One Fixed Trust

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Ephesians 2:1-10

I found this poem when I remembered singing this hymn that we sang today, and looked it up.  So I did an internet search.  And I saw the author and through a little googling realized that the hymn is just five of twenty-two stanzas in John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, The Eternal Goodness.  And when I read the poem I knew that I had to share it with you. 

So here is the link, (I encourage you to take the time to read it before continuing below):

The Eternal Goodness by John Greenleaf Whittier

Foolishness of God

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Have you ever been guilty by association?

I think we live in a culture that mass-produces judges and judgments.

We consume opinions like we consume entertainment and food.

Our market-saturated culture invites us to build an image,

construct an identity that is “in control,” rich, and sexy.

The problem isn’t just that power, wealth, and sex appeal

will not ultimately fulfill us.

The problem is that the market runs on competition.

And so we are sifted into different niche markets.

We become consumers of competing fashions,

Even competing opinions.

And this is encouraged by the way that our culture runs.

And so we become guilty by association because we’ve consumed the wrong goods, or fashioned this identity rather than that identity.

This group over here judges that group over there, because their news channel gives them opinions that are lampooned and condemned by my news channel.

I’m indulging in a bit of exaggeration and satire here.

We are more intelligent and independently minded than this gives us credit for.

But there’s some truth in all of this.

We are an image-conscious people.

On Courage

Mark 8:31-38

I remember watching the Disney cartoon version of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow

And the scene when Ichabod, the hapless schoolteacher is riding on the road out of town

And hears terrifying noises that make him imagine all sorts of calamity and then he realizes it’s just the frogs, or the cattails, or some other benign reality.

Fear has a way of twisting the way that we hear and see.

I think of the sounds I hear in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep and am awake in that fourth watch anxiety.

Or the drive home on a dark night and something makes my heart jump within me and as I get closer I realize it’s just a mailbox.

We have a self-protective instinct – that’s the reason we fear. It’s part of our humanness; it’s built into our biology.  And we need this; it is a very adaptive instinct. We need fear to learn to keep away from fire and countless other dangers.  But it quite often malfunctions –

Part of being human is being vulnerable.  And another part of being human is dealing with that vulnerability.

Peter was listening to Jesus talk about how the Son of Man would be publicly humiliated, would suffer and die and rise again after three days.