Today I preached in chapel. We were observing the feast day of Martin Luther, which wasn’t the most obvious day for our liturgics professor to invite me to say mass.
Anyway, I don’t feel blogheavy tonight, so I figured I’d put the sermon up. . . .
Isaiah 55:6-13/Psalm 46/John 15:1-11 February 21, 2003
Our professor of liturgics sturdily denies any deliberate intent in assigning preachers to particular feast days, so she will probably affirm that no wry humor played a part in allotting the arch-reformer to this stalwartly catholic presider. I myself just give thanks that it wasn’t Calvin or Zwingli, but instead that I was called to preach on the feast of Brother Martin, hearty Augustinian monk and apostle of grace.
If we had more than just five minutes, I might ask you for some testimonies, sisters and brothers, some witnessing about where your path to discipleship began, what first recognizable steps led you to this most unlikely way-station. If we had more than just five minutes, we could listen one another into truth, and hear how God’s ways vastly surpass our ways, how God?s thoughts transcend our thoughts.
But we don’t have that much time, friends, we must hurry or we’ll be late for lunch, and so I will elbow past all the enchanting, endearing stories of late-night conversions, of dear and trusted companions, of grannies and nannies, of hitting the bottom and slingshotting to the heavens, I’ll skip over all that and cut to the bottom line: discipleship begins in grace.
Our way with God begins in grace, that?s the only way it can begin, because our good ideas don’t save us, our lofty intentions sure don’t save us, our intelligence and fine looks and beautiful music and even the Book of Common Prayer and
By grace and grace alone all good things come to be; grace is our only fortress, our only rock, our stronghold and our only sure defense. And undeserved grace forbids our thinking that we bring about peace among nations, that our strength protects the innocent, that our wisdom adjudicates which nations deserve the full impact of US military destruction, and which tyrants must be supported and encouraged in the name of “national security.” Grace stands up and plainly names the lies and blasphemy that crassly identify God’s justice and God’s saving power with the ambitions of careerist politicians.
Grace falls silent when we manipulate, coerce, force enemies to submit to our will. Grace testifies for us and with us and in us, when all our ways in all our lives sprout flourishing myrtle and cypress, not withered, dry thorns and briars; grace grows in our discipleship when we reject the lies of brutal power, and follow the gentle, peaceable way of Jesus’ command to abide together in his love.
In the presence of grace, five minutes stretches to encompass all our hearts’ testimonies of praise, of thanksgiving and intercession in an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. In the of grace, “cutting off” is all that we can expect.
Amen
Posted by AKMA at February 21, 2003 09:06 PM | TrackBackThanks for posting your sermon from yesterday on your blog. I headed home after class, so I didn't hear it, and I'm glad to have read your words. They touch on an issue I struggle with in our little seminary community. We lose sight of the fact of God's unmerited grace present around us, even (especially?) in places that *we* deem unworthy.
At the risk of being blunt, there's a touch of smug self-righeousness that surrounds our community's opposition to military action, that is just as sinful as the "pro-war" posture it purports to work against.
Hear me clearly: I loathe the thought of war. With every fiber of my being, I pray for a safe, peaceful resolution to this terrible situation. I have friends and children of friends who will be intimately involved if and when shooting starts, and I can picture them way too easily bleeding and dying on a battlefield; the thought grieves my very soul.
At the same time, the dismissive sarcasm and name-calling that goes on in the name of "promoting peace and justice" is a sin that is not justified by the intention of opposing another sin. What do I mean? Things like:
When the military chaplain was on campus last quarter, and I heard him referred to as "the warmonger in the Moreau room."
When George Bush is not just disagreed with, but held up for ridicule.
When we make the arrogant assumption that of course, right-thinking Christians are those who agree with us. Others are treated to rolling eyes and patronizing condescension, effectively shutting down any chance of honest dialogue.
How do those words and actions "respect the dignity of every human being," as we have promised in the sight of God to do?
When we had the community forum last week, the three panelists had some meaty things to say; but Mary Beth's was the prophetic voice in the Seabury wilderness. She asked a question we need to hear, and own: "Will my son be treated differently if he visits here today in his blue jeans, than if he visits four months from now in his fatigues?"
By all means, we should oppose war, and violence, and oppression wherever we see it. Write your congressperson, hang a sign in your window, march and chant in protest. Just do so intentionally, thoughtfully, and prayerfully, remembering every moment that, by unmerited grace, the "warmonger" is also a beloved child of God.
Posted by: Jane at February 22, 2003 11:13 AMThe Stack is just what it sounds like: a tower of things that starts at the bottom and builds upward as it goes. In our case, the things in the stack are called "Stack Frames" or just "frames". We start with one stack frame at the very bottom, and we build up from there.
Posted by: Polidore at January 13, 2004 12:48 AMThat gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Rook at January 13, 2004 12:48 AMBut some variables are immortal. These variables are declared outside of blocks, outside of functions. Since they don't have a block to exist in they are called global variables (as opposed to local variables), because they exist in all blocks, everywhere, and they never go out of scope. Although powerful, these kinds of variables are generally frowned upon because they encourage bad program design.
Posted by: Jesse at January 13, 2004 12:49 AMThat gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Hugh at January 13, 2004 09:58 AMWhen the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.
Posted by: Annabella at January 13, 2004 09:59 AMThese secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.
Posted by: Ursula at January 13, 2004 09:59 AM