If you spent time in Sunday school or VBS growing up, you might have learned a little song, “I will make you fishers of men if you follow me.” We would sing that song when I was a kid, and then our teachers would tell us that we were supposed to do that. All of us were supposed to be—to use the gendered language of the early 1970s—fishers of men.
Did you know that we’ve had movies now for over a century?
When the centennial celebration was going on, twenty years ago now, there were all kinds of lists published, ranking the top movies of all time, the top movie villains, and so on. One of these lists ranked the top 100 movie heroes.
I think I was probably eight or nine; Gram and Papa were up visiting for a weekend. Gram happened to notice that I hadn’t made my bed one morning. I knew how to make my bed; my mom had taught me to make it when I was four. But I guess I didn’t want to deal with Gram giving me a hard time about not making my bed, so when she asked me why I hadn’t made it, I said, “I don’t know how.”
We memorized today’s reading in my worship class in seminary. The professor seemed to be implying that this is the correct Biblical way to worship—it’s the model for what we might call a “contemporary” or “praise” service: It begins on a high note with songs of praise, keeps our focus on God, and then moves us toward a quieter time, when we will hear the Word read, proclaimed, and taught.
Today’s passage from James is the scriptural backing for two of the traditional sacraments of the Catholic church: the anointing of the sick (formerly called Extreme Unction) and confession (now generally referred to, at least formally, as the sacrament of Reconciliation).
My first boss at the Council of Churches in Portland was an old-school kind of boss. He sat in the corner office and summoned me when he wanted something. He’d call me to come and go through paperwork with him at his convenience, without regard to what I was doing at the time. He would even call from time to time to have me make him a cup of tea and bring it to him.
When we translate from one language to another, things get lost in translation. There are words that have so many different meanings that you have to choose one as you translate. Or, as in the case of the three terms in New Testament Greek that are all rendered with one English word, love, there are simply no equivalent words in the new language that can fully communicate the meaning.
Do you remember the show Northern Exposure? Before it made the unfortunate error a great many shows make (I’m looking at you, Moonlighting, X-Files, Bones, and any number of others), having the two main characters hook up, it was a good show, with a really interesting ensemble cast.
So apparently someone once asked Andrew Carnegie how much wealth he thought was enough. His response was, “Just a little bit more.”
On the other hand, I once read about a woman down south, living in a tiny house with a dirt floor, trying to eke out a living on a meager piece of land. She received some money from the Farm Aid benefit, and somebody asked her what she was going to do with it.
Fred Craddock told some of the best stories. There’s even a book of them compiled by a couple of his students and colleagues.
I don’t know that this one is in that book; I first heard it in a recording someone made of a lecture of his, maybe at Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon. He said he was guest preaching at a church somewhere in Oklahoma one Sunday. It was his custom to teach an adult Sunday school class when he was preaching somewhere like that, so he asked if he could do that there.