Davison's Doodle

Lost Paragraph

Memorial Day and 4 July are always difficult days for me when it comes to worship and the community of faith.  It is a balance act to worship on these national holidays that are meaningful without bringing civic religion into the sanctuary or wrapping God in the flag or a providential nationalism.  I’ve only preached on Memorial Sunday (Trinity Sunday for some) twice.  My words were borrowed, a major rewrite and organization, from a previous sermon that I gave on the Sunday following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.   Here is the last paragraphs of my sermon that I titled then as well as yesterday, “Universal Sounds.”

I believe those who claim faith in God, by whatever name, need to encourage the whole world to pause, unwrap the sound proofing flags from our hearts, remove the ear muffs of politics from our ears, and sit in silent, prayerful, memorial respect.  Maybe if we can hear the universal sounds we can learn the melody of peace in our language and, in our ordinary time, they will know we are children of God by our justice, our mercy, our hospitality . . . our love.

Would that be an appropriate memorial for the men and women that have served or gave their last full measure of devotion so we might hear the universal sounds?  Let it begin with us.

Lost Sermon Paragraph

Sunday was Pentecost.  We read the traditional story from Acts as a responsive reading to call us to worship.  The text was read in Spanish just before the preaching moment.

But, earlier that morning I arrive at the office I had another look at my words for the day and spent thirty minutes reworking a couple of paragraphs.  The text below is one of those that I edited to its final form and reprint here.  It is not so much lost as “reformed.”

Those who stood and spoke that first Pentecost didn’t wake up thinking they would be translators of the good news of the kingdom of God or Jesus of Nazareth.  The disciples were hiding, waiting, going about their lives and practicing those things that Jesus taught and living as Jesus lived.  We often speak of seeing the world through the eyes of a child.  I think the best that can be said of that reformed Pentecost day is that those first disciples were seeing God in the world through the eyes of Jesus.  The story in Acts dramatizes what can happen when human beings get “fired up.”  Christianity’s confession is this: in the centuries that have followed Jesus of Nazareth and Pentecost day Christianity, as a movement, has more often than not gotten “fired up” over the meaning of “who ever believes in him shall have eternal life” (John 3:16), instead of “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22: 40).  Maybe it is because it is easier for human beings to believe in a miracle rather than be a miracle?