God is Love (Easter Day sermon)
We live in such interesting and exciting times. The new wonder is artificial intelligence, and I think it holds great promise for us. I use it sometimes as a research assistant. For example, for my Bible study two weeks ago, I wanted to focus on parts of the Passion that are unique to Luke’s Gospel. I asked ChatGPT to summarize them for me, with quotes from the NRSV of the Bible, which is what we use in worship.
It gave me a list within a second or two. I’ve been studying the Bible for about 50 years now, so I could look at that list and recognize it was correct, and use it to then frame our discussion. It’s not doing my work for me, but saving time the way a calculator helps with math and helping to leverage what I already know.
I saw a news article recently about a doctor who had used AI in a similar way. He had a patient with a particular form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome related to a particular gene. He fed the patient’s lab work and history into an AI. It suggested he look at a study that folic acid had been effective for this specific issue, and gave him a link to the study. He read it. He tried it. It worked.
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The Big Lies (Good Friday sermon)
Wednesday night I met with the youth group. I had invited them to ask me any question on their minds, anything at all. I was somewhat surprised that most of their questions were about the Bible. It was fun.
The question that took me the longest time to answer was, “What is your favorite book of the Bible?” How do you pick a favorite? After a few minutes of serious contemplation, I decided it has to be John’s Gospel. My reasons include its incredible prologue, “In the beginning was the Word…”, his most detailed account of the Resurrection and the ways that he shows who Jesus is and what he means to God’s people and the creation as a whole.
One of my favorite moments in John’s Gospel is the exchange between Jesus and Pilate when Pilate asks Jesus, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Then comes the kicker. Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
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A Servant Lesson
Come, join with me, let us join the disciples as they enter the upper room for their Passover meal, this meal would also be the last with Jesus before He went to the cross. Jesus was the only one in the crowd that knew it.
Let’s imagine that evening, let’s imagine what was probably on the minds of Jesus’ disciples. I’m guessing that their first thought was who would sit where? Perhaps, even pushing and bumping each other out of the way to get the preferred seat. Who would be in the “honored” seats?
They all knew where Jesus would be reclining, the 2nd seat on the left side. The seat of the host. The question on their minds was, who would be sitting in the most honored guest’s seat on Jesus’ right and then who would be the second honored seat on his left? Does this seem a little familiar? How times have you wondered where you might be seated at a wedding reception? How many of you remember arguing with brothers or sisters about who called “shotgun first?” I kind of liked sitting in the middle in the pickup. Thereby avoiding opening or closing the gate. The shotgun seat had its privileges, opening the gate wasn’t one of them! Still, everyone scrambled for the chosen seat.
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