Sunday, October 8, 2017

Sermon Notes-Oct. 8 Ex. 20, PHIL 3:4, MT. 21:33

Oct 8-In History of the World., Mel Brooks has Moses come down with 15 commandments, but he drops one of the tablets and announces these 10, 10 commandments.Ps. 19, creation and science and telos/goa/endpoint-It seems an odd combination-the order of the heavens and the order of God’s instruction, God’s blueprint for human life. God is a god of order, of arrangement, of aligning life. We can adopt the sheer beauty of nature, but we hear this wordless voice encoded in science as well. We have untangled the blueprint of life in DNA. We have probed the atom; we can see our brains respond in different ways to stimuli, even religious ones in reward centers. Over time, religion has a hand in sculpting our brains over time..God as creator will not give up on this creation.God forgives. God redeems our faults, mistakes, and missteps.We treat the first tablet shabbily. Other than the coveting prohibition, the second tablet is part of being a proper human being;nothing out of the ordinary.We do not honor the Sabbath. We treat god;s name  as an expletive or even worse as useless. We construct ersatz divinities all of the time, our of celebrities, and our own ideas and fantasies.

Human life is of two tablets: god and neighbor. Jesus is of two tablets: the human and the divine. Love god; love the neighbor. Respect God; treat the neighbor with respect.
Phil 3:4b-14,citizenship in heaven-I don't think he means that we no longer have status and concern here on earth-allegiance may be  his concern-as way to deal with first tablet of 10C-are we aliens here or is dual citizenship- rights and responsibilities-seek the common good- I tis one thing to be a citizen or a slave or an alien, or  an american citizen, but to be a citizen of heaven, of God's own commonwealth (see3:30)that transforms body of humiliation , goal of destruction to a life worth living.Eastman-In practical terms, this means that we are not only  our past or our memories.  From the standpoint of the grace of God in Christ, Paul  is no longer defined only by that history, because only God provides full identity papers, a passport for travel.
Paul's life  is not primarily about him. It's about God... Jesus Christ is the threshold where our past and our future meet. Jesus is the one who nullifies the power of our own history and liberates us for a new future.  Christ himself makes us righteous and thereby brings us into the life-giving presence of God. When Paul yearns to "be found in" Christ, he is responding to the self-giving love of Christ who was "found in human form" (2:7).
Finally, Paul uses the image of a race to describe the Christian life.Maybe the 10C can be called the starting line. We are on the move;the runner  keeps her "eyes on the prize" will stay on track. Similarly, the runner who mistakes the halfway marker for the goal and stops there, saying "I made it!" will drop out of the race. Paul says that he has not "already reached the goal" (3:12). The phrase is literally, "have already become perfect or mature."  Paradoxically, "mature thinking" means recognizing that we're not yet mature! We're not yet perfect, and if we think we are, we are deceiving ourselves. Rather, we are always in the midst of the race, carried forward from the past to the future in union with Christ.How can one be a whole person. Where do you find the capacity to go on? Christ is our companion.

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