[Propertalk] Feb. 14 sermon pointers - Luke 9 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

I remember listening a number of years ago to a National Public Radio interview with the former singer/songwriter Cat Stevens. He had long since converted from a nominal Christian culture to a passionate observance of Islam, now calling himself Yusef Islam. He was in Texas at the time raising money for his Islamic schools by promoting the sale of his greatest hits CDs. I found myself listening to this interview with some fascination having once, at the age of 20, attended a Cat Stevens concert and having owned several of his albums on vinyl. 

As I listened, I remember how condescendingly dismissive he was of the Christian faith talking about how all those poor simple Christians had just gotten the prophet Jesus wrong. How could anyone think that Allah could have a son? How could anyone possibly take the great prophet Jesus and twist him from the great teacher he was into some kind of false deity? 

I thought of Peter on the mountaintop, very much like Cat Stevens, wanting to make Jesus safely one of the prophets, wanting to keep the Lord God very much at a distance from our broken humanity. Yes, let Jesus perhaps be a towering figure like Moses or Elijah. That's something a pious person can understand and appreciate. 

http://www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de/archiv-9/070218-5-e.html

Samuel D. Zumwalt, 2007
- - - - -

...when the abbot heard that teaching, he thanked the rabbi. He went back to the monastery to gather the monks and to tell them the teaching of the rabbi. He told him, as he was instructed, that he would say the teaching once, and then they were to talk about it no more. "Listen carefully," he said. "The teaching is this: One of us is the Messiah." It wasn't exactly what the rabbi had said, but they began to look at one another in a whole new light. Is Brother John the messiah? Or Father James? Am I the messiah?

In the days to come, as they went about their prayer life and their work and their study of scripture, they began to treat one another in a whole new light. Each one of them might be the messiah, and this new treatment of one another, this new sense of expectation, was noted by the few pilgrims who came. And soon the word spread. What a spirit of concern and compassion and expectation can be felt at the monastery!

http://day1.org/1030-seeing_things_in_a_new_light

Charles Duvall, 2007
- - - - -

I'm not really sure, but I think what he had in mind was a chancery, a seminary and a college. Peter, in other words, was opting for a religion of temples, institutions and shrines. 

http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/chittister_3508.htm

Joan Chittister, 1991 
- - - - -

Many years later when my dad was 83 years old, he died. I remember that when the funeral was over, I walked away from the grave site and felt painfully disconnected. I felt disconnected from my dad; I felt disconnected from myself and from God. It was an uneasy feeling, and it stayed with me for weeks. I had climbed the high mountain of grief, and I did not know how to get off of it. One night I went home and went to bed early. I was lying on the bed with my back to the door of the bedroom when, suddenly, I felt the bed depress as if someone had sat down. The feeling is unmistakable. I knew no one else was in the house. It startled me, and I was suddenly alert. After a moment, I felt the bed move again as if the person had stood up. It was so palpable for me that I turned over quickly to see who it was. As I looked toward the door, I could see a figure going out of the room. The moment was so real to me that I said out loud, "Dad, is that you?" I stood up and walked to the door and looked down the hall. And, of course, there was no one there. But it was a remarkable moment. It was one of those mountain-top moments for me in which God had come to connect. 

http://day1.org/475-connections_that_count

Robert Sims, 2004
- - - - -

I like the quotation by Henry Drummond, the Scottish theologian when he said, "God does not make the mountains in order to be inhabited. God does not make the mountaintops for us to live on the mountaintops. It is not God's desire that we live on the mountaintops. We only ascend to the heights to catch a broader vision of the earthly surroundings below. But we don't live there. We don't tarry there. The streams begin in the uplands, but these streams descend quickly to gladden the valleys below." 

http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_a_mountains_valleys_and_plains.htm

Edward F. Markquart
- - - - -
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20100213/d9b1defd/attachment.htm>