Worship March 22, 2020

This morning's worship:

March 15, 2020 Worship LIVE!

Update:  Live stream finished - the video can be accessed by clicking on Love in the Age of Coronavirus


Because we love our neighbor, and we take seriously the warnings of the health officials, Langford Lutheran Parish has cancelled "in person" worship for the next two weeks.

Instead, we will be live streaming scripture/sermon/prayers worship.  The first is tomorrow, March 15 at 11am CST.

It can be accessed by clicking on this link:   March 15 worship livestream

If you have a prayer request for tomorrow, you can leave it in the comments.

Peace be with you all!

Pastor Ramona

John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16: Langford Community Worship 7/28/2013

Summerfest is in full swing, and today we had the community worship.

I've been doing a series called Country Gospel, and today's sermon was "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16.

If, as the songwriter says, "I learned everything I needed to know from John Cougar, John Deere, JOhn 3:16", what is it that we as small town people have learned?

Listen in.

What we learn from John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16

Humble and Kind: Thoughts for Mother's Day

When I first heard Tim McGraw sing "Humble and Kind," it sounded like Mom talking to me.

Not that Mom's voice was that deep, but that I had heard the wisdom in the song coming from her.

"Don't get to big for your britches"  Always stay humble and kind.

I knew the door was always open and the lights were on.  Mom's house was home in the truest sense of the word.  A haven, a refuge, a place where I was always welcome and safe.  A place where Love reigned.

Although my mother has been gone for 26 years, I still hear her voice in my head, guiding me. 

We learn so much at our mother's knee, don't we?

Lori McKenna says this about writing the song:

It was a school day at my house. I took my kids to school, and then I went back home ... and I was sitting in my dining room, and I look out my window. I have guitars all over my house, so I can fiddle around. We call them "spaghetti days" at my house, because if I end up sitting there all day and writing, then I can’t cook anything for dinner except spaghetti, because I can do it real fast, in, like, 10 minutes.

I was thinking about what we want the kids to know, and honestly how they don’t always listen to the things we say. I just thought, "I’m going to write it down." Honestly, it’s a very simple song, and it’s really just this list of things that I wanted to make sure we told them, in this rhyme form. I was lucky that the chorus made as much sense as it did. I did write it in that one sitting; it took me a few hours, but it was a lucky day. https://theboot.com/tim-mcgraw-humble-and-kind-lyrics/

Apparently, hearing your mother's voice in this song is the whole point!

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that much of what we learn at our mother's knee is what she learned from not only her mother, but from her faith.  Those women who mothered through teaching Sunday School and VBS, and serving in various ways in the church and community (and if she was lucky, women pastors, although my mother and I didn't have those role models).

I was talking about this week's sermon, and someone said, "Aren't mothers humble and kind?" 

We learn to be humble and kind from Jesus.  And from the examples of women who follow him.

I selected the Christ Hymn from Philippians 2 as one of the texts for this Sunday:

Though he was in the form of God,

        he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.

But he emptied himself

        by taking the form of a slave

        and by becoming like human beings.

When he found himself in the form of a human,

       even death on a cross.

Therefore, God highly honored him

        and gave him a name above all names,

   so that at the name of Jesus everyone

        in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow

            that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Talk about humility!  And the great love and kindness God shows be becoming one of us! Jesus reminds us that he is humble and kind and encourages us to lay our burdens on him in Matthew 11:28-30:

 “Come to me, 

all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, 

and I will give you rest. 

Put on my yoke, and learn from me. 

I’m gentle and humble. 

And you will find rest for yourselves. 

My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

Our final text for Sunday is Paul's encouragement to the Philippians at the end of his letter( 4:4-9):

Be glad in the Lord always! Again I say, be glad!  

Let your gentleness show in your treatment of all people. 

The Lord is near. 

Don’t be anxious about anything; 

rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, 

along with giving thanks. 

Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding 

will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.

From now on, brothers and sisters, 

if anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, 

focus your thoughts on these things: 

all that is true, all that is holy, 

all that is just, all that is pure, 

all that is lovely, and all that is worthy of praise. 

Practice these things: 

whatever you learned, received, heard, or saw in us. 

The God of peace will be with you.

Always stay humble and kind!

Tim McGraw's official video imagines the global impact if we were all humble and kind.  Well worth watching.

Standing on the Promises: Wisdom's Child has a Listening Heart

This week's readings:  1 Kings 3:4-28. Psalm 119:126-136, Matthew 6: 9-10

What would you ask for if God asked you, as God asked Solomon, “What do you want?  Ask me anything and I will give it to you”.

What would you say?

Solomon asks for wisdom - our translation says a “discerning mind.”  The Hebrew is literally a “listening heart.”

Solomon asked for  wisdom, not so he will have the prestige of being known as a wise man, but so he can govern his people with justice. He asks for the wisdom to have the heart of God, to love those that God loves.

Solomon asked for a listening heart. A heart that listens to God's own heart.

It's my prayer too.  God, please give me a listening heart.

A listening heart....

A listening heart so I can listen to all sides of an argument

• To hear those places where we are in agreement,
• That sometimes our goals are the same, but the way we go about reaching those goals are different,
• and coming to compromise.

A listening heart enables us to come to comprise

A listening heart to hear beyond those who are unwilling to compromise, unable to let go of their hate,

• to hear the fear hidden underneath,
• Or to hear the alignment with the gods of greed and power and one’s own good laying underneath the hate.

A listening heart to stand up for justice when it's being denied.

A listening heart to hear beyond my own experience

• to hear the experiences of others who do not experience events the same way I do,
• to recognize that they often experience my blessing as oppression,
• and to come to the knowledge that all too often, instead seeing myself blessed to be a blessing, I fight to keep those blessings to myself.

 A listening heart to align with the marginalized and vulnerable, the ones that God loves so dearly.

A listening heart that can hear

• those times that the things I want are in line with what God wants,
• and those times when I want things that are not in line with God’s will,

A listening heart that re-aligns my heart with the heart of God, instead of spinning the truth to make my wants seem like what God wants.

God, please give me a listening heart.  Amen.

Solomon, out of all the gifts he could have asked of God, asked for wisdom. 

What would you ask of God?

A Modern Leader: David’s Story (2 Samuel, chapters 11 and 12, part two)

The readings for this Sunday are 2 Samuel 11:1-5, 26-27; 12:1-9; Psalm 51:1-9

This Sunday’s reading is one of the more difficult ones of the Bible (and there are lots of difficult texts in the Bible for lots of different readings!).  Yet it’s an important text because it relates to us today.  Again, this could have been ripped from the headlines, a story of misuse of power, sex, and coverups. 

Yet it’s a story full of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

I’ve decided to tackle this story in three parts: 

• Part One: Bathsheba’s story – often overlooked when it’s not being romantically embellished or whitewashed (covered in the previous post). 
• Part Two: David’s story, a story of entitlement and abuse of power.  
• Part Three:  the story of Nathan confronting David, which reveals why David is called a “person after God’s own heart” – which is this Sunday’s sermon (and the next post in this series).

Our story begins:

In the spring, when kings go off to war,

David sent

Joab, along with his servants and all the Israelites 

                                                                       (2 Samuel 11:1a)

This is the story of a man who sends others to do what he should be doing.  At that time, kings led their armies into battle.  It sounds strange to us – how can a king govern if he’s out fighting a battle.  There was literally a “time for war” (Ecclesiastes 3:8), the time between harvest of one year’s crops and planting of the next year’s.  Wars were waged, not year-round, but in those few months. 

This season of war, David stayed at the palace, preferring to let others do his dirty work.

And with time on his hands, he found other things to do.

Restless with inactivity, he took a stroll on palace roof, enjoying the fine view of the city below.  An especially fine view that night, as he saw a woman bathing on her roof top.

David was not where he was supposed to be and doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.  Rooftops were part of one’s private living space – staring at the woman bathing was the equivalent of standing at someone’s window watching them. You were supposed to politely look away and pretend you didn’t see anything.  Just like well mannered people do when they accidently catch a glimpse through the window of their neighbor’s house.

One simply does not stand there and stare.

Yup, King David was essentially a creepy peeping Tom.

And he REALLY liked what he saw.

He asked around. Turns out she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite.  He was a member of David’s army.  We don’t know his rank, but we do know that he had been with David from the earliest days (2 Samuel 23:39, listed as one of David’s thirty Mighty Warriors).  Which begs the question – how did David not know this was one of his top warriors’ wife?  Did he not know where Uriah lived? Had he not met Uriah’s wife?  Maybe they were newly married? 

Maybe David hoped she wasn’t who he thought she was. Maybe he hoped she was another woman, who looked quite a bit like Uriah’s wife. 

It didn’t matter. She was married…he moved on her anyway. After all, when you're a king, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Somethings never change. smh.

David had her brought to the palace and forced her to have sex with him. Then he sent her home.

That would have been the end of it, but Bathsheba got pregnant.  David is in a fix.  Uriah is at war and everyone will know Uriah can’t be the father.  What if Bathsheba talks?

“I’ll fix this.”

David proves to be the king of cover-ups.  He brings Uriah home from war, hoping he will do the natural thing a man does who’s been away from his wife for a while.  Unfortunately for David, Uriah is a man of integrity, loyal to the king and to his comrades in arms.  He stays at the palace barracks.  Even getting Uriah drunk doesn’t change his commitment.  Plan one fails.

David doesn’t look very good in this story so far. If you’re counting, David has broken the commandment against coveting, and adultery, and bearing false witness (what is a cover up if not a huge lie), theft, it gets worse.

The cover-up foiled, David gets angry.  Murderously angry.  He sends Uriah back to the front carrying a note to the commander at the front.  A note instructing the commander to put Uriah at the hottest part of the battle, the weakest point in the line, and. Then. Fall. Back.

Leaving Uriah to be slaughtered.

Once again, David sends someone else to do his dirty work. Uriah carries his own death sentence.  Joab, the commander sets up the scene for murder. And the opposing army are the unwitting hitmen.  Remember, Uriah is one of David’s trusted Mighty Warriors.  I shudder to think of what he would have done to an enemy (actually he did worse stuff to his enemies, but somehow that was ok, cause they were enemies)!

Fortunes of war, huh?

Up the count of broken commdments to include murder and theft. You know the saying “Murder is theft of a life, Adultery is theft of a wife….”

After a suitable time of mourning, David puts the final spin on the sordid story:  he marries the poor pregnant war widow.

Way to come out looking like the hero, David!

God wasn’t fooled by David’s machinations.  While David was busy breaking the second half of the 10 commandments, he was also breaking the first half.

It’s interesting that one of the possible meanings of Bathsheba’s name is “daughter of the oath” and Uriah’s name means “YHWH is my light.”  David violates the oath – God’s covenant at Mt Sinai, breaking pretty much all of 10 Commandments (words of life).  The darkness of David’s actions is in direct opposition to the light of YHWH.  There’s more going on here than meets the eye – David’s sins are sins against Bathsheba and Uriah. His sins are also a violation of the trust he has as God’s chosen king.  And most of all, they are sins against God.

This is the story of power.  It has been said that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely (John Dalburg-Acton, 1^st Barron of Acton).  This is a story of a powerful man who feels entitled.  Entitled to send others to do the work he prefers not to do.  Entitled to anything and anyone he wants.  Entitled to do what ever he thinks is necessary to maintain his reputation and power.

David is acting like a king.  Way back when the people of Israel first cried out for a king, Samuel warned them about the entitlement that goes with power.  David fit that bill to a T.

David's story sounds so much like the stories of modern leaders.  There are so many stories of power being abused.  Of scandal and cover-up.  It’s easy to point the finger and say, “yes, (so-and-so) is doing exactly that!”  These charges can be leveled on both sides of the political aisle, in the higher echelons of religions, against CEO’s…against anyone with massive power.

Let's look closer to home. What about you and me?  How do we use our power?

“Oh,” you say, “I don’t have any power.”

Yes, you do.  We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  Money gives options. Education gives options. Choices are power. You have power.  How will you use it?

Jesus lays down his power (Philippians 2:5-11) and sides with the marginalized and vulnerable.  The promised Son of David, Jesus becomes the type of King God wants – one that uses power to lift up the oppressed, and care for the poor and vulnerable.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to do the same.

#MeToo: Bathsheba’s Story (2 Samuel, chapters 11 and 12, part one)

The readings for this Sunday are 2 Samuel 11:1-5, 26-27; 12:1-9; Psalm 51:1-9

This Sunday’s reading is one of the more difficult ones of the Bible (and there are lots of difficult texts in the Bible for lots of different readings!).  Yet it’s an important text because it relates to us today.  Again, this could have been ripped from the headlines, a story of misuse of power, sex, and coverups. 

Yet it’s a story full of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

I’ve decided to tackle this story in three parts: 

• Part One: Bathsheba’s story – often overlooked when it’s not being romantically embellished or whitewashed.  
• Part Two: David’s story, a story of entitlement and abuse of power (told in the next post).  
• Part Three:  the story of Nathan confronting David, which reveals why David is called a “person after God’s own heart” – which is this Sunday’s sermon (and post three in this series).

Bathsheba’s reputation has been sullied by Hollywood and, sad to say, centuries of preaching that routinely casts women in the role of seductress, sexual provocateur, and adulteress. 

Sebastiano Ricci, Bathsheba at the Bath, 1720. Szepmuvesti Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary

Her relationship with David has been cast as a torrid love affair.  It's been scripted as a romance and she has been cast as a willing partner in this relationship with David. Or she is painted as a political operator, using her physical charms to wiggle her way to power.

Seductress? Political schemer? A woman in love?  

Maybe...

Or more likely, a victim of sexual abuse by a man in power.

What is the truth of her-story?

Bathsheba (daughter of the oath, or daughter of seven) was married to Uriah the Hittite, (whose name means” YHWH is my light”).  Please note that both Bathsheba and Uriah are Hebrew names, even thought Uriah is clearly identified as a Hittite.  It’s usually assumed that Bathsheba was a Jewish woman married to a Hittite.  Her nationality is not identified, which supports the assumption that she is Jewish – foreigner typically have their nationality as part of their identification (Ruth the Moabite, Uriah the Hittite).  However, there is speculation that her father may have been Hittite (or perhaps he married a foreign woman).  

Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, even though a Hittite, was a member of David’s army.  We don’t know his rank, but we do know that he had been with David from the earliest days (2 Samuel 23:39, listed as one of David’s thirty Mighty Warriors).  I hadn’t realized how close he was to David, yet David did him dirty (more about that next time!). 

Much has been made of Bathsheba’s bathing on the roof.  Surely a modest woman wouldn’t bath so publicly, right?  It means she was flaunting herself, right?  Victim blaming at it’s finest.  Bathsheba was simply doing what she was supposed to do: purify herself after her period.  Bathing often took place on the roof, which was used as additional living space (there is speculation that she may have been bathing in the interior courtyard of her house, open to the air).  There was a parapet to prevent people from falling off the roof, which would also have given privacy to the people on the roof.  Bathsheba was simply doing what she was supposed to do.

David, however, wasn’t.  Social customs were to avert your eyes if you could see into your neighbor’s roof.  David should have looked away, preserving Bathsheba’s privacy.

Can you imagine Bathsheba’s reaction when she was summoned to David?  What on earth could he want?  There's no question but to obey the summons.  You didn't say no to the king.

Once in David’s chambers, she is raped. 

Yes. Raped.  This is not the start of a beautiful love affair, or the first blush of a romance that budded into marriage. To paint what happened to her any other way is to whitewash David’s actions.  She HAD to consent.  And forced consent is not consent – it’s rape. 

Once done with her, David discards her.  Until…

Bathsheba discovers she’s pregnant. By the way, the timing of the rites of purification after menstruation coincide with the most fertile time in a woman’s cycle. So, yeah, she got pregnant.  And she’s in trouble.  Her husband is at war.  There’s no way to explain the pregnancy, except…

She sends a message to David.  She has no where else to turn but to the man who raped her and discarded her.  She is forced to seek help from the very person who has put her in the situation of being labeled an adulteress (and subject to death).  She is literally afraid for her life.

David, after a series of unsuccessful maneuvers to cover up the affair, has Uriah murdered.  It’s staged as a battlefield accident, but it’s murder, pure and simple.  After her time of mourning, David calls Bathsheba once more – from the text, it appears this is only the second time he requests her presence – and marries her.

She. Marries, Her. Rapist.

She marries her husband’s murderer.

Her child dies. 2 Samuel 12:14 says it was part of David’s punishment for his sin. Which certainly doesn't paint God in a very good light in this story! The best spin we can put on this is to say that the child's death was interpreted as punishment for David's sin.  Which is also problematic - this interpretation gives David's sin prominence over Bathsheba's suffering.  

Bathsheba is victimized by David and his actions again and again.

Bathsheba continues to be victimized over the centuries. People are ever ready to blame a woman for a man’s bad deeds.  Especially for the misdeeds of a powerful man:

• It can't have been David's fault - Bathsheba flaunted herself, enticing him.  
• She was a seductress, a willing partner in adultery.  
• She must have been a master in palace intrigue, maneuvering herself to a position of power.
• She was an operative of factions that wanted to bring David down.

Victim blaming at its best.  

Yes, Bathsheba makes the best of a bad situation.  But that doesn't erase the violation of her body and her dignity. 

Later in the story, Bathsheba gives birth to Solomon (2 Samuel 12:24 says "David comforted his wife," and that "God loved Solomon"), her "rainbow baby" who ultimately becomes king after David. 

Bathsheba is a fighter. A woman of valor who fights for her dignity.  A woman of strength who picks up the broken pieces of her life and weaves them into something beautifully indestructible. 

Where is God in Bathsheba’s story?  It somehow seems insufficient to say that God blessed her for her suffering by choosing her son Solomon to be king, making her mother of the king, and a powerful woman in her own right. 

Rather, I think God was the one who brought Bathsheba comfort in those days after the rape, who gave her strength to endure, who gave her healing.  God walked with her through the desert of marriage to her rapist/husband-murderer.  God cried with her at the death of her child. And the God who brings life from death, brought new life, and hope, to Bathsheba.

To Bathsheba, God is the God who cares for the victims of violence, hearing their cries of anguish, believing their stories, walking with them as they heal.

As children of this God, can we do any less for the victims of sexual assault and violence today?