He died for us. (Good Friday sermon)
Monday of last week I was able to get a COVID vaccine at the Publix on US 60. It was all very quick and easy. The nurse warned me that my shoulder might feel sore, as though it had been punched. That is a very familiar feeling. For most of my childhood my older brother and I routinely punched each other in the arm. Sometimes it was just for fun, a game to see how tough we were. Sometimes it was to settle a dispute. Sometimes it was just a sneak attack, for which there was always a just reprisal.
Over the next day or two my arm was sore, which caused me to think more about my brother. He is two years older than me. He is a great guy, a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer who ran nuclear reactors on submarines for 20 years. He’s now a librarian at the Lakeland Public Library. I love him dearly and am thankful for him and his family.
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People of the Bowl and Towel
One of Laura’s and my all-time favorite movies is “Forrest Gump.” We stumbled on it the other night when we were unable to find anything on regular television. We have seen it many times, if you haven’t seen it, I certainly recommend that you do. I understand that it was a fairly low budget film. In fact, Tom Hanks helped fund it. The writers and editors did a really creative job placing Forrest and Jenny, our two main characters in historical news film footage. Through the events of their lives, we revisit some of the most memorable and turbulent times of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
We remember several great lines from this movie:
Me and Jenny goes together like peas and carrots. Stupid is as stupid does. My mama always said, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” My mama always said, “you have to do the best with what God gave you.” What’s normal anyways? Mama always said, “dying was part of life,” I sure wish it wasn’t. My name is Forrest Gump, people call me Forrest Gump.
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Jesus said, "I am..."
I can be – am – a Smart-Alek at times. When Meg or one of my kids asks me where I am, I will often say, “Here.” “Here” is the only place we can be. We are never “there.” So, yes, that is a Smart-Alek thing to say, but there is an underlying fact of life in it that frames how I’d like us to approach Mark’s Passion narrative.
We need to stop; stop and recognize where we are. We always live at a point in time. It is always, “now,” in the present, in the moment that everything happens for us. It is as though we are always in the middle of the hourglass, the current moment being the grain of sand that is passing through.
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