October 14, 2007                                                                                                                                           Jeremiah 29:1-14   

 

    I’m not sure when I first realized what it meant to live in a city.  Oh, I knew as a young child that I lived in Cincinnati, but even though I lived only fifteen minutes from downtown, Cincinnati was for me for many years the quiet, secure, lily-white suburb that insulated my existence from the urban center we called “downtown.”  My elementary school years are remembered against the backdrop of our cul de sac where neighborhood friends and I played kickball, hide and seek, and hopscotch.  Sundays, I spent with my cousins eating roast beef at my grandmother’s.  In the summer my family would take a vacation to Canada or Florida or Michigan.  And school was the sheltered existence of Miss Doherty’s School for Girls.

 

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Psalm 23;  Luke 14:1-24

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. — Psalm 23:5

When it was time for dinner, he sent out his servant…

saying, “Come on in; the food’s on the table.” — Luke 14:17 (Eugene Peterson paraphrase, The Message)

Then go to the country roads.  Whoever you find, drag them in.
I want my house full! — Luke 14:23 (Eugene Peterson paraphrase, The Message)

Most week days at noon I walk up to High St. and have lunch at McDonald’s or Wendy’s—about as far removed as you can get from any kind of grand banquet or fancy dinner party.  When some Pharisees had Jesus over for dinner, they watched him like hawks.  But it’s just not good manners to stare at other people eating at Wendy’s.  At a formal wedding banquet, you look for your place card to be sure you sit at the proper place.  But at McDonald’s the main concern is just to find an open booth or table that’s relatively clean. Proper dress is essential at a fancy dinner party.  But once after a church work party I lined up for a burger and a frosty at Wendy’s, and even though my clothes were grungy and sweat-stained no one seemed to take notice.

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Isaiah 43:1-7;  Luke 15:11-18a  — Baptism

Thus says the Lord… "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine." — Isaiah 43:1

But when he came to himself he said, "…I will
get up and go to my father…" — Luke 15:17-18

It’s strange, I know, to stop reading right smack in the middle of the story.  Last Sunday John Jones and Susan read the entire story of the Prodigal Son between them, and in her sermon Susan reflected on Rembrandt’s wonderful painting of the younger son kneeling before his father.  But we’ve stopped way before that.   At this point, the younger son—this guy who effectively told his Dad to drop dead by asking for his share of the inheritance and headed out to take the world by storm—he’s had an awful time of it.  Everything’s gone down the tubes, and now he has bottomed out.  He’s stone cold broke.  He’s standing there knee deep in pig slop and wondering what Purina Hog Chow might taste like.

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Deuteronomy 6:4-9;  Mark 12:28-34;  Matthew 13:52

Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of
heaven is like the master of the household who brings out of
his treasure what is new and what is old. — Matthew 13:52

Schools are back in session.  Sunday school classes resumed this morning.  And soon O.S.U. students will be back in class (although obviously football is king since the games start so long before the classes).  Despite OSU football, teaching and learning are vitally important—not just acquiring information to pass standardized tests, but learning how to think.  Learning never stops.  There are always new thing to learn.  I mentioned in my “Life & Times” column a kids’ book my children gave me as a joke, called Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs.  Once when I was complaining about how scientists had decided there really was no such a thing as a brontosaurus, I exclaimed, “When I was a kid, the brontosaurus was the main non-meat-eating dinosaur!”  Of course, my kids heard me as saying I was as old as dirt.