Will Rice - Sermon #27 - Obey Your Thirst

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

John 4:7-15

“Obey Your Thirst”

This is the first week of our emphasis on our stewardship of presence. When we join the church, we promise to support it with our prayers, presence, gifts and service. Although we may not be especially good at it, the church never forgets to talk about our stewardship of gifts. In fact, when I say stewardship, most people think about money. Stewardship campaigns are very often about asking people for money. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Financial stewardship is an integral part of our growth as Christians. It is vitally important for us to be reminded that everything we have is gift from God and it is our responsibility to us it in ways that honor God.

The word stewardship comes from a couple of old English words: stig- which means hall and weard – which means guard. Hall guard or hall keeper. It has come to mean in English – one who manages another’s property, finances, or other affairs. The concept comes into Christian thought as this: all we have is truly a gift from God, and truly belongs to God, therefore, we are simply stewards of what is truly God’s and therefore need to think about how we use it.

God certainly gives us more than just money right? So, when we talk about stewardship, we are talking about all the things that God gives us as a gift and how we are, or are not good stewards, keepers of those things.

When we join the church, we promise to be good stewards of our lives and the church by supporting the church with our prayers, presence, gifts and service. These are all ways we are good stewards of what God has given us. As I mentioned, we talk about gifts, especially financial. Already this year, we have talked service, how we use our God given gifts and talents to support the church. Now, it is time to talk about presence.

I find it interesting that pastors are actually more willing to talk about money, something almost no pastor likes to talk about, than they are to talk about presence. It wasn’t that many years ago that when people missed church more than a couple Sundays, they could expect the pastor to show up at their house. But it has fallen out of vogue to tell people, you know, you really ought to come to church. So let’s talk about that. And as I do whenever I come across something difficult to preach on I start with something I saw on TV.

For the past couple of years, the marketing gurus at the Coca-Cola Company have been marketing their wonderful lemon-lime beverage, Sprite, with the tagline “Obey Your Thirst!” It is wonderfully successful campaign. It has a certain irony to it though. “Obey your thirst!” Is your thirst, the mechanism in your body that tells you that you are in need of hydration, telling you that you need carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium citrate , and sodium benzoate? I bet what your thirst is telling you is, “Give me some water.”

Now, in case you are in the beverage industry, know that I am not knocking soft drinks. I have my own mild addiction to Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi. My purpose is not to even knock marketing people. This is just such a wonderful analogy. We are being told to obey our thirst by drinking exactly what we don’t need. Granted, Sprite will hydrate you, but it will also fill you with some things you don’t need, including 140 empty calories. What your body really wants is the real thing…

Which brings us to another slogan. I am just old enough to remember this song:

I'd like to teach the world to sing
in perfect harmony
I'd like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
That's the real thing.

Another great marketing maneuver by the folks at Coca-Cola, telling you that Coke is the real thing. But that it still not the real thing. What your body really wants is the real thing. Some hydrogen, a little oxygen, H₂0, water. But we are told that we need something else, and we usually believe it.

The prophet Isaiah says it so well in chapter 55.

²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

As I said, I am not trying to knock soft drink makers. I am trying to show that our spiritual thirst is much like our body thirst. We often quench it with the wrong things and people are always telling us what will quench that deep down thirst in our soul.

We are all created with a giant God sized hole in our soul. It causes us to seek out God. But we are easily distracted and misled. It has been that way since the beginning. Think of the wonderful story of the first man and the first woman in the Garden of Eden.[1] God provided for their every need, even providing for their loneliness by creating man and woman.

But one day, when God had stepped out of the garden, a serpent comes along and says, “Have you tried the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden?” “No, God said not to touch that one.” The serpent replies, “God just said that because ‘God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

They had what they needed, but the serpent says, “Obey your thirst!” And in case you haven’t read the rest of the story, things didn’t go so well after that. You can read about it in Genesis, chapter 2.

Saint Augustine states “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[2] We are created with this need for God, this thirst for God, but there is always a serpent saying, “Obey your thirst! What you really need is something that will make you powerful and interesting and sexy and smart. Why satisfy that thirst with God when you can satisfy it by being like God?

“Obey your thirst!” Why have water when you can have something better? -something that carries with it an image. Sprite features basketball superstar Lebron James in one of its television ads. Did you know the Lebron James drinks Sprite? So, perhaps Sprite will not only quench your thirst, it may make you into a multi-millionaire, world-famous, superstar, drafted right out of high-school basketball legend. No longer are we trying to quench thirst, we are trying to fill that emptiness that is in our very soul. We are trying to fill the hole that only God can fill by trying to be like God.

But all those things that we try to fill our lives with are just empty, carbonated calories. What will really quench our spiritual thirst is the pure, unsweetened, fresh from the tap grace of God.

¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

How do we partake of this water? It is very easy, yet sometimes a little hard. You know, I never drink as much water as I should. You know why? Because I am always drinking too much other stuff – sodas, coffee, etc. These things temporarily satisfy my craving but eventual it catches up with me and I am really thirsty.

My spiritual life is the same way. Going to the movies, watching TV, reading a good book, these things satisfy me in the short run. But in the end, it is only the living water of grace that will satisfy my soul. The way that I can drink of that water is simply to be in the presence of God.

Now, worship is not the only way to be in the presence of God. One can be in God’s presence in the outdoors. Some of the times I have felt closest to God have been on the tops of mountains. God can be especially present in times of solitude. God can be present in moments of great human achievement. But none of those can replace the need for Christians to gather together in community to praise God together and open their hearts to the presence of God, to the living waters of Grace. That can be in a large community like worship or in a smaller group. Whenever and wherever we meet together to read scripture, pray, give thanks to God and share our faith, we enter into the thirst-quenching presence of God.

Now I realize that I am, as they say in church talk, “preaching to the choir.” You are already here, partaking of the living water that is the grace of God. But we all need to hear this message. There are a few people among us who gather in community to worship God every week. For some, even when they are out of town, they find a group to be with on Sunday. Some of these folks obey their thirst even more by meeting with a smaller group every week, perhaps a Sunday school class or a reunion group.

But most of us, are just sipping from the glass of grace, slurping down the sugary, carbonated beverages of life and dedicating just a bit of time to indulge in the cool living waters of God. Think about it numerically. Grace has about 1000 members, but of that 1000 only about 317 make to worship at least once a month. Only about 200 make it to worship twice a month. We know that the quenching waters of grace are here but the world is telling us constantly, “Obey your thirst!” Drink this, eat this, buy this, succeed at this, try this! It is hard to hear that still, small voice of God, the words of Jesus, whispering to us:

John, Chapter 6 ³⁵Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

During these two weeks, as we as we focus on our stewardship of presence, I invite you to consider how you are obeying your thirst. You may have already gotten in the mail a commitment card, which you are invited to bring to worship next week to commit to drinking more deeply from the well of God’s grace. You will notice that we won’t ask you to sign these. We won’t know who committed to what so we won’t be following up to let you know how you are doing. This is for you. This is your opportunity to truly obey your thirst.

I challenge you to step up. If you come to worship sporadically, commit to coming regularly. If you come regularly once a month, commit to come twice a month. If you already come twice a month, come three times. If your job keeps you away sometimes, commit to come when you can. If you are already coming as often as you possible can, consider diving deeper, partaking of the living water in a small group Bible study or fellowship. If you are already doing all of that, you get an even bigger challenge: Do something that will take you deeper, fill your cup even further, and bring someone with you to the well.

And don’t do any of this to make me happy or to make Pastor John happy or even to make God happy, do it because God is offering you something that no one else can offer, the living water!

Amen.

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[1] See Genesis 2:4-24

[2] Saint Augustine, Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book 1, Chapter 1, (Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research Systems, 1999) online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confess.ii.i.html, accessed 20 August 21, 2006; internet

Will Rice - Sermon #26 - Read the Instructions

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Matthew 7:24-28

I was 28 years old and working for Clear Channel Communications in Austin. I produced and hosted radio shows all over the country from Burlington, Vermont to Yuma, Arizona. I was going to church for the first time in my life. I had recently been baptized and I was already thinking about a call to ministry. Someone suggested I sign up for something called Disciple Bible Study. I was really excited about everything in the church. I had just found God in my life and was wanting to get my hands into everything. I immediately said Sign me up! Then I looked closer: 34 weeks, 2 and half hours a week? And the only offering was at night from 7-9:30. My job started around 5 a.m. which meant I got up around 4, which made 9:30 p.m. sound like the middle of the night.

I signed up anyway. I vividly remember the very first night of the class because I had to be late. I had agreed to fill in on the afternoon show on KVET, the country radio station in Austin. My shift ended at 7 and the class started at 7. I put on a really long last song and made it there by 7:15.

I was terrified. There I was 28 years old and I had never read the Bible. I didn’t know Leviticus from Philippians. I didn’t know there was a New Testament because I didn’t know there was an Old Testament. Heck, I didn’t know what a testament was. I had heard about the Good Samaritan bit had no idea it was biblical. My total sum of my biblical knowledge came from claymation show Davey and Goliath although I had now idea that David and Goliath were actually biblical characters. I was pretty sure the Bible was just a bunch of thees and thous and shalts all strung together.

People who are thinking of signing up for Disciple Bible Study with me are always saying something like, “I don’t know enough about the Bible.” Trust me, the only way to know less about the Bible than I did involves being from another planet.

I was terrified. I didn’t overcome my fear to take Disciple, I just went anyway and it was one of the most important things I ever did. More of that in a moment. Let’s look at today’s text.

For people have spent much of their lives in the church, this story is so familiar that it is hard to hear anymore. Many of you finished it in your head before I was done reading it. But let’s slow down and read a little more carefully.

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

When I first moved to Corpus Christi, I had to learn about all sorts of things. I had to ask why I had all these hoses around the foundation of my home that seemed to leak water when I turned them on. I had to ask why there were all these cracks in my ceiling. I remember having Mike Boggs explain to me how it was possible that when I hung my curtains level according to my laser level, they were totally crooked. I had to ask my neighbor why they were digging all these holes around his house and piling up concrete cylinders. All of the answers had something to do with not building one’s house on the rock. Not that you seem to have a whole lot of choice around here. Rock can be hard to come by. When you build your house on the sand, the foundation is not very solid and it moves and you have foundation problems.

So here in Corpus Christi, we don’t really need much help with this parable do we? Because we actually see the problem with building our homes without a firm foundation, we get the problem with building our lives without a firm foundation. Parable explained, end of sermon right?

Well maybe. Here is where it might not be as clear as we think it is. What is the firm foundation? Christ? God? The Church? Prayer? All of the above? Those are good answers, in theory.

There is a difference between what we think we know and what we actually know. I know that to properly build a house I need to lay a firm foundation. I have watched enough houses being built to know that there is some digging and leveling, there is some framing with wood and there is a whole lot of cement. But do actually know exactly what goes into laying a foundation? No.

We may know that to build a firm foundation in our lives we need God, we need Christ, we need prayer, but do we really know what goes into that foundation. Perhaps scripture is a little more specific.

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

We are trained to read as quickly as possible and look for the main idea. With scripture, we have to slow down. One of my seminary professors insisted we always read scriptures in Greek or Hebrew. He didn’t insist for especially scholarly purposes. He made us do it because he knew most of us had to read very, very slow. When we read this quickly our brain picks up the main idea.

Listen closely:

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

If we do this, it will be like we build our house on what? The rock.

We will be like what kind of man? The wise man.

How do we do that? That is the part many of us miss:

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them

We jump right to the building on the rock thing and skip the how it is we build on the rock, by hearing the words of Jesus and acting on them. The primary way that we, as modern Christians can hear the words of Jesus is through scripture. Unfortunately, we, as modern Christians do not read much scripture.

We may get the idea that we need to build on a strong foundation, but we are fuzzy on the details. According to a poll conducted by Gallup in 2000, 65% of Americans agreed that the Bible, “answers all or most of the most basic questions of life.” We know that it helps us build a firm foundation. Interestingly less than half of those 65% actually read the Bible at least weekly. More interesting is the fact that 28% of those people who agreed that the Bible “answers all or most of the most basic questions of life” rarely or never read the Bible.[1]

And I would think that those numbers are a little skewed. If someone asks you, “are you a Christian” and you say yes and then they ask you if you read the Bible, you are inclined to say yes.

I don’t need the polls to tell me that people don’t read much scripture. I am not talking about anyone in particular and I do know a lot of people in the church who know the Bible better than I do. However, as a church, we do not know or read or study scripture as we ought. I have heard this same sort of message delivered by a pastor with a wagging finger, saying “shame on you for not reading scripture.” That is not what I am doing. There is no shame or guilt here. God still loves you even if you don’t know that Zephaniah is actually a book of the Bible or that 3^rd Gillipians is something I made up.

It is not an issue of shame or sin, it is an issue of building the foundation for your life.

I don’t read instructions. When I get something with ‘some assembly required,’ I put the instructions aside, try putting them together and only refer to them when the thing I am assembling starts to look nothing like the picture on the box.

Well I didn’t read instruction until last week. Last week, Alisha and I went out and bought a crib for a baby who is going to be living with us. I got it home, ripped open the box, started trying to figure it out. Then I stopped and thought, Oh my gosh, a helpless infant is going to be sleeping in this thing. Then I read the directions word for word to make sure I put that thing together right so it would be safe and solid for the little one who would be sleeping there.

It is important that the crib be solid, just as it is important that out lives be built on the firm foundation of Christ through scripture.

We don’t read the Bible like we should and that hurts as a church. We cannot build a solid foundation in our lives or in the world unless we act upon the word of God and we cannot act upon the word of God unless we know it. And I don’t mean knowing it in the way that we know it when we let people feed us little snippets to support hurtful or hateful ideas that are contrary to the overall meaning of the Bible. I mean knowing it for ourselves. The Bible is an incredibly complex, rich text, a text that does not always yield easy answers, a text that challenges us to struggle with the deep and complicated call of God on our lives.

We need to study the Bible and we can’t really do that alone. It is a catch-22: a lot of us feel like we don’t know enough about the Bible to join a group Bible study, yet we have trouble learning much about the Bible on our own.

I encourage people to read and study the Bible on their own, but there is no substitute for gathering together with a group of people and listening for the call and claim of scripture through each other’s voices.

I started out talking about my experience of Disciple Bible Study. That class I went into with trembling knees was made up of old and young, married and single, parents and grandparents, a happily married couple and a single mom, lifelong church members and people new to the faith, people who knew the Bible and people who had never read it. And each and every one of those people came out transformed. Transformed by the word of God, transformed by the power of the Spirit, transformed by the experience of growing and learning together, transformed by the power of God that flows through us when take the opportunity to seek together.

It wasn’t too long between the time I took Disciple and started leading it. What is amazing is that it is always different. The group dynamics are never the same. What is amazing is that it is always the same. People are always transformed. What amazes me is that I am always transformed. Every time it is the same scripture, the same exercises, the same study guide. And every time, the words come alive for me in a different way through the lives and experiences of the new group I study with.

I could go on forever, but I want you to hear from someone else, someone from this year’s class of Disciple Bible Study.

Thank you to Roberto Rios and Gordon Merritt who shared their experience of Disciple Bible Study with us in worship. They both spoke from the heart without a text so you only get my part. However, feel free to ask them or any graduate of Disciple Bible study to tell you more about the experience.

I challenge you to read and study the Bible in a group. If you have never taken Disciple, sign up for Disciple I. If you have taken one, but stopped there, consider joining the group who will be exploring Disciple II together. If you aren’t ready for that, join a Sunday school class, join a small group. If there is nothing that fits your lifestyle or schedule, find some friends and start your own. You find a time to meet and I will help you with what to do.

Build your house on the rock, the rock that is the word of God. Amen

Click here to return to Will at Grace and comment on this sermon.

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[1] Alec Gallup and Wendy W. Simmons, “Six and Ten Americans Read the Bible at Least Occasionally”, Gallup Poll News Service, Washington, D.C., http://poll.gallup.com/; accessed 7 August 2006; internet

Will Rice - Sermon #25 - Audio

The text of the sermon can be found in an earlier post.


MP3 File

Will Rice - Sermon #25 - When Rejection is a Good Thing

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 6:1-13

This may be a bad way to start a sermon, but… I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. Yes you heard that right. I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. I hope it is not today or anything. I hope I am never asked to leave because I am perceived as lazy. I hope it is never because I messed up the finances or was mean to people for no reason. I hope that someday, I will be asked to leave because I came on too strong about the central message of the Gospel.

I love to hear that people like my sermons. I do lots of things to make them more interesting, easier to follow, even fun. But, when it comes right down to it, the message that I have to deliver is radical and counter-cultural and if it doesn’t occasionally make someone mad, I am probably not trying hard enough.

¹He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him

The idea of hometown is not as powerful in my generation as it has been. We are all so very mobile. The little town I grew up in was probably more like where Jesus grew up in the fact that, as a kid, most of the town knew who you were and knew who to call when they saw you doing something you shouldn’t be doing.

²On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!

I hear this a little differently each time I read it. I wonder if we see a difference in perception based on delivery verses content. Already read in Mark’s Gospel we have heard the amazing things that Jesus can do well. He has been healing, and teaching and telling these great parables that make hard concepts more understandable for common folk. Now he is in the synagogue and he’s got PowerPoint running. He’s using movie clips and props. He’s hired a praise band and he even gets worship out on time. Everybody loves this stuff. But then:

³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Most people read right over this and miss what happens, in one verse the crowd goes from adoring to angry. What happened?

I think they started listening.

I think for a while they were mesmerized by his performance, but then they started realizing that his content was a little upsetting.

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

The first two times I preached on this text, I read too much into this line. It is a pretty common saying in antiquity and I think we all sort of get it. People who know you too well have trouble taking you seriously.

I have a long time friend in Houston, we have been buddies since college and we have been through a lot of stuff together. He is about to finish his PhD dissertation. I was on the phone with him the other day and said, “Don’t expect me to call you doctor, I know you too well.” He said, “No problem, ‘cause I am still not calling you Reverend.”

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

I think that this may be more than Jesus stating the obvious point that sometimes people who know us too well have trouble taking us seriously. This may have just been Jesus way of saying, “My ultimate identity does not come from your evaluation of me.”[1]

Now Jesus didn’t post his sermon from that day on his weblog so I don’t have a copy of what made everybody upset. Luke’s gospel takes a stab at filling in the blanks but Matthew and Mark portray the scene with no reference to what was said.[2] I think it is less important to dwell on what was said and more important to look at the rejection. Jesus was preaching a radical message of love and grace, a message of generosity and justice a message of peace and hope, especially for those who had no hope, a message designed to turn the world upside down and when he preached it in his hometown, people didn’t like it. Jesus response, “oh well, I will go preach somewhere else then. My message is from God and the fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less valuable.”

⁵And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.

Off he goes.

Jesus mission is a bit larger than he can tackle doing all the preaching himself, so he sends out some other folks.

⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

This is the first ever Every Member in Ministry campaign. And it is worth pausing to say that this is where our word apostle comes from. Most of us have heard of the 12 Apostles. Sometimes we use that interchangeably with 12 disciples; I get lots of questions about this. The word apostellw means to send. Jesus began to apostellw them out two by two. Disciple comes from the Latin translation of the word matheti which means student, apprentice or simply follower. So, technically, Jesus apostled (sent) the disciples (followers).

To be an apostle is to be one who is sent. Now listen to what they get to take with them:

⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

Man that is pretty drastic. I won’t venture much further than the mailbox without some cash, a number of credit cards, and about a gallon of bug spray. I might go without food, but that is what the cash is for.

¹⁰He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.

This is sort of a confusing line, let’s look a little closer. Whenever you enter a house… Alright, they are going to be going to people’s homes to talk to them about the good news of the kingdom of God… stay there until you leave the place. The New International Version says, “stay there until you leave the town.” Perhaps, when you go to a town, find a place to stay and stay there until it is time to leave the town, don’t go shopping around for better accommodations. Stay focused on what you are there to do.

¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

In our culture, it is too easy to read this as angry gesture. Shaking the dust of one’s feet might be likened to a certain hand gesture one might give another driver who has failed to yield the right of way as your are trying to exit S.P.I.D. But that would be missing the point of what is going on. Remember when things didn’t go well for Jesus in the synagogue?

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

Jesus knew that the apostles, if they delivered that same world-changing message the Jesus delivered would sometimes be treated the same way. So he gave then a little ritual.

¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

Remember your ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of you. Your message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.

This is an important message. Sometimes as Christians we tie ourselves in knots trying to make the gospel message more palatable, more friendly. Let me clarify, there is a difference between doing our best to make it understandable, relatable, exciting, relevant – all those things that may attract people to hear the true message… there is a difference between that and beginning to change the message itself to make it more acceptable.

We are doing a lot to live as faithful children of God and we need to celebrate that and lift up what we are doing. We also need to talk about Grace and how God’s love is available to all even when we are not who we should be. We are, at times, struggling against churches that think that Christianity is all about judgment and damnation, so we are very clear in our emphasis of Grace, that overwhelming, unmerited love of God that pursues us and pulls into relationship with God no matter what.

Even that sometimes puts me in a situation where I have to make a decision. I have been in many a conversation with other Christians, talking about Grace and we will be having a happy conversation and they will be thinking:

Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him?

And then I will keep going and say that I believe that God’s grace is available to all of God’s children. And the hair on the back of their neck will stand up. And they will ask, “You don’t mean everyone right?” To which I respond, “Yes God’s grace is available to everyone, every single last person God created.” To which they ask, “You don’t mean to gay people or Muslims do you?”

Then, I have to make a decision. Do I back down so they will continue to like me or do I speak the truth about the Gospel as I see it remembering that my ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of me. My message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.

Most people are ok with the Grace thing. But, we also need to stand up occasionally and say things that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Pastors need to have enough gumption to proclaim the word of the gospel even when it means people at the door won’t say “nice job pastor” but rather, “get lost pastor!”

We need to have the strength to not just follow along with the tide of the community delivering an acceptable message, we need to occasionally lead up stream. The reasons is, no matter how well we are doing, here in our church, at being graceful and kind, however well we are doing praising and worshipping God, the gospel is calling us to look at the world outside. The world outside needs us. That world needs you and it needs me to stand up for the radical, counter-cultural message of grace, peace, justice, and kindness. We need to stand up for that message, even when that goes against the me-first, money is king, profit-before people, might before mercy, everyone for themselves mentality of the world. And that, sometimes, makes people angry.

The point isn’t to alter the gospel to fit the world, but rather to change the world in the light of the gospel. But now I have tread into dangerous territory. I may have accidentally given you a dangerous weapon when I was trying to give you a burden. Some believe that we stand up for the gospel by standing on high ground and hurling moral judgments upon people we don’t understand. I want to reread verse 12.

¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

This is where we get messed up. We think that our task, if we really want to stand firm for the gospel is to go out and tell people to repent. And when most of us think of repent we think that it means something about not sinning anymore or feeling bad about our sins.

First of all, repent, metanoe,w, actually conveys of sense of turning -- of changing one’s mind. My favorite translation of metanoe,w is to turn one’s heart toward God. Let’s look at the whole verse again:

¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

Kai. evxelqo,ntej evkh,ruxan i[na metanow/sin

So having gone out, they proclaimed in order that they all might turn their hearts toward God.

There is a big difference between telling people to repent, change their ways, feel sorry for what they have done, especially when we all still have some ways of our own to change - and telling people about the world changing, counter-cultural message of the gospel, a message of radical transformation, rooted in “compassion, love, generosity of spirit, kindness, peace, social justice,”[3] grace and hope – trusting that this message will touch them and turn their hearts toward God.

We have to be willing to stand up for that good news. We have to be willing to stand up, not to make moralistic pronouncements about others as though we are free from sin, but to say, in Christ, there is a chance for a world based in hope instead of fear. We have to be willing to proclaim that God news and trust that people’s hearts will be moved toward God. We have to be willing to stand up and say we believe in and are willing to work with God and each other to create a world where no child will go hungry, where money isn’t the most important thing, where the earth is a gift to be protected, where meaning is more important than possessions, where bombs are not the best way to make peace, where generosity wins out over greed every time.

I am going to stand up for that Gospel. Even if people don’t like me or maybe even, if I am lucky, ask me to leave.

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[1] The quotation marks reflect the thought I am attributing to Jesus, the idea for this comes from Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and to Love, Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 80

[2] Luke’s Gospel, 4:16-30 has Jesus reading from the 61^st chapter of Isaiah. It is worth reading Luke’s account and the reference from Isaiah.

[3] Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God, Taking Back out Country from the Religious Right, (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) 5

Will Rice - Sermon #24 - Audio

The text version of this sermon can be found below.


MP3 File

Will Rice - Sermon #24 - Two Stories about Seeds and a Really Big Tree

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 4:26-34

“Two Stories about Seeds and a Really Big Tree”

Check out General Sherman. It is a tree, a giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum to be more exact. It is located in Sequoia National Park in California. Let me tell you a little bit about this tree. It is 275 feet high. For a little perspective, the tree is as tall as a 27 story building. A thirteen story building would barely touch its first huge branch. The total volume of the trunk of the General Sherman tree - 52,500 cubic feet - is equal to the lumberman’s measure of 630,000 board feet. Since a board foot is 12 inches of 1x12 lumber, the trunk of the General Sherman tree theoretically could be cut into 119.3 miles of 1x12 planking. That would reach from our front door to this end of the 410 loop outside of San Antonio.

Giant redwoods like this have seed cones. When a forest fire burns through the forest, the updraft causes the cones to open dropping hundreds of tiny seeds to the ground, seeds so tiny that it takes 91,000 of them to weigh one pound. These tiny seeds fall to the ground onto the fertile soil produced by the fire and from them come more trees, trees with the potential to be as big as the one we just looked at. Now this is all just part of how nature works, but it is fairly mind blowing. From that tiny seed, comes that gigantic tree.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

Jesus loves to talk in parables, starting with things that we do understand to help us figure out things we don’t understand. Except maybe, this time, using something we think we understand, but really don’t, to explain something beyond comprehension.

There are actually two parables here back to back:

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,

³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;”

The kingdom of God is sort of like someone scattering seed on the ground, and sort of like a tiny little mustard seed. Let’s look at both of these.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”

Most of us have been through elementary school science. We know that if seed is scattered and the soil is fertile enough and there is enough moisture, it will sprout and turn into a plant.

However well I understand the science, it is no less miraculous. If you are a gardener or a farmer you toil in the dirt and work hard to make sure your seeds are in the right dirt and that they get plenty of water and the right amount of sun. However, there is a part you aren’t really in control of. That certain something that changes that seed from a seed to a living thing.

²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

We can plant seeds, but we can’t make them grow. This is an interesting lesson in mystery and humility. All of our efforts aren’t much compared to what God can do. That is true with the seed, we can plant it and fertilize it, but only God can make it grow. That is true with our efforts as people of God. In our efforts to help initiate God’s kingdom in this world, to bring change, to follow God ourselves and help others find their way to God, we can do good things, but it is truly God who can take those seeds and make them grow.

There is great mystery in the spark of life that turns a seed into a living thing and there is great mystery in how God takes what we do and truly turns it into something that can build the kingdom of God.

³⁰He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

Back to the General Sherman tree~ Remember those seeds? It would take 91,000 of them to make a pound of seed. Yet from just one of them can become a tree 275 feet high! That is part of the mystery, part of God’s work.

From the tiniest beginning, God can create wonderful, enormous results. The coming of the kingdom of God is a wonderful, enormous result. But all we have is little seeds. But that is ok. Because this is a God thing.

What I love about parables is that sometime we can hear them differently when we are in different places.

Let me give a couple of examples.

Pride

Betty is a young pastor, just a couple of years out of seminary. For her first appointment, the Bishop sent her to a small church that was just about dead. After only two years under Betty’s leadership, worship attendance has doubled, membership has doubled, there are a number of new young families with children, and they have just begun planning an expansion of their sanctuary to provide for all the growth. Betty sits back one day and thinks to herself, look what I have done. Our parables say, “look what God has done!”

1 Corinthians 3:7 reads:

⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

I think that this parable reminds us who is doing the work. It tells us to not give ourselves so much credit and remember that God is doing the real work. That is a pretty good sermon right there, so I could stop… but I am not sure that pride is the biggest problem we face.

Pressure

Let’s look at another example, another set of ears through which to hear this parable. Matt is a lifelong Christian, but while in a group Bible study really hears God’s cry for the poor. If you spend any time at all reading the Bible, you will see that God is much more concerned with the poor than God is concerned with issues that we want to pass laws about. So Matt does some research and finds out that 20,000 people a day perish die to extreme poverty.[1] He looks a little deeper and finds out that 1.1 billion people worldwide are living in extreme poverty, meaning they earn less than the equivalent of one dollar a day.[2]

Matt reads that and then says, “what the heck am I supposed to do about that?” He could have two equally dangerous reactions. One is to take the entire burden of this problem on his shoulders. He could become convinced that he needs to fix this situation. He might accomplish quite a bit, he may actually make a difference in the lives of many hungry people, but eventually he is going to burn out. He is going to miss out on the opportunity to work in unison, to be a vehicle of the amazing transforming power of the one who created the universe.

Matt could be overwhelmed by the pressure he has put on himself.

Complacency

I said Matt could have two dangerous reactions to being overwhelmed, let’s look at the other one with another example. Back in Austin where I was last appointed we have a lot of pan handlers. I mean a whole lot. Every major intersection featured at least one man or woman with a sign asking for money. Laurie comes to me one day and says, “I don’t know what to do about these panhandlers. I feel like I should help them, but I am afraid if I give them money they will spend it on drugs.” My response, “Good point, so what are you doing to help?” Her response, “Nothing.”

That other dangerous and perhaps more dangerous reaction to being overwhelmed with the enormity of the task is that of complacency. Sometime when we look at a problem as big as homelessness or as big as world hunger, we just say, “I can’t possibly fix that, so I am not going to even try.”

Laurie’s feeling of being overwhelmed has led to complacency. “I can’t do it all, so I will do nothing!”

2 Corinthians 9:10

¹⁰He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

These two parables remind us of our place in all of this kingdom building. We can’t take all the credit (avoid pride). We shouldn’t carry the whole weight on our shoulders (pressure) and we can’t just do nothing (complacency)

The Parable in Action

Now I have given you examples of how this parable corrects us. Now, let me talk about where I have seen this parable in action. I was in a class with a couple of people like Matt and Laurie, the ones I mentioned in the examples. They were both convicted of their need to be in ministry with the poor but overwhelmed with the task before them. One was facing pressure the other complacency. I found out one day that they were both volunteering in downtown Austin at the homeless shelter serving dinner Friday nights. They weren’t ending hunger, they weren’t solving the problem of every homeless person in Austin, but they were doing their part trusting that God is faithful doing God’s part.

A lot of people know that there are a lot of parts of Corpus Christi that aren’t as nice as some of the neighborhoods we live in. There are neighborhoods with frighteningly high crime rates, drug trafficking, and enough violence to keep most of us away. In some of these neighborhoods live people who are trying their best to raise families and retired people trying to get by on fixed incomes. It is so easy to look at these people in these neighborhoods and either be overwhelmed with the pressure of trying to fix the entire situation or more likely to say, “I can’t fix that, I am not going to even try.”

There is that option and then there is the idea that if you were to go into one of these neighborhoods and touch one life or one family that you would be planting the seeds of the kingdom. What if you went to one family whose house was broken down, perhaps even falling down and said, “we want to help.”

That is exactly what Sea City Work Camp does and just go finished doing last week. Just during the week hosted by Grace, 10 houses 100 youth at least 100 adults supporting the whole thing. The Sea City organization takes applications from people who need help and then people go out and help. And you know, in two or three weeks each summer, the whole city isn’t changed. But what is amazing is the sort of life God brings out of those seeds. In the communities where the work is done, you can sometimes notice a little chain reaction as neighbors decide it is time to clean up their lots, mow their lawns, maybe even put on a little paint. There is a little more pride in the neighborhood. More importantly seeds of the love of God have been planted. Who knows what God can do with what has been done in those neighborhoods?

And what about the seeds planted in the young people. Yeah so they work hard for a week in the sun helping someone. But God takes that week and brings transformation out of it. Young people leave Sea City Work Camp forever changed with a deeper understanding of the call of God in their lives, a deeper understanding of people who don’t have what they have.

Now, I could meander around on this topic all morning. I could give you other examples and tell you stories and reread the parable another way. But instead, let me go against all the conventions of good sermon writing and ask this question:

Where is God calling you to plant seeds?

Are you feeling called to share the good news of God, but overwhelmed with the task? Is there one place, one person, one thing that you can do and then trust in God?

Is hunger and homelessness something close to your heart, but you can’t even imagine where to start? You know all the money collected at the communion rails today goes toward restocking our food pantry so that when people come to Grace looking for help, we can give them groceries. That won’t end hunger overnight, but we can do our part and trusting in God to be faithful doing God’s part.

God is calling us all to look after God’s most precious little ones. Some of us have a special call to help children. But where do we start? There are children right here in our city, right here in Annaville/CalAllen without enough to eat, without proper healthcare, with unstable households that nearly guarantee for them an entire life of poverty, and children without homes at all stuck in the system just hoping for a family to love them.

Well that is too much to even begin to tackle. But we can all support Metro Ministries or the Wesley Community Center which provide basic necessities for people who have fallen through every other safety net. Almost any one of us can all take part in our mentor program and give one child a role model that can help them escape from the trap of poverty. Maybe some us can open our homes to foster children through Methodist Children’s Home. These are kids who don’t want a new X-Box for Christmas, they just want someone who will actually demonstrate that they are worth loving.

Perhaps you worry about the young people in our community, about the choices they will make or how they will navigate this complex world. But there are a lot of young people out there and only one of you. What if you start right here working with our youth. Some will say, “Oh I am not ready to actually work with youth” That’s ok, there are ways you can support the people who do work with you, providing meals or transportation or even money for scholarships. Do what you can, we can trust God to provide.

As Christians we have to fight the temptation to sit back and watch the television or read the paper and say, somebody ought to do something about that! We have to be out there planting seeds!

Where is God calling you to plant seeds? Those seeds might be your time, your skill, your money. Those seeds could include a small commitment or a total life change. The seeds you plant might create instant results or through them God might create something you will never see.

You know, I have dreams for Grace. I think that God can and will do amazing things here. I am not just talking about more members and better programs. I am talking about real kingdom of God stuff, transformation that actually affects the community around us, bringing positive change and a tangible sense of the love of God. I see that happening here, but as a pastor, I see the hurdles. We need more room, more parking, more bathrooms, more signs, more money. But, I only worry so much, because I know that if we all really do what God calls us to, if we do our part, God will be faithful. We will be able to overcome any obstacle that keeps us from truly reaching out and transforming the community that surrounds us in the name of Jesus Christ.

If God can create a tree 275 feet high from one, tiny little seeds, God can transform anything we can offer into things beyond our belief. We should be spreading as many seeds as we can. Amen?

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[1] Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty, (New York: Penguin Press, 2005) 1

[2] Ibid, p. 20

Will Rice - Sermon #23 - Of Particle Spin and Other Things Beyond Comprehension

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 1:9-11

I don’t want you to worry. In seminary, pastors are highly trained for all situations. Our professors know what challenges we will face in the local church. They know that once a year, on the church calendar, we will face the challenge of Trinity Sunday. They know that we will be faced with that day where we will have to explain how it is that God is three AND one and why that is important. When this subject comes up in seminary, it is one of the few times that the answer is very clear and non-nuanced. On Trinity Sunday, it is suggested by the giants of theological and pastoral wisdom at the seminary… you know, you might want to write this down in case you some day have a preacher in your family that doesn’t go to such a fine institution as the one I went to. On Trinity Sunday, you are to, without a doubt, without any fear or trepidation, find a guest preacher. It can be the Bishop, the District Superintendent, a friend from school, it doesn’t matter.

Most people have heard of the Trinity, but let me clarify what I am talking about. The Doctrine of the Trinity says, (this according to the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church):

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power and eternity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.[1]

That is a bit to swallow, let me spell it out a little more clearly.

1. God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2. Each person is fully God
3. There is one God

Clear as mud. I find that people tend to fall into about five camps about the Trinity.

Camp One – They just get it, no explanation necessary
Camp Two – They think they get it, but don’t really
Camp Three – They don’t get it and don’t care
Camp Four – They don’t get it and they really wish they did
Camp Five – They realize it is not really about getting it

I am sure a bunch of you have read it and a bunch more have it sitting around the house. A few years back, Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds of our times wrote a book, A Brief History of Time. In the book, he did a pretty wonderful job of explaining things like space time, black holes, wormholes and basic astrophysics to people with little brains like mine. There was one part, thought that drove me nuts. If any of you here this morning are astrophysicists, please excuse me for a moment while tromp all over your field.

Hawking says that “everything in the known universe, including light and gravity, can be described in terms of particles.”[2] All of these particles have a property called spin, something that tells us what they look like from different directions (if you could actually see them, they are pretty small.) A particle of spin 0 is like a dot; it looks the same no matter how you turn it. A particle of spin one is like the ace of spades playing card, it only looks the same if you turn in all the way around 360 degrees. A particle of spin 2 is like the queen of hearts, if you spin it just half way around, it looks the same. Now, all of that makes sense, at least at a theoretical level. However, there are particles said to a have a spin of ½. For them to look the same as when you started, you would have to turn them two complete revolutions.[3] Not just one time around like my ace of spades, but around again.

I don’t have a picture for that because that, to my tiny little brain doesn’t even make sense. I just can conceive of an object that wouldn’t look the same if you turned it completely around, that would take an entire extra revolution to look the same as when you started.

I love reading stuff like Stephen Hawkins’s work because it reminds me that there are limits to my own understanding. There are limits to the number of dimensions that I can think of. I don’t even understand the building blocks of matter and energy, how am I supposed to hold any sort of monopoly on understanding of the one that created everything?

It is easy to forget that everything that we use to try and understand God is simply a model. A model is not the thing itself, it is a theory or an object used to try and understand and study something far more complicated. God warned us all about how far to take models.

Exodus 20:4-6:

⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.

The Reverend Charles Royden, the Vicar at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Bedford, England talks about the Trinity this way, “The Trinity is not an explanation of God, it is a description of what we know about God, albeit contradictory and contrary to logic as we know it.”

Think about today’s passage again for a moment:

⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Right in this passage you have Jesus, the Son, the Father speaking from heaven, and the Holy Spirit, the three persons of the Trinity in the same scene.

Back in my small high school, when we did musicals, occasionally someone would have to play two different parts, which worked fine, but the two characters could never be in the same scene.

Throughout the years, pastors and theologians have come up with a number of ways to help people understand the Trinity. Legend has it that Saint Patrick, who really is the Patron Saint of Ireland, not a Hallmark invention, used the shamrock, a type of clover. The clover seems to have three parts, but they are all really part of the same leaf. There are a number of limitations to this including the fact that a clover, can come apart. God is one.[4]

Another common explanation is water. There are three forms, ice, water and steam. There is a small problem with that, water can’t be all three things at once.

An explanation that I have always liked is that of a woman’s ability to be mother to her child, wife to her husband and sister to her brother. It is wonderful, except that this sort of thinking was condemned as the heresy of Modalism in the 3^rd century. The heresy of this view is that it contends that God just appears as three different persons and isn’t really three different persons while at the same time being one.

Studying the Trinity for a while is somewhat like looking at the work of M.C. Escher for too long.

With as perplexing as the Trinity is, you may wonder why we still talk about it. A lot of pastors and churches have lumped talk of the Trinity in with other “antiquated” “outdated” now irrelevant church stuff. Church growth experts tell us that we if want to reach a new generation of Christians we need to scrap all the stuff like this and preach sermons on relevant topics like “Lose Weight the Gospel Way” “40 Days and 40 Nights to Debt Free Living” or “Praying Your Way to a Promotion.”

I do not think we ought to toss out the doctrine of the Trinity. But, let me be clear, the point is not doctrinal correctness… the point is relationship! The point is transformation! In describing the Trinity, we are trying, in vain, to explain what we know about something greater than our knowing. We are faced with an impossible task, but one we must undertake.

Close you eyes for a moment – I want you to think about distance. It is about five miles from where you are sitting to my house is Wood River. From where you are sitting to edge of the visible universe is about a million million million million miles.[5] That’s just the known part. Picture that. You can open your eyes to see that number on the screen.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Our God is so beyond comprehension, that our words fail us, but if we stop trying, we can miss out on the true blessing of a God so radically abundant that our frail little models fall very short.

Although the model of the Trinity is limited, without it, we also may limit our own understanding. Without some discussion of trinity, we risk, placing all of our “theological eggs in one basket.”[6]

In our God we have God the creator, who made all this, everything we can imagine and more, a God that is powerful, all-knowing, ever present.

Our God, is an awesome God,

he reigns from heaven above,

with wisdom power and love

our God is an awesome God.

or

God of wonders, beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy

But, if this is all we consider, our God seems distant, removed, completely shrouded in mystery. If we worship only God, the creator, we risk having a faith that is sterile, completely theoretical as we hurl praise at a distant world maker hoping that some amount of grace might be thrown back. Our God is one God, three in one who is very real to us in Jesus Christ and who lives and breathes in us in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our God is Jesus Christ, a very human being who laughed and wept, who ate and slept, who was born and died. In Jesus God knows our pain, can relate to life on this Earth. In Jesus we can connect to God in a very personal way.

And he walks with me and he talks with me

and he tells me I am his own.

And the love we share as we tarry there,

none other has ever known.

Or

My Jesus, My Savior, Lord there is none like you!
All of my days, I long to praise, the wonders of your mighty love
My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength,
Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you!

But if we take Jesus without God the creator, where is the power, where is the mystery? If we worship only Jesus the Son, we may have a faith that is just too human, too limited, too practical. Our God is also a God of power, the God with the power to create and the Holy Spirit, empowering us in ministry.

Our God is the Holy Spirit, a very real presence in our world, empowering us and the church to do the work of ministry and live as God’s people. Without it, our faith could be distant, in the skies with our creator or stuck in the past with the historical person of Jesus.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of living God, fall afresh on me.

But if we consider only the Spirit, perhaps our faith could waver and change as fickle as the wind that blows.

We are the church of the Triune God! We are a church that invites people to experience the awe and wonder of a God that created and is creating billions of galaxies, stars of unimaginable brightness, planets of rock and planets of gas, great mountain peaks and deep lush valleys. Giant towering trees and beautiful fragile flowers of so many varieties that we could never see them all.

We are a church that knows the abundant love of that God through the very human Jesus Christ, God! who stepped from the throne to live among God’s beloved children, healing them and walking with them and telling them that they are loved. This same God in Jesus Christ said “I love you so much, there is nothing you can do to change that. You can even nail me to a cross!”

We are a church that doesn’t just see God in the heavens or of Jesus in our history but God alive and living and working in us, making us the church, sending us out to share the news that the God of all creation loves us and that in Jesus Christ that God overcame death itself, brought us into relationship with God and taught us to love our neighbor as our selves. In the one Triune God we have a God of transformation above us, around us, within us working to draw us into relationship with God and working to change the world!

We have a God so absolutely amazing all we can say is, “well it’s kind of like this: you know how water and ice and steam are really all just water?”

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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[1] “The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church” ¶ 103. Section 3—Our Doctrinal Standards and General Rules, The United Methodist Book of Discipline, 2004 (Nashville, The United Methodist Publishing House, 2004) 59

[2] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition, (New York: Bantam Books, 1988, 1996) 68

[3] Ibid, 69

[4] Rev. Will Rice, “The Trinity, Who Really Cares Anyway?” Preached at The Rock United Methodist Church, Cedar Park, Texas, 26 May, 2002

[5] Bill Bryson, *A Short History of Nearly Everything, (Broadway Books, 2003) 18

[6] Mary W. Anderson, “So Explain It To Me”, The Christian Century, May 20-27, 1999, p. 523