Many thanks to Wallace Hartley for filling in last week. I love the picture of the Lambeth Conference paper boat. With all the controversy, I thought it would sink. Hopefully, we have seen the last of those bulletin inserts.
It is good to return and to be part of a scripturally based service. The Rev. Mark House gave an excellent sermon today sticking to John 21:15-19 (which was appointed for tomorrow's feast of Peter and Paul). Jesus' instruction to Peter,
"Feed my lambs...Tend my sheep...Feed my sheep"was the focus of the sermon.
Unfortunately, we ignored Paul by not remembering 2 Timothy 4:1-8, as this letter reminds us of how to tend and feed us sheep when it is written,
"...proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths."
As the zeitgeist infiltrates itself into our very being with it's promise of fulfilling our every desires, it is ever so easy to wander off into the wastelands of "modern" life and forget Paul or create new myths such as "Rabbi Paul (click at your own risk)," or the Spongian myths (reader beware) regarding his sexual tendencies. We will eagerly listen to such new teachings. We are easily led astray by false shepherds. We do not want to hear "sound doctrine." We are falling for the myth that we know more than our forefathers. These words of Paul have no doubt been proven to be prophetic time and time again and certainly ring true today. He is telling us how he fed and tended the Lord's sheep. He had "fought the good fight," but the time of his departure had come, and he needed to pass along these instructions. After listening to Mark House's sermon, I was ready to get out of my chair and go tend some sheep myself.
If you still do not know how to tend and feed sheep, go back and reread 2 Timothy (about the letter here).
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I always find it amazing that new life keeps being breathed into old heresies and errors. No one has a knowledge of history, church or otherwise, which of course allows us to wallow in the narcissism which underlies our belief that we're having these "new" revelations.
ReplyDeletePaul saw it in the First Century and we see it today. We will see it until the end of time.
Cheers.
Thanks r.
ReplyDelete"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
Remembering is only possible if you put forth an effort to study the past.