From the Pulpit

Excerpts from messages being presented at area places of worship this weekend.

The Rev. Howard Dotson, Westminster Presbyterian Church

In our Gospel lesson this week, Jesus reminds us that our discipleship will come with a price. In our secular, hedonistic and materialistic culture, there are so many things competing for our time and energy. At times, we are tempted to go the solo route and just get ours and leave it at that.

At times, we forget what it is truly required in our calling: to love neighbors as ourselves.

We are tempted to hide our heads in the sand and just keep ourselves entertained instead of allowing the troubles of this world to sink into our consciousness. As bearers of the cross, we can't always have warm fuzzies and simplistic sound bites.

Our world is complicated and conflicted, and we need to be engaged in the processes that foster peace and reconciliation.

If we are to be faithful in our journey, we need to resist the prevailing consumer spirituality. It needs to be more about compassion and service and less about what is in it for me.

As disciples of the crucified and resurrected Messiah, we must be willing to bear the cross set before us. Each of us has one. May our hardened hearts be broken now and then, so when the pieces are put back together our heart space is large enough to hold more love and compassion for others.

The Rev. Dan Steen, Prairie Lane Church

Luke 10:2: “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”

An increasing trend in our culture is that you have to be really good at something to participate in it or try it. We might say, “Just let the experts do it.” Hardly anyone works on their own cars anymore; they are too complicated. And it used to be you would buy a TV and plug it in. Now, you need to hire the “Geek Squad” to install it and get it calibrated for you. Even grade school children are being asked to pick one sport and specialize in it, because it's really hard to be just a casual athlete and make the team.

And, in the same way, many people think that to do ministry, you need to be a trained expert. In churches, many people would rather give a little extra money and hire someone else to do the church work for them, instead of getting involved in ministry themselves.

This is where our culture is going. But this is not biblical. In the Bible, Jesus equips people and He sends them out. And He sends them out BEFORE they are totally ready. He shows them by example and gives them a few instructions first; but mostly he takes untrained, ordinary people and tells them to “Go, depend on God, do your best, and learn from mistakes.” All Christians are called to be God's workers.

The Rev. Ernesto Medina, St. Martha Episcopal Church, Papillion

Luke 14:25: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

This verse from Holy Scripture is NOT comfortable! If I tell you the truth, I would say to you something like, “How about we just ignore this one, Jesus could not have been serious!” Often we encounter parts of Scripture that simply do not feel real or even truthful. The easy out is to pass right by them.

Let's take a hard good look and see if we might find the Gospel of Jesus in this passage. First of all, let me be clear: If we look at the totality of Scripture, what we see is God saying, “Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, and then love. And when you are done with loving, love some more.”

Hate certainly is a strong word. While I was growing up my parents were clear that HATE was not a word allowed in the house. With a little research, it appears that the Greek word used in Luke's Gospel actually means something like “love/like less.” So HATE is just not a good translation of the original text.

But still the passage offers some problems. If we continue with the rest of the passage, it appears that this verse on how we view our relationships has some relation with how we go about planning for important THINGS in our life. And here perhaps is a key: THINGS! What God does not want of us is to consider the relationships we have to BE possessions. People are people and not things. We all know the trouble into which we get ourselves when we think we can control our parents or our partners or our children or even life itself.

The God truth is that all we have is of God's and for God. With God's truth, our relationships, even with our own life, are truly gifts. Gifts that are sacred — thus holy. It is at this point that we then with a profound openness can turn to Jesus and be his disciple! Oh my goodness was that hard! Yet, I would say, worth the effort.

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