Rev. Zach

Hosea 1:2-10 Psalm 85:1-13 Colossians 2:6-15 Luke 11:1-13 Our Gospel Lesson today was recently the topic of debate in our Wednesday night book study, as it was featured in the book, Preaching The Hard Sayings Of Jesus by Dr. John T. and the Rev. James R. Carroll. The Carrolls – a father and son team – suggest an underlying current of tenacity in prayer as the essential teaching of this lesson. As I considered this passage and the related threads in the tapestry of God’s word for us today, I remembered the work of another theologian – the late, great Charles Schultz . Consider his perspective on the topic. “Stubbornness is a fault. Tenacity is a virtue.” But how do we know? How do we know when we are being “merely tenacious” or just being stubborn? I think there is a fine line and a slippery slope at the edge of tenacity and stubbornness. Hosea – who is just a bucket of sunshine, by the way – spoke in a time when things were going great for the Northern Kingdom of Israe

Amos 8:1-12 Colossians 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42 “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” has got to be one of the strangest expressions I have ever heard. When would anyone ever do that? Why in the world would you need to tell someone not to cut off her or his nose? Of course the expression refers to hasty judgement. In its origin it may have had more to do getting even with someone else, as John Haywood wrote in the 18th Century: “If there be any, as I hope there be none, That would lese [lose] both his eyes to lese his foe one, Then fear I there be many, as the world go'th,  That would lese one eye to lese their foes both.” Even more severely, it may go back to experiences such as those of Saint Abbe of Scotland who led a convent to disfigure themselves to save their chastity from invading Danes. It worked, and the Danes were so repulsed that they decided to burn the entire convent. All of us have, at times, made hasty judgements. All of us have, at some point, decided

2 Kings 5:1-19a           Galatians 6:1-10           Luke 10:1-11, 19-20 Hubris is a rather fancy word, isn’t? It almost makes the user seem as self important as the one being criticized. In Greek society the word carried a legal penalty with it for offenses that were power related and unjust – perhaps even similar to crimes we would call “heinous” today. For us, hubris is just a high dollar word that implies overconfidence to the point of an overblown sense of self importance. As a nation that occasionally refers to itself as the last remaining Global Super Power, it seems reasonable to consider whether or not our sense of self worth is entirely accurate. In fact, I would suggest that some level of self critique has been as much a part of our culture as fireworks and flags. The sacred tome – or at least a good catch phrase – for such a concern is the novel titled The Ugly American , written by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer in 1958. I say catch phrase because the irony is that w