WHAT’S TRUE & WHAT’S NOT - Sermon

John 21:1-19    WHAT’S TRUE & WHAT’S NOT & DOES JESUS’ RESURRECTION MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Ray is a corn farmer. He and his wife Annie and small daughter Karin live on farm in Iowa. Ray is a good husband and dad perhaps because he made up his mind to be different from his own father John who was seldom around when Ray was a boy. Their relationship was always troubled and then John died. 

Year later Ray began to hear a voice telling him to build a baseball diamond and an outfield on his farmland. The voice told him, "If you build it he will come." Ray doesn’t understand the persistent message and unable to ignore it he believes it and he persuades Annie let him build a baseball field with spectator seats. One evening some uniformed players begin to emerge from out of the cornfield and they begin to play ball. They appear so happy to play. The game ends as the sun sets and the players withdraw into the corn. Neighbours hear about it and at first think Ray has lost his mind. A game happens night after night as these ghostly players come from the corn and the neighbours show up to watch one night, and return each following night. 

If you haven’t recognized it, Ray is the protagonist in a novel called ‘Shoeless Joe’ written by Canadian author W.P. Kinsella, a novel that was turned into the movie called ‘Field of Dreams.’ In this fantasy drama Ray doesn’t know that the voice belongs to Joe Jackson, nicknamed “Shoeless Joe,” who was an outfielder with the 1919 Chicago White Sox. That team became known as the Black Sox because of a dreadful scandal, when seven players all dead and gone now, were disgraced and banned from baseball because they accepted bribe money for intentionally losing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. 

Near the end of the story as the players return into the corn stalks, only the catcher remains on the field. He removes his mask and a handsome face appears that Ray recognizes as his father John when he was a young aspiring ball player. Ray says to Annie, "It's my father... I-I only saw him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He's got his whole life in front of him, and I'm not even a glint in his eye. What do I say to him?" Ray introduces John to Annie and Karin and choking with emotion Ray asks, "Hey Dad? Do you want to have a catch?" The two enjoy a game of catch between father and son one more time as the sun sets. Then dad waves goodbye and moves into the corn stalks. 

Kinsella story is an inspired piece of literature about the themes of faith and redemption. He writes fiction. He deals in make believeand it’s entertaining and we are okay with that because we understand the genre. 

However, those themes of Faith and redemptionare customary themes in church too. Here in this place we are uninterested in fiction. We want and we expect truth in our conversations and in our teaching. We certainly want the truth about faith and redemption.  

At the Crossroads again

A NEW LEARNING
I am going to make it easy for myself. I ran out of time for a researched post so I will simply tell you that on Saturday Christine and I attended a wedding - a rather unique wedding. A youngish father of five children, divorced, married a woman nearly his age who was unmarried and had never before been married. She became the instant step mother of five children. She is brave, good for him, and will be a pleasant female influence upon those children. They truly care for her. The couple is deeply in love with one another. It's a redemptive story through and through.

They used a Brian Doerksen song called 'Lead Us Lord,'the words of which may be an encouragement to you for life situations quite unrelated to this couple's.

Here we stand
At a crossroads again
Like you said
In time the seasons change

Looking back
We recall the blessing and the pain
But now we turn our hearts toward
What is still to come
We want to dream again

Lead us Lord
Into a life of fruitfulness
Prepare our hearts to risk again
As we trust
Taking simple steps of obedience we know
That you will lead us Lord.

Look at Brian Doerksen's site if you like to find music you may want in your home or on your ipod.

Words Fascinate Me - For Instance - Pimp

A NEW LEARNING
Words have always fascinated me. My son is now a school teacher and one of the games we played as he grew up was identifying unusual or infrequently used words and employing them in sentences. This morning I was awakened by the intensity of a dream. I came to my parked MX5 car to find that it had been stripped. I had left it with the top down. Wheels, seats, steering wheel were all gone. Then the last thought before I awoke was “someone is going to surprise me by pimping my ride,” and there it was - burgundy leather seats, custom steering wheel and dash with GPS and small TV screen and rockin sound speakers.
That term comes from the popular MTV television show “Pimp My Ride,’ on which someone’s commonplace vehicle is made over. This use of the term reflects a new meaning that emerged from hip-hop and street culture as a transitive verb meaning "to decorate" or "excessively customize." The Urban Dictionary discloses that if something is ‘pimpin’ it’s very cool. It is likely something ordinary that has been ‘tricked out’ or made gaudy, ostentatious. It has been adopted commercially and people are pimping my space, my yearbook, my kitchen, my photos and more.
The origin of the word "pimp" is unknown. It appears in 1600 English literature with the same primary meaning it has today. A pimp is somebody, usually a man, who finds customers for a prostitute in return for a portion of the prostitute's earnings. The stereotypical pimp became popularized in the 1970’s with a flamboyant dress, swaggering walk and lifestyle. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term was used to refer to informers and does so in Australian parlance. A pimp can mean "a despicable person" for evident reasons.
Here’s a twist. My Pastor is preaching Christmas theme sermons. The Old Testament book of Hoseah contains a tender and significant story to describe the grace of God to humanity. Improbably, God told Hoseah the man of God to marry a prostitute thereby liberating her from her past life. Her name is Gomer. Not long after Gomer left Hoseah and returned to her former lifestyle. God told Hoseah to find her and persuade her out of love to come back to him. In fact Hoseah had to pay money to Gomer’s paramour to purchase back his own wife. Hoseah’s marriage became an acted out parable of God’s relationship with Israel. The life lesson is that God would not give up on Israel either. Even though the people of Israel worshipped other gods, God loved them anyway and took them back. That’s a glimpse into God’s love that does for us what Hoseah did for Gomer, woo us tenderly, promise us hope and safety, and renew our vows to Him and consummate our relationship again in purity. Hoseah 2:14-23 contains the Bible’s tenderest love song. So here is another word with variant meanings one of which is the forgiveness or absolution for past sins at the cost of the life of the sinless Son of God.

Photo used with permission of Anita Gutschick, actress portraying Women of the Bible
A Dramatic Presentation, 410-647-6797, www.womenofthebible.com