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<div style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:10pt;color:black">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Judy <judy_boli@ecunet.org><br>
To: propertalk.topic <propertalk.topic@ecunet.org><br>
Sent: Sat, Feb 28, 2015 11:46 pm<br>
Subject: [propertalk.topic] Sermon for Lent 2B<br>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">Dear Friends,</font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">This Sunday’s sermon is entitled “What (or Who) Is Your Cross?” or “Lent- the Chance of a Lifetime” and deals with the Old Testament lesson (Genesis 22: 1-14) and the gospel (Mark 8: 31-38).</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Here it is: </font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">Last Sunday, we thought through the whole problem of temptation- how our human nature predisposes us to yield to temptation, because we want anything we’re told we can’t have (as did Adam and Eve with that fruit); how the problem was not lack of education, but choice; and how not yielding to temptation is really a mind game- because where our mind goes, our mouths and actions are almost sure to follow.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">This morning, I’d like us to look at a very unpopular subject- crosses- our cross, Abraham’s cross, and Jesus’ cross.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">We heard Jesus tell his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, and we know- as much as we’d like to not think about it, Jesus is talking to us also.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">It is really important to understand about taking up our cross, because not understanding can lead us into trouble.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">First of all- just to clear up a common misconception- your cross is not something that just happens to you, like arthritis or cancer or heart disease or some kind of handicapping condition, however difficult it is.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">That’s an affliction.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Your cross is something you choose to carry, a chosen sacrifice that is chosen specifically because you love Jesus.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Second- carrying our cross is not something we can do or not do if we accept Jesus as our Lord as well as our Savior. </font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Jesus doesn’t say, “Take up your cross and follow me if you feel like it, or if it’s not too inconvenient, or if it doesn’t expose you to unpleasantness.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">He says, “Take up your cross and follow me”- period- no choice, an order.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">So where are you about crosses, and what (or who) is your cross?</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">Abraham is a good example of someone who willingly took up his cross, accepted the possibility of a huge sacrifice, and did what God needed done.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">We heard about it today in the story of his willing offering of his only son, Isaac.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">If we don’t understand the culture of his time, we miss something very important in this episode.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">What Abraham thought God was asking him to do was not unusual.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">The people of almost all the cultures of that historical period practiced child sacrifice.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Anytime something really catastrophic was threatening (drought, war, disease), the common assumption was that the chief god was angry and needed to be appeased- and the blood of the oldest male child would do it.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Did you notice back in verse 5 when Abraham told his servants: “</font><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><font color="#000000">WE</font></b><font color="#000000"> will come back?”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Even though he was a product of his culture, Abraham somehow knew that God would not really allow the sacrifice of his beloved child- that God would somehow provide, yet Abraham followed through as he understood until the angel intervened.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Why in the world did God suggest such a terrible thing?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Probably because God was sick, sick, sick of innocent children being offered on the altar of sacrifice to appease him, because that’s not at all what he wanted.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">It was probably to make exactly that point, because- except for times of huge apostasy, this was the very last child offered as a sacrifice by the Israelites in the name of God.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">In other words- Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice finally allowed God to make the point: children are to be loved, nurtured, cared for, yes- sacrificed for.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">That’s a good message for us today.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">We talk a lot about how much we love our children, but do we sacrifice for them as did earlier generations?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">If it’s a choice between our clothes or their teeth, our habit (alcohol, tobacco, etc.) or their clothes, our fun or their sleep, our entertainment and the media we allow in our house or their moral development- which do we choose?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Or perhaps we make huge sacrifices for them, but the focus is not on the individual child- it’s on ourselves.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">It’s so easy to see our children as extensions of ourselves, so we expect them to succeed specifically in areas in which we did not.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">I can’t tell you in the course of forty years of teaching and almost thirty-seven years of priesting how many times I have heard parents talk about high expectations for their children when they needed right at that time to get some education themselves so their children would have a better life.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">“Take up your cross and follow me,” says Jesus.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Are you listening?</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">What if your children are not your cross?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">What is your cross?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Do you inconvenience yourself for anyone besides someone in your own family?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Do you inconvenience yourself for God?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Let’s look at what a cross really is?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">A cross was a means of torture and execution.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">If Jesus were sacrificed for our sins today, he probably would have died in an electric chair or by lethal injection.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">This would mean that we who wanted to remind ourselves of our commitment to our Lord would be wearing an electric chair or a gurney with restraining straps and an IV bag on a chain around our necks!</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">A cross was a means of insuring ridicule and humiliation.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">You know how people even today in our reality-type TV programs seem to love to watch people under embarrassing, frightening situations?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Have you noticed how that TV camera is pushed right up to the face of the grieving widow after a tornado or the microphone in the face of the mother after her child has been murdered?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">I hate to think of the possibilities if TV cameras were allowed in execution chambers!</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Times haven’t changed.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">As the person carrying the cross struggled under its weight to the place of execution, people seemed to love being entertained by their torture; and they jeered, laughed, poked, prodded, and otherwise embarrassed the victim.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">So you see- a cross (as Jesus intended) is a pain- often exceedingly difficult, embarrassing, unfashionable, time and energy consuming, and we’re frequently not appreciated for making the sacrifice.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">A fellow pastor told of a man in his congregation who stopped every day after work to help a disabled neighbor- washed him, shaved him, shopped for him, ran errands for him.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">When asked, he said that- yes, it was extremely inconvenient- but God had laid on his heart that this was to be his cross.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">“The amazing thing,” he said, “is that- as much as I give, I receive much more.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">That’s probably what Jesus meant when he said that the person who sacrifices for God and others will gain his life.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">The Rev. Richard Donovan is entitling his sermon for today, “Jesus Calls Us to a Life of Giving that We Might Have a Life Worth Living.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Not bad!</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">So, I ask you again- what’s your cross?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Have you ever donated money to someone who was not a family member or friend when you needed it yourself?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">What do you do to help the stranger, the person not as privileged as you are?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Are you only thinking of you and yours, or do you reach out in Jesus name?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">More to the point, if you take Jesus seriously- this Lent is the perfect time to make some changes if the Holy Spirit is convicting you right now.</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">One more thought about crosses before we give our thoughts about this to Jesus.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Are you aware that one of the latest fashion accessories these days is a cross- a huge, gaudy piece of junk jewelry.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">That’s one more thing a cross is NOT intended to be- in fact it’s as close to a put-down of Jesus’ sacrifice as we might find, but look around- you know what I mean.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Does this mean that you should not wear a cross around your neck?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Of course not, but it’s important, if you choose to wear one, to do so for the right reason.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">I wear a cross almost every day.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Why do I wear a cross?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">I wear one to remind myself I am a child of the King, that I’m never alone- because God is with me (as in the Romans lesson today).</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Sometimes, especially if I’m frightened or anxious or under pressure, I’ll quietly slip my cross inside my blouse so I can feel it right next to my skin.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">It reminds me that the Jesus of my last Holy Communion is even nearer to me than that cross.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Is there a time you should never wear a cross?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Absolutely!</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Are you about to cuss someone out?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Are you about to boss someone or treat someone unfairly?</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Never, I hope, with a cross showing!</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">You know the verse that says, “I don’t want to be like Judas in my heart; I just want to be like Jesus.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Wearing a cross while being a person of injustice or of violence in word or deed makes us a traitor to almighty God.</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">In closing, check yourself out with this Lenten thought: “Too many people are waiting for God to do things for them rather than with them.”</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Don’t be like that.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Be a loyal disciple.</font><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><font color="#000000"> </font></span><font color="#000000">Take up your cross and follow Jesus!</font></font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes; tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">For anyone who is interested, this sermon and updated African-American wisdom statements are posted on our parish’s web site under “Sermons & Stuff”. The address is: </font><a target="_blank" href="http://www.stpaulsepisag.org/"><u><font color="#0000ff" face="Times New Roman"></font></u></a><u><font color="#0000ff" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.stpaulsepisag.org" target="_blank">http://www.stpaulsepisag.org</a></font></u><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman"> .</font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">Blessed preaching,</font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">Judy Boli</font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">St. Paul's Episcopal Church</font></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: normal; mso-mirror-indents: yes;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">Saginaw, Michigan</font></span></div>
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