Phil (w)Rite: A Proper 6

Showing posts with label A Proper 6. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Contrasting Realms

4 Pentecost Cycle B proper 6 June 16, 2024
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 Mark 4:26-34

Biblical readers and scholars might assert that the message of the kingdom or realm of God is a very basic message in the tradition of the words of Jesus which made it to the synoptic Gospels. The later Gospel of John does not include the parables of the the kingdom of God.

Another insight regarding the parables of the kingdom of God found in the synoptic Gospel would be the appropriation of their meaning for the writing contexts of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

What does the message of a kingdom of God mean in the years 70-90 of the Common Era for the members of the Jesus Movement who certainly knew the reality of what living in a kingdom, a realm, an Empire, meant.

Surely, it was not lost on the readership of the Gospels the stark contrast of realms or kingdoms.

For the Gospel readers, the kingdom of the Caesar was the reality of the Roman Empire whose laws and armies impinged upon each person within the realm. As far as anyone could travel, they still remained within the realm of the Caesar. They lived and moved and had their social being within the realm of the Caesar. Many of the Caesars were designated by decrees of the Roman senate to be gods. So, the Caesars were gods and/or sons of a god.

What would it mean in contrast for the propagation of the message about the kingdom of God, the great God of the Hebrew Scriptures, the great God who was called Father by Jesus of Nazareth?

The Jesus Movement of the Gospel settings did not have expansive social reality; there was no Christendom, Holy Roman Empire, or impressive visible evidences of the kingdom of the Christian God.

The Gospel writers had the boldness to perpetuate a kingdom message to contrast the obvious presence of the kingdom of the Caesar, which engaged members of society through laws, administration, armies, and the collection of taxes. The kingdom of the Caesar was unavoidable and participation in it was not voluntary, but required.

Participants in the Roman Empire believed in other realms; they believed in the realms of the gods and goddesses. They believed in fate such that the gods and goddesses favored their leaders and marked their interactions through their various mystery traditions. Through auguries the Roman sought to interpret the messages being received from the gods.

The message of the kingdom of God as presented in the Gospel is a message about a greater realm, one greater than Caesar's visible realm, and one greater than the realm of the gods and goddesses. This Great God was on the expanding horizons of any human possibility and was all inclusive.

The message of the kingdom of God in the Gospel was not just about the existence of this great realm of God; it also was about the uncanny, the mysterious, the delicious discovery of this Great God within one's own territorial being of what was internal to the epidermis of a person.

The Gospel Kingdom of God message was that enlightenment to this great kingdom was like the mystery of an organic event, the planting of seed that goes from a tiny thing planted in soil only to surpass itself in exponential growth and arrive at a place of producing more seed for more plants.

The Gospel writers were proclaiming that Christ, the Messiah King, through the power of the invisible but knowable Holy Spirit could personally tap a person into the knowledge of being connected with God. And the results were uncanny, enigmatic, and marvelous.

How could such surpassing greatness have come from something seemingly so insignificant?

The Gospel of the contrasting Realm of God is that the seeming unnoticed Spirit can gradually take over one's life and create such impressive collateral effects as to spread to influence people to become a significant social reality of goodness, love, and justice in the world, in a way in which the realm of the Caesar could not happen.

The parables of the Jesus as recounted by the Gospel writers, was a witness to the mysterious and uncanny enlightenment event which let people know in personal ways their specific relationship with God in identity with the Risen Christ through the experience of the Holy Spirit.

The early members of the Jesus discovered that they could live knowing the realm of God as being primary to their existence and enlightenment, even as they knew in their life situations they lived in the realm of the Caesar with his armies, administration, laws, taxes, and various mystery religions.

Today there are too many people who call themselves Christians who want our governments to force their Christian views on this world and this country. They would try to replace the persuasive and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in giving the unique orientation of each person into the enlightenment about the one God who loves and without force seeks to use love to lure us to enlightenment.

May God help us today to know how to live in contrasting kingdoms without confusing the modes of enlightenment through which we come to know them. And may God's loving Spirit enlightenus and make us agents of love as the valid mode of administration of the God of Love. Amen.

Saturday, June 17, 2023

God's Children's Have Names

3 Pentecost, A p 6, June 18, 2023
Ex. 19:2-8a Ps.100
Rom.5:6-11 Matt. 9:35-10:15

Lectionary Link

To have a name means that one has been wanted and designated as having a unique place within a group of people, most notably, one's family.

In our time, our identity is most often associated with numbers, our social security numbers and driver license numbers. We get assigned different numbers in all kinds of transactions. Having a number as our identities can leave us seeming to be impersonal administrative cogs getting lost as mere statistics within a system.

Numbers can be offered in combinations so as to be individually unique, while if one's name is John or Jane, there are many other Johns and Janes.

But the point of having a name like John or Jane, is that John or Jane are someone's John or someone's Jane, in the sense of belonging.

Today's Gospel lists the twelve disciples of Jesus by name. The existence of the Gospels is proof that the Jesus Movement attained some success as a social movement and with success of any movement there comes the organizational changes to become efficient in administrating larger numbers of people as well as adopting deliberate strategies to present the originating ideals to a greater number of people.

The originating ideal of the Jesus Movement was discovered and manifest in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. I don't think that Jesus tried to revolutionary; he just had this great gut feeling that many, many people were missing the obvious. He did not think that people should be alienated from the obvious, because the obvious belongs to everyone.

We know that food, water, and air are obvious needs for the lives of everyone and knowing that, the human task is to make sure that everyone has knowledge about and supply for what is obvious for the sustaining of physical life.

But what was the great personal and human relationship obvious thing which was being missed by people in the time of Jesus? The obvious for Jesus is that he knew himself to be a Son of God, and because he knew this, he also knew that everyone else too was a son or daughter of God. But the social conditions in the setting of Jesus did not allow people to know the obvious. The many other human roles of society dominated and crowded out the ability for people to know themselves as children of God.

God's realm or kingdom was a personal realm, a realm where each person was to know oneself as God's child. This knowing oneself as a child of God is exemplified in the baptism of Jesus when he is declared to be the son of God, but not just a son but one who was delightfully pleasing to his heavenly parent.

For Jesus to know himself as a son of God and one who had the interior sense that his very being delightfully pleased the heavenly parent, well.......he believed that this is what every person should realize in their lives.

This was the good news of the obvious which Jesus shared. And he called his friends and let them know about this obvious primary dynamic: James, John, Peter, Andrew, Matthew, Philip, Bartholomew, James, son of Alphaeus,Thomas, Judas, Simon, and Thaddaeus.

The disciple had names because they were known to Jesus, they belonged in the company of Jesus, they belonged in the family of God, as God's children. And if these friends of Jesus could know this obvious reality of being God's children, then they too would want to share the obvious with as many people as they could.

So the Gospel message of being children of God, made in God's image as the primary affirming identity of life is what the evangelical mission was about. Our Gospel lesson presents some strategies in spreading this basic message within the environs of Palestine.

The heart of the Gospel is that God's children have names because they are known by God as God's beloved children, and they are known to have personal names within the community of the people of this world.

It is very easy for people to lose their personal value within community. People can be reduced to their function and their roles, their titles, the amount of wealth, education or their positions within society.

The obvious message of Jesus was this: First, each person is a child of God and to be treated with the dignity and respect of such an identity. Yes, we have many other callings, roles, and functions within our social setting, but Jesus came to remind us about our primary identity as children of God.

The mission of Jesus was to convince his friends that they were children of God and then get them to convince other people about their basic membership within the family of God.

The disciples are listed by their names because they belonged to God and to each other. Let us discover the baptismal meaning of our names today, namely that we are God's children, and it is our mission to discover this, and to help other people discover this too with as many strategies as love can devise.

In our highly populated world, people can easily get lost by being an administrative number or a member of a statistical category. We in the church, the local church are to be like the proverbial bar, Cheers, where everyone knows our name, because we celebrate belonging to God and to each other. Amen.

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Sunday School, June 18, 2023 3 Pentecost A, proper 6

Theme:

Discuss the difference between a disciple and an apostle

It is June; we have finished the school year. Many students have graduated. What do students do after graduating? They go to the next level of their education or they begin to work doing what they have been trained to do.

A disciple is a pupil or student. An apostle is a person who has been sent.

Today we read a list of the 12 disciples. The 12 disciples were pupils or students of Jesus. They followed him and watched him. They heard him teach many lessons about God and life. Jesus as the teacher and professor decided it was time to graduate his disciples. When he graduated his disciples, they became apostles. They were sent to do and say the same things that they had learned from Jesus. But as apostles, they still were disciples because even after they began to teach and preach like Jesus did, they still continued to learn from Jesus as his students.

You and I are to be both disciples and apostles. We are supposed to students of Jesus. But we are also supposed to students who have graduated. We have successful learned many things from Jesus and so we are qualified to practice what we have learned and to share it with other people.

If we don’t share what we have learned then we have wasted it. That is why we need to be both disciples and apostles. We need to be students of Jesus but also messengers of Jesus in sharing what we have learned from Jesus about God’s love, God’s forgiveness and the Good News about Jesus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvq6iPkXCQQ

Sermon:

Peter, Andrew, James and John. Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew. James and Thaddaeus, Simon and Judas.

Do you know who these 12 men were? They were 12 friends and disciples of Christ.

Why were there 12 disciples? The church was called the new Israel. And how many tribes were in the Israel? There were 12 tribes named after the sons of Jacob.

Were there only 12 disciples of Jesus? No there were many more. Jesus helped so many people that all of those people became his disciples.

There were women: Mary his mother, Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany, Martha. There was Zaccheus, Nathaniel, Bartamaeus, and many more.

Today, we have read about how Jesus changed the 12 disciples into 12 apostles.

What is a disciple? A disciple is like a student.

Is a person supposed to be a student forever? No, that is why we have graduation. A student graduates. A student then becomes a teacher, because everything that a student learns he or she must share that with someone else.

So the twelve disciples graduated from their school with their teacher Jesus, and they became apostles.

Apostle means someone who has been sent to do an important work.

The disciples graduated and became apostles because Jesus told them it was time for them to go and to do the things that he had taught them. He told them to go and tell people good news. He told them how to get rid of the bad things in life. He told them how they could recover from their sicknesses.

And since Jesus had only one voice, two feet and two hands, he could not be everywhere. So he sent the apostles to help him do his work.

And now today, Jesus calls us to be disciples. We are students of Christ. But not just students of Christ, we are also apostles, because Christ needs us to be his voice and his hand and feet in this world.

With our voices we can tell people good news. With our feet we can go to the places where we are to tell people good news? Where is that? It is right here. And with our hands we can help and heal people who need to be helped.

Let us remember that we are disciples of Jesus, but that we also have graduate from being disciples, because Jesus also makes us apostles when we are sent to do and say the good things that Christ taught us. Amen.

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

June 18, 2023: The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Gathering Songs: If You’re Happy and You Know It, Awesome God, Amazing Grace, Simple Gifts

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And Blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever. Amen.

Liturgist: Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Song: If You’re Happy and You Know It, (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 124)

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it then your face should surely show it. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.

Make a high five…...

Make a low five…..

Shout Amen….

Liturgist: The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist: Let us pray

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

First Litany of Praise: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great! Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us! Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior! Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family! Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins! Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead! Alleluia

A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 116

I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving * and call upon the Name of the LORD.

I will fulfill my vows to the LORD * in the presence of all his people,

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

Thanks be to God!

Liturgist: The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, `The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Liturgist: The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever. Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Liturgist: The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People: And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory Song: Awesome God (Renew! # 245)

Our God is an awesome God, he reigns from heaven above.

With wisdom, power and love. Our God is an awesome God.

(Sing three times)

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of our birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts. Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might. Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

the bread and drink the wine, we can know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as

this food and drink that becomes a part of us.

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ. May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant: Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People: Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Amazing Grace (Blue Hymnal # 671)

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found. ‘T’was blind but now I see.

‘T’was grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.

The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. ‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years. Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise. Than when we’ve first begun.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Closing Song: ‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple (Blue Hymnal, # 554)

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

and when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,

to turn, turn, will be our delight till by turning, turning we come round right.

Dismissal:

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.

People: Thanks be to God!

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Evangelical Mission Today: Red, Yellow, Black and White, All Are Precious in His Sight

2 Pentecost, A p 6, June 14 2020
Ex. 19:2-8a Ps.100
Rom.5:6-11 Matt. 9:35-10:15
Lectionary Link

We are at the season of graduations, and of course graduations this year have been interupted by the pandemic, but they still happen. Why? Because learning cannot stop and people cannot cease to have transitions from being students to being graduates.

In today's Gospel we have something akin to graduation from the rabbinical school of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel sets it up almost like a graduation ceremony with even a list of the graduates. "Peter, would you come forward and get your diploma...Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Thomas, Thaddeus, Judas,James son of Alphaeus, Simon, Bartholomew and Philip. You can imagine Jesus giving a commencement address, saying, "I have called you disciples, my pupils and my students, but now you have the degree of apostleship conferred upon you. You don't cease to be a disciple now that you will be apostles, but the whole purpose of learning from me is to go forth and practice what I have taught and shown you. Yes, you are apostles now, but you will still have some very hard lessons to learn, and some of you won't make it, (wink, wink, Judas). and some of you will experience failure, (wink, wink, Peter) but being an apostle does not mean being perfect, it simply means that I am sending you."

Jesus, as someone who knew he had something very special to share with the people of his country, also knew that in his time he was limited by only being able to be in one place at at time; he was limited by the location of wherever his body was. So, he needed to deputize and send out apostles from his school. He needed his graduates to go forth and put into practice what they had seen and learned from him.

And what did getting the message out need? It needed strategies and so Jesus gave his newly graduated apostles an evangelical strategy for a specific mission at the specific time. He tried to help them understand that not everyone would agree with them. Some would ignore them, some would even try to hurt them. Not everyone would be receptive to their message. So, "Don't get bogged down with rejection; move on. Let God take care of those who do not receive your message."

You and I are in the school of Jesus by virtue of our baptisms. And just like the apostles of old, we need to be graduates and continuing students at the same time. Everyone gets baptized into the school of Jesus. We matriculate in the school of Jesus through baptism. But the church has often made a mistake; we have often made the clergy the official apostles who do the ministry and we have treated lay people like perpetual students who belong to the churches where we pay clergy to be the special graduated apostles to do the work. No, everyone is to be an apostle and graduate in the school of Jesus. We are not called to be perfect graduates, only sent graduates. And we need to remember that if we have been baptized, then we are also sent. The so call official apostles of the church do not exhaust what it means to be sent by Christ; we are all sent by Christ.

Just as there were evangelical strategies in the early Jesus Movement and Christian communities based upon the "harvest" of people ready to hear. We too need to be sent with strategies to the people in our lives. The message has to be articulated to the conditions on the ground; what does it mean for the kingdom or realm of God to come near to the lives of people today?

Right now, the Gospel evangelical strategy for us has to include the message of God's love and justice for all people, particularly the people who have had to deal with those who have preached the love of God but not been recipient of the love of God from people who have called themselves followers of Jesus.

We live with the results of some very painful irony. When the message of Jesus became so white and Euro-centric, it became associated with the air of cultural superiority. And Euro-centric Christians conquered much of the non-white world and what happened? In direct and indirect ways, we introduced the peoples of the world to this Jesus. And many black people and people of color came to like this Jesus. And in the middle of the subjugation of black people, the obvious question was, "Why can't these white people treat us like Jesus would. We've found Jesus and he treats us much better than you do."

This discrepancy between the Christ we proclaimed to people we conquered and the total malpractice in the love of Christ is the big racial plague and aftermath of the era of the subjugation of the black people in our world.

If we are going to return to be students of Jesus and become "re-certified disciples and apostles," we are going to have to make conscious the deliberate practice of social justice for all people in our lives central to our Gospel strategy of evangelism.

Evangelism for us today, means that we need to become re-certified in the Holy Spirit who is honest to what the love of Jesus Christ means in the actual practice of justice. And we as Christian missionaries should never have taught this song, if we didn't practice it. "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." Let us sing this song again but let us really mean it in our evangelism and Christian living today. Amen.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Sunday School, June 14, 2020 2 Pentecost A, proper 6