realization: I was afraid that God wouldn't love me if I admitted I didn't believe he loved me all of the time. See what I mean, it hits the air and turns stupid. And then I found this verse: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because He first loved us.

So I tried to stop not believing. Have I reached a transcendental new Spiritual level, have I moved to Moore's level two or perfection in love? I don't know. I'm working on it. I know that I'm a least moving in a good direction because I could tell you that story that makes me look way less than put together.

Moore says something interesting about how level two deals with other people though. Once you stop chasing the affirmation of your own goodness and just believe it, then you start to notice other people's goodness. You stop seeing them as means to an end of telling you you are good, but you want to share what is good in you with what is good in them. This can be a lot more scary than controlling them to meet your needs, because people are inherently messy and don't have right answers, but it seems like it will be a lot more rewarding as well.

It took finals for all this stuff to be brought to the forefront for me, for Don it took his girlfriend breaking up with him. (second half of story i don't feel like typing about urine and being gay)

The challenge is to look at yourselves in light of all this. Really examine where you are without believing all the whitewash you put on yourself for other people to hid your flaws, but to ask yourself if you are capable of being loved and loving without fear.

hebrew final

490 vocabulary words = 823,646,547,425 brain cells

7 verbs tenses, 10 weak verb types = 958,548,316,791 brain cells

reading backwards with braille for vowels = 564,497,137,496 brain cells

knowing you're finished with all required languages, priceless.

letter to the ancient Israelites

Dear Ancient Israelites,

When I finish my work on time travel, I have a few thoughts for you to keep in mind as you develop as a society:

What is the deal with Hebrew? Are you too good for vowels? Or do you really speak in a series of clicks and phlegm hocking sounds and those crafty Masoretes just put in vowels later to fool us? Did you have too much time on your hands while wandering around the near east, was there an abundance of free-time in you sustenance societies that you sat around and came up with the most complicated language as a challenge to fill up the hours, a party game?

I think you may be taking this whole "three letter" thing a little too far. You may think it handy to use the same three letters to mean "dirt" and "to throw dirt" with a nifty switch-a-roo with some vowel dots, but it makes translating a bit of an issue for us non-dot savvy types. especially when some of the same letter combos have nothing to do with each other like "goat" and "strength" unless there is a correlation there that I am unaware of. (super goats, eating a swath through the land?)

you might also want to consider making your letters not look so much like each other. because really "to defile" looks strikingly like "to praise" and since you haven't developed moveable type, this could lead to some REALLY embarrassing translation gaffs with the slip of a pen. might want to look into that.

Finally, I totally get the whole pastoral society thing, but 6 words for cows? I think you might be over doing it a bit. I mean really, at least make one mean "spotted cow", or "funny looking cow" or something. And along the lines of funny looking cow, what is the deal with the word that means "cow" AND "crocodile" eh? Near-sighted scribes, hallucinogenic mold in the bread? You might want to avoid that little slip becoming a permanent part of the language.

Thank you, Ancient Israelites for you time and kind consideration of a humble a harrassed student of you language. Oh, and as a tip, watch out for the Babylonians.