On a different note, there was one new face, and his daughter, present for my service. I feel honoured to introduce them to the United Church. I hope they felt welcome, and not too scared. I know how uncomfortable it is to be surrounded by a bunch of strangers. I would like to see them again.
First, a few thoughts on the service. I was extremely nervous at the beginning. It took everything I had to say “good morning” and get into the announcements. But then it was OK. The topic was not over the top because I warned the congregation about what was happening and the topic was bullying.
The hymns may have been a bit choppy. I need to put more focus into this. The prayers were OK. Childrens time was different because we said the Lord’s Prayer around the Communion table. The sermon went well. I am very glad that I followed my heart and used the tools from LLWL, my experience with Dare to Care, and wove this with the Scriptures to produce an intriguing (and different) sermon. It made people think.
Back to reality. The homework is becoming much deeper. More insightful. One piece of homework was to comment on a Scripture reading that was particularly powerful. I chose one of he passages that was used for the service. Not because the scripture was particularly powerful (the torment of Hannah) but because it changed the way that I interacted with the congregation. This was a lot of thinking and reflecting. I resisted the urge to stand on a soap-box and focussed on relating our experiences to the scripture.
Another piece of homework was to read a few articles on why the Incarnation matters, and then to describe why the Incarnation matters to me. I have never thought of this. I had never thought of anything beyond the simple “Jesus was born, and he was to become the Saviour.” The essays stirred some deeply philosophical thoughts: God could have appeared in any form to guide us down a path to love and respect each other. He could have come as a powerful force and pronounced the edict “Thou Shalt Change.” But, no. God touched humankind as a baby, and lived through all of the problems that people live through.
This struck a chord in my professional life as an engineer. I try to change the way a refinery is operated so that it can be more profitable. Standing on a high table and stating “Thou shalt use a different strategy for tuning thy PID controllers” does not work, and never has, and never will. I can only influence change when I have earned the respect of the people in the facility: work on night shift, go through upsets, and show them that I can provide something valuable. Then they might listen. The Incarnation is similar. People respected God (and Jesus) because Jesus was one of us, not some aloof ivory tower academic. He got his hands dirty.
I am hoping for a lively discussion tomorrow night.
Blessings.
