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OF FIRST PRIORITY
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(Sermon from Sept. 5,
2000 beginning the 23rd Season of Thursday Night Church)
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So I’m thinking — “If this should be my last season to be doing ‘moments,’
what is my highest priority message?” I know it sounds sort of mortality-driven,
but face it; I’ve got to wind down this business sometime. (Remember, we
started as a 1 year only experiment). |
I played over some of the big drums I’ve beaten over the years. The themes
boil down (nicely, I might add) to three: |
Honest to God (expanding the concept of God) |
Honest
to the Bible (retrieving the Bible from literalism) |
Honest
to Jesus (friendship without idolatry) |
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I
doubt that anyone who has read me or heard me over the last 45 years or
so needs to hear anything more about those subjects. |
My brain wondered and wandered on to the question of what I would most
like people to remember about me. Again, three choices emerge. (When you’ve
preached for too long you tend to fall into “3-point-itis”—everything in
3’s). People could remember |
What
I say (and I’ve said a lot of words both written and spoken) |
What
I do (I like to overestimate my deeds, the best unknown to me) |
What
I am (which is a mystery to me but possibly visible to others) |
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I decided that what I “am” may be the most important. I think the thing
that has made Jesus both loved and revered is not so much his reported
words and doings, but a sense of what he “was.” People sensed the divine
in him. “God was in Christ,” they said. That’s memorable. |
Moving on (if you are able to follow my connections), the basic question
about Jesus is what he was. There were the famous “I am” statements about
Jesus. But I find myself drawn to the idea of Jesus as a person/example/metaphor/embodiment
of unconditional love. |
I’m on a roll now. If love is his nature, what teachings have memorable
priority? My choice is the second part of the Great Commandment: “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” |
So, here I am, sort of landed on a priority by way of sequential (if not
convoluted) thinking. The priority is love. |
If you were to find the primary writing on love in the Bible, where would
you turn? I would turn to I Corinthians 13. Jesus never wrote his ideas,
as far as we know. The Apostle Paul did, often times poetically. We have
his words. |
My decision is pretty much made. I am going to spend this year soaking
up the essence of the spirit and ideas of this “love chapter.” I’ll try
to overlook the fact that his objective seems to be to get a wayward church
to straighten up its act. I’m going to take it as a profound statement
of what matters most—of what is the highest priority. |
If people in my group have no other memory of my religious instruction,
I’m hoping that they will forever be called to their own priority as a
result of my downloading of I Corinthians 13 into their core being—into
their
“hard drive.” So, we begin the new moment season: “If I speak in
the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love…” |
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Art Morgan
– Thursday Night Church
October, 2000
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