Pastor's Blog May 9, 2015

 

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Saturday, May 9, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“Each of you must show great respect for your mother and father,
and you must always observe my Sabbath days of rest. I am the LORD your God.”
Leviticus 19:3 (NLT)  

Notice

Notice two things about today’s passage.   First the writer connects the fourth and fifth of the Ten Commandments, honoring father and mother and keeping the Sabbath.   Second, the author in a surprising counter cultural move places mother before father.

Consider

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.   Reflect on the female images of God in the Bible.  

Genesis 1:27  Women and Men created in God’s image

“Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them."  

Hosea 11:3-4  God described as a mother

God: “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I who took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.”  

Hosea 13:8  God described as a mother bear

"Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and tear them asunder. . . . ”  

Deuteronomy 32:11-12 God described as a mother eagle

“Like the eagle that stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young, God spreads wings to catch you, and carries you on pinions.”  

Deuteronomy 32:18  God who gives birth

“You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.”  

Isaiah 66:13  God as a comforting mother

God: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”  

Isaiah 49:15  God compared to a nursing mother

God: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” 

Isaiah 42:14  God as a woman in labor

God: “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept myself still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant.” 

Jeremiah 44:25  Queen of Heaven

“Thus says . . . .the God of Israel: You and your wives have accomplished in deeds what you declared in words, ‘We are determined to . . . .  make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out libations to her.’ By all means, keep your vows and make your libations!”  

Psalm131:2  God as a Mother

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.”  

Psalm 123:2-3  God compared to a woman

“As the eyes of a servant looks to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to you, YHWH, until you show us your mercy!”  

Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34  God as a Mother Hen

Jesus: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” 

Luke 15:8-10  God as woman looking for her lost coin

Jesus: “Or what woman having ten silver coins, is she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Plan

How will you honor God and your mother on Sunday?  Even if you perceive your mother as a negative in your life, nevertheless there is something in her that stretched her beyond herself for your sake.   That was God loving you through her.   You can honor God by thanking Him and forgiving her.  Even better you can ask her (whether she’s still alive or not) for her forgiveness of you for judging her.  Now that would be an incredible Mother’s Day gift!!!!!
 

Prayer

“Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you for this reminder!  It was always way, way, way too easy for me to take my mother for granted, just as I have also found it way, way, way too easy to take you for granted.  I am so sorry for that.  I both ask for your forgiveness and thank you for having granted me forgiveness even before I asked (actually just like my mom, who loved and forgave me before I ever asked – something I’ve learned about you, Lord, through the mother you gave me)   Amen.”

 Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Avengers:  Age of Ultron
Friday May 8, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Why does Christianity Today, one of my favorite magazines, give this movie a four star rating?  Read on!   Jeff

It’s a Grade-A scifi and a meditation on evil in the human heart, in one entertaining package
by Jessica Gibson/ MAY 1, 2015

OUR RATING


MPAA RATING
PG-13 (For intense sequences of sci-fi action, violence and destruction, and for some suggestive comments.)

GENRE
Action, Superhero

DIRECTED BY
Joss Whedon

RUN TIME
2 hours 21 minutes

CAST

Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans
 

“At risk of sounding too hyperbolic too soon, Avengers: Age of Ultron might be the best movie Marvel has ever made.
As a sci-fi flick, it’s got some faults. There’s a lot of action and director Joss Whedon doesn’t leave enough pauses to process it all; it provides little backstory, so newcomers to the Marvel Cinematic Universe might get confused without context; it’s much darker than Marvel’s previous installments.
But the film has an incredible ambition to be much, much more than the sum of its parts. Beneath the capes, behind the punches, even underwriting the witty banter is a story not about the strength of superheroes fighting unfathomable evil, but about the strength of people battling their tangible fallen natures.
The story explodes into action right away with the original team: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). They’re on a raid to retrieve a powerful alien scepter that the pseudo-political cult HYDRA has been weaponizing since the first Avengersfilm. The team runs into some unexpected trouble in the form of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson), twins who developed superpowers during HYDRA’s experiments with the scepter.
After the successful mission, Tony and Bruce run experiments on the scepter that could help with their latest global security project, a program called Ultron (James Spader). Underneath the requisite tecnobabble, the scientists’ goal is to transfer the scepter’s mysterious intelligence to Tony’s robotic weapons and form a dispensable army of Ultrons, robots with a moral code to achieve “peace in our time.”|
In an unsupervised moment, something clicks in the program and Ultron emerges out of the absolute worst interpretation of Tony’s desire to protect the world. Ultron believes that to create peace, he has to stop evil everywhere he sees it, including the evil in humanity. Scared and violent as he realizes his mission, he destroys Tony’s other AI program, Jarvis, takes control of Tony’s robots, attacks the Avengers, and escapes to build an army for global genocide.
The rest of the film unfolds quickly; there’s a lot happening with a lot of people and it’s a lot to take in. Even though it runs for nearly two and a half hours, it could have used a little more padding between events to smooth the transitions.
That said, as he proved in the first movie (check out our 4-star review), Whedon’s directorial strengths are ideal for this type of sprawling epic. His stories are intensely character driven, with well-defined personalities and clever, compact dialogue that anchor the film on the team’s interactions. 
The film could’ve unraveled into the “circus freak show” one of the villains dubs the ensemble, but Whedon somewhat miraculously juggles all these personalities by leveling the playing field. Nobody monologues at everybody else, everyone has input in each conversation, the lines have tangible quirks fitting each personality, and even the fast-paced combat banter is skillfully woven to never feel morbid or overpowering. In fact, it’s usually pretty funny.

Image:  Walt Disney Studios

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’
Whedon also gives characters who haven’t had stand-alone films chances to balance out their well-established counterparts. Clint Barton is the quiet star of the film, stepping into a nurturing role for his teammates. Natasha Romanoff gets some stellar backstory—still not enough to satisfy the craving for her own movie—but her budding romance with Bruce feels a little stilted. Whedon gets carried away in crafting character-focused moments and takes these two somewhere that doesn’t work.
The movie’s action sequences are spectacular without devolving into spectacle, because like everything else, they’re all about the people. When they’re not smashing robots, the Avengers focus on getting civilians to safety and moving their fights away from cities. This concern is a welcome change from superhero movies that wreak havoc without regard for collateral damage. Whedon always brings the focus back to the characters, making a subtle but necessary point about the Avengers films: these stories are about people, humans, and humanity’s collective fight against their own collective evil.
Though he may have started with a vendetta against the Avengers, Ultron soon develops a god complex and decides to pass judgment on all humanity. He strings his plans with Biblical references: “Whenever the universe settles,” he says, “God throws a stone at it.” As he sets up his stronghold: “On this rock I shall build my church.” The best way to rid the world of sin? “Ask Noah.”
These references aren’t casual epithets; they make an important point about what the Avengers are battling. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but Ultron is conspicuously human. He talks and jokes like a person, and at his inception, he has the naiveté and fear of a child. Like all human children, he has a sin nature; his first act as a “living” thing is essentially a murder (Cain and Abel parallel, anybody?). He was made by fallen people, and that fallenness becomes his identity and purpose.
If Ultron embodies collective human sin, the Avengers embody individual, personal sin and the struggle to do good despite being fallen. The heroes confront their own ambition, selfishness, arrogance, and fear; Tony owns up to Bruce, “We’re monsters, buddy.” They despair of their ability to fight the evil in themselves, much less the evil in Ultron. They recover their hope and purpose by affirming their faith in each other and relying on their strength as a team.
One of the film’s best moments occurs when Clint gives Wanda Maximoff that choice: stay trapped in fear, or fulfill her incredible potential: “If you step out that door,” he challenges her, “you’re an Avenger.”

Image:  Walt Disney Studios

Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’
Each Avenger makes that choice in this movie. At some point they all face their own fallenness, and they don’t all conquer their fears. But they all still choose to fulfill their callings, to step up and fight, because that’s who they are. It’s what makes them most authentically Earth’s Mightiest Heroes: they fight the battles humanity never could, together.
And above all the movie tells its viewers to make the same mighty choice. It’s defending the significance of making the moral decision in spite of our own fallen states. It praises the beauty of having authentic relationships that build us up when we need it most. It affirms that the evil in the world exists and can be beaten (Chesterton would be proud). It’s a powerful defense of virtue and hope and faith, wrapped up appropriately in a superhero cape.
Age of Ultron isn’t a great science fiction film because it’s got the biggest explosions or the best CGI or the most characters. It’s a great science fiction film because it tackles huge ideas about humanity in nuanced, intellectual ways without sacrificing the elements that make it a fun movie. This film can’t be written off as the latest in the Marvel assembly line. It defies the expectations of its genre to be an incredible, engaging, significant, flat out fun work of art.
Caveat Spectator
The very first word of dialogue is an expletive, to which another character warns, “Language!” The gag gets repeated at the character’s expense whenever an Avenger curses for the rest of the film; it’s very funny, but it does involve a few more scattered profanities. In the first half, several of the Avengers have some intense nightmares brought on by another character’s psychic powers. One nightmare shows the entire main cast (bloodlessly) dead or dying; one involves some implied intoxication and revelry; the last implies an execution and some frightening medical procedures. A character recalls being sterilized as a teenager; it’s not shown and there are no descriptive details, but in context it’s still a very weighty confession. As expected, there’s an abundance of sci-fi violence, mostly against robots, but it can still be pretty heavy. One character’s arm is cut off in a fight. In an admirable act of self-sacrifice, a character is killed in a hail of gunfire and we see their bullet-riddled and somewhat bloodied body. At parents’ discretion, this movie is probably best for kids ages 12 and up.
Jessica Gibson is an intern with Christianity Today Movies and a student at The King’s College in New York City.

 
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Pastor's Blog May 7, 2015

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Thursday, May 7, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Begin 

In your mind's eye see all those people who have given up some portion of their lives so that your life could blossom.  Thank God for them right now.


Scripture

“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?”          1 John 3:14-17




Reflect  

If God used evolutionary processes to bring us to where we are today (a view fully compatible with an inerrant view of scripture) then it certainly looks like he created a dog eat dog world.  Not only that, but he also called it good!!  What?

Then along comes Jesus, in today's passage reiterated by John, telling us to buck the evolutionary drive of self-preservation and do the exact opposite which is to give myself up for others.  I am to suffer loss so that others can experience life.  Could it be that in choosing to be Christ-like by suffering loss I am experiencing the "good life"?  Could it be that when God called everything he had made good that behind it is the reality that our transcending our self-preservation through suffering is a good, perhaps the primary good that makes us partners with God himself.  The motto of hell is eat or be eaten.  The motto of heaven is eat and be eaten


Prayer

"Lord, forgive my selfish slavery to preserving my comfort which imprisons me in an endless all-consuming pursuit which ends without the comfort I seek to preserve anyway.  I will, beginning now, seek to extend myself at cost to myself even in on the smallest of ways to serve someone else who needs help.  Amen."


Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

 
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Pastor's Blog May 6, 2015

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Wednesday May 6, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Begin in Silence

Make a mental list of the people in your life who are closest to you. Which ones do you love?  Which ones do you hate?  Do you hate no one?  Perhaps there are some whom you can't stand.  Pray right now for God to miraculously bless each person on your list.

Scripture

"This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.”                                                                                        1 John 3:11, 14-15


Reflect  

Sometimes I feel dead.  Do you?  By dead I mean emotionless, feeling minimal love for anyone much less for my enemies.  I think it's normal to feel dead sometimes.  Love is not an emotion.  It's self-extension for the spiritual good of another.
But hate, wishing ill on another, wanting to see another fail or get what they deserve or suffer what's coming to them or wishing they were never born or hoping they go to hell or putting them down or gossiping things that put them in a bad light or using racial slurs . . . . .  Well, that's another thing altogether.   Those things make you a murderer and unrepentant murderers get sent away for life, quite different to the eternal life of God, with God and offered to repentant sinners by God.

Prayer 

“Lord, Lord, Lord, it is I Lord.   I am the hater.  I am the murderer.  It is I who has hate on my heart.  I admit it, repent of it and am willing, even desirous of facing the awful and painful glory of our humiliating yet elevating cleansing and forgiveness.  make this hater into a blesser, just as you are a Blesser.  Amen."

Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)

 
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For more:   follow on Twitter @jefflampl  

Cain and Able

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Cain and Able
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Jeff Lampl

Begin 

Reflect on your week ahead.  What temptations will you face?  Where will you be tempted to be dishonest?  Where will you need God's help the most?  Ask him for that now .

Scripture

“This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you."    
1 John 3:11-13


Reflect  

Cain's own self-righteous, self-justifying, blaming heart needed to remove the righteousness that stood before him every day in the person of his brother, Able.  Self-justification always shrinks before, flees from, or must eliminate that which reminds it of its smallness.  Able was too "big" for Cain.  
Before whom or what do you feel the need to act bigger than you really are and, failing that, seek to eliminate, flee or avoid?        

Prayer

"Lord, please forgive all my posturing, my self-justifying, my blaming, my healousies, my sense of "smallness" around others more righteous than I am.  I am your child and that's enough.  Amen"

Conclude with Silence   (2 minutes)        

 
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Sabbath - How Will You Spend Tomorrow?

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Sunday, May 3, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“You have six days each week for your ordinary work,
but the seventh day must be a Sabbath day of complete rest,
a holy day dedicated to the LORD.”
Exodus 35:2 (NLT)

   Plan for Tomorrow
                Tomorrow is the Sabbath.  Plan at least one way that you will "keep" it.


  Think       Ask, what is it that I want to accomplish?

  Consider
                Sabbath Keeping will always be counter cultural.  If we are not deliberately
                thinking about how God's world and the world we're in differ, we will be
                conformed to "the world" without ever knowing it.  

                Choose something that takes you out of "the world" an into God's world for
                the day.

   Suggestions
                Go to Worship and actually worship God.  Praise him for who He is and all
                that He has done for you.
                Spend time counting your blessings. Do so until gratitude overwhelms you.
                Read through the gospels until you feel yourself connecting with Jesus.
                Do nothing.
                Turn off your phone, TV, radio, and computer and with no "agenda"
                connect live with someone "live".
                Take a drive through Southern Chester County
                Have dinner with your family and or friends and initiate a food fight

               Prayer “Lord, tomorrow is Your Day.  Help me as I plan to make it a day of
                            honoring you, resting in you, and leading my family to experience you
                            as well.   In Christ’s name, I pray,  Amen”  

     Conclude with Silence  (2 minutes)

             
                Comment    

                For more:   follow on Twitter @jefflampl