Text: John 4:5-42
Theme: “A Samaritan Woman: The PLEA”
3RD Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
There was no spring break for Jesus. The Pharisees – with their hands on the religious pulse of the people -- had heard that He was gaining quite a following, so He decided to get out of the area of Judea. No rest for the weary! It’s time to pack up and head north!
There were a number of ways to travel back up north to Galilee from Judea and, surprisingly, our Lord decides to go through Samaria. Others may or may not have advised Him to take a different route. Whatever the case, it was risky business for a Jew to travel through Samaria. Why is that? The answer has to do with race – or racism. In America, we had a civil war over that issue. Much of the age-old strife in the Middle East, when it’s all boiled down, is on account of race.
The Jews of Jesus’ day considered the people of Samaria – the Samaritans – to be second-class, second-cousins. They were thought of as inferior half-breeds. Chances are that many of us have distant relatives that we’d really rather not spend a whole of time with. Such relatives have something in common with fish out of water: after a day or two they start to stink. That’s putting it mildly. There was a saying, popular at the time of Jesus, which said: “The only good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan.” That’s putting it directly. Also, there is evidence that the feelings were reciprocated; they went both ways.
Decades ago, the singer Cher -- of Sonny and Cher fame -- waxed auto-biographical when she wrote:
My father married a pure Cherokee
My mother's people were ashamed of me
The indians said I was white by law
The White Man always called me "Indian Squaw"
Half-breed, that's all I ever heard
Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word
Half-breed, she's no good they warned
Both sides were against me since the day I was born
The feelings behind such language, or ones similar to them, may have gone through the mind of the woman, the Samaritan woman, who saw this stranger sitting at the ancient well of Jacob where she had come as she always did to draw water.
No stranger to us, it was Jesus. We are told that He was tired – a very human thing to be. Jesus, well aware of where He was and who this woman was, speaks up. Road weary, worn out, and thirsty, He utters a plea: “Give me a drink.”
It should be noted that such verbal exchanges – again, in Jesus’ day – were entirely inappropriate. Men didn’t talk to women in public like that. That was a big no-no. Already, Jesus has crossed a boundary if not broken a barrier. While it may disappoint some folks, Jesus was never much for political or even religious correctness – as they were then understood.
The woman – as shocked as she surely was! – barely had time to think. If she did, it perhaps would have gone on like this: “Who’s this? Is another man – this time a Jew – here to play grown-up games with me? Will he use, abuse, send me away like all the others?” She doesn’t scream in rage. She doesn’t run. (That’s one of the miracles in this story, I think.) She stays put and asks the obvious question: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Jesus, only too aware of the race problem and the social propriety that was at stake, says: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’”
She noticed that this tired man did not have a bucket or some such thing to get the water out of the well. “Where can you get this living water?” she asks. “Are you greater that our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and his herds?”
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” says Jesus, “but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a well spritzing up to everlasting life.”
The woman, either honestly hoping to get some of this water or thinking it all a badjoke, says: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” Living water should have its practical benefits. It certainly could save a trip out to this old well in the searing heat of the day!
Jesus, still parched, says, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.” She says, innocently, “I have no husband.” Jesus says, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
There was not much she could do about being a woman in that patriarchal, male-dominated society. Also, there was nothing she could do about being a Samaritan woman. Put together, that was a double whammy of badness! But the five husbands thing was something she likely thought she could hide. No one could tell that just by looking at her. It was her secret. Christian writer Alyce McKenzie writes: “Her whole life is organized around keeping her secret. She dreads the moment it comes out. It’s like the jack-in-the-box clown. It stays in the box but then the handle starts turning and that creepy music starts, and then Pop, goes the Weasel! Out comes the secret, and there is shame.”
The Samaritan woman is in good company. Like her, we, too, have something we would rather not have others know about – even those closest to us. As it is said, “Some things are better left unsaid.”
In 2004, a man named Frank Warren started a website called postsecret.com. It was an art project. He asked people to mail in postcards that had one of their secrets written on it. The rules were that the secret needed to be anonymous and something that was never shared with someone else. The website is still going strong. Here are just a few from Warren’s website that cover the range from humor to heartache:
--In high school I was so desperate for a boyfriend I dated a guy who went to Star Wars Conventions…and he dumped me.
--Even vegetarians think of meat from time to time. I know I do.
--My insomnia is going to get me fired.
--I can’t stand my stepmother.
--When things go well for me I have to wreck my life all over again.
When you own up to a secret, you run the risk of being rejected. That’s why people send anonymous postcards to a website – because they are afraid to confide them to another human being face to face.
With the Samaritan woman, Jesus did the confiding for her. He said what she could not bring herself to say. Would He, too, reject her? No.
And the woman, to her credit, does not bail on Jesus. Often, when painful truth makes the light of day, people seek quick escape. Not this woman. She hangs in there and says to Jesus: “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we much worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus does not rebuke her for changing the subject. He says: “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not now; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The woman, now free to reveal a yearning deeper than her secret, replies: “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes he will explain everything to us.”
Jesus declares: “I who speak to you am he.” That was the good whammy to end all good whammys!
The disciples now enter into the scene. They wonder what in the world Jesus is doing talking to a woman out in public. During that exchange, the woman slips away and is no longer silent in public. She heads into town and has no compunction about speaking up. She tells the people: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”
This woman, together with the acquaintances, invites Jesus to stay. Jesus did – for two days, we are told. In the end, many more became believers. They said to the woman: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Jesus knows our secrets – all those things we’d rather not talk about in polite company. He knows our prejudices, our pre-judgments. He sees beyond our Sunday best.
All of the pain, all of the wrong that the woman felt and that that woman caused, Jesus knew. All of the pain, all of the wrong that we have felt and we have caused, Jesus knows.
All of it, every bit of it, He took to His cross. He paid for it there, says the Gospel. He erased the insurmountable debt as He hung battered and dying. In His resurrection from the grave, He gave us that message that causes wells of living water to spritz up in our hearts.
Just think: it all started with one man, his parched throat, and his plea: “Give me a drink!”
What is Jesus asking you for this Lent?
Amen.
THE STRAIGHTFORWARD PULPIT
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Abraham and Sarah: The PROMISE!
Text: Genesis 12:1-4a
Theme: “Abraham and Sarah: The PROMISE”
2nd Sunday in Lent
March 20 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”[b]
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.
Somewhere along the lines of four thousand years ago, there lived a man named Abram. His wife was named Sarai. They made their residence, along with their extended family, in a city called Ur. That town was in what we today would call southern Iraq. The Bible mentions the town of Ur – calling it “Ur of the Chaldees” – four times. Other than the name, we know very little about Ur.
In the decade of the 1920s, a British excavator and archaeologist by the name of C. Leonard Woolley spent a great deal of time at the ancient site of Ur. The work of Woolley and his team gives us all a glimpse of the milieu, if you will, from which this ancient man and woman – Abram and Sarai -- came from.
Although Ur was small, it was a bristling commercial center along the Euphrates River. The culture was religious. It was named for the moon-goddess, Urim. It was also materialistic – as excavations of the ancient ziggurat and royal cemetery revealed. The population was educated. There were codes of law, and it was governed by various dynasties down through the years.
Ironically, within the last two weeks, nineteen members of a branch of the United States Military (called The 13th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion) visited the ruins of this ancient city. This story did not make, as they say, the “national news.” It was tucked away on the internet.
The soldiers were taken through the ruins of ancient Ur by the caretaker, a man by the name of Diaf. They learned about Sir Woolley’s discoveries. They saw the artifacts, the jewelry, and the cuneiform writing from four thousand years ago. They viewed extensive sewer system that the citizens of Ur had built. One soldier, Specialist Paul Aguilera, had this to say at the end of the visit: “It taught me that, while we may think we are a lot more intelligent than people were back then, that is just not the case.”
Today, I offer you a second message in a series called “A Very Personal Lent.” I hope this short trip to Ur reveals that Abram and Sarai, despite the thousands of years of advancement since, were not much different from us. They knew culture; they knew fashion; they knew how to think and write; they knew how to dream it, envision it, and build it, and they knew a thing or two about religion.
Did they worship, at first, the moon-goddess Urim? If so, a night like last night would have been one to take note of. As Wendy Hundley of the Dallas Morning News reported it, “The weather cooperated with clear skies on Saturday night to give North Texans a good view of the super “perigee” moon. The full moon appeared 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than normal as its lunar orbit brought it close to the Earth.”
Eventually, Abram and Sarai left Ur. The Bible is silent as to why. But they move north by northwest and settled at a town called Haran. Haran also had a temple to the moon-goddess, Urim, so that may have been a reason for settling there. It was also along a trade route, so business considerations may have come into play.
Abram and Sarai prospered in Haran. They enjoyed wealth and gained many possessions. Servants were on hand to cater to both their needs and wants. The world was their oyster. They were in Haran, the Bible seems to imply, for quite some time.
During that period of time in Haran, something happened with massive significance for future generations – leading all the way to our own. Abram did not witness a “perigree” moon. There were no incantations from a priest or priestess of Urim, the moon-goddess. Instead, it was the voice of Yahweh, the God of heaven and earth. As it turns out, they were about to start traveling again. Only this time, it wasn’t the family itinerary. It was God’s. Yahweh said to Abram: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” Abram was seventy five years old, well past the current retirement age, when this shocking change of plans came.
I wonder if any of you have ever felt what Abram and Sarai must have felt. Let’s say that you have a sense of settled peace with your life so far. You’ve enjoyed North Texas for quite some time. Your roots are down. Your family is around you. You serve the broader community you live in. You enjoy your life, and you support and love those who enjoy life with you. Yes, there are the usual concerns and worries which are always part of the mix. But you’re not going anywhere. You have a history in your current location. Your loved ones are there; your friends are close by. There is a familiarity in your surroundings that you’ve grown accustomed to.
If you were Abram, what would you do if you were told to change all that? I know what I would have said: “Leave? Say it isn’t so! You’ve got to be kidding! That’s the craziest, most cockamamie idea I’ve ever heard. Skip it. Forget it. Not me. Not going. I won’t apply for any passport, and I won’t call the movers. It’s just not going to happen. Let’s get that on the table and get it straight right now!”
Yet, even before Abram or anyone of us could interrupt by putting our thoughts into words, Yahweh goes on: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
I talked to a gentleman the other day who knows a thing or two about global positioning satellites. They can locate and survey spots anywhere in the world through the coordinates that are sent. The margin for error is only eleven feet. Yesterday, the United States, in cooperation with the United Nations and other countries, launched over one hundred tomahawk cruise missiles toward select targets in Libya. No doubt, those high-tech weapons hit the marks assigned – probably with only an eleven foot margin of error.
On that day in Haran, the word of Yahweh was not filled with divine explosives; it was filled with promises – gracious, loving, and powerful promises all. That word was not meant to control, manipulate, or destroy. It was meant to bless and lead and enliven. And that word locked on to the coordinates of Abram’s heart, and hit its mark perfectly! In today’s New Testament Reading from the book of Romans, the apostle Paul reiterated what the Scriptures teach about Abram: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
My hope is that the gracious Word of Yahweh has locked onto the coordinates of your heart today. Join me in celebrating that you and I are recipients, heirs, and living proof of these promises of God. Abram and Sara’s story is our story; we’re part of it; we’re in on it; we are members of the family. We are not nomads wandering aimlessly adrift. Instead, we have the promises – the itinerary! – of the one true God.
A final thing needs to be said about the promises of Yahweh. As I said earlier, they are not manipulative or controlling. They come in the way of a gift – with all the surprise a gift entails. Therefore, they are rejectable. In other words, it is entirely possible to say: “God, no thanks. I’ve had it. I have my own game plan. I’m going to follow my own path and intinerary. You I will do without.”
The astonishing thing is that the entire history of God’s people – from Abram and Sarai and on down to you and me right now – has been like that. The promises of Yahweh are set aside for something else: for what’s fashionable, for what’s fun, for what’s happening now. The word of Yahweh is shoved away to make room for better ideas: our own, supposedly enlightened, ones.
But the good news I share today is that while our keeping covenant with God is spotty and only too often misses the mark, God’s keeping covenant with us is as good, if not better, than ever! God didn’t send a missile. He sent a Son!
As Nicodemus the Pharisee heard in today’s Gospel reading: “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
When you have those moments alone; when you really start to chew on what’s happening in the world what with wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, economic uncertainties, and the ascendancy of fresh fear, then I can’t think of a better time to recall the promises made to Abram and Sarai and the promises kept in Jesus Christ.
God knows the coordinates of your heart, and His love is locked onto them!
Amen.
Theme: “Abraham and Sarah: The PROMISE”
2nd Sunday in Lent
March 20 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”[b]
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.
Somewhere along the lines of four thousand years ago, there lived a man named Abram. His wife was named Sarai. They made their residence, along with their extended family, in a city called Ur. That town was in what we today would call southern Iraq. The Bible mentions the town of Ur – calling it “Ur of the Chaldees” – four times. Other than the name, we know very little about Ur.
In the decade of the 1920s, a British excavator and archaeologist by the name of C. Leonard Woolley spent a great deal of time at the ancient site of Ur. The work of Woolley and his team gives us all a glimpse of the milieu, if you will, from which this ancient man and woman – Abram and Sarai -- came from.
Although Ur was small, it was a bristling commercial center along the Euphrates River. The culture was religious. It was named for the moon-goddess, Urim. It was also materialistic – as excavations of the ancient ziggurat and royal cemetery revealed. The population was educated. There were codes of law, and it was governed by various dynasties down through the years.
Ironically, within the last two weeks, nineteen members of a branch of the United States Military (called The 13th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion) visited the ruins of this ancient city. This story did not make, as they say, the “national news.” It was tucked away on the internet.
The soldiers were taken through the ruins of ancient Ur by the caretaker, a man by the name of Diaf. They learned about Sir Woolley’s discoveries. They saw the artifacts, the jewelry, and the cuneiform writing from four thousand years ago. They viewed extensive sewer system that the citizens of Ur had built. One soldier, Specialist Paul Aguilera, had this to say at the end of the visit: “It taught me that, while we may think we are a lot more intelligent than people were back then, that is just not the case.”
Today, I offer you a second message in a series called “A Very Personal Lent.” I hope this short trip to Ur reveals that Abram and Sarai, despite the thousands of years of advancement since, were not much different from us. They knew culture; they knew fashion; they knew how to think and write; they knew how to dream it, envision it, and build it, and they knew a thing or two about religion.
Did they worship, at first, the moon-goddess Urim? If so, a night like last night would have been one to take note of. As Wendy Hundley of the Dallas Morning News reported it, “The weather cooperated with clear skies on Saturday night to give North Texans a good view of the super “perigee” moon. The full moon appeared 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than normal as its lunar orbit brought it close to the Earth.”
Eventually, Abram and Sarai left Ur. The Bible is silent as to why. But they move north by northwest and settled at a town called Haran. Haran also had a temple to the moon-goddess, Urim, so that may have been a reason for settling there. It was also along a trade route, so business considerations may have come into play.
Abram and Sarai prospered in Haran. They enjoyed wealth and gained many possessions. Servants were on hand to cater to both their needs and wants. The world was their oyster. They were in Haran, the Bible seems to imply, for quite some time.
During that period of time in Haran, something happened with massive significance for future generations – leading all the way to our own. Abram did not witness a “perigree” moon. There were no incantations from a priest or priestess of Urim, the moon-goddess. Instead, it was the voice of Yahweh, the God of heaven and earth. As it turns out, they were about to start traveling again. Only this time, it wasn’t the family itinerary. It was God’s. Yahweh said to Abram: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” Abram was seventy five years old, well past the current retirement age, when this shocking change of plans came.
I wonder if any of you have ever felt what Abram and Sarai must have felt. Let’s say that you have a sense of settled peace with your life so far. You’ve enjoyed North Texas for quite some time. Your roots are down. Your family is around you. You serve the broader community you live in. You enjoy your life, and you support and love those who enjoy life with you. Yes, there are the usual concerns and worries which are always part of the mix. But you’re not going anywhere. You have a history in your current location. Your loved ones are there; your friends are close by. There is a familiarity in your surroundings that you’ve grown accustomed to.
If you were Abram, what would you do if you were told to change all that? I know what I would have said: “Leave? Say it isn’t so! You’ve got to be kidding! That’s the craziest, most cockamamie idea I’ve ever heard. Skip it. Forget it. Not me. Not going. I won’t apply for any passport, and I won’t call the movers. It’s just not going to happen. Let’s get that on the table and get it straight right now!”
Yet, even before Abram or anyone of us could interrupt by putting our thoughts into words, Yahweh goes on: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
I talked to a gentleman the other day who knows a thing or two about global positioning satellites. They can locate and survey spots anywhere in the world through the coordinates that are sent. The margin for error is only eleven feet. Yesterday, the United States, in cooperation with the United Nations and other countries, launched over one hundred tomahawk cruise missiles toward select targets in Libya. No doubt, those high-tech weapons hit the marks assigned – probably with only an eleven foot margin of error.
On that day in Haran, the word of Yahweh was not filled with divine explosives; it was filled with promises – gracious, loving, and powerful promises all. That word was not meant to control, manipulate, or destroy. It was meant to bless and lead and enliven. And that word locked on to the coordinates of Abram’s heart, and hit its mark perfectly! In today’s New Testament Reading from the book of Romans, the apostle Paul reiterated what the Scriptures teach about Abram: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
My hope is that the gracious Word of Yahweh has locked onto the coordinates of your heart today. Join me in celebrating that you and I are recipients, heirs, and living proof of these promises of God. Abram and Sara’s story is our story; we’re part of it; we’re in on it; we are members of the family. We are not nomads wandering aimlessly adrift. Instead, we have the promises – the itinerary! – of the one true God.
A final thing needs to be said about the promises of Yahweh. As I said earlier, they are not manipulative or controlling. They come in the way of a gift – with all the surprise a gift entails. Therefore, they are rejectable. In other words, it is entirely possible to say: “God, no thanks. I’ve had it. I have my own game plan. I’m going to follow my own path and intinerary. You I will do without.”
The astonishing thing is that the entire history of God’s people – from Abram and Sarai and on down to you and me right now – has been like that. The promises of Yahweh are set aside for something else: for what’s fashionable, for what’s fun, for what’s happening now. The word of Yahweh is shoved away to make room for better ideas: our own, supposedly enlightened, ones.
But the good news I share today is that while our keeping covenant with God is spotty and only too often misses the mark, God’s keeping covenant with us is as good, if not better, than ever! God didn’t send a missile. He sent a Son!
As Nicodemus the Pharisee heard in today’s Gospel reading: “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
When you have those moments alone; when you really start to chew on what’s happening in the world what with wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, economic uncertainties, and the ascendancy of fresh fear, then I can’t think of a better time to recall the promises made to Abram and Sarai and the promises kept in Jesus Christ.
God knows the coordinates of your heart, and His love is locked onto them!
Amen.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Adam and Eve: The PROBLEM
Text: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Theme: “Adam and Eve: The PROBLEM”
1st Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
This morning I begin a series of seasonal messages that I’m calling A Very Personal Lent. My rationale for the title is as follows: Among the many temptations we are faced with concerning believing in God is to think of it all in only abstract terms. But how often do we deal in abstractions? Think about it. We don’t deal with them very often. Rather, we are faced with concrete, gritty, messy, energizing, at times demoralizing, occasionally triumphant realities that are very real, and we are the very real people who face them every day. A healthy dose of the concrete, therefore, is in order. And if it is to be concrete and substantive and something, as they say, that we can sink our teeth into, we cannot avoid the personal. So I propose to survey with you some very personal stories of persons in the Bible as they related to God, their own lives, and the events swirling around them. We will consider Adam and Eve, our ancient parents. We’ll take a look at Abraham and Sarah next Sunday. Turning to the New Testament, we’ll then pay a visit to the Samaritan woman at the well, to a man born blind, and to a very close personal friend of Jesus named Lazarus. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will wash away the abstractions and enable our faith and life to be refreshed and energized.
As we all know, there are good habits and bad habits. A routine I’ve begun recently – that of working out at a gym – is hopefully becoming a good habit. The idea is to lower the blood pressure, lower the high cholesterol, drop twenty pounds of bad fat, and add at least ten pounds of lean muscle mass. First off are the stretching exercises. Next up are the weight machines with special attention paid to biceps, triceps, and pecs. Then it’s off to the stationary bike to get ten minutes or so of cardio in before shooting some hoops, swimming some laps, sitting in the sauna and then showering up.
By the way, there are high-definition televisions to watch in these fitness centers. The one in front of my favorite exercise bike features the Entertainment Television channel. After last week, I might have to pick a new bike. I listen to my own music on headphones, so I don’t listen to the TV audio. But they do have closed-captioning. This past Thursday, while pedaling away on the bike, I noticed that Entertainment Television must have been running a feature on Charlie Sheen. Every time I look up, I see Charlie Sheen – sitcom clips of Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen with or without a cap on, Charlie Sheen talking to a reporter, Charlie Sheen smoking a cigarette while dripping verbal profundities. With his much-publicized legal hassles and battle with addiction, one pundit has described the man as a “narcissistic train wreck.” E TV, apparently, is on hand to chronicle it all for an entertainment-obsessed culture. Never mind earthquakes, tsunamis, American soldiers fighting and dying in other lands, or debates involving teacher unions and collective bargaining. We do love our distractions, and there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned narcissistic train wreck from time to time.
The erratic behavior of a highly paid actor and the subsequent media attention to the same, I surmised as I pedaled on the bike, are only symptomatic of the deeper problem which is, in fact, the deepest problem of them all.
As the perspiration dripped from my forehead, I turned from the TV and reshuffled my iPod. I remembered today’s Old Testament Reading for the First Sunday in Lent. It features the story of our ancient parents, Adam and Eve, yielding to temptation and falling into sin. I pedaled faster. I felt angry. But who or what was I angry about? Was it the media or Charlie Sheen? Was it something I didn’t even know?
Well, for starters, I kept harking back to that Old Testament reading. I was certainly angry at that damnable snake – or “the serpent”, as the text says. The Bible says that that serpent was “more crafty” (another translation says “subtle”) than any other wild animal the Lord God made.
Ten years ago or so, I was playing a golf match at Oakmont Country Club in south Denton. My opponent was a skinny, gangly, rubbery, athletic-looking guy named Marty. He was a pretty good golfer, and everybody knew it. When I drew his name as a first-round opponent, I thought my chances in the match were pretty slim. But I gave him a good fight. In fact, I was actually ahead in the game until the 14th hole. On the way over to the tee box, Marty’s golf cart screeched to a stop in front of mine. I almost crashed into his cart from behind. Marty turned to me and motioned for me to be quiet. Then he pointed to something on the ground and said “Look.” Right next to my cart was a four to five foot water moccasin snake. Marty then said “Don’t move.” He slowly got out of his cart, grabbed a 7 iron, and proceeded to end the snake’s life prematurely. I said, “Marty, you must be afraid of snakes.” He said, “No, I’m not afraid of them. I hate them.” I regret that I never got around to asking him why. It could have made for an interesting conversation.
The point is not to solicit your thinking about snakes. Rather, I would ask you to consider the subtle, crafty, and very real reality of evil in the world – or, if you will, the force of evil in the world. When I was an eight year old boy I visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany with my parents. I saw the pictures, the ovens, and the evidence of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”. Who, in their right mind, could not conclude that this was pure evil? Later on and more recently, I remember sitting a number of times in the middle of the night with ER nurses and attendants at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas who, after reporting to police, had to debrief after treating another child that had been abused and beaten. This is not “St. Elsewhere.” This is not “Grey’s Anatomy”. This is real life. You don’t think there’s a force of evil in the world? Ask them.
The Bible doesn’t deal with abstractions on this subject. It personalizes that force of evil and gives it a variety of names: Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, and so forth. Still, how tempting it is to entertain an abstraction and picture the devil as this little red man with horns and a pitchfork in his hands sitting on your shoulder fiddling with your conscience. It’s so easy to make the force of evil little more than a comic-book figure. In truth, we recoil at the thought that there is actually such a force lurking about, as the Apostle Paul said, like a lion waiting for someone to devour. It’s more comfortable to think of life in this world as rather benign and as one random series of events after another -- hence, the earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunamis -- while we cross our fingers in the hope that God is sovereign and actually gives a rip about you and about me. It’s like the entertainer sang on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson all those years ago: “When it all comes down, I hope it don’t land on you” – or me, or anyone for that matter.
But the fact of the matter is that it did land – on Adam and Eve, our ancient parents. And, like it or not, we’ve been dealing with the aftermath ever since – one narcissistic train wreck after another.
They started off in paradise! They were to take care of paradise! They could enjoy the food of paradise! They could live, move, and have their being in the paradise their Maker provided for them. It was like an all-expense-paid spring break at Atlantis in the Bahamas! There was perfect freedom as the Lord
defined it: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Someone has said that “Behind every crisis there lies an opportunity.” Enter the subtle, crafty serpent/devil/force of evil. It wasn’t paradise for the serpent/devil/force of evil. It was paradise lost for the serpent/devil/force of evil. No time was wasted in attempting to get our ancient parents to share the misery. One good narcissistic train wreck deserves another.
The first item in the arsenal of attack was the tactic called doubt. “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” asks the devil of Eve. Eve, in reply, said back to the devil what the Lord had first said to her. She confessed what God had said. Good for her.
Not to be deterred, not one to give up so easily, the devil goes to plan B. Plan B is flat-out denial. “You will not certainly die,” says the devil. Before ancient Eve could respond, the devil throws out a perk, a benefit, a dainty morsel for Eve to consider: Eat from that tree and you will be like God – knowing good and evil. In essence, you will be all that you can be.
In the motion picture The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino plays the devil who is presented in the form of a high-brass, extremely wealthy New York City lawyer. After having revealed himself as the prince of darkness, he says to the young lawyer named Kevin (played by Keanu Reeves): “I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted, and I never judged him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man. I’m a humanist. I rest my case.” With Adam and Eve, it certainly appears that the devil is a “fan of man.” He has their “best interest” at heart.
Adam and Eve fell for plan B hook, line, and sinker. Enthralled by the beauty of the forbidden fruit, informed of the benefits – nutritional or otherwise – that would come from eating it, they disobeyed their Creator.
After that, we are told that their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked. For the first time, as the Biblical record makes clear, humans felt shame. It wasn’t paradise anymore. Whatever it was, it was unacceptable. They couldn’t live with that, so they came up with a tactic of their own. It’s called the “cover-up”. They fashioned fig leaves for garments to cover their shame. Taking responsibility for their actions was not in the cards.
Ever since, the human race has been, as Dr. Luther once described, “curvatus in se” – that is, curved in on itself. The Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – must step aside to the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. As Mark Twain once observed: “In the beginning, God made humanity in His own image; ever since, humanity has tried to return the favor.”
My point is this: the problem with humanity is deeper and more pervasive than any one of us realize. The solution to this problem is far more grand and full of wonder than we could ever envision.
That devil, that old narcissistic train wreck, kept at it and kept at it and kept at it. But then one day, he ran into Jesus. And a little word sent the devil packing.
What is that little word? It is the “little word” of the Gospel, the “little word” of forgiveness, the “little word” of unconquerable life and love – from God – that would ever end. All of that is embodied in that distant son of Adam and Eve – even Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure,
one little world shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers, not thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
Amen.
Theme: “Adam and Eve: The PROBLEM”
1st Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
This morning I begin a series of seasonal messages that I’m calling A Very Personal Lent. My rationale for the title is as follows: Among the many temptations we are faced with concerning believing in God is to think of it all in only abstract terms. But how often do we deal in abstractions? Think about it. We don’t deal with them very often. Rather, we are faced with concrete, gritty, messy, energizing, at times demoralizing, occasionally triumphant realities that are very real, and we are the very real people who face them every day. A healthy dose of the concrete, therefore, is in order. And if it is to be concrete and substantive and something, as they say, that we can sink our teeth into, we cannot avoid the personal. So I propose to survey with you some very personal stories of persons in the Bible as they related to God, their own lives, and the events swirling around them. We will consider Adam and Eve, our ancient parents. We’ll take a look at Abraham and Sarah next Sunday. Turning to the New Testament, we’ll then pay a visit to the Samaritan woman at the well, to a man born blind, and to a very close personal friend of Jesus named Lazarus. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will wash away the abstractions and enable our faith and life to be refreshed and energized.
As we all know, there are good habits and bad habits. A routine I’ve begun recently – that of working out at a gym – is hopefully becoming a good habit. The idea is to lower the blood pressure, lower the high cholesterol, drop twenty pounds of bad fat, and add at least ten pounds of lean muscle mass. First off are the stretching exercises. Next up are the weight machines with special attention paid to biceps, triceps, and pecs. Then it’s off to the stationary bike to get ten minutes or so of cardio in before shooting some hoops, swimming some laps, sitting in the sauna and then showering up.
By the way, there are high-definition televisions to watch in these fitness centers. The one in front of my favorite exercise bike features the Entertainment Television channel. After last week, I might have to pick a new bike. I listen to my own music on headphones, so I don’t listen to the TV audio. But they do have closed-captioning. This past Thursday, while pedaling away on the bike, I noticed that Entertainment Television must have been running a feature on Charlie Sheen. Every time I look up, I see Charlie Sheen – sitcom clips of Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen with or without a cap on, Charlie Sheen talking to a reporter, Charlie Sheen smoking a cigarette while dripping verbal profundities. With his much-publicized legal hassles and battle with addiction, one pundit has described the man as a “narcissistic train wreck.” E TV, apparently, is on hand to chronicle it all for an entertainment-obsessed culture. Never mind earthquakes, tsunamis, American soldiers fighting and dying in other lands, or debates involving teacher unions and collective bargaining. We do love our distractions, and there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned narcissistic train wreck from time to time.
The erratic behavior of a highly paid actor and the subsequent media attention to the same, I surmised as I pedaled on the bike, are only symptomatic of the deeper problem which is, in fact, the deepest problem of them all.
As the perspiration dripped from my forehead, I turned from the TV and reshuffled my iPod. I remembered today’s Old Testament Reading for the First Sunday in Lent. It features the story of our ancient parents, Adam and Eve, yielding to temptation and falling into sin. I pedaled faster. I felt angry. But who or what was I angry about? Was it the media or Charlie Sheen? Was it something I didn’t even know?
Well, for starters, I kept harking back to that Old Testament reading. I was certainly angry at that damnable snake – or “the serpent”, as the text says. The Bible says that that serpent was “more crafty” (another translation says “subtle”) than any other wild animal the Lord God made.
Ten years ago or so, I was playing a golf match at Oakmont Country Club in south Denton. My opponent was a skinny, gangly, rubbery, athletic-looking guy named Marty. He was a pretty good golfer, and everybody knew it. When I drew his name as a first-round opponent, I thought my chances in the match were pretty slim. But I gave him a good fight. In fact, I was actually ahead in the game until the 14th hole. On the way over to the tee box, Marty’s golf cart screeched to a stop in front of mine. I almost crashed into his cart from behind. Marty turned to me and motioned for me to be quiet. Then he pointed to something on the ground and said “Look.” Right next to my cart was a four to five foot water moccasin snake. Marty then said “Don’t move.” He slowly got out of his cart, grabbed a 7 iron, and proceeded to end the snake’s life prematurely. I said, “Marty, you must be afraid of snakes.” He said, “No, I’m not afraid of them. I hate them.” I regret that I never got around to asking him why. It could have made for an interesting conversation.
The point is not to solicit your thinking about snakes. Rather, I would ask you to consider the subtle, crafty, and very real reality of evil in the world – or, if you will, the force of evil in the world. When I was an eight year old boy I visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany with my parents. I saw the pictures, the ovens, and the evidence of Adolf Hitler’s “final solution”. Who, in their right mind, could not conclude that this was pure evil? Later on and more recently, I remember sitting a number of times in the middle of the night with ER nurses and attendants at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas who, after reporting to police, had to debrief after treating another child that had been abused and beaten. This is not “St. Elsewhere.” This is not “Grey’s Anatomy”. This is real life. You don’t think there’s a force of evil in the world? Ask them.
The Bible doesn’t deal with abstractions on this subject. It personalizes that force of evil and gives it a variety of names: Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, and so forth. Still, how tempting it is to entertain an abstraction and picture the devil as this little red man with horns and a pitchfork in his hands sitting on your shoulder fiddling with your conscience. It’s so easy to make the force of evil little more than a comic-book figure. In truth, we recoil at the thought that there is actually such a force lurking about, as the Apostle Paul said, like a lion waiting for someone to devour. It’s more comfortable to think of life in this world as rather benign and as one random series of events after another -- hence, the earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunamis -- while we cross our fingers in the hope that God is sovereign and actually gives a rip about you and about me. It’s like the entertainer sang on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson all those years ago: “When it all comes down, I hope it don’t land on you” – or me, or anyone for that matter.
But the fact of the matter is that it did land – on Adam and Eve, our ancient parents. And, like it or not, we’ve been dealing with the aftermath ever since – one narcissistic train wreck after another.
They started off in paradise! They were to take care of paradise! They could enjoy the food of paradise! They could live, move, and have their being in the paradise their Maker provided for them. It was like an all-expense-paid spring break at Atlantis in the Bahamas! There was perfect freedom as the Lord
defined it: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Someone has said that “Behind every crisis there lies an opportunity.” Enter the subtle, crafty serpent/devil/force of evil. It wasn’t paradise for the serpent/devil/force of evil. It was paradise lost for the serpent/devil/force of evil. No time was wasted in attempting to get our ancient parents to share the misery. One good narcissistic train wreck deserves another.
The first item in the arsenal of attack was the tactic called doubt. “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” asks the devil of Eve. Eve, in reply, said back to the devil what the Lord had first said to her. She confessed what God had said. Good for her.
Not to be deterred, not one to give up so easily, the devil goes to plan B. Plan B is flat-out denial. “You will not certainly die,” says the devil. Before ancient Eve could respond, the devil throws out a perk, a benefit, a dainty morsel for Eve to consider: Eat from that tree and you will be like God – knowing good and evil. In essence, you will be all that you can be.
In the motion picture The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino plays the devil who is presented in the form of a high-brass, extremely wealthy New York City lawyer. After having revealed himself as the prince of darkness, he says to the young lawyer named Kevin (played by Keanu Reeves): “I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted, and I never judged him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man. I’m a humanist. I rest my case.” With Adam and Eve, it certainly appears that the devil is a “fan of man.” He has their “best interest” at heart.
Adam and Eve fell for plan B hook, line, and sinker. Enthralled by the beauty of the forbidden fruit, informed of the benefits – nutritional or otherwise – that would come from eating it, they disobeyed their Creator.
After that, we are told that their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked. For the first time, as the Biblical record makes clear, humans felt shame. It wasn’t paradise anymore. Whatever it was, it was unacceptable. They couldn’t live with that, so they came up with a tactic of their own. It’s called the “cover-up”. They fashioned fig leaves for garments to cover their shame. Taking responsibility for their actions was not in the cards.
Ever since, the human race has been, as Dr. Luther once described, “curvatus in se” – that is, curved in on itself. The Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – must step aside to the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. As Mark Twain once observed: “In the beginning, God made humanity in His own image; ever since, humanity has tried to return the favor.”
My point is this: the problem with humanity is deeper and more pervasive than any one of us realize. The solution to this problem is far more grand and full of wonder than we could ever envision.
That devil, that old narcissistic train wreck, kept at it and kept at it and kept at it. But then one day, he ran into Jesus. And a little word sent the devil packing.
What is that little word? It is the “little word” of the Gospel, the “little word” of forgiveness, the “little word” of unconquerable life and love – from God – that would ever end. All of that is embodied in that distant son of Adam and Eve – even Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
his rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure,
one little world shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers, not thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
Amen.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
When Christianity Begins to Speak
Text: Psalm 51:10-12
Theme: “When Christianity Begins to Speak”
Ash Wednesday
March 9, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
The word “Lent” comes from an old English term which means springtime. If all we had to rely on was Dopplar radar, we might not be sure if it, indeed, is Lent. I mean, if spring comes can winter be far behind? Perhaps it is global warming. Wait, it can’t be that. We’ve had nasty a winter with very low temperatures in Texas. Pipes have burst and flooding in our building was the result. So it must now be global climate change – as it has more recently been described. But we’ll let the scientists, meteorologists, and politicians quibble over that. More importantly, for our purposes, is this question: what is the “climate” of our souls? If you did Dopplar Radar on your soul, what’s the weather like? What’s the forecast?
To carry the analogy through, it was all nasty weather for King David’s soul. We just heard him speak in the 51st Psalm – a penitential psalm, the Bible scholars tell us. What does the great Old Testament King, the “apple of God’s eye”, have to repent about? Repentance does sound so – what’s the word? – religious! The psalm (p. 598 in your pew Bible) does have an editorial comment – which is part of the Biblical text – before the first verse. It reads like this: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.”
Oh, that explains a few things. If King David lived nowadays, the news of his adultery may have leaked out to the press and we would have had ourselves something of a scandal. His supporters would have rushed to his defense while his enemies would be smelling blood in the water. But what if you threw capital murder – of the premeditated variety – into the mix? It is exactly what happened with David. He commits adultery and then arranges for the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite. Without David’s friend Nathan calling him to account, it stands to reason that David would have gone along his merry way as if nothing had transpired. Perhaps he thought of sitting back one day after it all happened and thinking to himself: “I got away with it.”
Although he may, at first, have denied it with the best of them, in the end none of this happened without consequence for David’s soul. David himself eventually said: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” It sounds like a guilty conscience to me. What do you do with a guilty conscience? Do you suppress it? Do you deny it? Do you rationalize it away in an attempt to take the edge off? Do you medicate it? A friend of mine on Facebook recently shared a quote worth quoting: “It says something about our times that we rarely use the word, sinful, except to describe a really good dessert.”
C.S. Lewis nailed it when he wrote:
Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind that Law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power – it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
Dear friends in Christ, I really want Christianity to talk to me in this way this Lent. I want it to talk to us all. I want this Lent to be a season of renewal for each of us. There is a corporate way that this happens. In other words, we come to church and we receive the Word of God in its written, spoken, and sacramental forms. This is all good. But I’m talking about renewal on a level we tend to overlook and even forget. I speak of the personal and individual level. Together with corporate worship, this renewal starts – on a personal and individual level – with daily meditation and prayer.
We take care of our bodies – we clothe them, feed them, exercise them, give them rest. We take care of our minds – we engage them; we read; we expand our mental horizons; we even entertain them. We tend to our jobs – we go through our day and daily round of activities to support ourselves and those we love.
What about our souls? I ask. What about our spirits? I’m not just talking about one hour a week on Sunday mornings.
Lent, you see, is more than just a season where we mark the passage of time (in this case, forty days). Lent is also a discipline. And discipline breeds habits, and habits become a way of life.
I am not “Herr Pastor”! I am not a theological dictator! I am not the final arbiter of Presbyterian canon law! God forgive me if I come off sounding like an overbearing, autocratic religious sort who didn’t know when to shut up and was out of touch with reality. But let me, at the very least, earnestly suggest and plead with you to from the depths of my own soul to undertake daily meditation and prayer. Let Christianity have that conversation with you. If you need resources or suggestions on how to make that happen for you or to improve what you are already doing, that’s one of the reasons I am here. Prime times of the day for meditation and prayer, if I might further suggest, are shortly after you wake in the morning and shortly before you go to sleep at night.
And one last suggestion: it would be wonderful if you would commit to memory that prayer which is our text for tonight. It reads as follows:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
We begin this season and leave this sanctuary tonight with a very stark reminder of mortality on our foreheads. “Dust you are to to dust you shall return,” God said to our ancient parents. Later on, the Bible offered its own commentary of our mortality when it said: “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Lent is not meant to be morose. It is not meant to make a good showing of repentance – as if the quality of our repentance and sorrow is what earns God’s favor. Rather, it’s a chance for Christianity to speak to us again, for the crucified Christ to speak to us again, and we meditate upon what we hear and offer our prayers accordingly. God bless us all in this. God bless this season of Lent.
Amen.
Theme: “When Christianity Begins to Speak”
Ash Wednesday
March 9, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
The word “Lent” comes from an old English term which means springtime. If all we had to rely on was Dopplar radar, we might not be sure if it, indeed, is Lent. I mean, if spring comes can winter be far behind? Perhaps it is global warming. Wait, it can’t be that. We’ve had nasty a winter with very low temperatures in Texas. Pipes have burst and flooding in our building was the result. So it must now be global climate change – as it has more recently been described. But we’ll let the scientists, meteorologists, and politicians quibble over that. More importantly, for our purposes, is this question: what is the “climate” of our souls? If you did Dopplar Radar on your soul, what’s the weather like? What’s the forecast?
To carry the analogy through, it was all nasty weather for King David’s soul. We just heard him speak in the 51st Psalm – a penitential psalm, the Bible scholars tell us. What does the great Old Testament King, the “apple of God’s eye”, have to repent about? Repentance does sound so – what’s the word? – religious! The psalm (p. 598 in your pew Bible) does have an editorial comment – which is part of the Biblical text – before the first verse. It reads like this: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.”
Oh, that explains a few things. If King David lived nowadays, the news of his adultery may have leaked out to the press and we would have had ourselves something of a scandal. His supporters would have rushed to his defense while his enemies would be smelling blood in the water. But what if you threw capital murder – of the premeditated variety – into the mix? It is exactly what happened with David. He commits adultery and then arranges for the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite. Without David’s friend Nathan calling him to account, it stands to reason that David would have gone along his merry way as if nothing had transpired. Perhaps he thought of sitting back one day after it all happened and thinking to himself: “I got away with it.”
Although he may, at first, have denied it with the best of them, in the end none of this happened without consequence for David’s soul. David himself eventually said: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” It sounds like a guilty conscience to me. What do you do with a guilty conscience? Do you suppress it? Do you deny it? Do you rationalize it away in an attempt to take the edge off? Do you medicate it? A friend of mine on Facebook recently shared a quote worth quoting: “It says something about our times that we rarely use the word, sinful, except to describe a really good dessert.”
C.S. Lewis nailed it when he wrote:
Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind that Law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power – it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
Dear friends in Christ, I really want Christianity to talk to me in this way this Lent. I want it to talk to us all. I want this Lent to be a season of renewal for each of us. There is a corporate way that this happens. In other words, we come to church and we receive the Word of God in its written, spoken, and sacramental forms. This is all good. But I’m talking about renewal on a level we tend to overlook and even forget. I speak of the personal and individual level. Together with corporate worship, this renewal starts – on a personal and individual level – with daily meditation and prayer.
We take care of our bodies – we clothe them, feed them, exercise them, give them rest. We take care of our minds – we engage them; we read; we expand our mental horizons; we even entertain them. We tend to our jobs – we go through our day and daily round of activities to support ourselves and those we love.
What about our souls? I ask. What about our spirits? I’m not just talking about one hour a week on Sunday mornings.
Lent, you see, is more than just a season where we mark the passage of time (in this case, forty days). Lent is also a discipline. And discipline breeds habits, and habits become a way of life.
I am not “Herr Pastor”! I am not a theological dictator! I am not the final arbiter of Presbyterian canon law! God forgive me if I come off sounding like an overbearing, autocratic religious sort who didn’t know when to shut up and was out of touch with reality. But let me, at the very least, earnestly suggest and plead with you to from the depths of my own soul to undertake daily meditation and prayer. Let Christianity have that conversation with you. If you need resources or suggestions on how to make that happen for you or to improve what you are already doing, that’s one of the reasons I am here. Prime times of the day for meditation and prayer, if I might further suggest, are shortly after you wake in the morning and shortly before you go to sleep at night.
And one last suggestion: it would be wonderful if you would commit to memory that prayer which is our text for tonight. It reads as follows:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.
We begin this season and leave this sanctuary tonight with a very stark reminder of mortality on our foreheads. “Dust you are to to dust you shall return,” God said to our ancient parents. Later on, the Bible offered its own commentary of our mortality when it said: “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Lent is not meant to be morose. It is not meant to make a good showing of repentance – as if the quality of our repentance and sorrow is what earns God’s favor. Rather, it’s a chance for Christianity to speak to us again, for the crucified Christ to speak to us again, and we meditate upon what we hear and offer our prayers accordingly. God bless us all in this. God bless this season of Lent.
Amen.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Topic of Conversation!
Text: Matthew 17:1-9
Theme: “The Topic of Conversation”
Transfiguration of the Lord
March 6, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Here’s a topic for conversation – at home, at church, or at the water cooler: if I were to ask you to name one special moment in your life, what would it be? Would you be able to say “Well, yeah! I’ve pulled a few lucky rabbits out of life’s hat”? But really, think about it for a moment and identify, in your mind, that bright, shiny, technicolor experience that is writ large over the canvass of your life so far. When was it? Where was it? What was it? Could it be when your eyes met the eyes, for the first time, of that person of your dreams? Perhaps mothers would mention the birth of a child. Maybe fathers would say the same thing. An athlete might recall winning a huge game or a championship. That special moment may be when you walked across that stage, with that academic mortar board on your head, and received your degree. It could be that you set a personal or a business goal and you set about working toward it and eventually achieved it. No, you didn’t insert a new page in the Guinness Book of World Records, but you set a record for yourself! When that moment arrived, it was grand. Your memories are vivid; it still evokes a smile. You remember that you were overwhelmed, humbled, proud, tired, exuberant, and even a bit afraid. You experienced the whole gamut of emotions. That one moment was truly unique and unforgettable. It was your moment, and they can’t take it away from you; you sent a ripple of hope through your own life and the lives of others.
In 1988, the Summer Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea. I don’t remember a single gold medal winner. But I’ll never forget the song that emerged from that event. Whitney Houston sang it, and the chorus goes like this:
Give me one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be,
When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me.
Give me one moment in time when I’m racing with destiny.
Then in that one moment in time I will feel,
I will feel eternity.
But not everyone is an Olympic athlete or a popular vocalist. What if you can’t think of such a moment? We should definitely allow for that possibility. Someone might say, “You know, I’ve had some good moments and some not-so-good moments, but none of them really stand out. None of them sizzled and most of them fizzled. Maybe you’re the kind that might agree with country crooner Willie Nelson when he sings:
This face is all I have – worn and lived in,
And lines below my eyes are like old friends.
And this old heart’s been beaten up,
And my ragged soul has had things rough.
And this face is all I have – worn and lived in.
Whether you’ve had many moments, only one special moment, or none that you can think of, I still want to invite you into the story that we’ve heard today. Together, I want us to find our place in this story. We may find our moment in it right here today that sets our hearts and souls on a new track.
The Lord Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John. It always seems to be Peter, James, and John -- out of that apostolic band, that group of Jesus’ twelve disciples -- that get picked. It doesn’t seem fair. Some folks get the special attention and others don’t. That’s one of those irksome little facts about life that you just have to accept. I remember PE class in grade school. We played a game called line soccer. The teacher would pick captains. And the captains – every single time we played – would pick these people in the following order: Neil, Al, Steve, Bryan, and Paul. I was always fifth. Neil, Al, Steve, and Bryan always got picked first. I was the fifth best athlete in grade school; I worked harder than them all, and I didn’t appreciate being fifth pick one bit! I wanted a moment in time when I’d be picked first. It didn’t happen.
Forget line soccer! So here we sit taking in today’s Gospel story from quite a distance in terms of geography and years. Jesus picks Peter, James, and John and they go mountain climbing. There’s nothing too spectacular about that; people climb mountains every day I suspect – to push themselves to their physical limit, for recreation and so forth.
But then, on this particular expedition all those years ago, something happened. And that something that happened is so unique and special that the church, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, has set aside a Sunday to remember it. It’s called Transfiguration Sunday.
Matthew reports that Jesus was “transfigured” before Peter, James, and John. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.”
Fire on the mountain! Run boys, run!
The devil’s in the house of the rising sun!
Chicken in the bread pan pickin’ out dough.
“Granny, does your dog bite?”
“No child, no!”
It wasn’t fire; it wasn’t the devil; it wasn’t in the house of the rising sun. But it was on the mountain, and it was Jesus like He had never been seen before. It was one moment in time! And there stood Moses and Elijah – Moses, chosen by God to take on the Pharaoah of Egypt and deliver the law, and Elijah, the chief among the prophets. There stood Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in dazzling glory. And they were talking with one another. What, pray tell, were they talking about? What was the topic of conversation.
You have four gospel books, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Three out of the four – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – record the story of the transfiguration. We’ve heard from Matthew. Mark’s version is similar. But Luke includes a detail, and that detail gives us the topic of conversation. Luke says: “And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”
The text speaks of His “departure.” In life, you have arrivals and departures – at train stations, at airports, at church meetings, and business conferences, at the beginning of life and when eyelids are closed in death. The English word is “departure.” But the Bible’s term, for which “departure” is the translation, is – drum roll please! – “Exodus”. That’s a compound word for you literary purists; we have two words. There is “ex” which means “out,” and there is “odus” which means “the way”. Exodus means “the way out.”
Moses, that key figure in the great salvation event of the Old Testament, was used of God to help show God’s people the way out of 400 years of bondage in Egypt. Elijah, the “prince of the prophets”, along with the prophetic band, proclaimed the way out to the children of God so bent on not keeping covenant with God. But this time, the topic of conversation is the departure of Jesus. It’s His exodus, his way out.
The detours and side streets were there. He could have adopted plan B. He could have snapped His fingers; vanished from the scene; left Peter, James, and John gawking, and that would have been that. He would have been remembered as a fine, upstanding man among men. World history in subsequent generations would have dubbed Him a great moral leader. They may have awarded Him a Nobel peace prize post-humously.
But Jesus didn’t take plan B. He didn’t plot escape coordinates on His divine GPS. He didn’t go to the left or right or up or down or around. He didn’t romance the thought of detour. He saw the gathering storm clouds. Synagogue and state would collude. God’s honor would be saved and the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome”, would have to prevail. And that meant that Jesus had to go. He had to die! Sugar-coat it all you want! Beat around the bush all your want, but that’s what had to happen. That’s how His enemies saw it.
But Jesus saw it as His exodus. He knew He was going to die on that cross, but it would be on His terms. It wasn’t His enemies’ plan before it was His! He would suffer the beatings, the mockings, the scourging, the floggings, the wormwood and the gall. He would bleed out His life on that cross not to save God’s honor, not to keep the peace of Rome, but because you are worth it. He would bridge the gap and traverse the hellish chasm; He would bring a confused, anxious, and fallen humanity back to its maker. He would show just how real – and how costly! – genuine forgiveness really is.
As the conversation on the mountain progressed, Peter, James, and John wanted the show to go on. Peter insisted on setting up three shelters. It looked, for all the world, like his one moment in time. Glory on the mountain! Supernatural light! Divine and spiritual power at so very real and at his disposal! He was privy to that. Later on, Peter would write: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord. But we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”
But a voice interrupted Peter’s event planning there on that mountain. The voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
At the sound of those words, Peter, James, and John – the hand-picked of the Lord – were terrified. They fell on their faces in awe.
When it was all said and done, there was only a touch – the touch of Jesus. Back to normal Jesus said: “Get up and don’t be afraid.”
In just a few minutes, that’s what we shall have: just a touch, a touch of bread and wine, the touch of Jesus.
It is good, Lord, to be here! This may be the most important moment of your week and perhaps even your life. It’s just a touch and a topic of conversation to relish forever.
Amen.
Theme: “The Topic of Conversation”
Transfiguration of the Lord
March 6, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.
4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
Here’s a topic for conversation – at home, at church, or at the water cooler: if I were to ask you to name one special moment in your life, what would it be? Would you be able to say “Well, yeah! I’ve pulled a few lucky rabbits out of life’s hat”? But really, think about it for a moment and identify, in your mind, that bright, shiny, technicolor experience that is writ large over the canvass of your life so far. When was it? Where was it? What was it? Could it be when your eyes met the eyes, for the first time, of that person of your dreams? Perhaps mothers would mention the birth of a child. Maybe fathers would say the same thing. An athlete might recall winning a huge game or a championship. That special moment may be when you walked across that stage, with that academic mortar board on your head, and received your degree. It could be that you set a personal or a business goal and you set about working toward it and eventually achieved it. No, you didn’t insert a new page in the Guinness Book of World Records, but you set a record for yourself! When that moment arrived, it was grand. Your memories are vivid; it still evokes a smile. You remember that you were overwhelmed, humbled, proud, tired, exuberant, and even a bit afraid. You experienced the whole gamut of emotions. That one moment was truly unique and unforgettable. It was your moment, and they can’t take it away from you; you sent a ripple of hope through your own life and the lives of others.
In 1988, the Summer Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea. I don’t remember a single gold medal winner. But I’ll never forget the song that emerged from that event. Whitney Houston sang it, and the chorus goes like this:
Give me one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be,
When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away and the answers are all up to me.
Give me one moment in time when I’m racing with destiny.
Then in that one moment in time I will feel,
I will feel eternity.
But not everyone is an Olympic athlete or a popular vocalist. What if you can’t think of such a moment? We should definitely allow for that possibility. Someone might say, “You know, I’ve had some good moments and some not-so-good moments, but none of them really stand out. None of them sizzled and most of them fizzled. Maybe you’re the kind that might agree with country crooner Willie Nelson when he sings:
This face is all I have – worn and lived in,
And lines below my eyes are like old friends.
And this old heart’s been beaten up,
And my ragged soul has had things rough.
And this face is all I have – worn and lived in.
Whether you’ve had many moments, only one special moment, or none that you can think of, I still want to invite you into the story that we’ve heard today. Together, I want us to find our place in this story. We may find our moment in it right here today that sets our hearts and souls on a new track.
The Lord Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John. It always seems to be Peter, James, and John -- out of that apostolic band, that group of Jesus’ twelve disciples -- that get picked. It doesn’t seem fair. Some folks get the special attention and others don’t. That’s one of those irksome little facts about life that you just have to accept. I remember PE class in grade school. We played a game called line soccer. The teacher would pick captains. And the captains – every single time we played – would pick these people in the following order: Neil, Al, Steve, Bryan, and Paul. I was always fifth. Neil, Al, Steve, and Bryan always got picked first. I was the fifth best athlete in grade school; I worked harder than them all, and I didn’t appreciate being fifth pick one bit! I wanted a moment in time when I’d be picked first. It didn’t happen.
Forget line soccer! So here we sit taking in today’s Gospel story from quite a distance in terms of geography and years. Jesus picks Peter, James, and John and they go mountain climbing. There’s nothing too spectacular about that; people climb mountains every day I suspect – to push themselves to their physical limit, for recreation and so forth.
But then, on this particular expedition all those years ago, something happened. And that something that happened is so unique and special that the church, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, has set aside a Sunday to remember it. It’s called Transfiguration Sunday.
Matthew reports that Jesus was “transfigured” before Peter, James, and John. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.”
Fire on the mountain! Run boys, run!
The devil’s in the house of the rising sun!
Chicken in the bread pan pickin’ out dough.
“Granny, does your dog bite?”
“No child, no!”
It wasn’t fire; it wasn’t the devil; it wasn’t in the house of the rising sun. But it was on the mountain, and it was Jesus like He had never been seen before. It was one moment in time! And there stood Moses and Elijah – Moses, chosen by God to take on the Pharaoah of Egypt and deliver the law, and Elijah, the chief among the prophets. There stood Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in dazzling glory. And they were talking with one another. What, pray tell, were they talking about? What was the topic of conversation.
You have four gospel books, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Three out of the four – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – record the story of the transfiguration. We’ve heard from Matthew. Mark’s version is similar. But Luke includes a detail, and that detail gives us the topic of conversation. Luke says: “And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”
The text speaks of His “departure.” In life, you have arrivals and departures – at train stations, at airports, at church meetings, and business conferences, at the beginning of life and when eyelids are closed in death. The English word is “departure.” But the Bible’s term, for which “departure” is the translation, is – drum roll please! – “Exodus”. That’s a compound word for you literary purists; we have two words. There is “ex” which means “out,” and there is “odus” which means “the way”. Exodus means “the way out.”
Moses, that key figure in the great salvation event of the Old Testament, was used of God to help show God’s people the way out of 400 years of bondage in Egypt. Elijah, the “prince of the prophets”, along with the prophetic band, proclaimed the way out to the children of God so bent on not keeping covenant with God. But this time, the topic of conversation is the departure of Jesus. It’s His exodus, his way out.
The detours and side streets were there. He could have adopted plan B. He could have snapped His fingers; vanished from the scene; left Peter, James, and John gawking, and that would have been that. He would have been remembered as a fine, upstanding man among men. World history in subsequent generations would have dubbed Him a great moral leader. They may have awarded Him a Nobel peace prize post-humously.
But Jesus didn’t take plan B. He didn’t plot escape coordinates on His divine GPS. He didn’t go to the left or right or up or down or around. He didn’t romance the thought of detour. He saw the gathering storm clouds. Synagogue and state would collude. God’s honor would be saved and the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome”, would have to prevail. And that meant that Jesus had to go. He had to die! Sugar-coat it all you want! Beat around the bush all your want, but that’s what had to happen. That’s how His enemies saw it.
But Jesus saw it as His exodus. He knew He was going to die on that cross, but it would be on His terms. It wasn’t His enemies’ plan before it was His! He would suffer the beatings, the mockings, the scourging, the floggings, the wormwood and the gall. He would bleed out His life on that cross not to save God’s honor, not to keep the peace of Rome, but because you are worth it. He would bridge the gap and traverse the hellish chasm; He would bring a confused, anxious, and fallen humanity back to its maker. He would show just how real – and how costly! – genuine forgiveness really is.
As the conversation on the mountain progressed, Peter, James, and John wanted the show to go on. Peter insisted on setting up three shelters. It looked, for all the world, like his one moment in time. Glory on the mountain! Supernatural light! Divine and spiritual power at so very real and at his disposal! He was privy to that. Later on, Peter would write: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord. But we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”
But a voice interrupted Peter’s event planning there on that mountain. The voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
At the sound of those words, Peter, James, and John – the hand-picked of the Lord – were terrified. They fell on their faces in awe.
When it was all said and done, there was only a touch – the touch of Jesus. Back to normal Jesus said: “Get up and don’t be afraid.”
In just a few minutes, that’s what we shall have: just a touch, a touch of bread and wine, the touch of Jesus.
It is good, Lord, to be here! This may be the most important moment of your week and perhaps even your life. It’s just a touch and a topic of conversation to relish forever.
Amen.
Friday, March 4, 2011
REMARKS
THE MEMORIAL/RECEPTION FOR KYLE THOMAS
Saturday, March 5, 2011
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
My name is Paul Dunklau, and I’m the pastor at First Presbyterian Church. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you this morning, but my attendance is required at a church meeting in Dallas.
I share your appreciation for all that Kyle meant – and will continue to mean – to you, and I likewise share your sorrow. I know you join me in supporting Kyle’s mother, Patricia Parks, and Kyle’s immediate family at this time of loss. Your presence today will give them strength for the days to come.
My Uncle Harold lived in Missouri. He was a great outdoorsman, and fly fishing was his passion. He taught me how to tie a fishing line properly. I’ve never forgotten it. Think, for a moment, about one thing – just one thing that Kyle taught you, said to you, or expressed to you – that helped you along the way, assisted you in seeing the world as it is more clearly. It won’t take long for you to pinpoint something.
I was aware of Kyle’s love for the outdoors. He was a sort of Crocodile Dundee with a Texas twang! On a visit to his home, I wasn’t sure if I was indoors or outdoors! There’s no doubt about it: he provided safe haven for many creatures in the animal kingdom. He enjoyed the vast variety among birds, fishes, frogs, lizards, snakes, cats, dogs – you name it. He taught us all something about how to appreciate – and even care! – for them all.
At the same time, Kyle understood – perhaps better than most – that we live in a fallen world. Whether it be among the animals or the human race, death occurs. Kyle was no stranger to sickness, and, like the great outdoorsman that he was, he battled it with true grit.
And here’s just one more thing: he also knew and believed the basics about faith. Jesus Christ lived in the very world that we all live in. He died a very real death, and He rose again from the grave. What that means is this: death itself will finally be undone and life is the ultimate victory! That’s the quiet confidence and soulfulness that lived in Kyle – even as he took care of all God’s little creatures. Remember that, and, whenever you see a turtle sunning itself at the edge of the pond only to dive under the water, take that as a “wink” from Kyle!
God Bless You All!
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
THE MEMORIAL/RECEPTION FOR KYLE THOMAS
Saturday, March 5, 2011
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
My name is Paul Dunklau, and I’m the pastor at First Presbyterian Church. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you this morning, but my attendance is required at a church meeting in Dallas.
I share your appreciation for all that Kyle meant – and will continue to mean – to you, and I likewise share your sorrow. I know you join me in supporting Kyle’s mother, Patricia Parks, and Kyle’s immediate family at this time of loss. Your presence today will give them strength for the days to come.
My Uncle Harold lived in Missouri. He was a great outdoorsman, and fly fishing was his passion. He taught me how to tie a fishing line properly. I’ve never forgotten it. Think, for a moment, about one thing – just one thing that Kyle taught you, said to you, or expressed to you – that helped you along the way, assisted you in seeing the world as it is more clearly. It won’t take long for you to pinpoint something.
I was aware of Kyle’s love for the outdoors. He was a sort of Crocodile Dundee with a Texas twang! On a visit to his home, I wasn’t sure if I was indoors or outdoors! There’s no doubt about it: he provided safe haven for many creatures in the animal kingdom. He enjoyed the vast variety among birds, fishes, frogs, lizards, snakes, cats, dogs – you name it. He taught us all something about how to appreciate – and even care! – for them all.
At the same time, Kyle understood – perhaps better than most – that we live in a fallen world. Whether it be among the animals or the human race, death occurs. Kyle was no stranger to sickness, and, like the great outdoorsman that he was, he battled it with true grit.
And here’s just one more thing: he also knew and believed the basics about faith. Jesus Christ lived in the very world that we all live in. He died a very real death, and He rose again from the grave. What that means is this: death itself will finally be undone and life is the ultimate victory! That’s the quiet confidence and soulfulness that lived in Kyle – even as he took care of all God’s little creatures. Remember that, and, whenever you see a turtle sunning itself at the edge of the pond only to dive under the water, take that as a “wink” from Kyle!
God Bless You All!
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
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